Snippets #15: on the right noise for he right time...

when i was sitting on the train from Lisbon to Sintra, way back at the beginning of my trip, i pulled out my PSD, plugged my wraparound headphones in and hit the Play button on some Parkway Drive. i don't usually listen to music when i'm traveling - my ears are 1/6 of my sensory perception, and almost as important to my experience of a place as what it looks or smells or tastes like. if you've got headphones drowning out the sound of a place, how are you going to notice the hum of the Eurostar as it leaves the station at St Pancras, or the sweet whine of the violin the man's playing on the Paris Metro, the calls of the market vendors in Fyshwick, or the boys busking with cellos in the street in Bruges, the snatches of English overheard that tell you here's someone i might be able to talk to, or the horn of the bus that's about to hit you in Barcelona because you looked the wrong way before crossing the street? everywhere has its sound, each language its own tone - hot chili Portugese blur, hyperactive mania of excited Spanish, the musical sexiness of French or the manic staccato of Cantonese. it's part of each place's unique signature.

but somehow despite it being the 3rd day (if you count the last day running around London, followed by my night in Heathrow) of my trip, it felt like forever since i'd chilled out with some music, and some noise always helps to ease the long periods of time spent sitting, waiting, getting your corpus from one place to another. i didn't select Parkway Drive per se - i'd been listening to it so much in London that it was an automatic response, but somehow after Romance Is Dead had been playing for a minute or so and i realised that it was all wrong for the situation, and i pondered this while i sat and watched Lisbon roll past, become countryside and eventually evolve into mountains. Parkway Drive is a loud metal band from the east coast of Australia - loud and angry, fast-paced and screamy. it's music for angry young men who say "Fuck" a lot. music for when you're living in a city and have to deal with the amount of shit a metropolis like London throws at you, when you're surrounded by souless zombies living the same day over and over and over, dealing with the day-to-day drudgery of Real Life, struggling to maintain some semblance of spark in your soul. somehow it just didn't suit my new world of wandering Europe, in a new bed every couple of days with my home on my back, a shoulder bag full of city maps, unfamiliar streets and something new around every corner.

Andy Mckee plays me to sleep when i'm on trains and planes. Death Cab For Cutie sing to me while i blog more often than noot. Wish You Were Here by Incubus soothes my mind when i'm thinking of home and missing my people. Pink Floyd when i want some soul. Disturbed or Parkway Drive when i want to get charged up and energetic. The Cure when i'm feeling melancholy. right now Bloc Party are being English in my ears, wistful and mournful, but bouncy and exuberant all at the same time (i discovered Plans off the Silent Alarm album by accident yesterday and this evening it's hit the spot perfectly while i nagivated the Berlin U-bahn back to my hostel). Parkway Drive came back when i was in Bruges when i was feeling weary and fucked, walking the streets more because i felt like i should than because i really wanted to be anywhere but my bed with Carrion screaming on repeat, drilling into my skill and filling my tired bones with energy. i swear i grew 2 inches when i hit Play, my shoulders squared and my legs forgot they were exhausted. wandering the canals, my head wasn't in the game - i was still in Paris, sitting along the Seine at midnight, driving down the Cotter with the roof off my car and the William Shatner's cover of Common People cranked loud, walking into Dickson from O'Connor for dinner on a cool spring evening. i was tired and weary, quietly wishing i was home, ashamed of myself for not enjoying where i was or what i was doing more than i was, and adding some loud, angry noise to the mix kept me moving, exploring this faux-medieval town for a couple of hours until i felt like i'd done as much of it as i could possibly do.

i'd love to say that i've done all of this on my own - modern technology lets me brush fingertips with Home, too far out of reach to take hold of, but the most featherlight of touches that lets the feeling of warmth defeat the tyrany of distance, my 24 Hour Friends: people who are just as alone as you are and determined not to be, but sometimes it's enough to have a voice in your ears who reminds you why you're doing what you're doing, the value of it, the opportunity that's too good to be missed despite the cost to your health, your relationships, your savings account, lifting you up by your brain stem, dragging you forwards and making you hungry for more...

Amsterdam: is it just me, or did this place suddenly get a whole lot less cool?

i hate to say it, but i'm fucking happy to be out of Amderdam. seriously, how much a place can change from winter to summer is amazing. it's not the town itself - it's still the happy little burg it was when i was here in February. the bucket's the same, it's all about the shit that's in it.

i'm being overly harsh i guess, but sitting on the bus on the long ride to Berlin i reckon i could have spent more time in Bercelona rather than stop here. i was only going to make it an overnighter, then get back on the bus in the morning and motor it onwards but i'd organised with the girls from Toowoomba whom i met in Bern to hang out while i was here so i took 3 nights rather than just the 1. it didn't help that they were a no-show for our evening out, leaving me fucked and abandoned, sitting on the side of the road in the RLD while i sat like a mug with my book on the kerb having stoned tourists trip over me while cigarette butts rained down out of upstairs windows. the only thing that saved the evening was when i went for a walk to look for food and ran into Mel from Busabout walking in the opposite direction and hooked in with her and her friends from there on in... although on reflection that may have wound up being the silver lining on the storm cloud that was starting to form over my head because if i'd not met up with Mel i'd not have met Dee, Stef or Val either.

i was already in a bit of a shitty mood when i took up my position on the kerb at 4PM. the previous night getting in was alright - i'd been in my dorm for all of 8 seconds when i got chatting to the Canadian who was lying on his bunk moaning and groaning about having been stoned and drunk every night the last week and spending too much money on prostitutes. didn't stop him coming down for a beer though, or paying for everything past the first round. we had a pretty good evening sitting around the Irish pub downstairs from the Witte Tulp (White Tulip) Hostel. even the rowdy Brit tourists who generally yelled over us and, while friendly enough, had a certain streak of "quick to anger soccer hooligan" about them, didn't really spoil the mood. they were just a taste of what i was going to see out on the streets later though.

the "English Stag Do" has a pretty bad reputation in most of Europe that i've seen. they get out in a pack, go somewhere cheap or fun and generally act like it's a fucking theme park. they seem to roll with the philosophy that they're only there for a couple of days so they can run amok and not have to worry about the mess they leave in their wake. it's all about getting pissed and shoving past you in the street while singing football anthems with these arseholes. it's not everyone, of course. not every young Aussie lad wears boardies, a blue wife-beater and a stubby-holder on his arm and makes a mess of Galipoli on ANZAC Day, but it happens enough (or used to - i avoided it when i had the chance this year based on the reputation, but people who went this year said they've cleaned up their act and this year was very respectful). Amsterdam attracts the sort of people who really want to get this sort of shit out of their system. want to go get stoned and not worry about getting arrested? want have a different girl every night and not go through the effort of chatting them up and buy them drinks? want to be able to piss in the street? actually, that's not really allowed. i nearly wound in lockup when i ducked down a quiet alley for some relief and was given a good shoving by an angry plain-clothes cop. the rest the Dutch will more than happily charge and tax you for. there are 3 Golden Rules i've been told have been the main tenents of Dutch law for hundreds of years: 1) You must be discrete. 2) You can't be harming anyone else. 3) It must be good for business. obey these three and it's all on for young and old. Catholicism survived through the Protestant age because of these three rules. Jews were accepted with to greater or lesser degrees even into WWII because of this.

it's just that it attracts seedy wankers who messy up the place and use it as an excuse for a big party, and summer is the time when everyone takes their break so plenty of them come to Amsterdam. i don't know how the locals stand it, but then the Dutch are famously liberal and open-minded. to this day i've not met a rude or nasty Dutch person - just look at Wiebe and Mieke who i hung out with in Sintra.

waking up the next morning without anywhere to be and a bit if a hangover i'd have loved a sleep-in... even just to 9:30 or 10AM. my grand plans of getting some fucking rest were defeated by the Old Church which my hostel happened to be in front of. it's not even a fucking church anymore, but that doesn't mean the bellringers have been laid off. starting at 8 and going on until about 10 at night the bells go off every fifteen fucking minutes. the bells... THE FUCKING BELLS!! WHY WON'T THEY FUCKING STOP? WE'RE IN THE ERA OF WRISTWATCHES FOR FUCK'S SAKE! i HAVE A CLOCK ON MY PHONE, MP3 PLAYER AND CAMERA! I DON'T NEED TO KNOW THE TIME FROM A FUCKING BELL! SWEET JEBUS i'LL RECANT MY ATHEISM, JUST MAKE THEM FUCKING STOP!!! every morning. every motherfucking, dog-raping, child-vivisectioning morning.

i can get by on 5-6 hours of sleep as long as it'd good and i don't have to do it for long, but a shitty pillow and sagging mattress put paid to that, so between a shitty night's sleep and the sandaled feet of a choir of angels pounding on my head i was not in a great mood. still, awake and with time to kill i headed off for a pile of Pommes Frittes et Mayonaise the NewEurope Free Tour for something to do, and because i knew in my gut that if i went i'd run into Mladin again, which i did. he was on the bus when i left Bruges and i knew he'd do the free tour on his first day to get an idea of the place before covering the rest on foot. he's a good bloke and i was missing the Triumvirate of Tourism from Paris and after walking around for 4 hours we stopped for a quiet coffee before i went off to my doomed appointment.

i spent the rest of the evening getting to know my new batch of 24 Hour Friends while Mel changed hostels and we went for a wander of the RLD since they'd not seen it at night yet. when i came in winter it was fairly quiet all told. this time round it was jam-packed with people and from the number of lads i saw going through the doors the sex-tourists were in full force. when you get up to with your money is up to you as long as it's not hurting anyone but i couldn't pay for it. it's not my style. still, the girls have to make a living so i'll not pass judgement. i heard a story in Paris that there was an interesting legal case in The Netherlands a few years ago where a woman applied for the dole and was asked if she'd tried prostitution and when she said "No" she was refused assistance because she'd "not tried all available options". the case went to court and (fortunately, as far as i'm concerned) the girl won. that must have been an interesting circus to be in the middle of...

the most surreal thing about it though was the tour groups of OAP's being led through, peering in the windows at the girls in their skimpies. that completely did my head in. imagine your grandmother wandering through Amsterdam's RLD surrounded by stoners and sex-tourists having a good old look-see. i can't do it. my head's ready to implode just thinking about it, and i think it'd be the end of either of mine, especailly my maternal. nonetheless, that's what i was seeing, not once but twice, on consecutive nights.

i tried for an early night and a better night's sleep and failed on both counts and in the end i think the only reason i dragged my aching corpus out of bed was to get away from those fucking bells, so i went to catch some of the stuff i'd not seen the first time i was in Amsterdam like the Sex Museum (which was interesting, but small and at the end of the day: meh), then tramed around until i got to the Waterlooplein Markets and found a phone booth so that i could call my kid brother for his birthday. when i got on Busabout they gave me a phone card that's supposed to be good for 5 minutes worth of calls to Australia, but not, it turns out, good enough to call a mobile phone which is the only number i have for The Boy since he stopped being a KIPPER (Kids In Parents Premises Eroding Retirement Savings) and moved out from the Parentals last December so i wound up saying fuck it (out loud, in the middle of the road just so you know) and eating into my drindling credit to call him on my mobile. the sound of shock was worth it. he's my kid brother - these things are worth it.

i ran into Mladin randomly at the monument in Dam Platz while i was waiting for Mel and the crew an hour or so later while i saw there with Inhale Exhale cranked on my PSD and my copy of Day Watch open on my lap and he kept me company while i killed time. Dee's an interesting Indian-Australian who's been good value and Val and Stef are fraternal-twins from canada who are straight as straight, but very Nice - good value one and all. we meandered around and checked out a few things they hadn't seen yet while we waited for our evening canal-cruise, then spent a bit over an hour being ferried along the canals. which was a pleasant way to kill the evening. pulling back into dock i spied Caitlin and her boyfriend sitting in the Hard Rock Cafe - two American kids i'd met in Interlaken and wound up bailing on the crew so i could go over and say hello, which is how i would up giving yet another tour of the RLD. i was going that way anyway - my hostel was in the middle of it all after all. it was an odd random encounter, but pleasant.

this morning i managed to beat the bells. i was out the door by 6:30AM so that i could get across town and to the pick-up point for the bus. the Val and Stef saved me a long walk - they were staying 100m down the road from me and had a spare tram ticket which they donated to me which meant that we were in position a good hour early. now it's all a couple of hours behind me and we're not far from the German border. we've been warned to get rid of any marjuana we may have saved for later before we hit there on threat of the arrest of not just them, but the bus driver as well and no one looks particularly worried. me, i've got better things to do than try to sneak a gram of fine Dutch weed across the border, so i know i'm clean. in the meantime, it's going to be a long run into Berlin and the motorway's pretty boring. if you want to see countryside take the train. if you want to get there cheap while surrounded by Australians take Busabout. i've got Dee sleeping next to me, but there's no way i'm sleeping on this thing so i guess i'll kill the hours watching Pushing Daisies and Flight of the Conchords. thank fuck for buses with power points...

Bruges: drinking chocolate and eating beer...

"Don't go to Bruges," people would said when i told them where i was planning on getting to in Europe, "all there is to do is eat chocolate and drink beer."

wait... are you saying that's a BAD thing?

this is where i'm supposed to wax lyrical about Bruges. it's a small Belgian town you can walk across in half an hour... maybe more if you count the areas outside the moat. it's billed as a UNESCO-protected medieval town with charming streets and canals. what it is is a tourist village which is about as authentic as a Disney remake of a Hans Christian Andersson fairy tale. please note that i don't say this is specifically a bad thing. when you get past the instant reaction, Bruges is a lovely little place to kill a couple of days drinking some examples of the best-crafted beers on the planet. i've drunk a lot of beer in my time, across 5/7 of the inhabitable continents and i'm here to tell you that Belgian beer is the BEST... although i'm also prepared to recant this statement if necessary when i get to Germany.

oh, and the chocolate is fucking unreal, too.

and cheap. did i mention cheap?

you can cover off the main tourist attractions in half a day - it's what i did, with Danielle whom i met on the bus on the way in. go to the top of the bell tower in the Markt Square in the middle of town, then head off to see the Veneration of the Holy Blood (one of the churches claims to have a vial of Jesus' blood. it was a vial, it had dried-up brownish-red stuff in it... although i'd love to see a DNA comparison with the Shroud of Turin. you know... just for shits and giggles), bugger off to yet another church to see the Madonna and Child - the only Michaelangelo statue outside of Italy, walk past a canal or two and fetch up in the little pub with 200+ different beers behind the counter and see how many of them you can get through. there, see? throw in some Pommes Frittes et Mayonaisse and try out some of the chocolate (my recommendation: buy some of the broken-up blocks, take a massive bite and let it slowly melt in your mouth. it shut me up for a good 5 minutes... if you ignore the happy groaning) and you've done everything you need to do it Bruges. the rest of it is relaxation time.

seriously, i spent my second day going for a nice walk around the place taking photos and ignoring the tourist shops and spending almost no money - 5.50 Euros bought me over a kilo of spaghetti at a little cafe marked out on the tourist map (although the map failed to mention that this place had the Worst Service i'Ve Ever Seen, and i've been to Wong Kei's in London), and i worked through a 10 Euro Beer Card at the hostel. even my fucking hostel had incredible beer on hand. there doesn't seem to be any such thing as a bad Belgian beer. they must burn anyone who brews a poor batch at the stake or something.

my only little sin in Bruges was a visit to the local Heavy Metal Music shop, where i asked to hear any recommended Belgian or French metal, and would up walking away with a Belgian Punk album. the rest of it was just more rubber off the soles of my shoes and time spent sitting around the hostel's bar (the only place i could get a reliable net connection) chatting with Jess, the blonde Canadian who seemed to be hanging around a bit. she was pleasant enough company, and i wasn't looking for a new Best Friend or anything so she worked out well enough as someone to talk to.

i really needed the time to chill out though. it hit me hard on my second day there. i woke up feeling like crap, shifted my kit from one dorm to another and found myself sitting downstairs with breakfast trying to work up the motivation to do something other than lie around on my bunk all day. in the end i shamed myself into going exploring, but it was only 4 hours before i was back again, and i must have spent at least one of them reading my book while i waited for the rude waitress at he cafe to take my order (although once she did the food came quick), and another half standing in Metalzone listening to average-sounding music. i was, as they say, uninspired.

still, 2 days after arriving i'm back on the bus, this time to Amsterdam. my faithful travel-towel which has been with me since Egypt, on the other hand, didn't make it onto the bus. i left the bloody thing hanging up in Bruges after my shower this morning and didn't realise until i was climbing on the bus to go, so i guess i'm drying myself with a tshirt from now until i find a cheap replacement. oh well - these things happen on the road and if that's the worst thing i lose then i'll count myself lucky... wait... where's my external hard drive?

no, there it is. damn TARDIS shoulder-bag...

Paris: unexpected delays may occur in transit...

i was supposed to be in Bruges by now - it's the date i've had booked since the day before i left London when i waved my finger at the calendar in the STA in Covent Garden and plucked a random date out of the air. as it happens, i'm not currently in Bruges: i'm still in Paris. it wasn't my idea, although it was a good one. one i liked more and more as the seconds passed after it was inserted into my head as gentle as a needle in your vein, as effective as a red-hot spike through your ear. wisdom comes at the strangest times, like when you're sitting on the bank of the Seine and someone says quietly:

"You know, you don't have to leave tomorrow..."

and so i didn't.

the free walking tour was a good idea too - there was a huge contingent from the St Christopher's and it was a good opportunity to meet a few people. i did another of the NewEurope tours in Dublin, and i strongly recommend them. it's a cheap 3-4 hours of entertaininemt, and you see a lot of a city quick. after we were done there were a few people who wanted to head off to the Eiffel Tower, so i went along and as we were all milling around afterwards in the shade of that monstrous feat of engineering i suggested that the Arc du Triomphe was only another 20 minutes walk onwards, so i led them there. suddenly i'm a fucking tour guide in a city i'd spent a total of 2 days in previously.

NewEurope run a number of paid-for tours, including one through the Montmartre area, famous for artists and sleaze, the Moulin Rouge and a particularly impressive church. we were all keen, so we caught the Metro out to Blanche Station from the Arc du Triomphe and met them up across the road from the Moulin Rouge (which is smaller than you'd expect, as well as being somewhat less impressive than the movie would lead you to believe). we're led along and shown the houses where Van Gogh lived and Picasso lived, as well as the cafe where Picasso painted pictures for food before he got famous, on to the statue dedicated to the martyr who allegedly picked up his own severed head, then hiked 6 miles up the hill to that very spot before dropping dead, preaching the gospel as he went, meandering our way up to the hill whereupon sits the church i'd seen in the distance from the Eiffel Tower ages previously. it's a gleaming white mixture of roman, byzantine and gothic styles. it's also where my spectacles broke in two, leaving me with my prescription sunglasses to see by.

well, fuck.

i wound up walking around through the twilight with a small crew of people who wanted to check out the markets we'd walked through previously on the tour and pick up some art. the area's jumping with starving artists making a living sketching portraits and caricatures, as well as some extraordinarily pleasant paintings of various landmarks, and i wound up dropping 20 Euros on a couple of nice pictures that'll go well with the pair i picked up in Barcelona. now there's a habit i should probably nip in the bud sooner rather than later...

meanwhile, after nearly 12 hours of wandering around with this group, i was starting to get to know them pretty well. there's Mladin - a Serbian from Melbourne taking his long-service leave, MCG - a Californian student with an eco-sustainability bent on exchange in Denmark and taking her time getting there, plus Stars and Moon - mum dragging her youngest around Europe for a while as part of her home-schooling. they've proven to be an entertaining crew for the last couple of days. we finally got back to the hostel just as the last of the light was fading, which was good since i was getting to the point where i had to choose between wearing my sunnies and being able to see the darkness clearly, or going without and seeing it light but blurry. next thing i knew, MCG and i were sitting on the little bridge across the Seine at 2 in the morning with me looking like some sort of vampire fetishist, wearing mirror-shades in the middle of the night, talking about sustainable technologies for a brighter future.

i finally got to sleep at somewhere around 3 or 4 when Snoring Guy rolled over, farted and shut the fuck up (i've come to the opinion that roughly one in 6 people snore, so if you're in a dorm room you're almost guaranteed to have SOMEONE sleeping in the same room who sounds like a cross between a clogged toilet and Thomas the Fucking Tank Engine), then was up again at 7:30AM to shift my bus bookings around.

today i played tour-guide again. our merry band caught the Metro to Notre Dame, then onwards to the Catacombs, where MCG bailed and headed for the hostel and 4 hours of sleep. i'm not sure how it happened, but people seem to think that i'm some sort of authority on this town. it helps that they wanted to see things i've already seen once and i have the sort of memory that holds onto otherwise-useless information which is none-the-less interesting. i'd planned on getting the crew to the Catacombs then chilling out in a cafe before meeting them afterwards but Stars wouldn't hear of it, and the next thing i knew my ticket was covered. we stopped for a bite to eat, and suddenly i have a burger in front of me. after guiding everyone around yesterday Mladin insisted on going a round at the hostel, and he's been talking about grabbing crepes somewhere too. this is the sort of generosity that does my head in - here i am wandering around with random 24 Hour Friends, having a good time and suddenly it's like a job people want to tip me for. i don't want it but i'll accept it, even if only not to be rude - i'm just happy to have entertaining people to hang with and i'm having a blast just walking the streets, soaking up the colour, practicing my French (mine is laughably bad, but better than most of the people i'm with so i've been doing a fair bit of the talking). what's really funny is that this isn't the first time someone's suggested that i drop out and become a tour-guide. maybe i should have a think about that...

meanwhile, Stars and Moon need to get to Charles de Gaulle for their flight to Luton and i'm going to make damn-sure they get on the right train, so Mladin and i help them navigate the maze of the nearby Metro/RER station, then accompany them as far as Gare du Nord on our way back to the hostel. i'm going to have to keep in touch with those two - Stars is a remarkably interesting woman in her early 50's with a lot of life-knowledge. she's a quick study as well. she had me pegged surprisingly quickly. Moon, on the other hand, has to be one of the clueiest 13 year olds i've ever met. life is long, though, and Stars has consigned her email address to the mercies of my Notebook de Dios so we'll just have to see what happens. i'm supposed to be passing through her part of the world in September next year anyway, so things could always get interesting.

i had a bit of a time out in my new dorm - booking an extra bed at the last second often means shifting rooms, and now i'm up on the 6th floor in a room with 6 beds, not bunks, and an ensuite bathroom. it hurt my wallet, but the convenience factor was entirely worth it. i was sitting in the bar a couple of hours later chatting with a couple of randoms - Rachel the Apprentice Chef from Sydney whom i'd met in my dorm earlier, and Emily from Melbourne who's touring for a couple of months while her boyfriend winds up his work before they meet back up in London - when MCG comes down and we head down the road for a cheap meal of couscous before whiling away the evening, picking up from where we'd left he night before while the rain comes down outside, making the streets glisten and lending the Parisien night a dream-like quality. tomorrow MCG, Mladin and i are headed for Versailles to check out the Chateau and the gardens that have seen the feet of the the likes of Louis XIV and XVI, Marie-Antionette and Napoleon Boneparte and i know that once again tonight i'll get nowhere near enough sleep, and tomorrow will be spent telling stories and entertaining the troops. we've got a good dynamic running now - 3 very different people with vastly different backgrounds who somehow get along famously. MCG's enjoying having interesting people to hang out with and Mladin's liking having the backup in his wanderings. he was really nervous about getting around a completely foreign city, but he's getting it together. by Friday he'll be running around alone without a care in the world. by Friday i'll be on the bus to Bruges, as tempting as it is to hang around untill Sunday when Mladin and MCG move on. i can't though - i just can't afford it, although that's probably for the best anyway. i could see myself getting too attached to this place and i don't have that luxury. places to do, things to meet, people to be... or is that supposed to be the other way around?

France - Back in Paris again (once wasn't enough)...

FUCK!!! Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuckfuck!! damn my brain, damn my memory, damn my jet-powered rocket pants... which i don't have and are yet to be invented! it's Monday. i just hopped off the train at Gare du l'Est and started hiking off to go sight-seeing when i remembered that tomorrow i'd planned on going to the Louvre. but tomorrow's a Tuesday. the motherfucking Louvre's closed on a fucking Tuesday!

FUCK!

i stopped in the first cafe i saw and payed a ruinously high price for a coffee so i could use their wifi. the lack of free wifi in Interlaken meant that i hadn't actually worked out where my hostel was, so i needed to find it quick. half an hour later i'm there and wait for some stroppy French bitch to finish arguing with the staff so that i can get checked in, dump my bag and run. it's 4:30PM before i get there, having sprinted to the nearest Metro station and guessed right the direction to go. fortunately the Lourve is on the same line, and thank fuck for that.

come 6PM i'm much calmer. i've seen the Mona Lisa and the Venus di Milo, i've seen the Code of Hammurabi and more French paintings and sculture than i care to remember, including a room full of colossal Rubens works, and spent the rest of the time aimlessly wandering looking at whatever i can see, which is a lot. i could head back to the hostel again by Metro... but it's a pleasant evening and i've spent most of the day on the train from Interlaken to Basel, then on to Paris Est so i could use the exercise and i plod up to the Opera house, then meander my way back, stopping at a greasy kebab joint which happened to have an open wifi connection nearby to feed for the first time today, check my email and sort out my bus route and realise that i have 9 days unaccounted for at the end of the trip before i head off the the south of Italy. hmm... i'll have to find something interesting to fill those with.

did i mention that yesterday i went Canyoning? i don't think so. for a full description of what it involves, check the excellent Wikipedia page. for the lazy, you start at the top of a canyon and get to the bottom or end of it, jumping from rock to rock, wading through glacier-melt and jumping off or sliding down waterfalls. i was exhausted at the end of it, once i'd had a few of the provided beers and had a cheese-and-salami sandwich and the adrenaline had worn off. it's been safe-ified, and there are a pair of experienced guides who take you through, but from the 50 metre abseil at the top to the zip-line at the bottom it has to be one of the funnest things i've ever done - just imagine doing a flip off a 6 metre jump into freezing snow-melt next to a waterfall in the Swiss Alps. it's unbelieveable... now i just need to find 380 Franks so that ii can pay someone to let me jump out of a helicopter.

meanwhile, i'm back in Paris again and this is something which brings me no small joy - a pastry shop on every street corner, monuments you can navigate by and attractive women who say "oui" (or more usually in the case of one hairy Australian: "non"). the only sadness is that it means that i'm no longer in Interlaken. Jason and i parted company early this morning after having a lovely dinner out at the Thai place near the Funny Farm, but he's on facebook, so we can catch up whenever we want. we wound up sitting next to the guy who runs the Hang Gliding business in Interlaken, who asked how long we'd been travelling together.

mate! we only met a couple of days ago in the hostel!
"Really? You guys seem like best mates!"

i guess it was a bit like that. still, he's in London by now and i'm chilling out in the St Christophers alongside the north-east end of the Seine. i got the Louvre in today, so i have tomorrow to entertain myself. i'll probably do one of the free NewEurope tours - it leaves from the hostel and promises 3-4 hours of entertainment. it's lovely being back in Paris. i can walk around this city for hours on end and be happy, stopping occasionally for a coffee or a Tartelette Citron. it's going to be a great day tomorrow - i can feel it, then it's on the bus to Bruges for me and on to phase 2 of my trip. i'm still looking forward to heading home, but there's no urgency in it. i've hit my stride and got my second wind. i'm powering on in the best way and laughing all the way. part of the joy of being back in Paris is that i don't have that feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar place. i still have my map from the last time, but my feet seem to know more or less where to go and there's no concern about getting horrendously lost. it's a great feeling and i'm grooving it, a lot. i'd head back out into it tonight, but i'm opting for a quiet, and cheap one lying in my bunk with my Eee getting a few things sorted out online. tomorrow's another day however, and i'm sure there's plenty of adventures to be had then...

Interlaken: please let me get back here just once before my body breaks...

it's one of those gorgeous rainy days where water's been falling steadily and gently from the sky since i woke up this morning and hasn't stopped in any real way since. it's the sort of cold wet day where if you were at home you'd look out the window in the morning and think fuck it, i'm not even changing out of my pyjamas, let alone leaving the fucking house, make yourself a steaming hot cup of tea, curl up on the couch with a bucket of popcorn big enough to feed Ethiopia and watch movies until you pass out under the blanket... but i'm not at home. i'm in Interlaken, Switzerland.

Interlaken is one of those places whispered about in hostels and cheap pubs - wherever low-fi travellers congregate. it's in the Lonely Planet and all, but unless you're in the Adventure Sports scene you've probably never heard of it. i hadn't either until i got chatting with two Canadian girls with more metal in their faces than the Statue of Liberty, waiting for the Airport Shuttle on my way out of Split. we did the standard backpacker's handshake of where are you going? where have you been? and they said

"We're going back to Interlaken."
back?
"Yeah, we had to totally rearrange our trip and add 2 weeks so we could go back. 3 weeks just wasn't enough."
wait... what the fuck's so special about Interlaken??!?

so when i got back to London i looked it up, promptly added it to my list of places to get to in Switzerland, filed under "i have too much shit to deal with right now to think about it too hard".

i pulled into Interlaken Ost Station at 3 in the afternoon a couple of days ago on a high. i'd spent the previous day wandering Bern with Chris from Colorado, hitting the Einstein Museum and generally enjoying the quiet little capital, then having some quiet drinks with him and the girls from Toowoomba. the girls were on an early train out, so Chris and i bummed around and took our time getting to the station. our departures were something like 2 minutes apart, and i spent the next 50 minutes ignoring my book. the view out the window was far too nice to miss - rolling hills and neat little villages giving way to a sky-blue lake in a valley of mountains which the train followed for about half the trip, stopping finally in the massively-touristy little town of Interlaken. picture a nexus of glacial valleys carved out between the mountains - a land-bridge between two lakes, one of which rates as the deepest in Europe at over 800 metres while overhead parachutes float down from helicopters, para- and hang-gliders soar and gondolas glide silently up to the top of mountains under a sky speckled with clouds. Interlaken is the Xtreme Sports capital of Europe, second in the world to New Zealand for people to run around like fucking maniacs and jump off or out of things in summer, or strap planks to their feet and slide down white mountains in winder. it's also possibly the most naturally-beautiful place i've ever been to, and after 16 countries it's getting towards the point where that's saying something.

i killed an hour or so checking out the town with my backpack strapped on under clear blue skies in 34 degree heat before i legged it out to Bonigen a couple of kilometres down the road and as separate from Interlaken as Queanbeyan is from Canberra. i'd been disorganised again and left booking a hostel too late, and without wifi at the YHA in Bern i decided to take the easy route and get them to book me a couple of nights in the one in Interlaken. this, it turned out, was something of a mistake. the Interlaken YHA's idyllicly located on the shore of the eastern lake with a nice little grassed area and decent facilities. it's also family-friendly, which came as a bit of a shock.

i'll admit that when i walked into the dorm in Bern to see a Spanish woman breast-feeding in a room that smelled strongly of "baby" i was a bit freaked out. rocking up in Interlaken to find out i was sharing the room with 2 families did not make me particularly happy. don't get me wrong - it's not that i don't like kids. i fucking hate kids. i didn't even like myself until i was in my 20's. they're loud, irritating, don't listen to anyone and you're not allowed to punch them or tell them to shut the fuck up. i'll admit that there are certain individual children i'm quite fond of, but on the whole i'd not be particularly upset if everyone under the age of 16 was sent to an internment camp until they became properly human and were allowed to join the rest of society. fortunately, my worst fears were never realised. there were plenty of kids around the hostel, almost all of whom were quite well behaved and apart from one little Indian girl who spoke only in short, sharp shrieks they managed to not actually force me to notice them.

i'd got myself settled in, read my book for a while and took the chance to enjoy some downtime for a couple of hours when a brain-wave hit me: town between two lakes, one east, one west. the sun sets in the west. there must be at least even odds of there being a great sunset! i had about an hour to get to the other side of town, so i powered off and caught the bus out to Interlaken West. when you check into your hostel in this part of the world you get a "Tourist Card" which entitles you to free use of the bus system, plus various discounts around the place, so i had no concerns about abusing it as much as possible. 4 hours later i staggered back into the hostel unfulfilled - i'd power-walked for nearly an hour trying to get to the western lake, only to realise that i'd massively underestimated the distance involved and had to walk back into town to get the bus back to Bonigen, then spent another hour walking down the street with my laptop out sniffing for open wifi connections. i eventually found one and sat down on a pile of bags of fertiliser, obviously looking dodgy as hell, but refusing to move until i'd caught up on my email.

sitting in the hostel going over the day's photos shortly thereafter and beginning to despair of meeting anyone interesting in this slice of family-friendly hell, i met Jason from Halifax, Nova Scotia and we've been hanging out ever since. with absolutely no effort we managed to hit it off in about 8 seconds, and 5 minutes later we'd agreed to meet at breakfast and go exploring the next day. Thursday was beautiful and warm with a sun which smiled down upon us like a golden god. when i dragged myself out of my bunk on Friday it wasn't just raining, it was pissing down. i'd known this was going to happen - in a town where the primary source of income relies on the weather, everyone knows what's coming tomorrow so i'd been warned about the incoming storms the day before, so Jason and i convened over low-GI cereal to discuss our game-plan, which turned out to be "get to town, hit the Tourist Information Centre".

Friday was one of those days on which, irrespective of the weather, the gods did smile upon me. between meeting at breakfast and heading out, the rain stopped. the bus arrived 2 minutes after we got to the stop so we didn't have to wait, and by the time we got into town there was some clear sky. there was no climbing mountains - the peaks were all obscured by clouds. they have CCTV up there on a public chanel so that anyone can check out the conditions, and that made planning the day much easier. in the end we wound up firing off to Lauterbrunnen by train to check out the Trummelbach falls which cut through the mountain past 11 viewing galleries and pump 20,000 litres of water a second down into the valley. the train's obviously been designed with tourists in mind: the windows all wind right down, and we spent the half-hour ride hanging out of them like a pair fools, taking photos and giggling like clowns with views sliding by that make you want to curl up in the corner and gibber quietly.

the weather was still holding out when we got back to Lauterbrunnen, so we headed off to Grindelwald if for no other reason than that it was there and accessible, and wound up not having to pay for the train because, out of sheer luck, the conductor just didn't get to us. Lauterbrunnen's famous for sitting in a valley with something like 72 waterfalls and was breathtaking. Grindelwald used to be a farming village before tourism reared its lucrative head and gives access to some of the region's peaks. we looked long and speculatively at one of the chair-lifts, but noted at the darkening sky and opted to skip it and head for the train. we were barely on it when the heavens opened, and our ride back to Interlaken was accompanied by a light-show to go with the pouring rain.

it was 3 hours later that we staggered into the hostel, soaked, but full of the cheapest pizza in Interlaken (still the equivalent of AUD$11.60), exhausted but jubilent and sat down to sink some cheap beer from the supermarket, high-fiving each other every couple of minuites. it was a fucking great day.

today's been a washout. Jason and i have shifted hostels to the Funny Farm which is far less of a mission to get in and out of town from. i'm booked in to go Canyoning tomorrow in Grimsel and we're heading out with a couple of Americans we met when we arrived to get pizza and watch the fireworks that are going off in the park. i'm loving this town, the quiet Swiss people wandering around and the backpackers and adventure-seekers who are all talking about what amazing activity they've just done, and what they have planned for tomomorrow. i was only supposed to be here for 2 nights and this is night 3 of what will turn out to be 4 and... well, i'm sure Lyon is lovely and all, but right now it could be turned into a smoking glass crater tomorrow and i'll not regret having missed seeing it because i still have one more day to enjoy being here.

yes, it IS worth coming back to... how shocked am i?

Barcelona -> Bern: soothing rain for the soul...

it's raining in Bern and i'm feeling better than i have in days, sitting on the balcony outside my dorm room in the dark with the lightning flashing behind me while fat drops of water fall from the sky. by the time i flew out of Barcelona i was shattered - fucked up and bent out of shape. was it the heat? the crowds? i don't know. one way or another i was glad to finally get out of Spain.

i pulled into Barcelona on the night train out of Madrid on Sunday morning after spending the night in a cramped little cabin sitting up with an American girl, a lovely young Argentinian couple and a middle-aged Spanish couple who i spoke to mostly in sign-language and my broken Spanish. it was just like the scene out of Eurotrip when the kids are on the train with the amorous Italian guy, except less with the "scusi, scusi" and more of the waking up every hour or so feeling cramped and uncomfortable. night trains are an awesome idea for travelling - it cost me 41 Euros - 1/4 the cost of the high-speed AVE train, and saved me the cost of a hostel for the night while giving me an extra full day in Madrid. the light was blinding when i walked out of Barcelona Sants Estation with my backpack strapped on, and my world had the surreal slant that comes when you don't sleep well, wake up in a completely different place, and then suddenly as i'm walking along i realised i was standing in a grove of gum trees. i was convinced that this could NOT be right, but no - there was a little plaque on the ground saying that they were in fact Eucalyptus Globulus, and suddenly i desperately wished i was home again. a wise(ish) man once said to me "Holidays are easy, travel is hard," and in Barcelona i hit the wall.

it's around three and a half kilometres from the Sants to La Ramblas (The Rambles) in the heart of Barcelona. i could have taken the Metro, but why? i had time to kill and a city to see, and walking saved me 1.35 Euros. i took my time, grabbing a coffee at a little cafe on the side of Av. de Paral Lel to build up my strength. it was already hot when i stepped blinking out of the station at just past 8, and it just got hotter. i finally got to the Hostel at somewhere around 9:30AM to find that it was, in fact, a pokie lounge. WTF? the people running the place didn't speak english and pointed down the road when i asked about the Hostel at 49 Las Ramblas. no joy. i walked into a nearby hostel who refused to let me use their wifi, so i wound up walking up and down the street looking for an unsecured connection. i must have looked dodgy as fuck sitting on my backpack with my Eee on my lap, but i was beyond caring. finally connected outside the Tourism Information Centre, i checked the website to see that the address was, in fact, 49... except that the directions said 75. Double-WTF?

20 mintues later i'm sitting in the common-room of the dodgiest setup i've ever come across. no staff - i'd been let in by one of the Estonians who was staying there. the guy who manages the place comes and goes, it seems. after an hour of cruising their net connection i gave up, dumped my bag and bogged off to wander around the town. it's a pretty place, no mistake. broad streets tree-lined streets, pretty buildings, a Gothic Quarter which was all shady alleyways, the Picasso Museum with was well-worth the look (although not as good as the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam) and a marina which has obviously been done up in the last few years with a statue of Columbus, Nelson-style, on a high plinth pointing west, and to glory.

after i'd had my fill of bizarre Gaudi architecture, forgetting which side of the road people drive on and nearly getting hit by buses and sweating in the sticky heat i got back to the hostel and finally got to check in. it turns out that they're actually operating illegally - they don't have a licence to operate, and they were massively overbooked (i was in a 6-bed dorm sleeping 8 people: one on a trundle bed, and 2 Scottish girls sleeping together)... but... you know? it was the friendliest place i've stayed in a long time, a nice lounge (with 2 people sleeping on the couch), their internet was free and fast and it was as comfortable as it had to be, in one of the best locations in town. the weirdness aside, i was actually kinda grooving it.

i've been talking to people about destinations for a while now - it's a standard Backpacker conversation: where have you been, where are you going, what was good, what sucked. i've heard the phrase "Oh, Barcelona shits all over Madrid," so many times that i had pretty high expectations. i find the best way to compare two cities is the sister-analogy, and Spain is no different. Barcelona's definately the prettier younger sister to Madrid, but in this case it's not completely a good thing. Madrid's the cultured, older girl with a deep-seated energy and doesn't give a fuck what you think. Madrid smells of hot concrete, salsa and tapas. Barcelona, on the other hand, is prettied up, but you realise quickly that she's done her makeup to cover up the bad skin and lack of personality. it's gorgeous, don't get me wrong... but i'm getting sick of younger girls with an inferiority complex. after Madrid, Barcelona smelled like last night's paella, urine and desperation and now i'm a little older and wiser i find i've far more time for the more worldly lass who doesn't feel like she has anything too prove. Madrid's beauty is effortless. Barca's is forced, and the vibe rubbed me completely the wrong way.

when i'd pulled in that morning i met a couple of English girls (ok, one was from Wales, but i'm not in the mood to split hairs, OK?) who i'd agreed to meet up with at 7PM to go for a drink and when they finally got their act together at a quarter to 8 we had a nice time wandering around, grabbing a gyros (think aussie-style kebab) at one place, then a jug of sangria at another and all would have been good if we hadn't been attached by a sweaty Spanish guy afterwards. it started with him yelling at us, then trying to grab me, then a shove, after which i decided that it was about time i distracted him while the girls legged it, so i threw him around for a bit then legged it myself.

i've not been in a fight in years, and the last time it ended in one blow. it turned out that i COULD in fact take a punch to the face and not fall over, so he backed off from there. i wasn't in the mood to take another shot in the jaw, so when he knocked my specs off i wound up having to knock him around for a bit while i desperately searched the ground for them, hitting him occasionally to keep him distracted. it was funny - holding my phone as a torch and scouring the pavement blindly while making sure that neither of us stepped on them. it was funnier when the guy who attacked me started calling for the police. i've got no fucking idea what was going on, but i spotted them, grabbed him by the throat and threw him into the street so that i could grab them, punched him again while i made sure they were intact and legged it back onto the croweded Rambla. i caught up with the girls again, but it was a while before the adrenaline wore off.

back in the hostel later i was starting to settle in for the night when the 3 Scottish girls checked in and we got chatting. when i mentioned that they should stay in the crowded areas on account of my adventures they joked about taking me out with them for security, and i said yeah, why not? which is why i would up hanging out with them until past 2. they were good company... not to mention hotter than Satan's Sauna.

the next morning i woke up in an almost empty room, covered in sweat, feeling like i'd been run over by a truck. most of the people in the hostel were heading off to a music festival nearby, which i'm guessing is why i had such a hard time finding accomodation for the 2 days i was planning in Barcelona. i hadn't been injured in the fight - he didn't manage to lay anything on me (it's nice to know for sure that the training i've had since the that last fight still works), and i hadn't drunk much, but i'd had it. i spend the rest of the morning lying around drinking water, trying to get up the energy to go back out and see more of the city, but i was fucked. i managed to drag my sorry arse out of bed, get some food into me and head off to walk around, but after about 3 hours in the heat i gave up and chilled out in the hostel, chatting with the 2 Swedish girls who'd spent the last week partying, the Malaysian/British student on walkabout and the 5 Aussies who'd just run with the bulls in Pamplona. i just wasn't in the mood - i tried to get up the motivation to blog but it just didn't happen. i tried to watch a movie but i couldn't concentrate. i was tired and feeling sick and really just not in a fit state for anything.

the next morning i pulled myself out of bed in pretty much the same state i'd entered it in, packed my shit and headed out to catch the Metro for the Airport (not as simple a proposition as it looked like it'd be on the map). i'd been so on the go for the last fortnight and the only thought in my head was about how shit i felt and how much i desperately just wanted to go the fuck home. check-in was quick and painless, the little Airbus A319 took off and i immediately passed out in my seat for most of the flight to Geneva.

you know how the Swiss are renouned for being well organised? well, everything you've heard is right. if they'd just accept the Euro and try not to be so fucking expensive this place'd be a paradise. the train station at the Airport connects straight to Geneva. i'd expected to have to find the station for my train to Bern, but it was a no-brainer so my lunch on the shores of Lake Geneva became too much of a mission for me to be bothered with. i had to change trains at Lausanne anyway, so i decided to go for a wander there instead and found myself rolling downhill through a lovely neat little town. i had enough time to get to Lake Geneva, then hike back up the hill, grab some fresh bread, ham and cheese from a supermarket and get back to the station in time for the next train out, and sat there watching the countryside roll by while i had a little picnic on the train, washing my sandwich down with juice and polishing it off with a couple of squares of dark Swiss chocolate.

sitting there, watching the Alps roll into the lake i couldn't help but laugh - on a train in Switzerland eating French bread wearing shoes from Singapore, shorts from London, a singlet from Australia and a hat from Thailand while i listen to people talking in German. sometimes i get so confused i have no idea where the fuck i am. somehow i managed not to fall asleep on the train to Bern. i don't know how. the countryside was lovely in the green-rolling-hills and mountains way that i loved about Ireland, but in a style that seems uniquely Swiss - everything neat and clean and nice. i kept looking for Julie Andrews to come dancing over the hill singing, but she never showed.

Bern and i got off to a bad start. part of what i hated about Barca was the crowds. Madrid was busy, but it flowed. Barca was full of gawping fucking tourists getting in my way and stopping in the middle of the footpath for no reason, bumping into me and risking a fist in the back of the head for their trouble. i stepped off the train and straight into rush-hour foot-traffic in the Swiss Capital and after the last few days i was on the verge of not being able to fucking take it. i was hot, sweaty, irritable and about ready to mow down anyone who got in my way. out of the station i sat down at a bus stop to take stock and check the map before footing it off towards the YHA. it wasn't a long walk, and almost entirely downhill (which is doing to suck huge piles of donkey-dick when i move on, but that'll be another day). check-in was quick and friendly, although they don't have any free fucking wifi (which should be a capital offence in this day and age). i got into my room to find out that i'd be sharing a dorm with a nursing mother, so the room smells strongly of baby, and sitting on the balcony sorting through photos from the last couple of weeks i was hearing a dearth of English being spoken in the courtyard until... wait... what was that? AUSTRALIAN ACCENTS! 3 OF THEM!

ten years ago i couldn't have done it. i was a much different lad back then and the idea of walking up to 3 girls and inviting myself into the conversation would have had me all tied up in knots. this, however, is a whole different country and i am a new and improved Raven since the old days so i threw my shoes on and went straight down there.

sorry, but i heard the accent from upstairs. mind if i join you guys?

which is how i wound up spending what was going to be a quiet evening lying on my bunk watching a movie sitting around drinking the bottle of port i'd picked up in Lisbon with Nat, Kyly and Lou from Brisvegas, along with Chris from Colorado. ordinarily i try to avoid other Australians on tour... or maybe avoid is too strong. i just don't seek them out. this time i needed it. i needed it like Goulburn needs a decent thunderstorm. i needed it like a smoker needs that one last fag. i needed to be amongst my own people, talking like i would back home, using phrases and sayings that have had people in the last several months looking at me like i'm strange, like when i was offered some snacks and said nah, but cheers. these little things. they're nice folks and we wound up being asked to quiet down a few times. we sat outside under the maple tree while it rained and the thunder rolled, until i got so heavy we were getting drenched and had to go inside. Kyly jumped on the piano, then grabbed her guitar and sung a song she wrote. 2 more bottles of wine were polished off and a good time was had by all, and after all that i'm feeling so much better it doesn't even fucking compare. a few hours with people who think that my hobby of having people film me doing poi in different places is cool, who are checking off places they've visited like a shopping list, who have stories of their misfortunes that they laugh about and tell like jokes... it's helped remind me why i AM a long way from home, why i'm running around like a fucking maniac doing as much as i can and seeing everything i can wrap my eyes around while i have the time. i'm actually looking forward to exploring Bern with Chris tomorrow, and that's more than i've been able to say for a couple of days now.

the world's looking up. it feels like i've hit the wall and managed to go through it, bricks an rubble scattered in all directions while i brush the mortar-dust off my shoulders and power on into the distance. i needed to feel the rain on my face after the last couple of weeks of blue skies and heat in Spain, and now my tired soul feels washed clean and renewed. of course, i've now gone and given myself 6 hours or less to sleep which is a bad habit, but fuck it. i had to sit down and bash it out, talk about it live, smell the moist air and listen to the dripping of water falling on this quiet little city. tomorrow's going to be a good day... i can feel it in my brain, but now i need to sleep so that i can be up and make the best of the breakfast provided in the morning. it's fucking expensive in Switzerland, so if there's free food i'm going to be all over it like a fat girl on a cupcake...

Madrid -> Valdelavilla -> Madrid: how my brain broke just by speaking my own language...

i was in a rush when i flew into Madrid - so much of a rush that i actually spring for a taxi from the airport into town. i was really not in the mood for fucking around. i was supposed to be at an orientation lunch for my Pueblo Ingles programme at 2PM, and the flight didn't arrive until 40 minutes past that, so i sprinted into the city, dumped my backpack and powered across town. i missed the free lunch, of course, but i got a couple of coffees into me, listened to the live flamenco music and caught the briefing, which was the most important part - i kinda wanted to know what was expected of me over the coming week, and what i could expect in return.

Pueblo Ingles is a company operating primarily in Spain which teaches English. they do the standard courses, but they also have a programme where they take the students out to one of several little villages dotted around the place and immerse them in the language for a week. to keep the costs down, and to give them the most natural experience outside of spending time in an English-speaking country, they get in volunteers to spend the week with them and make us talk to them for hours and hours and hours on end. the biggest rule is that you never speak Spanish to them... although sometimes that gets bent if it means getting a better understanding. it's a lot of work for a volunteer - you have to get yourself to Madrid for the pickup, but they make it worth your while with free accomodation and 3 meals a day with just about as much wine as you'd want to drink. they say 3 meals a day. what they mean is a buffet breakfast, then 3-course banquets lunch and tea with morning tea and stacks of coffee thrown in, then they let you loose out into the town while you get paired up one-on-one with one of the Spaniards and suggested topics of conversation.

sounds like fun, yeah? well, it is. it's also surprisingly tiring. i like to think i can talk the ear off just about anyone, but at the end of the first day i was about ready to fall over from mental exhaustion and barely able to string a sentance together. it turns out i was the hardest person there to understand when i spoke naturally - i was actually told a couple of days in that the Spaniards were afraid to talk to me, i was so hard to follow, so i wound up doing my usual trick of adjusting my accent to make it easier to follow. this helped, i think.

it was an entertaining week, all told. we were in a little town village called Valdelavilla which literally translates as "Village In The Valley", with no mobile reception, a dodgy internet connection and no one else for miles around. the place was deserted back in the 20's when the government planted a pine forest which sucked up too much water for them to continue farming, then was redeveloped back in othe 80's/90's as a Rural Tourism resort. Pueblo Ingles has more or less permanent, exclusive access to the place for their programmes which run back to back, friday to friday, so the place is almost constantly in use so it works out well for everyone. what this all comes down to is that i got to see a part of Spain i'd never have seen if i'd done the tourist thing in a peaceful, quiet part of the middle of fucking nowhere in northern Spain. there were some surreal moments being out in the countryside, like when i took one of my victi... i mean charges for a walk, and on the way back was floored with the view of wind turbines up on the hill over the village, or when i woke up at 3 in the morning to a munching, crunching sound, looked out the window and saw 2 stags feeding on the green grass under my bedroom window.

the Spanish were hillarious fun, too. most of them had been sent by work to improve their English, but there were a few who'd paid out of their own pockets to be there, and at 1800 Euros each it's not a cheap proposition. i love the Spanish though - these are people who dance a the drop of a hat, and they all seem to learn at about the same time as they learn how to walk. seriously, these people can fucking MOVE, and they don't care who they dance with. the IT Manager in his 50's from Catalunya is dancing with the 19yo car salesman, then will pass him off for the pretty young OBGYN who was previously being spun around by the singer/dancer from Minnesota while the Russian/American dance-instructor tries to get the hairier of the two Australians to come salsa, gives up when he resists (by grabbing hold of the bar and refusing to let go) and instead grabs the photographer from Melbourne. ignore what you see on the streets of Madrid - the scam artists, the prostitutes, the thugs. don't let that be your impression of Spain. there were some beautiful, genuine people on the programme. take Olga and Clara, the OBGYN's. Clara had to be the sweetest lady i've ever met - always smiling and enthusiastic. she made me promise to let her know when i was in Rome so she could come and hang out with me, and how could i say no? take Jose Luis who was always stone-faced, then would come out with the driest humour i've heard in forever and having everyone on the floor laughing. then there was King Arthur (Arturo) and Pablo-the-Fifth (Pablo V) who were constantly dragging me aside to learn slang and swear words, and Marta who, at 17, became everyone's little sister. leaving was an emotional time - you spend a week of concentrated time with a bunch of people and when you suddenly have to go back to the real world you don't want to leave.

the Anglos were an interesting bunch, too - there were a couple of backpackers doing it for a bit of a change of pace (and a cheap week - my bar tab at the end came to 7.40 Euros), the regulars who've done programmes before, a number of Americans who'd flown in just to do the programme and were then heading straight home. a few of them had brought their teenage children with them who were involved in one of the teen-programmes.

that all said, i was pretty glad to get back to Madrid and not have to think so hard about what i was saying or how. making yourself easy to understand means speaking slowly and clearly, and keeping a conversation interesting without going into too many esoteric topics that they're not going to understand kept my brain working overtime. i was really looking forward to meeting up with the folks i'd met when i'd first pulled into Madrid, when i walked out of the orientation planning on heading off sight-seeing and was grabbed by Nic, the Mad Scotswoman, who dragged me out for a beer... or three. Nic's a veteran - she's done something like 6 different programmes over the years, so she's been in and out of Madrid enough that she knows her way around. i wound up hanging with her and Pete from Watford until past midnight on that first night and we'd exchanged numbers so we could find each other again afterwards, so at 9 i was waiting at the Bear statue just off Puerto Del Sol. it's a fairly famous little monument - only a metre or so high on a metre-high plinth, a bear reaching up to eat from a strawberry tree. i found out later that it symbolises the religious and secular sides of Madrid living in harmony from when the church held the land and mining rights and an agreement was made to not make life too hard on the town. the Bear statue is the standard meeting place for non-Spaniards in Madrid, so i had a fun time waving in the background of other people's photos while i waited for the rest of the crew to show up.

i liked Madrid a surprising amount. i was told not to expect much, but the dry heat agreed with me - it saps your strength far less than humidity, and there's a background buzz of energy that runs through the place. every city in Europe is built on a major waterway - an ocean, or a river - except for Madrid. it's fed water from an underground spring, but being inland keeps it dry and means you don't get the clinging heat you do elsewhere. you find yourself thinking at 2AM that it's really too early to head to bed because the party's only just beginning. Spain runs at a different pace and timing to anywhere else i've been in the world. forget about the siesta - business people don't have one, of course, you can also forget about finding an open shop between 2 and 4 in the afternoon because the shopkeepers DO. the good restaurants don't open until 9, where in most of Australia they're starting to shut down, and Spanish people think nothing of sitting out to dinner until 2AM, grabbing a couple of cervezas until 4, then meeting up at 9 or 10AM the next day. i have no idea how they do it, but i like it.

i met up with Pete the next morning at 9:30 back at the Bear to go sightseeing and spent half the day wandering around, grabbing coffee in Plaza Mayor and cruising through the Egyptian Temple. back in Egypt i was told that when UNESCO helped save Abu Simbel and the Temple of Isis a number of smaller temples were gifted to the countries involved, and the Temple of Dobod was one of them. it was kinda nice to have my memories of Egypt refreshed, if only for 5 minutes. shortly later we were back at the Bear to meet Nic and Sarah from California, as well as Fernando, one of the Spaniards from Nic's programme and Claire, a mad American who seems to have been everywhere and has more energy than i do at twice my age. by the time i climbed onto the night-train to Barcelona i'd been at the Bear 3 times as we met, split and met again. we'd done a brilliant tapas lunch and checked out some of the less-famous touristy sites, including the Don Quioxte statue i'd walked past earlier but in my rush to get where i was going hadn't noticed.

Madrid's a surprisingly addictive town. first glance says it's nothing much - just another European city, but when you're out on the town the resonance of a few million Spaniards pushes your energy levels right up, and sleep becomes this thing that happens to other people. now it's receeded into the distance and it's dark outside the carriage i'll be trying to sleep in tonight. tomorrow i wake up in Barcelona and i have high hopes for a good time there - it's been massively hyped and i'm hoping that the 2 full days i have scheduled will be enough. meanwhile it's time to curl up and see if Andy Mckee can play me to sleep so i have the energy to get through tomorrow...

Portugal: i went to Lisbon and somehow i managed to not find any roast chicken. i feel ripped off...

1/7/09 11:53PM

in the last 2 days i've been offered pot and hashish on a total of 14 occasions. i've been offered cocaine on 4. most of the time it's regular looking guys, although twice it was middle-aged gents in a suit or a tweed jacket and cap. that was a little... odd. it's a little disconcerting when a guy walks up to you with a stick of what's unlikely to actually be hash or probably isn't marijuana in his hand. fortunately for everyone involved in the complete lack of a transaction they were happy to take a polite no thanks with a good grace and moved on. thanks, but i like to have my lungs and my nasal cavity on the inside, not the outside, and i have no interest in spending tonight in a Portugese jail... or worse: hospital.

Lisbon's pretty. actually, it reminded me a lot of parts of Croatia - old-school limestone buildings with terracotta roofs, smallish alleys emptying out onto wide streets. the majority of the Old Town is flanked by a pair of hills, forming a shallow valley leading down to the harbor on the Tagus River. on the eastern side, overlooking the city, is an old castle. on the west, a really very pleasant restaurant and night district. i'd heard that Lisbon wasn't really worth seeing, but now i really wish i had the chance to get down to Lagos which i've heard is nicer, but i have places to be and only so much time in any one country.

i rolled into town yesterday with about 3 hours of sleep under my belt. i got an hour and a half at Heathrow, then about the same again on the plane. i rememeber it taking off, then someone giving me food, then coming in for the descent. one might consider crashing out at the airport to be a bit ill-considered, but it served its purpose and i knew for sure that i wasn't going to be late for my flight. i wish i'd had more time to prepare... but then, you always do. i'd printed out a map to my hostel, then promptly forgotten to pick it up off the fucking printer. it's typical - as my grandfather used to say: "Less rush, more hurry." either way, i managed to make do with that i found at the airport, although i'd i'd been paying better attention i could have gotten off the airport shuttle right outside my hostel, and not half an hour's hike uphill. by the time i finally got here i was dripping with sweat and must have smelled a treat... and i know it's only going to get worse as the weeks go by. the Hostel Without A Name was fine as far as things go, although its claim to be in Central Lisbon was a little creative. oh well. shit happens. i dumped my bag, changed my shirt for a singlet and headed off into the sunshine. 6 hours later i collapsed into my bunk having hit the castle, the foreshore, the Baixa (the dip in the valley) and a few of the rambling, medieval areas either side. my feet had barely left the ground when Pietre, my Italian dorm-mate asked me what i was up to, and whether i wanted to come out for a beer and while my brain was formulating the phrase i'm tired and i didn't get much sleep last night so i'm going to have a quiet one in my mouth jumped in with why the fuck not? and it was another 5 hours of wandering around the town before i was finally in bed again. damn beer-hungry mouth...

by the end of all that i more or less felt like i'd done Lisbon which is a little sad all told, so i checked out the Lonely Planet guide to Western Europe i'd borrowed from Moonbug and decided to hop the train and head for Sintra - around 40 minutes on the Lisbon commuter rail. Sintra was the holiday-home for the Portugese royalty, back in the day when they had any and is basically a pretty little forested area with a Moorish castle on at the top of the mountain which dates back to the 9th century. i got in with a basic plan revolving around "show up, see what there is to see", so i wandered into the town looking for lunch to find that everything was touristy and expensive so i kept heading up, up, up the mountain. another picturesque location, another fucking mountain. as i walked i realised i was surrounded by a band of OAP's cluttering up the footpath from somewhere in South America, probably Brazil from what little i know of Portugese. not a problem... except that they were slower than an inbred retard. fine - i can get past them... and then they decided that the best way to tackle a slow walk was to sing. i had enough of singing Latin American motherfuckers ruining my peace and quiet in Egypt, so i legged it faster to get away from them and found a nice little spot to have a light lunch... only to find that they'd followed me into the cafe and hadn't given up on the singing bullshit. no lunch for me then. thanks a fucking lot you noisy slow-walking throwing-off-my-chi sons of bitches.

so i decided that eating was just not going to happen and headed on up the mountain, to get away from the Brazilians if nothing else.

so it was that i got to the bottom of the castle section of the climb and was sitting down for a bit of a break that i met Mieke and Wiebe and somehow fell in with them for the rest of the day. Wiebe (think Wilbur) lives in Lisbon doing more or less the sort of work that i do and his mum Mieke (think Mika) had come to visit him for a bit. by the time we'd climbed to the top, tried sneaking into the castle without paying (and failed), taken a stack of photos and headed down again we were getting along roaringly. beers at the bottom, you say? how could i say no? we even wound up on the same train back to Lisbon together, and i couldn't have been happier with that arrangement. Wiebe and i seemed to share the same twisted sense of humour - there were a couple of times when he had me in stitches, rolling around my seat on the train. he's even started reading my blog, which has me worried. maybe i should say something nice about him?

it's these little things that really put a smile on your face when you're traveling - the 24 hour friends who add colour to the place. if i'd been only my own i think i'd have been pretty bored, but i was stoked beyond words to have interesting people to hang with, and to this day i'm glad to say i've never met a Dutch person who wasn't pleasant company.

tonight is quiet time. i'm checking out tomorrow and on a flight to Madrid to kick off what will hopefully be an entertaining interlude in Spain. flight? well, it was acutually cheaper to fly than to take a train, not to mention much, MUCH quicker. i really want to be avoiding air travel as much as possible. this is a train/bus trip for me, but when needs must to the airport i will go, and probably give EasyJet even more of my cash. otherwise, it's been a good start to the trip... 2 days down... and... what is it? 70 something more to go?