an airplane over the sea

dan was here...

2008-07-27T23:24:00.000-07:00

So this is it then! I'm back in Melbourne, got in yesterday morning. Head is still flying, jetlag is weirder than I remember. I think people are already sick of hearing the words "In Berlin..." and "What I love about Holland is...". Just deal with it.

Finished up in London. Broke my bag, Beth set fire to the kitchen, I nearly slept through my cab and therefore missed the train and nearly missed my flight to Finland. Fell asleep at the airport and woke up surrounded by no less than 120 Indian people having a picnic. I was in the middle of them all, like the centrepiece or something. Toyko was very very very hot. Only like 35 degrees or something, but I felt like I was going to die. Went to a few shrines and/or temples, had some food which I didn't know what it was, went to Shibuya and Harajuku and was staying is Asakusa. It was all amazing, but I was so wiped out that I don't think I really engaged with what I was seeing. Another time, hopefully. Here's some photos:

Bizarre smoking stations on the street!
You're not meant to smoke and walk at the same time,
so you stop by this little bus-stop-esque thing and smoke,
then keep walking. Hilarious.
Do you love that it's called 'Manners Street'?
Toilet with a computer inside.
It heats the seat so your bum is warm,
and there are like 100 buttons on it,
so you can change options and select
features and flavours and change it to surround sound...

The streets in Japan are crazy, people everywhere, and the buildings are so high and there are ads blasting from every screen above your head, massive cinema-sized ads carrying on up in the sky while you feel like you're walking through a considerably cleaner Bladerunner. People were generally quite helpful, women moreso than men. Lots stopped to ask if I was ok, particularly when I had my big bag on. Some people even gave me a little clap when I put my bag on while on the train. Then they bowed, and I bowed too, and kinda lost my balance because I bowed too low, and they laughed and bowed again, and I thought... I'm not going to fall for that again, you guys. You're just messing with me! Cheekies. Especially nice were the two girls and boy from Hong Kong (who were all dressed in kimonos?) who gave me 100Yen after I massively fucked up all my train transfers and bought the wrong tickets on the way to the airport and had no money and no ATM and I thought I was going to die from my bags and the heat. I must have looked like a crazy person, one of those obnoxious Australian just yelling "ATM!" louder and louder at the train station assistant in the hope that he would understand me if it was screamed at him.

Not much left to say, really. I had a blast. Met some wonderful people, saw some crazy shit, used some terrible keyboards, ate some suspicious food, heard some amazing stories that I will definitely steal as my own... and hopefully it won't be another 2 years before I get to do something like this again. America2009? Let's wait and see...

xd

Hometime...

2008-07-23T06:10:00.000-07:00

And so I'm on my way home.

Monday night we went to this really tight bar called U Sudu, which the American girl from the pub crawl told us to go to. It has a really unassuming front, just a normal doorway, but once you go inside it all changes. It's underground, and had about 10 or 12 different rooms, all going deeper and deeper underground - a rabbit warren with little stone-walled bunkers all connected by windy staircases and corridors. We went to the deepest room we could find, and they were playing Daft Punk, and no-one was speaking English, and we were very very happy. The bartender made Jes a couple of his own special cocktails - 'Sweet' was the only instruction she was allowed to give - and we just sat and chatted and drank sweet cocktails til it was time for bed. It was such a great place. Really chilled out but buzzing with life, too, and was fuller when we left than it was at 10, when we arrived. Really cool.

Our last day in Prague was a really nice one. We got up late-ish, and decided to go for a walk to see the 'real' Old Prague Castle, the one they built before they built the Old Prague Castle. We got halfway there, though, and the stormclouds that had been gathering all morning decided they'd had enough gathering and wanted some action. It went like this:

Jes and I are walking down a street. The clouds are black. She says 'Shall we head back to the hostel?' We had no brolly and she no cardigan, so we weren't all that keen to be stuck in the rain. So we head back the way we came. Halfway down the street - a little, tiny Czech sidestreet, population 5 - there is an enormous, and I mean enormous, flash of light, and a huge clap of thunder. Not a clap, a roar. We both ducked, along with everyone else in the street. Jes thought we were at war, convinced it was a bomb. I wasn't entirely disagreeing with her, even when I was assuring her it was just thunder. It was so freakin intense. It must have been right on top of us or something - I have never heard or seen anything like it. Crazy! The heavens open, and we leg it.

So we run into a supermarket to try and escape the rain. Jes bought some powdered brocolli soup, we both bought a KitKat, everyone's happy. The rain had eased, so we thought we'd just keep wandering, and see this part of town that we hadn't been to yet. Very much off the tourist path, it was mostly locals doing theird thing, the odd person with a map thrown in for good measure. We walk past this little restaurant, and Jes suggests we get some real Czech food, but we can't read anything on the menu and I tell her this and we keep walking, to the next restaurant, which is slightly fancier, and has their menu in English, too. We stop to read it, looking for a non-meat-based option for Jes, and the guy from the OTHER place comes out and says 'Come inside for some real Czech food!'. I kinda laugh and tell him we'll think about it. We eventually decide to go in. It's tiny, this place, a big grubby. Nowhere to sit, only benches to stand at and lean on. Old Czech men and women stand and eat their big plates of food, drink their beers. It looks cheap, but smells pretty good. I order this dish called 'svickova', which the American girl from the pub crawl recommended. I know it's meat and dumplings, but not much else. Jes isn't eating. The cook says he can make it up specially for me, even though it's not on the menu. It's basically little medallions of beef, in a big creamy sauce made from root vegetables and cream, served with bread dumplings and whipped cream and cranberry sauce. He brings out a huge plate literally overflowing with sauce, and wow. It is pretty amazing. Stodgy as hell, especially with the dumplings, but so tasty. Jes gets us some enormous beers, which are only about a dollar fifty, and I tuck in. The cook speaks a bit of English so comes over to chat to us. He spent 10 months in Cairns a few years back, so we talk about Australia a little bit. He complains about the European Union, and then tells us the business is his family's - he and his father run it, his mother and his brother and his brother's girlfriend all work there. He talks about the marijuana laws in the Czech Republic - 'You can grow, just no give to children!' (which seems pretty sensible, really) - and how he hates the EU for the way it tries to homogenise Europe, and how countries need to hold on to their traditions and cultures. Some Norwegian girls we met in Berlin said similar things. Then he says to us, 'You like alcohol?' and we kinda laugh a little and point to our beers. He runs behind the counter and Jes and I crack up, not knowing what to expect. He comes back with a bottle of Czech liqueur made of citrus, a little like limoncello but darker and thicker and more intense. He pours us a shot, and himself one too, and we all toast and have it. It's nice, not amazing, and burns the backs of our throat. We talk about it for a bit and then he pours us ANOTHER. Ok. I don't know how he expected to go back to work after that, because we were hammered. We didn't want to refuse, we wanted to be polite and nice, seeing as he was so interested in chatting to us, but when we left like a half hour later, we were wobbly kneed and had to stop on a bench for a minute to compose ourselves. We giggled for about an hour, I think. It was such a lovely little experience, and I was full to the brim with good food and good feelings afterward. The meal only cost me about 5 dollars, too, which was amazing!

We went back to the hostel, napped, packed, went and saw Get Smart at the movies, then went out to a pretty fancy looking restaurant where I had the 'svickova' again - very nice again, but so filling, and I was still full from lunch! In fact, I'm still full now, and I'm in London - and Jes had a veggie bowl with fried cheese, and we shared a baked potato, and we had drinks, and it all worked out to about 20 bucks each. Amazing. Again, unassuming front, down into a little bunker-style room with stone walls and a curved ceiling. Very quiet, but very nice.

Left Prague this morning. Said an emotional goodbye to Jes at the hostel, and got on the 2-trains-and-a-bus to the airport. I sat right up front of the plane, thinking it would be good to make a quick getaway once I got to London. Of course, right up front is where all the babies and toddlers were sitting, and they were all so grumpy at being in seatbelts and yelling and screaming and screaming and screaming and screaming... They all fell asleep eventually, which was nice. I got into Stansted about 10.30am local time, and made my way here to Gloucester Rd, to see the folk at the hotel - Inga, Pat - before meeting Beth after she finished work. I'm now waiting for Inga to finish work at 3.30 so we can go for a drink, then will go meet Beth, then George comes home, then we stay up, and I leave for Heathrow at about 3 or 3.30am.

That's all. I miss Jes, it's very very weird not having her 10 metres away. I have all these amazingly witty things to say and no-one to say them too. I cried a bit before, again, but that was so gay so I just stopped and ate a sandwich instead. And NO, I didn't sing Wicked out loud on the Tube, that did NOT happen. Jes would've appreciated it.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
d

Czech this shit out...

2008-07-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

We have seen so many people wearing tshirts that say "Prague - Czech me out!" that I now am finding it difficult to fight the urge to punch them in the back of the head.

Let me begin by sazing that the keyboards here trade the y and the z, and I am trying real hard to remember, but if I slip up, dont kill me. I also cant find the apostrophe, or most of the other punctuation stuff.

Prague isnt our favourite citz in the world. We were having serious doubts earlier in the week, considering going to Switzerland as originallz planned. It is reallz cool in some aspects, and so freakin prettz, but it the 40000 tourists that are everywhere are a bit of a pain in the arse. Plus everyone is real rude. But then on Saturday night we went on a pub crawl and everzthing changed. Well, not everzthing. But the story sounds better if I say that it did.

Despite not reallz enjoying the last pub crawl we went on, we figured that it would be a good way to meet people, see some of Pragues nightlife, and get out of the creepy hostel. We approached the meeting point carefully, making sure that no-one was too scary looking. There were the obligatory 25 desperate-looking men and 4 vague-looking girls. We got chatting to this girl Sarah, from LA, who spent a year in Australia. She was pretty cool, verz chilled. She was friends with the guy that ran the thing, apparently. So we head off to the first bar, its prettz good, but we quicklz realise that everzone is lame and we dont like them, so we go and sit outside to chat to Sarah. Turns out she is the sister of the dude that is hosting the night, and he is the dude that runs the whole company. He set it up himself a few years ago, built it up from scratch. So there we are, chatting away, they make fun of my haircut, we make fun of their accents, we all make fun of the tourist who perpetually talks about where he has been, where hes going, what he seen, did you like Paris, Berlin was amazing, I got ripped off in Portugal, yada yada yada. And then Isaac says something about getting a text message from someone, telling him to get out now because he has a kid. Jes and I are like... Er. What? Turns out theres about 3 pub crawls in operation in Prague. Each make something like 700 Euro each a day. The Ukranian mafia figured this out, and want to control the whole lot, taking the booty of 2000plus Euro a day for themselves. So theres been death threats against them, their families, their patrons. Turns out Sarah is Isaacs sister and has come along for moral support because the threats they thought were emptz until that point suddenlz seemed real, and it looked like he was going to be pushed out by the mob. We were floored. This shit reallz happens? Apparently they all have 3 weeks to live, now. Isaac has filed a police report, but apparentlz they werent helpful. Its crayz! Sarah then said she knew a guy who could make the bad men disappear forever for just 5000czK, but I dont think they were going to follow through with that. Hopefullz. They were all so nice, and it was so sad to see them all upset while their customers were inside getting drunk on free absinthe. We only stayed until the next bar, and then headed home, but not before Sarah told us to go visit her at her work so she could give us a few pointers on cool things to do in Prague. Now that Ive written all this down the mob will surely find it and come after me, but at least you all know about it now.

Today we had a real busy day. We started by visiting this crazy monument to Kafka, where a mini Kafka is riding a headless and handless giant Kafka.

We then headed up to Prague Castle, which was a bit lame because of all the thousands of people, but it was so old and offered a pretty tight view over the whole city.

The hill we had to walk up to get there thought was just not on. Hills are so gay. We wandered around there for a while, then headed over to an area called Mala Strana, which is this big like forest area, with a little mini Eiffell Tower on the top. Some Czech dude thought the Paris one was structurally unsound, so built his own tiny version. You can climb it, we didnt. We had Ryvitas with peanut butter and jam instead. Tasty times. Actually, on the way over the Mala Strana we stopped at this clifftop restaurant and sat on the edge overlooking the whole city and ordered Pina Coladas, which was pretty exciting. We felt like rich people for a minute, until we had to scramble for coins at the bottom of our bags to pay for them.

We got the funicular, which is like a tram cart thing, to the bottom of the hill, and then got lost in the tiny streets trying to find the Lennon Wall. Its this tight wall thats like a shrine to John Lennon, been around for ages, and was started under communism when all his fans loved his rebel attitude. Its covered in graffiti and lyrics and stuff, its pretty cool. See here...

Theres not much else to add really. There probably is but I forget.
Only one and a half more days left here... Very excited about Tokyo! I probably wont blog again until then, so I guess this is nearly goodbye... but not yet.

Photos! More on the flickr account too...

This is what Czech people wear everyday.

And this is how they travel to work everyday...

This is how they are punished for their crimes.

Jes and I in front of the Charles Bridge.

See you all real soon.
xd

Berlin to Prague...

2008-07-19T06:08:00.000-07:00

So Prague is really old and cool.

We got the train here from Berlin on Thursday, took about 5 hours. I was up late playing cards with some Canadians at our hostel, so didn't get to bed til late, and slept in my clothes, and then got up early to check out, and didn't shower, and didn't change, and then got on the train hungry and greasy and still feeling gross in the tummy. It was a pretty smelly journey, overall. There was a little kid on the train who had a Happy Meal AND a McChicken, and it looked so good. We sat there plotting how to kill him and eat him and wondered whether he would taste like McChicken too.

Given the tiredness on the train, we were pretty grumpy when we got to Prague. The whole place smelled like sausages and boiled potatoes. We got to an ATM to take out some Krona, and could only get 1000czK notes, but when we tried to buy train tickets to get to our hostel, no-one would accept them! We actually argued with the lady at the ticket booth, and then figured maybe we could swap it at a shop for some Mars Bars or cigarettes or something. Not a chance. I was tempted to just buy 700 croissants and take the change, just so we could get on the goddamn train! We tried swapping it at all the money exchange offices, the workers there barely pausing long enough to put down their own cigarettes before rudely shaking their heads at us. Then Jes had a brainwave, and that was to swap my last 4 Euro into Krona, and we JUST had enough for train tickets. So we ran back to the booth and this CRAZY little lady no taller than a hobbit, all dressed in black with gnarled features and grey hair - a witch, really, she was a witch - tried to push in front of us. So Jes kinda stepped in front of her. So she pushed in front of the guy behind us. It was so weird. She just saw a line and decided to join it halfway. Crazy Czechs. The whole country has basically been like that, just rude people shoving you and not apologising, so I've just started shoving straight back. There's no point trying to be friendly, it's totally not on the radar. Last night a man on the street asked us if we wanted to buy weed, cocaine or hash (our choice) from him, but we decided against it, even though it was like midnight and he didn't look shady at all with his hood up and no teeth. We were also wary, as someone left a note on the pin board at the hostel saying "Don't buy off the streets - I paid 800 Krona for 4 breath mints!!!!". Blackmarket breath mints are clearly a big problem here.

The hostel is ... well. It's not bad. It just needs a better communal area, and a policy of not allowing crazy Scottish men to stay there, especially if they're old. We just checked in and this dude in our room, no younger than 45, started talking to us about stuff, and I honest to God could not understand a word he was saying. We just nodded and smiled and said a few things about buying dinner and then ran away.

And then dinner. Hoo boy. We decided we wanted to cook our own food. Which was fine, there were supermarkets and the hostel had a kitchen. We went to a Tesco Express (yes, they're here too!) to scope out the situation. Apart from everything costing a lot, it was all in Czech. We tried to buy butter - we had to peel OPEN the butter and nibble at it to make sure it was butter! It wasn't, so we closed it and shoved it right up the back. And then we wanted pesto. Jes chased a man through the supermarket shaking a jar of green watery puree at him, but he didn't know what it was and said it should definitely not go on pasta. Ok. So then we decided to get cous cous. Cous cous, fetta, mushrooms, cheese, olives and sundried tomatoes. All mixed in together, amazing. We rush back to the hostel, cut everything up, boil the water, add the cous cous... except it's not cous cous. It might have been semolina, or Durham wheat, but was most probably some kind of porridge, and it was so thick that it was hard to stir, so we kept adding water and it just got more and more porridge-y. We ate it anyway, and it was pretty good, just needed some salt and some more cheese and it would've been ok. But I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone - porridge and sundried tomatoes are not meant to go together.

Scottish man was still there the next morning though. And that night. He came in (I think it was him, maybe it was the other Scottish man - there were 3 of them!) with a torch on his head and started getting ready for bed. Anyway, the next morning, he woke me up at like 8 or something to talk about the French Riviera, and how it differs from the Italian Riviera, and so I started trying to read my book and ignore him, and he just wouldn't stop talking! I kept thinking I'd managed to squash him with a final-sounding "Haha, oh well. Next time maybe", and there'd be silence for a few seconds, and then he'd start over. Gaah! Don't wake me up early to talk about boring stuff! Don't wake me up at all! And then Jes went to the bathroom and left me all alone. I thought I was going to die, just lying there with this old Scottish man peering down on me from above, standing right next to my bed.

Tummy is still feeling very unusual. I don't know, this morning we had baked beans and fibre crackers, and we got more fibre crackers to snack on, and we're having veggies for dinner. I feel like maybe I have a tapeworm or a baby or something inside me, or an alien. The tapeworm is maybe a possibility, seeing as the chicken I ate in Berlin might actually have been pieces of old shoe, and then the goat at the zoo ate from my hand and I bit my nails without washing them, meaning I basically ate goat spit. It's like I'm carrying a bag on my front, my tummy is actually HEAVY and solid. But look, it's better today, and I don't think you all need to know any more or hear any more about my digestion, I'm sure you've had enough. By the time I'm home, it'll be allllll good.

Yesterday we spent a full day wandering around. We started off at Bethlehem Church, which we climbed to the top of, and got the most stunning views of the city. I have photos but this computer is not happy with me so refuses to help me upload them. I'll do it soon.

Then we went to the Astronomical clock, which is like a lunar clock. Every hour it does a little show, and it was possibly the most piss weak thing I have ever seen. Death rings a little bell, and then the apostles jerk around, and then a crow makes a noise like a raspberry being blown, and it's over in about 40 seconds. Everyone was so excited, this massive crowd. It was really embarrassing.

Then we headed over into the older part of town, up near the castle, and checkout out some old bridges and went to some cool shops. This one shop was like this ace little boutique of clothes and toys made by architecture and design students at the local university. Really great stuff. This morning was markets, and an attempt to see the Old Jewish Cemetary, but it's the Sabbath so it's all closed up. Tonight we're going to go out and try to meet some normal-aged people, and we have a few little plans for the next couple of days, but overall just want to wander and keep getting lost in the little streets, which we are experts at doing by the way.

We went and saw The Incredible Hulk last night ... wow. WOW. GO AND SEE IT. So good. Hulk Smash!!

Can't believe I'm home in a week. Leaving here Wednesday, flying to London, chilling with Beth and George for the night, then on to Tokyo via Finland, and then MELBN!

The depressing stuff...

2008-07-16T06:14:00.000-07:00

Sunday night Jes and I were totally wiped and so decided something had to give. We'd had enough of old buildings and old bridges and old art, so decided to do something fun and normal. So Monday morning, we packed up our things and headed off to the zoo!

This was all very exciting, and even thought our tummies were feeling real yuk, we thought that a whole bunch of cute and scary animals would cheer us up. Which they did, for the most part. We saw all the big cats, which I guess is the most depressing part of the whole experience. I don't know if I totally believe in zoos, but I guess the conservation work and breeding programs and etc are necessary and good, so maybe they are ok. The cats are depressing because they're so big, and they're generally in relatively small enclosures. Which I know is just the 'public' enclosure, and they have more room out back, but it's still not a lot, is it? They'll never know what it's like to run a whole lot, run like 300metres through grass and trees and stuff. And they're MEANT to do that. But then I guess I'm 'meant' to do a lot of things that I don't do, including running 300metres, or any number of metres. But I get to choose that. Anyway. The cats. They were so cool, obviously, because they are amazing and sleek and agile and will kill you. The tigers were... wow. So there's the big tiger enclosure, which was actually pretty snazzy, I guess because tigers are sexy and sell magazines, so they get the better stuff. So you look at the enclosure from the front and the sides and from the back, but the back is through a pane of glass, cos you're kinda 'in' the enclosure when you go through the back entrance. One tiger, the lady, was pacing up and down this strech of glass, only like 3 metres long, while we stood there, on the other side, staring at her. She was like 5cm from our faces. It was absolutely amazing. She just looked like a really really big Ding Ding, with stripes, and teeth the size of my face, and paws the size of dinner plates. The monkeys were pretty cool, too, specially the babies. One chimp was getting chased by the others and got so scared he did a poo. Then a baboon was masturbating but realised everyone was watching so turned around to face away from the crowd. And we think maybe another monkey was performing a sex act on the big boss monkey, because he was smiling and all we could see was the back of her head. ANYWAY. So the zoo was great, we saw penguins (which we learned from our time watching Animal Planet in Holland are the most inefficient walkers in the world) and seals and elephants and giraffes. The giraffe keeper was yelling at them in German because they wanted food and he had none so was kicking them out of the feeding pen. It was funny, because even though you know giraffes don't speak English, you think maybe they might understand a little bit, but German? No. Giraffes do not speak German. We also went into the childrens petting zoo to feed goats and ponies, and we got goat spit on our hands and then forgot to wash them before lunch. All the parents brought their kids in there to get up close to a baby goat, but the kids were TERRIFIED and screaming and crying, desperately trying to get away. We also saw the baby polar bear, Knut, but he wasn't a baby anymore, he was just a big bear eating a fish. Funny how all the signage is still him as a little cub, all cute and white and playing with butterflies. Walking past the wolf enclosure, we saw them eating some meat and stuff. Jes waved at me madly and yelled across the zoo "DAN! A wolf doing poo!" She wasn't lying. He was doing poo.

This was very sad, a lion by himself in a concrete room. But it was just his pre-feeding room, so after being in there he got to eat. Or before. He was separated from the girls, at any rate. He looked so fuckin depressed, but then got up and was running around. It's the eyes, the Labrador eyes that make your heart break in two.

Me and elephants! One of them was real hungry and kept banging on the door of that building to let the waiter know he was ready to eat now.

Jes and the pygmy zebras.

Video time! Excuse the poor quality of the tiger one, but you get the idea.

I filmed this penguin about 8 times for like 20 minutes total, waiting for him to just JUMP. He never did. He ran back and forth over and over. Idiot.

Tuesday we went to Sachsenhausen, which is a concentration camp about 45 minutes outside Berlin. It was pretty heavy and moving and very uncomfortable. We got there and bumped into Jessy, the girl who was our tour guide last week. She was there to do a private tour, but suggested we jump onto another one that her colleague was running, so we tagged along with his, and didn't have to pay which was pretty nice. We tipped him good. He took us around the facility, which has both original buildings but also reconstructions. Much of it was destroyed or burnt down, so some of the buildings there now are purely for memorial purposes. The stories were horrible, the living conditions were horrible, and I guess we all know the stuff that happened. It was mostly a men's camp, with a small number of women kept in a bordello for the high-performing soldiers. What struck me the most was how much like a business it all was, and how it was about effective use of money and space and resources. For example, it was found that large camps had lower productivity than smaller camps. And so smaller camps were built instead, littered throughout the countryside, pockets here and there. Sachsenhausen was a 'model' camp, the camp that international dignitaries were brought to, kept all nice and clean and maintained, unlike other camps like Auschwitz whose appearance reflected the activity going on inside. From what I understood, it was also a 'base' for these smaller camps, so people ate and slept there, but often went out to do manual labour elsewhere. That's probably wrong, but at any rate, it was real bad. The most fucked up bit was the killing rooms. The buildings are gone, but their foundations are still there, and you can walk through them. Obviously no-one had any interest in rebuilding or replicating the rooms, so you have to use your imagination, which I guess is bad enough, and still not anywhere near bad enough. The gas chambers and portable gallows were really scary. I kinda felt a bit sick at the end of the whole thing.

Jes is sick today with a bit of a fever and a tummy issue, which is still affecting me, too. We're eating real light in an attempt to shake it.

Prague tomorrow, instead of Switzerland. Expensive, but hopefully a great way to end my trip. I'll fly from there to London for one last night with Beth and George, then to Heathrow for the leg home! Looking forward to my little weekend stopover in Tokyo, too. Tiiiiiiiiiiight.

xd

Studio 54

2008-07-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we (me, Jes and Kelsey) went shopping to this massive department store called KaDeVe, which is like 8 levels... it was huge. The bottom floor was all fancy, accessories and bags and stuff. They had a Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Lagerfeld, Dior ... there was money being thrown around everywhere. We went into Chanel for a minute, the assistant was like "Can I help you?" and when we said we were just looking, she stared at us as if to say "Filth". She glared at us the whole time, not appreciating Jes' attempt at good humor when she put on a pair of 800euro sunglasses and smiled at her. I swear as soon as we left they got out the Hobo Spray and cleaned all the products we'd touched.

We spent a long time on the mens and womenswear floors, looking at all the stupidly expensive clothes and hats and gloves. Why pay 10 dollars for a plain white tshirt when you can pay 700? Bargain. The food floor was pretty much heaven, too, all the cooking done teppanyaki-style right out in the open. I stared at a chef making potatoes in a pan for like 10 minutes, and then glared at the man that got to eat them. He didn't share or anything. One weird thing though was the smell, and this seems to go for all of Berlin. It's built on very swampy ground, so maybe it's like the bog underneath, but you're walking along and all of a sudden ... eggs! Sulphur! Poo! Garbage! It's gross, but I guess would be good if you were really gassy, because no-one would know if you farted or if it was just the city. Flatulent people of the world, Berlin is your homeland.

Last night Jes and I did something we're not so proud of. We went on a tourist pub crawl. We figured it couldn't be THAT bad, they promised to show us some cool bars, and we'd meet people and be social, and if it was funny then at least we had a good story to share. Well. 10 Euro gets you a round of pre-drinks at the designated meeting spot - the train station, outside, standing around drinking warm beers. Classy. Then we walk to the first bar. It's ok, we sit outside, meet this 19 year old guy from Tasmania called Trent who is a bit of a tool but nice enough maybe. It's me, Jes, Trent, and these two Norwegian girls from our dorm who we originally thought were a bit fucked, but turned out to be not so bad. (We judged them based on a 4am-lights-on episode, which was pretty rude, but whatever.) The pub crawl people gave us free cherry liqueur, which was quite tasty. I wasn't feeling so good from the daytime, so wasn't planning on staying out late or participating in much of the festivity, but one shot wasn't going to kill me.

The second shot, though. Wow.

So we leave the first bar and congregate in an alleyway - maybe 50 of us? 70? - led by this American called Jock or Jake or Jimmy or Dickhead, I don't remember. The 'free shots' at the next bar were to take place RIGHT NOW, in the alleyway. Basically, we were meant to line up, and he walked past and poured Jaegermeister directly into our mouths, making sure to rub it all over our lips so it got all good and salivary. Uh, how about no? Deciding hepatitis wasn't really for us, Jes and I stood back and watched the packs of British and Australian men wrestle for prime position under the bottle..

We were beginning to think maybe the night wasn't going to be so amazing after all, but headed off to the next bar. On the way, we encountered several members of the group doing wees on the footpath and in the bushes. The 5 minute walk was too much for them apparently, they just had to do it right then, in public, in front of the whole crowd. It must have something to do with wanting to have their penises as close as possible to the women at all times. The second bar smelled like syphilis, but at least the sambucca shots came in cups. The third bar was an underground den that wasn't terribly bad - we danced a bit and had a beer - and it was at this point of the night that the couples started to form. One, at least, had a very public pash in the middle of the bar, and people even took photos of them. The whole night was like one big mating ritual, men running around headbutting each other and calling each other fags and then touching their balls, and the girls would stumble along in their heels and then say "Oh my god" a whole bunch of times, and then their breasts would fall out of their tops. Humans should be locked in cages and studied. We randomly bumped into Kelsey on the street, and forced her to come with us, which I'm sure she appreciated.

The last bar was totally, 100%, amazingly worth it. Wow. It was called Studio 54, and is the bottom floor of this massive six-level squat/artist space. The bar is pretty lame inside, but outside is a massive garden, all sand, and littered with junk. Basically a junkyard bar, with fairylights and big installation pieces and bands and stools to sit on. It was amazing. The graffiti and stencils on the walls were so tight, and you can look up into the windows of the artists spaces above you. I didn't get any photos, but we'll go back and I'll take some. Then we went up into the squat. Basically, from what I heard and understand, artists can live there for free and use the space as their studio so long as the rooms remain open at all times as gallery spaces. So sculptors and painters and 'street' artists all live in this big building that's totally run down, but it's stunning. Their rooms are set up like galleries, and they sell their art, and it's all really rough and German and so tight. Trent had an argument with a guy that makes t-shirts about knowledge or something, Trent claiming that his 19 years meant he was as wise as this 45 year old dude, and the dude disagreed. Little boys weeing in corners. And then, as we were leaving, we looked up and there was this incredible... I don't know how to explain it. Do you remember the film 'The Beach'? In once scene they light these lanterns, paper lanterns, and release them into the night, and the wind picks them up and they fly away? So we're standing outside this amazing place and there's like a flotilla of glowing lanterns floating through the sky above us, like 15 or 20 of them. They looked like aliens or something.

Rather than follow the rest of the group on to the final destination, a big nightclub, Jes and I decided we'd had enough and headed back to the hostel. We should have assumed that 'pub crawl' meant 'crawl over broken glass and broken morals', but we didn't think. All in all, though, a good night, and at least we had some buddies there to laugh at the whole thing with.

This morning Kelsey, Jes and I went with Canadian Steph and a few of her friends to this flea market where there was a whole lot of cool stuff, little knick knacks and whatnot. I was going to buy this doll of a witch, but it was made from straw and wood and stuff and maybe wouldn't have got back through customs. I guess it probably would, but anyway.

Tomorrow and Tuesday:
Revisit Checkpoint Charlie museum and the Topography of Terror, an exhibition set up where you can walk along the Nazi interrogation chambers.
Sachsenhauser concentration camp.

Wednesday we're not 100% sure on yet, we've got to go through our guide book and pick some stuff.

I'm feeling a bit gross at the moment, my tummy is not well at all, so I'm just going to not eat anything for a little bit and try and sort it out. Maybe just bananas. No bread, no meat, no processed or refined anything, drink lots of water. I've basically turned into a sandwhich from all the bread I've eaten, it bloats you so much. But it's cheap and easy. Argh.

Our hostel is super great, the people we've met have been cool, and the breakfast is good, the rooms clean and the bizarre music playing at weird times always hilarious - death metal over breakfast? Sure thing. We're in a cool location, too, in the old East, the old Soviet quarter I guess. There are areas that have been really built up since the fall of the Wall that look great and modern, but there are really poor looking areas, too, that remind me a lot of Croatia, kinda war-torn and decrepit and buildings falling down, or just boring looking and brown and in severe disrepair. You turn a street and the buildings are totally different.

Also, people here HATE it when you pat their dogs on the street. In 2 days, Jes and I have both been glared at and had dogs pulled away from us while we've been saying hello. Whatever.

I'd better go book some accommodation for Prague, cos we have none! Whoops.

More soon, including photos. Jes and I haven't had any fights so far, but maybe the German anger will rub off on us. Only time can tell...

That's Jes, Kelsey and me, just before Kelsey left for Prague this afternoon. She's real cool, from Seattle, super funny and nice and normal. It's sad we don't get to hang out with her anyway. We're Facebook friends now though, so that's basically friends forever.

Rotterdam, the Hague, and Berlin

2008-07-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

Ok. So we're in Berlin now (it's Saturday, our time) but I'll start with last weekend, in Holland.

On Sunday, Florian took me and Jes to a music festival in Rotterdam. We saw a whole bunch of bands, some local ones and some not-so-local ones. Devotchka (the band who did music for Little Miss Sunshine) played at the very end of the day, which was rainy and dreary, but we waited for them and they were really good. Proper musicians, good music, fun sound. Great. Pity the photos turned out all blurry, it's so hard to get a good picture on these little cameras!

Monday we had a good day in Utrecht, did some shopping and tried some local food and lived as the locals do, sitting and drinking coffee by the canal.

Tuesday we headed to Den Haag (The Hague) to visit the ICC, the International Criminal Court, where we sat through part of two hearings relating to war crimes committed in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was fascinating. We're observing from a very sterile little watching gallery, looking through big glass windows at the teams of lawyers, at least 10 or 12 on each side, and the panel of judges and high priestesses and gods staring back at us. There were security guards pacing around - I got in trouble for having water, Jes got in trouble for falling asleep, you weren't allowed to read unless you were taking notes, no photos, no talking, no smoking, no dancing, no fun stuff. The prosecutor was this Snape look-alike, all long dark robes and greasy curtained hair framing his face. He spoke with an American accent - learned, he was German maybe? Or Dutch? - but in this arrogant and patronising tone where he's just slice the defence team in half with a one-liner, and then the defence would retaliate really politely and reasonably. I was instantly on their side, I think because they appeared to be the underdog, and the team included this dumpy little man and a nice-looking lady with a lovely accent. They were so softly spoken but smart and clearly persecuted at high school, so I was immediately friends with them. Snape was just a meany - Jes was on his side, she kept yelling "Go Snape!"

I ditched Jes in the afternoon and went into Den Haag proper to the Mauritshuis, to see Girl With A Pearl Earring - the painting, not the film. It was in this beautiful little gallery (the Mauritshuis) which is actually an old house. I was expecting her to be all under lock and key Mona-Lisa-styles with security and whatnot, but she was just... there. Hanging in this little room, a few people wandering around and looking at her, it was so not a big deal, which was nice - no throngs to battle. You couldn't take photos, but she was totally captivating. Her face is full of little cracks, but her skin is so alive and glowing... whatever. Really cool. And weird to see it in real life, when the phrase "Girl with a Pearl" has been thrown around my house for years, Mum having taught the text (the book, this time) to her students for a while now.

And then that was it for Utrecht, and the Netherlands!

That's me and Ding Ding, Maud's housemate Jiva's cat, having a bit of a snuggle on our last night. He was 13, skinny as a rake, and roared like a little lion. He was so old and cranky, it was great, but he loved cuddles and kisses and sitting on laps and chests and faces. We miss him heaps.

We got the train to Berlin - about six hours or so - which was mostly uncomfortable, but ok. We slept a bit, listened to Wicked a bit. Getting the train is kinda great, because there's no getting out to the airport and then getting back in again at the other end - you just arrive in the centre of Berlin! Unreal.

Right now we're sitting in the bar of our Berlin hostel - The Heart of Gold - with our American buddy Kelsey, eating late breakfast and chatting and planning our day.

Yesterday we did a walking tour of Berlin, hitting a whole bunch of places - Checkpoint Charlie, parts of the Wall, the Brandenberg Gate, Hitler's bunker, a whole bunch of stuff. It was so tight.

That's me and one of the last little bits of the Berlin Wall that is still standing.

It was like a 3.5 hour walking tour, with this American guide called Jessy. She was really into Berlin's history and stuff, so it was great to have all her little sidenotes and things to latch on to. It seems like Berlin is a lot about it's history - about accepting it or denying it, reconciling with it, moving on from it while still trying to remember it. For example, Hitler's bunker - it's a carpark now, just a normal everyday carpark with grass and puddles and gravel and concrete. There's one small sign saying that this is the site where he killed himself, but you can't go visit down there, it's all filled in. If you were walking through, you'd have no idea it was there. It's kind of this interesting thing where it's not really being 'presented' for the public, because that would be weird I guess, but it's not hidden either. Having someone help talk and walk usthrough the whole thing was really ace. We're thinking of doing another walking tour later in the week, either a 'cold war' themed one, or one out to one of the concentration camps. I was skeptical that it would be lame, but it was ace. Better than wandering around aimlessly trying desperately not to look like or behave like a tourist.

That's Hitler's bunker. Not the bunker itself, but underneath the carpark. It's not special at all, is it? As in, it hasn't been made special by anyone. It's just a bit of ground.

Me and Jes in front of the Brandenberg Gate. It's pretty big.

The photos above are so tight. Ok. The mural was put up way back when (here comes a history lesson...) as like a Communist morale-booster. Look how happy everyone is! All working together! Scientists and families and workers, all in together, it's all amazing and everyone is smiling and happy happy and wow, how great is this. Obviously it wasn't so great, and the people began to protest and demonstrate and march. This freaked out the powers that be, and one day they shot them all. The photo, on the ground in front of the mural, has been placed there to mirror the mural, but the picture is of people at that march. It's the same dimensions, and so when you stand there it's this really interesting image of what the hope and plan was - happy faces and smiling children - and the reality. Apparently the mural is one of the last tokens or images of Communism that still exist around the city. Most of it's gone, removed, destroyed.

The photos above are of the Jewish Memorial in the centre of Berlin, which I think is called something like "A Memorial to all the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust". There was all this controversy, apparently, about it being Jewish-specific, but since then a number of other memorials have gone up around the place for gays, writers, intellectuals (same things??) and gypsies etc. It's really cool, the memorial. The ground is all uneven a-la Fed Square in Melbourne, and it's basically a massive site with, I think, 2311 'blocks', the meaning of which isn't really known. The guy that designed the whole thing was deliberately vague about it, and there's no sign or anything saying 'Welcome to the memorial!' or 'This is what it's about', it's just there. You can wander in and around them, and they get taller and shorter and you can literally get a bit lost. I guess it looks a lot like a graveyard - the blocks are about the size of a grave, maybe - and I think someone said the artist did say he got inspiration from a Jewish cemetary in Prague.

The morning started out so pretty and beautiful. We sat in a park and ate raspberries and grapes and drank water and lay in the sun. It was great. Here is us enjoying the amazing weather:

Mid-way through the tour, we noticed the massive grey clouds rolling over the city. It was dark dark dark, and then the wind picked up, and then the rain came. We got so so so wet. The photo isn't so great, it doesn't really do the wetness justice, but anyway:

We were frozen. But then the sun came out again, of course, and everyone was happy. Crazy Germans and their crazy weather.

We ended the day with noodles and beers, which were super cheap - we paid 4.50 euro each, and the beers were enormous, look:

The noodles were good too, the chicken a little suspect - we're not convinced it actually WAS chicken, and my tummy has been feeling a little interesting since, not in a very bad way, but it's been gurgling a lot. I think it's not used to Asian food, either, cos we haven't had noodles and stuff for a while.

More photos:

They have these bears all over the city, painted bears, everywhere. They have ones for certain countries, too. Here's Australia's:

And here's a random one on the street. Kelsey and Jes climbed it, so I thought I'd give it a hug.

Hope you're all well. Tomorrow is 2 weeks til I get home.

xd

PS. We had a crazy plastic bag-scrunching girl in our dorm, there's a big story there but I'll save it for next time. And then there's the Norwegian girls with the 4am-lights-on fetish. But I saw one of their nipples so it's ok.
PPS. All the photos I post here and plenty plenty more are going up on my flickr account, and you can look at them all here!

Funny things about other countries

2008-07-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

A special little post I'd like to call

"Funny things about other countries".

We'll start with food. And to kick us off (well, we really kicked things off with the buttermilk-on-museli dillema the other morning, but we'll move on), a collection of images from a recent trip to the supermarket.

WHAT WHAT WHAT

There were a lot of giggles about Hazelnoot Pasta on toast.

They're freeze-dried? They expand in water? Tiny can?? (and it's all dan's fault, see the brand)

Hilarious! My personal favourites include Choco Creeps - what parent is going to offer that to their child? And I don't think I'll quickly forget Jes yelling "Anti-Klit Spoeling!!" across the supermarket.

Big fried sticks of potato, and polysterene chips

The Dutch are very big on mayonnaise, which suits Jes and I very well. You get mayo (or, as the locals say, maa-yow) with fries at Burger King, and you can also buy cones of chips with maa-yow on them. It's pretty amazing, I had two cones yesterday alone. The maa-yow is so thick and cheesy and creamy. With the cone-fries, it comes out of a big vat with a giant nozzle on it, and it's so exciting to think about all that maa-yow just sitting there waiting to get into my tummy! Om nom nom. Jes and I have twice gotten this amazing artichoke pizza from this little dude whose shop is just around the corner. It's so tasty and somehow spicy, but we can't work out what it is from the ingredients. It's been really hard to work shit out, actually, even just at the supermarket, you have to really LOOK at food for ages and ages and then try to open the packet a little and smell it and if no-one's looking you just taste it, because half the time you have no idea what you're about to put on your mashed potatoes. I can't believe it's not butter indeed.

Other funny things are toilets. (This bit contains wee and poo, if you don't like them stuffs just read it anyway. Don't judge). Americans have big toilets filled at least half way with water, resulting in what my parents once tastefully referred to as 'shit soup'. You kinda look down at it all and it's a bit yuk, but then you have a giggle because you think of soup. The Dutch are pretty interesting, too - they have a dry little shelf where your bits go (so you can look at them?) and then when you flush, a giant waterslide comes down and picks everything up and washes it away on a fun little ride like at Wet'n'Wild! The wilderness toilets in Rotterdam were just big holes in the ground with a whole lot of blue disinfectant poured over the top, no sawdust or sand or nothin. In France there are kick-flushes, which mean you step on the flush button which is on the ground, so there's no need to touch the little germ-infested button. Remember when Jes snuck into the men's loo in London? That was another adventure. And of course, being in Europe, we've had to fork out a bit for toilets - usually just like a Euro, or fifty cents. The price you pay, funnily enough, has no bearing on the quality of the facilities. The French cleaning ladies are pretty cool about wandering in while you're weeing, too, which is slightly unnerving. Let's not forget the outdoor urinals on the street here in Holland, either. And now for a few real-life stories. Read on for hilarity.

I'm in London. I think Jes had arrived by this stage. Beth and George's place is kinda old, I guess, and a bit faded at the edges, so I wouldn't say the plumbing is amazing. So if you were to, like, use too much toilet paper or something, and the S-bend was only real little and and the water pressure wasn't too good, you'd have a problem. Not a 'problem' like a maths problem, you don't need a calcultor for this one. More a problem like 'the too-much toilet paper gets stuck in the little S-bend and the toilet gets blocked'. So it's at this point of the story that we find Dan, in his stupid pyjamas, looking around the bathroom for ... something, anything, a calculator. He jumps about like he's in a French farce and just worked out his boss knows about the thing and he's going to be in trouble, jumping here and there, looking, looking. And then he sees... his arm, his right arm, to be exact. Ok, let's all laugh at Dan with his arm up the S-bend, but the moral of this story is, Dan washed his hands very thoroughly many times and it's allllll ok now.

Another time, Jessie was at a toilet in Le Paris, at the Louvre. After she made her gold coin donation, she went and was about to sit when she saw a pube on the seat, so she jumped up and grabbed some toilet paper and started to clean it but the very-21st-century toilet automatically flushed itself and the water got all over her hands. She also washed it alot, etc etc.

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, Maud's house is equipped with a bidet, the little shower for your bum that's next to the toilet ... except I, obviously confusified over the constant translationing in my head, called it a bain marie.

There's no pictures to go with the above statements. Sorry? Or not.

I think that's all. I don't know what the Germans are like, but who knows, there's still a lot of toilets to be visited in the next few weeks.

Top five or thereabouts funny things about places that aren't Australia.

1. There are Australians everywhere. (This isn't funny in the traditional sense, more in the way that Ally McBeal is funny.)

2. Dutch people say 'fink' instead of 'think', and use a lot of 'actually's. So:

Me: Where is the train station?
Dutch person: Oh, actually okay, yes, I fink actually it is, if you actually turn left I fink, and follow the canal actually, I fink you will find it.

That's probably not amazingly culturally sensitive, I know it's pretty low to make fun of people for the way they speak, but it's Holland! And funny. And Jes says don't ever watch Goldmember before coming to Holland because it ruins Dutch people. Also funny is the way that all Dutch words COULD be English, except for they're not. One of the bands we saw at the music festival we went to yesterday in Rotterdam was called Jeremy's and the lead singer was a girl and she was wailing and whining a whole lot and I heard whole sentences of lyrics - really, I thought it was a love song - and then when it finished she was speaking Dutch. I was so disillusioned.

3. The orange juice we just drank, called "Cool Best! - because we keep it cool, you get the best!" Jes thinks some homeless man was just paid 50Euro to come up with that because it's the worst bit of marketing ever. I am now acutely aware of the fact that we've made fun of the Dutch and the homeless, so I think we'll leave it at 3 funny things instead of 5.

That's all for today, really.

For the homefolk, it looks like every flight home after the 24th of July is booked out, so I can't extend, which means I'm still coming home on the 27th. Unless Maud's housemate Jiva decides to move out, in which case I'm staying here.

love from Dan and Jes

PS. As for the holiday itself ... we're doing lots of cool stuff and lots of sitting around watching Ally McBeal. Moral of this story is not ' don't go to Holland and watch TV', but 'don't ever watch Ally McBeal ever, even in Melbourne or Adelaide'. It's terrible.

Utrecht, friends and bad pasta

2008-07-04T14:11:00.000-07:00

Holland, Holland, Holland. I asked one of Maud's friends about the difference between 'Holland' and 'the Netherlands'. They means the same thing, essentially, now, but once upon a time 'Holland' was the rich part, and 'the Netherlands' was the rest of it.

So Maud's place is basically amazing. It's in the centre of town, a second-floor apartment overlooking the canal. It's big and bright and has beautiful huge windows that you can throw open and fall out of. It's all cluttery and creative and arty and, basically, Jes and I have stopped at a few real estate agents to look at property... we're moving here. It's so green, and there's a canal that runs through the middle of the city. There's lots of young people, cool bands play here often, there's a supermarket and a video store ... there's no need to look anywhere else, really. There's good noodles, too, and some lovely little bars. Y'all can come visit, I don't mind.

I don't even know how you're meant to use that urinal. Well, I mean, I know how you use it, it's pretty simple, you basically just gotta stand and pee, but don't you think they could've at least put, I dunno, a shower curtain around it? Something? Those things stand ON THE FOOTPATH. Not in Utrecht, thankfully - Utrecht is not so tacky. That shit's in Amsterdam. And I guess peeing on the street is nothing new to a lot of people, myself included (only when the need arises, really really arises), but it's so confusing, like a weird mashup of trash and civility, so you feel nice and normal just peeing in a bathroom, but then realise the little man has gone green and a hundred people are barging past you. How confusement.

Less confusing is hamburgers in vending machines. I don't know why this shit isn't everywhere. I would definitely buy one of those, definitely definitely. Once, at least. Then, obviously, when you realise what a hamburger from a vending machine tastes like, you'll never purchase one again. Having said that, they seemed fairly popular amongst the kiddies in Amsterdam. They sold out quite quickly, one could say!

The canal that runs through Utrecht is constantly alive with music and noise, boats, people drinking on the banks, ducks with their babies, people riding waterbikes. And you have to cross little bridges to get from one part of town to the other. It's tight.

Speaking of tight:

That's where we're staying. Not there, not in that tree, but that's the view from our window. It's amazing waking up to the light streaming in through there - less amazing that it comes in at like 5am, after only going down at about 11pm or something.

Europe Interplay starts tonight, and Maud is basically organising the whole thing, so she's going to be mental for the next week, never at home. (Interplay is an international playwrighting festival held every year - I went to World Interplay last year in Townsville, which is where I met Maud and a lot of these other geezers). Tonight's the opening night party, and I think Jes and I are going to crash it. There's lots of old Interplay folk from Townsville here - I've already caught up with Anna, who's from Melbourne, and Florian from Delft (here in Holland). A few others, tutors and delegates alike, will be around, which will be nice.

That's me and Maud. She's the sweetest girl you'll meet.

The other night, Anna and Florian came into Utrecht for the afternoon, and we all grabbed lunch and some coffee and had a bit of a catch up. Jes and I decided to make dinner for them and for Maud, and then Maud invited her friends Erik and Yorit, so we went to the supermarket and got too much pasta and not enough sauce and put together a meal for 7. Aside from the shit food and the warm wine, it was really lovely. We all sat around and laughed and listened to songs and everyone spoke English, most of them better than me, and then the boys went off to see Xavier Rudd who was playing just up the road - so there were at least 3 Australians in Utrecht that night.

We decided to go out, too, that night, so while I lay on the couch, Jes did her little girly routine with the makeup and the clothes and the hairspray... well, she thought it was hairspray. The can was on the shelf with all the hair mousse and whatnot, so she grabbed it and used a bit of it. She kinda turned to me and said "That doesn't smell like hairspray. What is this?" We had a look at the label, which was written in Dutch, and worked out it was actually waterproofing spray for your shoes. It seemed to do the job though, because she looked great. And when it rained that night, the water just slid right off her.

Everyone is smiling, but it's all fake. We're actually all bloated and dying from the bad pasta...

We had another label-issue the following morning when Jes came in from the kitchen and took a mouthful of muesli and screwed up her face. We'd bought sour buttermilk instead of normal milk to put on our cereal. It said 'melk' on the front, so it seemed to be ok. It wasn't. I ate it though, and I'm still alive, so I guess it can't have been that bad. We might make some pancakes from it, because apparently you can use it for that.

Yesterday we got the train to Amsterdam. Jes got some new shoes (above). I think Amsterdam is basically a bit of a hole. A big whorey, touristy hole. I've been there before, two years ago, albeit very briefly, and I don't know what I saw last time, but wow. Initial touristy reactions are of grossness and dirtyness. Anna and Florian have said there are some very beautiful parts once you get away from the shit, but the shit is kinda what hits you first, what's pushed. Sad looking girls and women in their underwear, waving at you from shopfronts, trying to get your business. Sex shops galore, tacky nasty spruikers out the front trying to lure you in... I don't want to sound like a prude (heaven forbid!) but it's kinda yuk. We did see lots of stray cats though, which were cute and fun to play with. And we got some Ben and Jerry's ice cream, which made us both very happy. We met Anna, her friend Eliza, and Florian for a drink, too. And we bumped into some of the Spanish kids we waited with back at the Paris metro at 5am. Stupid small world.

It's really weird being able to smell weed wherever you go. You're walking to the supermarket or to church and all of a sudden someone rides past you smoking a joint. And it could be anyone, y'know, it's not just the young kids or the tourists, it's the cops and shit. Not the cops, I'm sure, but probably the priests. There's a coffee shop a short walk from our place and we've observed that it must close at midnight, as at about 10 minutes to 12, there's a line out the door of insomniac-looking people who clearly need something to send them off into the land of nod. The windows of the shops display what's on offer, like a little menu, with quantities and prices. There's even a chart to decode magic mushrooms - it has a table with the type of mushroom to buy depending on what kind of physical/psychic/bodily reaction you want to have, how many you should take, what to avoid when taking them (ie alcohol etc). And, hilariously, they've just introduced smoking laws here, which restrict the smoking of tobacco in bars and coffee shops etc, so if one were to smoke some weed, you can't roll it with tobacco, it has to be straight green, and THAT can be smoked indoors. What? What? What.

We didn't end up getting back from Amsterdam til quite late, and all of the shops had closed, so we got a pizza and ate it while watching The Devil Wears Prada and Maud did some work. Poor thing is going to have a crazy week! 60-odd people arriving today from all over the world, and she had to meet and greet all of them and answer all their questions and allocate all their rooms and tell them all where they can buy stamps and a drink and then tuck them allll in to bed at night. Busy work.

We've got a few things planned for the next couple of days. We want to climb the big tower in the centre of town, go for a trip down the canal in a waterbike, ride real bikes to the forest for a picnic, go to Delft and see some art, go back into Amsterdam, and go to a little cheese village not far from here. I don't know if we'll squeeze it all in, but we'll try. Berlin is next week, and everyone I have spoken to has said it's amazing! So excited.

I've put up all my photos, now, I think. Check them out here. I managed to delete a few altogether, which was a little irritating, but I think they're boring ones anyway, so it's not like there's a big gap missing from the holiday.

Jes has been at the beach all day, so she's napping on the bed. I'm doing this and watching a bit of Ally McBeal. I think we'll head to the party at some point later on tonight.

Miss you all, a lot now actually. I'll be funner next time, promise.

xd

Paris to Amsterdam...

2008-07-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

We are in Utrecht, just outside Amsterdam. We got in this morning, on the train. Standing outside the Metro in Paris at 5am, waiting for the gates to open, we were with a bunch of other Spanish people ... we all looked like homeless people, all tired and dirty and carrying bags. There was even a real live homeless man there, but it took us a minute to realise he was homeless and not backpacking.

We are very happy here, in a building we were brought to by Maud (my friend from Interplay). I think it's her University. We have real proper internet, on real proper computers - it's sad how desperate Jes and I are to connect with a keyboard. We were thinking of wandering around town this afternoon, but Jes just turned to me and said "Do you mind if we just sit here for four hours?" and I basically cried with excitement because I was hoping to do exactly that. We've developed this thing, we have, where we ask a question - Do you want the top of the bottom bunk? - and on the count of three, we both have to say the answer we want. So it goes a little like this:

Jes: Do you want the top bunk?

Dan: 1.. 2... 3

(simultaneously) Jes: Top / Dan: Bottom.

That way, everyone is happy, because we find out the REAL answer, not the polite answer. Unless we both answer the same way (ie if we both said 'top', we'd be in trouble). But that hasn't happened yet so we shant think about it.

ANYWAY. Paris to Amsterdam.

Let me do a bit more on Paris, because the last post wasn't really sufficient, in my mind.

Paris is amazing, basically, beautiful and old, but you need exactly four times as much money as we had in order to do stuff. And by 'stuff', I mean 'eat'. And 'have fun'. If you were there for a week, and had $10,000, you'd be rockin it. But we have about $6,000 for 10 weeks, so it's not quite the same. Finding food was hard - that's a lie, finding food was easy, we just went to supermarkets, but finding CHEAP food was hard. There was a lot of bread-and-cheese, baguettes, croissants, fresh fruit, noodles, pasta. On the first night - have I told this already? - we had chocolate biscuits and 'bolognaise' flavoured chips for dinner, because we were too tired and shit and poor to even think about making food.

We spent a lot of time thinking about, talking about and looking at food, though, stopping religiously at almost all shops to look at what they had that we could eat. If we ate everything that we stopped to look at and/or wanted to eat, we would be in a gutter right now. We obviously spent a lot of time looking at cheese. On the left is Jes and a giant BabyBel. Right after that photo was taken she shoved the thing in her bra and walked out of the shop all lopsided. She smelled for daaaays.

We had breakfast by the Eiffel Tower a few mornings - only about a 20 minute walk from our hostel, which wasn't too bad really. It really picked us up on our down mornings, walking past it and going - Wow. There it is. It's kinda gross up close, too many people trying to sell you things and steal your moneys, but from a distance you definitely feel a bit romantic. A lot of the time we spent walking, wandering, a getting lost. Jes was the guide with the map, and she didn't a great job - really, no kidding - but sometimes we did have 'special' moments on the side of the road where Jes would point at the map and say "Where are we?" and I would just do a blank face and shrug my shoulders and not speak English for a bit. She didn't like that a whole lot.

The other thing, and I guess you find this with any sort of travel, is that we were so tired, completely and utterly knackered from all the walking and all the thinking in French/translating, and all the map-reading, and all the constant heat and sunburn, and the uphill and the downhill and the sore feet and the bad pillow and mattresses on the bad squeaky bunk beds ... we were tired to the point of severe grumpiness most of the time. We found small things to amuse us, though, like the way the French would laugh at us when we tried to speak their language, or the way that we were interrupted in some way during every transaction we ever partook in ever - in a supermarket, at the hostel, buying a loaf of bread or a croissant or trying to get the room key, ANYTHING, someone always always always pushed in front of us or shouted over us or demanded service before us. That only became hilarious after about the 300th time. Is any of this making sense? Ok.

The hostel was stayed at in Paris was called the 3 Ducks Hostel, but it should have been called the 3 Showers Hostel, but even that would be a lie, because there are only 2. It was a nice place, very cute little courtyard, but no lockers, and lots of funny/smelly people staying there, very gross showers, very gross beds (both Jes and I have bites on us, and we think there were bed bugs). The showers are all push-button, which means you push the button and the cold water hits you like a fire hose for about 15 seconds and then dies, and then you press it again and the boiling water hits you like a water hose for about 15 seconds and then dies. It's good, because it works like a freezing/defrosting system, very clever. I was getting changed in the cubicle the other day, because I'm not really a naked in public kind of person, so was kinda trying to squeeze into my jeans in the shower while it's all hot and steamy, and then I bumped my ass against the push-button, and was soaked in freezing cold water. It was obviously hilarious but I wasn't happy.

When we walked into the hostel on the first night, Jes get hit on by some skeezy guy who asked her if she was there alone, which we think is French for 'Can I kidnap and rape you?'. I asserted myself as the boyfriend and all was well. In fact, it was all SO well, that a few days later, on the street, some French men came up and asked if they could take a photo of my girlfriend for a stupid work-team-bonding exercise that meant the whole office had to run around Paris getting photos of stupid things and doing crazy little challenges. Jes was dressed in blue and the task was to get a photo with someone dressed in blue. But instead of asking HER, they asked me - Is it ok if we take a photo with your girlfriend? What? Jes actually said, 'Er, you can ask me.' Obviously I undid her chain and let her do it. But just this once. The hostel had a lot of weird people actually. That same first night, the night of skeezy French man, another man came up to me and said "Ah, Hollywood! You have face like Hollywood!" which I thought was quite nice, really, considering I didn't know him. A bit later, though, he said "You need some sport, Hollywood. You're a bit fat, you need sport". Fucker.

We climbed Notre Dame one day, which took about a week because of all the steps. There really are a lot of steps. And the line was very long, a lot of waiting. But the view from the top was amazing, you can see out over all of Paris, and the Tower's up in the background. You're up so high, just chilling out with the gargoyles and chatting. It was a beautiful warm day, too, so that always makes things nice.

Sunday we met up with Nicole, who is my buddy and workmate from De La - she choreographs the Rock Eisteddfods. She was staying in the Latin Quarter with her mate Tam, and on Sunday we met Nicki (who I call Shaz - we're Shaz and Daz) to go market shopping and Montmartre-ing. The photo just there is of us outside Sacre Coeur, wearing matching t-shirts that Mary (our mutual buddy and Rock Ed co-shenaniganiser) had made up for a gig she worked on a little while back, a CD launch for a friend of hers. Had a great wander with Shaz. Sacre Couer was pumping, buskers and guitar players and kids everywhere, it was so tight, all bohemian-esque in a very tourist trappish sort of way.

Let's tell a funny story. We'll call the story, 'Crazy Puerto Rican bitch who looked like Nicole Richie, being a dog in the middle of the night'. It basically involved this crazy Puerto Rican bitch who looked a LOT like Nicole Richie being a dog in the middle of the night.

From the top:

I accidentally fell asleep in the sun outside the Louvre and got very hot and pink and now have a weird tan line on my arm (parents, I don't need a lecture about SunSmart, the lesson has been learnt) and then Jes made me go on a scary ride at the carnival that was called 'Boomerang' - we HAD to go on it, really - that spun us round in circles high up in the air, so by the time we got the hostel that night I wasn't feeling so good. Sunstroke and queasy tummy are a bad combo. So I was in bed by about 9, asleep by 10 - all is well. I'll tell the story from Jes' perspective now, because I'm asleep. There are 6 parts to this story. Read on!

Crazy Puerto Rican bitch - let's call her Nicole, as in Richie, not as in my friend - comes into the room at about 11 or so, I'm asleep, but Jes is reading, and some other people are asleep too. She barges in, opens the doors and yells "Is anyone getting reception on their cell??", Jes says 'Yes' in a way that indicated Nicole should really keep her voice down because it's late and people are sleeping. Then Nicole exits. An hour or so later, she barges in again - everyone is asleep, including an American couple just in from Venice and very tired. She bangs on the light, opens her suitcase, rummages through her case, finds a bottle of vodka, pours herself a PINT of vodka and Coke, and then exits again. An hour later, comes back and sees the American girl on one of the bottom bunks and starts complaining that that was HER bed, and Jes - woken from her sleep by the light and the yelling (Dan is still asleep) - tells her that the top bunk is free, she should just use that and sort it out in the morning. Oh no, no no no, Nicole decides to get the manager. So the light goes off for 10 minutes, everyone's happy again, but then the manager comes in all yelling and lights-on, "Who's in that bed? Who's in this bed? Who is that sleeping man?" Jes said "That's Dan". The manager tells the girl to sleep on the top bunk, they both leave, the light goes off, everyone is happy. About 4am, Nicole comes back, at which point Dan wakes up. She bangs in, turns the light on, waking everybody, smashes around the room for a while, then swings the doors open so violently that they bang against the walls - in fact, she may not even have used a door handle, she may have just pushed them so hard they flew open - and yelled "This room stinks, I'm opening the doors." Of course, 4am is the time that everyone in Paris decides to commit a crime or light a fire or have a heart attack, so there's sirens galore, and people are putting out rubbish so there are bins bashing around and bottles breaking. But it all settles down again. Everyone's happy. Let's get some sleep.

7am. Nicole's alarm goes off. Some hideous noise pollution is spewing from her phone, some hip hop shit with no beat but a wicked rhyme, at about 1000 decibels, waking everyone in the room except for Nicole. Dan gets up and staggers to her bed. She is half-lying on the phone, her right breast squashing the phone against the mattress. Dan (that's me, I'm going to keep using 'Dan' til the end of the story, thought) figures if she wakes up he'll just punch her in the face and she won't remember being groped anyway, so he grabs the phone and pushes some buttons and slams it shut again. Sleep. 7.30am, alarm goes off again. Quasi-naked American man stumbles from his bed to repeat the action Dan performed not a half-hour earlier. 8am it goes off again, and this time the dumb bitch half wakes up, mutters 'Sorry' and falls back asleep. The great thing was, everyone was awake after that and we all shared a moment of hatred, united against a common enemy. Jes was plotting her revenge, planning to line everyone's phones up beside Nicole's head and set them off at the same time. In fact, a lot of Jes' anger was unwarranted, because in between Nicole's night-time terrorist acts, Jes had fitful nightmares about the other bad things Nicole had done, which was nothing, obviously, because they were just dreams. So Jes had anger from Nicole going through her bags (dream) and yelling at her (dream) and a whole bunch of other stuff (dreams) ASIDE from the nighttime shenanigans.

Nicole woke up like an hour or so later spooning her purple Adidas sneakers and an empty bottle of vodka, put some hairspray in her hair and left. Fuck you very much.

Lots of photos to share, too. I'll post a batch from London below.

The dog squad: me, Jes, Beth and George

Jes' first London experience!

Australians on the Tube? What?

Me and George in Shepherd's Bush, before seeing Tegan and Sara

Just down by the water.

After the TATE.

Me at Buckingham Palace.

By the lions in Trafalgar Square.

A nice girl offered to take the photo, and as she was lining us up,

encouraging us to move further back toward the statue,

Jes whispered 'Are you ready to grab her?' and I said 'Yep'.

Playing with toys at Hamleys!

PS. Read Jes' blog too, over here!
PPS. I have also edited the options so now anyone and everyone should be able to comment. That's for you, Jacinta...

Croissant, baguette, Gerard Depardieu...

2008-06-30T03:12:00.000-07:00

FRANCE!

Internet has been impossible to find, despite the guide book saying that "internet cafes abound in Paris". Fuckers. I'm on a French keyboard and everything is different so if there are any typing errors, I apologise.

Ok. So we finished up in London, so long, farewell, bye bye. Train to Luton airport, roughly a two hour trip, according to the lady at the train station. We settled in with our books and some food - we stocked up on creamed rice and yoghurt for the journey; and got extra to take with us to France (it was so cheap, we figured it would be a good way to save money). We almost didn't make it though. Jes cleverly thought to look up from her book just as we pulled into the station, saying "Er, I think we should get off here". I don't know how long we would have travelled for before thinking maybe we had gone too far, or where we would have ended up, but we got lucky. In fact, that was the start of the lucky day!

At the airport we saw the fat guy who was in Sliders, that was pretty lucky. Then we decided to spend all our coins on sandwiches, and they equalled 5 pounds, and combined Jes and I had 5 pounds and 2 pence. Lucky lucky. Our luck ran out a bit when, because of the laws about liquid in carry-on luggage, they made us eat all the yoghurt and creamed rice. Jes and I are sitting on the designated "eating bench", drinking yoghurts straight from the tub cos we had no spoons, and then we had to skull our waters, and this nice German man was laughing at us and encouraging us to keep drinking. Tummies did not feel so good after that. The flight was 55 minutes, which is less time than it takes me to drive to Trent's house, and that was a bit fucked.

The hostel is dirty and gross, and Jes and I had to have a beer the second we arrived, and we both promised each other we'd save 5 euro for a bedtime beer each day, just so we can sleep more soundly. Paris is so expensive, too, it's getting us down a bit. We got kebabs last night and it cost us about 800 Australian dollars, and we didn't even get that many chips. Oh well. We have breakfast under the Eiffell Tower some mornings, and we've been to Notre Dame and Sacre Couer and the Arc de Triumphe and along the Champs Elysses with all the rich leathered women and their pooches in Louis Vuitton carrier bags. We went to the gay pride festival that was on, Jes' 88 year old great aunt who we met suggested we go, and it was hilarious and lovely, all utopia-esque with little lezzies and their little IVF babies running around. Jes and I wandered a bit further and decided to stop and have a drink before heading for the hostel which was like a 3 hour walk away. The bar lady made us a Mojito and a Margarita, and they were so so so strong, we literally had a sip and fell over drunk. I'm not even exaggerating. We didn't finish them, and went home to make pasta, but not before weeing in a park because the toilets was broke.

OH! There's more stuff but internet is over now and this keyboard has fried my brain. Today: Louvre and cemetary.

xd

Risotto, travel plans and Wicked.

2008-06-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

Jes and I went to see 'Wicked' yesterday. Amazing, of course. I think maybe the US productions were stronger - better acting or something, and the English accents were a little offputting to begin with, too - but I still cried, it was still amazing, and Jes loved it too. We got some shitty seats for 25pounds, and we sat quite a long way away, but it was stil terrific. At the interval the line for the girls' toilets was insane - it snaked back on itself like 11 times - and Jes needed to pee real bad, so I went into the men's toilets and scoped the situation out, hanging out by the hand dryer, waiting for all the lads to clear out. When it was empty, I grabbed Jes and she used the cubicle. After she was done, though, as we were walking out, a group of schoolboys walked in and she kinda smiled at them and they all started giggling hilariously. They probably thought we'd just had sex or something.

People here are not big on awareness of personal space. You try to squeeze past them - they won't move to help you, of course - and then as you say 'Sorry!', they'll glare at you. What?? Surely anyone who has just apologised to you is aware they're inconveniencing you SLIGHTLY and so you just say 'No, that's fine', right? Right? Fuckin Brits. It got real hot after the show yesterday, especially on the non-air-conditioned Tube, it was so gross and sticky.

Before the show, we met up - Jes went in early to get our tickets - and had sandwhiches we brought from home, tuna and mayo and avocado and tomato. It was so nice, sitting in the park. And then we had cheese and crackers. And then we went back to Eat and got some Banoffee pie. If we were here any longer, that shit would be the death of us, literally. We'd spend all our money on it, and then die from the cream that would be running through our veins.

The night before, Georgia made up a beautiful risotto with roasted veggies from the deli, and then we went to a local pub and had a few beers. It was a really nice night, just the four of us, hanging out. Another of the girls' friends, Vanessa, joined us much later in the evening straight from the airport - she's been staying with us since, but is leaving today, like us. Once Zoe arrived, which was yesterday, the once four-person house had in it Beth, Georgia, me, Jes, Wes, Ray, Vanessa and Zoe. Crazy talk! But it's a lovely little family vibe, everyone bustling around the kitchen, watching movies, chatting and laughing and being stupid. Dinner time was a bit chaotic, a lot of yelling over the top of each other, but we worked around it in the end.

Jes and I sat down last night to have a serious chat about whether we were going to skip Paris and stay in London - we are SO comfortable here - but Jes just sat there picking her nose. We decided that we DO love London, but it's too expensive to fuck around with the bookings we've made at this point. Instead, we might skip Switzerland, and stay in Europe for another week - Tom Waits is playing in Prague on the 22nd of July - and then come back to London after that, which means I might come home like a week or 10 days later, if I can afford it, and if I can change my flights. And if Jes stops picking her nose. She's a fiend.

Flying to Paris tonight. We're so sad to leave here, but it's PARIS. Very exciting. Of course, we haven't confirmed our hostel booking, and we arrive at like 10pm, so the trains will be all broken and we'll get a cab that costs 300euro, then the hostel will have cancelled our booking, and it will be midnight, and we'll be stuck in Paris on the street, and we'll have panic attacks and die. So looking forward to that.

Seeing Nicki in Paris, and Alyssa too I think. Friendly faces wherever we go!
xd

Parties, Lezzies and Snot

2008-06-24T02:46:00.001-07:00

I've been in London for just over a week now, away from home for about three. And there's still five to go!

London has been so good for my brain and my body, I think, I've really loved being here again. Since Jes got in, we've done a lot of fun stuff. I picked her up from Heathrow, running from the Tube because I was SURE I was going to be late and she would be there waiting and furious. As it was, she was held up at customs, and didn't come out for ages. Seeing her little head bobbing out from the doors was wonderful.

Friday, her first full day here, we went to Trafalgar Square, to the National Gallery. We met up with some of Jes' friends who were in town, and did the gallery with them. There were Van Gogh's and the Rembrandts and all the stuff on Jesus. I don't think I much fancy German or Flemish paintings, I really don't. They all look a bit odd. Italians just do it better, to be quite honest - they get the proportions right, the colours right, everything looks much healthier and normal.

Friday night, we caught the train out to Reading to see Simon Amstell (a comedian). The train took us just over an hour, and we managed to find the theatre without any issues. Amstell was hilarious and adorable and terribly inappropriate. His thing is that he says 'wrong' stuff - Madeline McCann jokes, Kylie cancer jokes, yada yada yada - and it's often quite distasteful, but he's hilarious when he does it, and he takes the piss out of himself too which I guess helps. Anyway, he was great. A lot of Brits seem to hate him. What WAS kinda refreshing is seeing this little skinny white gay Jew up on-stage talking about his past relationships in a non-gay context. As in, he was joking about partners and stupid sex stuff, and it wasn't made special for the fact that it was with a boy, it just was. I don't think you hear a lot of that in the mainstream, especially not from someone who is on TV the way that Amstell is, hosting a very popular show. The train home was interesting. The races had been on, so everyone was getting trains about, all drunk, all tarted up. The girls were prime candidates for that 'Ladette to Lady' finishing-school TV show, where they turn tramps into ladies in four weeks. Trashy ho's, the lot of them. And one couple were having a very public break up, she was crying like there was no tomorrow, sobbing so loudly I think it woke Jes up at one point.

Saturday morning was Portobello Rd markets with Jes' friend Anthony. We got off at Notting Hill Gate and wandered up towards the markets, through the antiques part and through the fresh produce part - I got a big donut which was tasty tasty from this cake stall with HEAPS, literal heaps, piles, mountains, of cakes and donuts and pastries and slices. It was like a treasure cave. It was very nice to be back at the markets, they were very familiar, and weird to remember where stuff was! We had lunch at Grain Shop, and ate it in Mau Mau Bar down the road over a beer. So good. People say you can't get good food in London, that's it's all stodgy shit, but if you hunt it down, you can find some good stuff. Grain Shop is all really good hippie shit, lots of lentils and stuff, all vegan/vegetarian.

Saturday night there was a bit of a crazy party at Beth and Georgia's place, which started small and got quite large. There was a guy there who reckons he was in 'Once', the film, in the background, and he played 'Falling Slowly' on his guitar and did a pretty good job of it too! We didn't get to bed until very late, and as a result missed the Camden markets. We did venture out for the Spitalfields markets, but decided halfway it was too far to go, so instead we wandered around Covent Garden, and then went to meet some of my friends from Interplay, Suzanne and Elinor and Natalie. It was so lovely to see them, just to sit in the park in the sunshine and have a chat with some friendly faces for a few hours. You do get a bit sick of being an observer after a while, a 'tourist', it's all a bit draining and boring. You look around and think, 'I should be absorbing all of this' but then you're tired and have a headache and your feet are sore and, really, you can't be at 100% all the time. So this catchup was a nice little interlude or something. We wandered back to Victoria station via Buckingham Palace and Jes got all fired up about colonialism. They have big archways, actually, surrounding the palace, that bear the names of all the different places they're colonised. Australia is there, with a kangaroo and a sheep as the symbols of our nation. That night, Beth made tasty noodles and we fell asleep watching 'Enchanted'. LAME.

Monday, yesterday, Jes, George and I hit the TATE Modern. Loved it. Picassos and Mondrians and Lichtensteins ... really sweet shit. You can wander and stare at that stuff for hours, and we did, until we got heaps hungry and went to find food. There is a massive sandwhich culture in this country, which gets Jes very excited. Me too. She suggested that we would be terrible travelling buddies, as we both get so aroused by food. We spend half the time looking at food and thinking how good it would be to have it in our tummies. So for lunch we went to EAT which is one of the many chains of sandwhich shops around here. Pret-a-Manger is pretyy much sandwhich heaven, but EAT was pretty good too. The girls got hippie shit, falafel wraps and roasted veggies, I got a BLT (yay bacon!) and a little Banoffee pie which was WOW. It's basically a banana and toffee pie, banana custard laced with toffee on a biscuit base. All three of us had some, and Jes acutally had to go inside and LOOK at the other ones in the case because she wanted to have more so bad. We're terrible. After the TATE we hit Oxford Circus - Topshop, H&M, Urban Outfitters and Primark left us very tired and our feet very sore and out wallets very empty. I got a pair of jeans, which I needed anyway, but they were £75 which is a little terrifying, but not much more than you'd pay at home. Then after alll that shopping and wandering and people-watching, we went to see Tegan and Sara at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. I figured it was just going to be a whole lot of whiny lesbian music, and it was. So many lezzies all in the one place! This scalper out the front, this little Jamaican dude, was like "Where is all the men? Why is there so many ladies, where is all the men?" No-one could bring themselves to tell him where the men were.

Today is... I don't know. Internet. Then George is going to make us some lunch, or brunch. It's still early. I think I'll head into the city later and go to the Globe, maybe try to get some Wicked tickets. I have a cold, my throat is all sore, and my snot is green. And there's a lot of it. And my head is all groggy and cloudy. I don't know, I just want to sleep and not move anywhere at all. But I'll push through!

Thursday to Paris. More of George & Beth's friends arrive tonight, so the house is going to get more cramped - there's six of us in a four person space right now, and tonight there'll be seven, and tomorrow nine. I think. Excellent...

Love you all.
x

Brooklyn, delays & LDN

2008-06-18T04:22:00.000-07:00

Just a quick one, no photos today.

Went to the party in Brooklyn. I decided I WASN'T going to go, then was sitting reading my Time Out NY at eating pot noodles at about 8pm, and thought - y'know what? It's New York, for God's sake. So I took the subway out to Brooklyn at about 9.30 and met Krista at her place. Brooklyn seemed a lot 'cooler', even just from the geezers getting on the train. Like a less gentrified Soho/Village/Chelsea. Very Melbourne. But in a good way. So I met up with Krista and her cat - so much fur, wow - and we had a wine and chatted about life and plays and New York and Interplay. Then we got a car service to the party. The driver had no idea where he was going, and kept demanding that Krista look at her iPhone to get directions - "Look at your GPS, look at your GPS!" - and charged us like $8 more than he was meant to. Whatever. We were glad to get there alive after all his shenanigans.

Party was in an apartment, not sure whose, but it was busy and sweaty and cool. We had some champagne and chatted, talked to some people. One girl got all up in my face about being Australian, questioning my accent, saying I didn't 'look' Australian - bitch, you didn't look stupid, but shit. Stayed there til the wee hours, then jumped back in a car and back to the hostel. Wasn't brave enough to tackle the Subway in the early hours, even though Krista assured me it would be safe. I had no credit, and no-one could understand my accent, so even if I did cry for help, no-one would get it.

Friday I did a MASSIVE walk down 5th Ave, checked out the toy stores and the Apple store and a whole bunch of other stuff I can't remember. Feet very sore. It was stupidly hot again, but then there was a thunderstorm - stuck in the middle of Central Park, no trees, drenched - but then the sun came out again and it was 40 degrees. Nice.

London: flight delayed 2.5 hours. Hardly slept at all. Off the flight, grabbed my bags, jumped on the Tube - still 10 quid left on my Oyster card!! Hilarious! Had arranged to meet Beth at Earl's Court, and while I waited, I went and bought a SIM card for my phone - new number is 0750 401 7037 - and set that up. So good to see Beth's stupid head running across the road to greet me. We went for a few wines and met up with Georgia, her housemate and Aussiemate and one of mum's old students (she taught them both English). George went to work and Beth and I went home to eat spag bol and watch DVDs. I was heaps tired from the flight still, and was pretty much dead by 11. It doesn't get dark til crazy late here, like 10pm and there's still light. But it feels so comfortable and home-like. I'm so glad to be here! Everything's familiar and lovely.

Yesterday I caught up with Inga for lunch - Inga worked on Reception with me at the hotel in Gloucester Rd. Again, lovely. Her friend Nancy came, and she works at the hotel now, as a Concierge. We got nachos and steak - real food is real different to 2 minute noodles! - and cider and just chatted for ages, and then took a walk to the Hyde Park and sat in the sun. So lovely. Stopped by the hotel and saw Pat and Susana, which was lovely too. Pat came out after work and we all went for a drink. It all just clicked back in place, there was only a few minutes of the awkward I-haven't-seen-you-for-two-years shit, and then BAM! Back into it. Good times.

After all that, met George and Beth again at the Troubadour (which is fast becoming a habit - twice in two days. And twice in two days there have been crazies wandering around out the front, the first one thinking Beth had "nice legs, nice long legs, real nice legs yeah"). We got talking to this guy whose band was playing there and he tried to convince us to go down and watch, and we just... didn't. We had dip and chips instead. He was nice enough, though.

Feeling very weird at the moment. Mitch, my Labrador, is a bit sick at home, and he's going to the doctors tomorrow morning to work out if they're going to do a very expensive operation on him. I'm scared he's going to die and I'm not going to be there. I don't even think I can comprehend what I would do if that happened. He is my best friend, y'know? I'm sure I treat him like shit a whole lot and he resents me for it, but he's been in our family since I was little. He walked me and my cousins to primary school every day, he's gone on holidays with us, he's run away and come back again, he's never growled in his life, EVER, he's just slept and played and sometimes pooed on the carpet. We still have an extension cable that's kinda stained from a runny poo he did on it one night when he had an upset tummy and we were all sleeping. Crazy puppy. I don't even want to think about it because I'm already a bit teary just writing this. Idiot. I kept laughing, saying, Oh haha, Mitch better not die while I'm away! I even TOLD him, I said, DON'T. But he's a bit deaf, I don't think I said it loud enough. Maybe I'll Facebook him.

Tomorrow's Jes. She must've left already, or be getting ready too. I'm collecting her from the airport circa 2.30pm. We're in Reading on Friday, seeing Simon Amstell's stand-up show, and then hopefully the markets this weekend, and Beth and Georgia are having a partay this Saturday night, which'll be funtimes!

That's about it. Georgia just came back with groceries. I'm off, then!

Love to all.
Text me!!!!

xd

Art, Soho and trashy souvenirs

2008-06-14T11:34:00.001-07:00

Starting with Thursday and working up to today...

Had lunch with Erin on Thursday at this little Indian place near the school where she teaches. I walked her back there afterwards, and she took me inside and showed me around, the corridors, the classrooms. I'll say it again - just like on TV. After that I wandered down to the Met (the Metropolitan Museum of Art) to check that out. I was trying to work out the difference between a museum and a gallery, but apparently the terms here are interchangeable. They mean the same thing. I always thought a gallery was for art, a museum for dinosaur bones. So I went to the Met. Huge, massive building, reall beautiful inside and out, and right on the park, you kind of wander out from the trees and it's right there on 'Museum Mile'. They have a special exhibition on right now of superhero costumes and the fashion that is inspired by it. So they had a whole lot of really cool costumes - Iron Man's real one (the actual one worn in the film), and Catwoman and Superman and the new Batman and the blue chick from X-Men who John Stamos' ex-wife played, her costume too. And then all the high fashion couture shit next to it. I know these things aren't necessarily meant to be worn, that they're just as costume-like as the costumes themselves, but goddamn. Why? Pants are pants and should have cylinders, right? So that your legs can go in them? Not weird angles and shoulderpads on your knees and a little cuckoo clock where your zipper should be. Shut up.

I saw lots of old European art, baby Jesus and Mary were around a lot, very popular those two. The modern stuff was really cool though, the Picassos and the Pollocks yada yada yada. Love just being around crazy shit like that, it makes you think more or something. Wanker!

That night I went to see Iron Man at the movies. Well. I bought the ticket ok, no dramas there. I thought I'd get some popcorn and a Coke. I forget that 'large' here means, like, human-sized, so the large popcorn and Coke (which ordinarily I could probably get close to finishing, especially if I was in a fattyfatfat mood and/or hungry and/or just fat) was RIDICULOUS. I'm talking a paper grocery bag-sized thing of popcorn and a Coke the size of a KFC bucket of chicken. So I'm trying to juggle this grocery bag and this bucket of soda, and of course, because I don't know the order of things, I didn't realise there was a 'bar' to the side, where one could add butter/caramel/salt to your popcorn, and where you also picked up your napkins and straws. So I'm so preoccupied trying to get to the cinema and take my seat without dropping shit that I don't realise I'm straw-less until I've sat down. That's fine, whatever, I'll just take off the lid and drink from the cup/bucket. So I sit in the second last row, thinking that this will be the best place for me to not be seen by anyone - everyone will sit in front of me, therefore won't see how I'm trying to eat all this popcorn and slurp all this Coke without a straw. Except EVERYONE sits in the row behind me. So I'm alone, in the second last row, everyone behind me, everyone looking at and judging me. I was pretty good for the most part, I think, I managed to not spill any Coke or drop too much popcorn. I was very self-conscious for the whole film, though. Of course, I only managed to drink about a litre and a half of Coke, so it was still pretty full by the end - I would've taken it home with me except I had no straw and no lid, so I had to leave it there. The next morning I woke up with the most terrible popcorn hangover. You know how it is. Salty salty popcorn slowly sucks all the moisture from your body overnight so that when you wake in the morning you're all shrivelled and prune-like and your head feels like it's been sat on a lot. I kinda stumbled through the morning, slowly regaining consciousness. Then went to the MoMA.

The Museum of Modern Art is, as the name suggests, ALL modern art. It was fuckin sweet. I loved it so much. Six floors of wanky modern art, large-scale light installations, video installations, everything. It was ace. There was a special exhibition on there, too, called Take Your Time - the main foyer of which was lit by flourescent yellow lights (see picture). The photo doesn't really do it justice, but basically, the effect of the light made everything - your vision - black and white. It was fuckin weird. You came up the escalators into a colourless world. People walked past you in grey, their faces and clothes grey. It was like those photos you see where the saturation has been removed entirely. It was so scary. And then you'd see into the next room, lit normally, all bright and colourful, but your own arm is till grey. Spooky spooky, but everyone was loving it!

In the foyer they have this massive void in the air, going up about three or four floors, so it's like a big air tunnel thing with balconies you can look out into it from (was that even a sentence?) and hanging in there is this installation, a big fan, like a fan you use in Summer to cool yourself with, on a big rope, swinging around and around. Watch the video below. Hilarious. I don't think the kid is part of it, though I wish he was.

They had a whole lot of Andy Warhol stuff, all the soup cans the a Marilyn and a Mao, and a room of Pollocks (some of the same 'group' of ones that the Met has). It was so weird seeing the 'real' ones, up close and personal. This image, especially, the Marilyn one, is so famous. I guess that's the point.

Part of the permanent exhibition includes architecture and design, so they have a whole floor of modern furniture and stuff - a giant plastic bag that folds up into a bumbag that homeless people can unpack, wrap one end around a vent coming out of a building, and it inflates into a little bubble house to sleep in overnight. Crazy chairs made of bubbles, chaise lounges made of wire, walls made of felt, lamps in the shape of pills - really '21st century', modern stuff. It's all a bit fun, really. Particularly when you read the 500 word explanation and realise that someone has a very real justification for making this stuff.

After the MoMA, I went for a wander down that end of town, said my goodbyes to 5th Avenue etc. I went to the New York Public Library (I had total Sex and the City movie flashbacks!) and then via the Empire State to Grand Central Station (left), which was fuckin beautiful. It's like the entrance hall to a palace or a museum or something, massive high ceiling all painted and lots of beautiful chandeliers. People running everywhere, of course, total chaos, particularly at 6pm or whatever time it was when I got there. The Empire State is kind of to one side of it, so there's this beautiful photo op with the two of them together.

Nice night last night, just chilling at the hostel. I finally realised that this place has a kitchen, buried in the dungeon, so made myself some pot noodles and read my book on the terrace (also a new discovery - who would've though having a bit of an explore could yield so many benefits??) and chatted to some other people. Very civilised and lovely. There was a DJ playing in the foyer, but everyone just looked too fucked to even consider dancing or hip-hopping or doing the rap or whatever it is you're meant to do with a DJ. Wiped out.

Today I got the Subway down to Chinatown and wandered through the street markets in Soho, looking for tacky souvenirs that are about a fifth of the price that they are in Times Square. Cheapskate much? Came back up into midtown walking through Greenwich Village and Chelsea. So many arty faggy wanky people ... it was like being back in Melbourne! It's a lovely area, the village, it's very green and quiet and chilled. There was a big Indian food and culture festival going on, which was cool to wander through and get free watermelon from. This crazy white lady had an argument with an African American woman about something - whitey was yelling about there being seven-foot hookahs (as in, water pipes/nargiles, not Pretty Woman) over on the East side, and what kind of American was that, what kind of Christian consciousness was that, where was God, huh, that wouldn't have happened in '96! Then the black lady told her to come back over here so I can throw paint all over you, I can paint your whole face! Lady. HAH! In the markets, I overheard this lady - and you have to say this out loud in your thickets, strongest New York cliche accent, because that's how it was delivered - on the phone to someone, and she said, "Look, I'm sure it looks nice, but I just can't see you in a dog collar, sweetheart!". Mother to daughter? Wife to husband? Wife to wife? Master to slave? Interesting.

Heat/humidity has crept back up today. Heading upstairs now to pack my clothes ready for 11am checkout tomorrow. Sunburn is peeling, I look like I have leprosy. Considering the state of the shower this morning, I probably do have leprosy. I did manage to get a pair of thongs and a t-shirt today, though, from Old Navy - eight dollars! Very exciting. Old Navy is like classy Target, H&M is nicer still - bought me some pyjama pants there yesterday. I love that place so much. It's why I'm going back to Europe, pretty much.

Krista, another Interplay girl, who also lives in NY, has just got back into town and has invited me to a party in Brooklyn tonight, hosted by her friends who are video installation artists. I'm really keen to go, but I don't know whether I'm going to be able to get back up here to 103rd. I'm having a Miranda moment - to Brooklyn or not to Brooklyn? Only time will tell...

PS. I have photos but for some reason only some of them want to upload. I don't know anymore. Use your imagination, cut out pictures from magazines and put my face on the bodies, it's really all exactly as you imagine it to be. There are heaps more from Salvation Mountain at my flickr account, www.flickr.com/photos/dangiovannoni/sets .

PPS. I don't know if I told you - I went to and ate at the Seinfeld diner! The real one! Tom's Restaurant! I took a photo from the front, you can actually SEE IT. It's all different inside, obviously, because it wasn't shot there, but the outside! I had lunch there, too, a wrap and fries and a soda. Tiiiight. (For the record, 'tight' is hip American slang for 'cool'. It's like 'fetch' for 2008. I say it because I want to FEEL American, y'know? I want to BE one of these people. Same reason I'm invading Iraq tomorrow, and eating grilled cheese right now. Too much? Pfft.)

World Trade Centre, Ellis Island and Lady Liberty

2008-06-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I jumped back on the hop-on hop-off bus and took it downtown this time. I jumped off at the World Trade Centre site, and spent some time wandering around there. It's basically just a massive construction site, cranes and scaffolding everywhere. You peek through the wire and there's a big hole and lots of workmen doing their thing. One of the giant cranes says something like "Helping rebuild the Freedom Tower" on it, and a big American flag plastered all over it. The flags are big here, everywhere you go you see flags. Lots of people taking photos. There's a walkway you have to cross to get to the other side of the road, and when on it you get a better view of the whole scene - the photo is on the left. From there you get a real sense of what is missing. It's this enormous gap, basically, where you know these two massive buildings once stood. The site itself isn't particularly affecting - it's too busy, there are too many people just going about their business for it to be a really 'still' experience, as least for me - but once you see the hole, then you kinda start thinking. Even walking there, when I couldn't actually see the site itself, I was thinking, 'This whole area would have been covered in smoke and dust and ash'. All the buildings, the sandwhich shops and the dry cleaners, they were the shops and the streets we saw on TV, covered in brown. It was a little spooky.

Then I walked down to Battery Park, where the ferry for Liberty & Ellis Islands leaves from. It's quite pretty down there, by the water. A park with lots of greenery, and some shade, and some benches and grass to sit on. They've also got a statue there, a big globe sculpture that used to be down at the WTC site, but which managed to 'survive'. It's pretty beaten up, but there's an eternal flame burning in front of it. The plaque says "it endures as an icon of hope and the indestructible spirit of this country".

I stopped at that point and had an icy pole and a drink of water. The weather was gross beyond belief. The line for the ferries were huge, too, I couldn't believe it. I decided to wait and see if they got any smaller, which they did, eventually.

Then I got the ferry out to Ellis Island, skipping Liberty Island - I didn't think it was worth it, to wander around at the base of the statue, unable to see it because you're so close ... plus it really didn't interest me. Ellis Island was fucking incredible, though, despite the huge number of people there. I took the audio tour through all the rooms and up the staircases and through the corridors - the most interesting room was the Registry Room, this massive hall where they used to process all the migrants. (Ellis Island is an island just off Manhattan that any migrants coming in off ships had to stop at in order to be processed. The buildings there now act as a museum. Yep.) Anyway. I stood there and thought about how my nonno's grandfather and my nonna's father both came through here, were both 'processed' here, and how terrifying it must have been. Not speaking any English, not knowing what the fuck was going to happen, but having the guts to get on a boat and go to a different country in search of something better. It made me put all my own homesickness and dirty-shower woes in perspective (the showers are pretty dirty, though, I'm pretty sure I have some gross tinea shit growing on my feet now - Jes, bring shower thongs).

The photo above is the view of the Manhattan skyline from Ellis Island, through the windows of the Registry Room. Imagine the feeling of being so close to your destination - it's literally JUST THERE - but also not knowing whether you're going to get to go over there or not. They were subject to all kinds of health checks and shit ... if they were puffing when the got to the top of the stairs, they were checked extra carefully to make sure they weren't going to bringing in any diseases, and to make sure they were strong enough to work and wouldn't become dependant on the State. I wouldn't have made it through - I was puffing like a bitch by the time I got to the top of the stairs.

The Statue of Liberty kind of stands there, watching over the whole thing, flags waving all around her on the island. She's actually enormous, so huge. Her feet are the size of a house or something, a really small house. It's been so surreal seeing all these 'iconic' New York figures up close and in the flesh - there's this weird detachment that happens, and I've said this already here, but you feel like you've seen it before because you HAVE, just on TV a whole bunch, never in real life. It takes some of the fun out of it, maybe.

Anyway. New York is growing on me. I'm better at wandering around alone. I have a few good bagel places to visit and get lunch. I don't know if mentioned this already - saw Sex and the City on Monday night. So good to see the girls again! I really liked it, it's a total fantasy story and completely absurd but it was great. Last night I saw Boeing Boeing, which wasn't amazing - I don't think I can do farce. The crowd went nuts though. I only saw it because Christine Baranski is in it, and she was unreal! This grumpy French maid ... just hilarious. Tonight is Wicked, tomorrow and Friday I might try and see some 'plays', off-Broadway stuff (even off-off-Broadway!). Top Girls kinda whet my appetite for some 'proper' theatre. Wanker.

Tomorrow I'm having lunch with Erin, and going to see some art. Hopefully. I'll get around to it eventually, it's just a matter of fitting it all in! I want to do the following things before I leave - the Met, MoMA, Grand Central, Empire State, United Nations building, Greenwich Village (I've already been there but I really liked it and want to go back to do some more wandering).

That's all, I'm done! Sunday evening I fly out for London.

New York, New York

2008-06-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

So I've been here a few days now. Moved out of Erin's place this morning and have checked into a big hostel, which is actually not too bad - clean rooms, a big internet cafe, payphones, it's all here. Hostels are great that way, I think, because you kind of get everything you need in one place, it actually does act as a 'home away from home'. Sort of.

Went and saw Spring Awakening yesterday, a 'rock musical' that won a Tony or something last year - hugely popular, I managed to get one of the student rush tickets which are about 25 bucks, compared to the 100 or so that everyone else pays. You buy it the morning of the show, and it's first in best dressed. I ended up having a seat in one of those rich-people booths, on the side of the theatre - from which you can only see half the stage. The usher was nice, though, and moved me into the second row of the Dress Circle, into some restricted leg room seats... shit, my knees are still recovering. I'm seeing Wicked on Wednesday night - it was totally sold out, basically, and the only 'rush' they have is the lottery, the same one I got in back in LA, but I didn't want to risk it in case I missed out. Wicked in New York was one of the big things I wanted to do, so I forked out 100 bucks and got the last seat on Wednesday night, in the middle of the front row of the Dress Circle. Nice nice nice.

Today I jumped on one of those sightseeing buses - they're great, they take you everywhere! And you can jump on and off at your leisure. I did a big loop through Harlem, which I've already kinda explored because that's near where Erin was living, but I saw the Apollo theatre, which was pretty tight. Got off at the Guggenheim to check that shit out ... of course, they're renovating it, so the whole permanent collection is out of action. All they had was a childrens art exhibition. Lovely. So I wandered down to the Met, thinking I could at least see SOME art today ... that's closed on Mondays. So at that point I kinda figured, ok, it's 2 o'clock, it's 1000 degrees and the humidity is gross, and I was hoping to be in a cool gallery by now ... I'm going to go sleep in Central Park. Which is what I did. I got an icy pole and lay in the sun (hello sunburn!) for a bit and just snoozed. I saw my first NY squirrel, too, clambering up the tree next to me! We made eye contact and he was staring me down, and as I reached for my camera he took off, screaming 'No paparazzi!'.

Central Park, aside, I guess, from being filled with crack addicts and crazies at night time, is actually really beautiful. To have this massive green space in the middle of a city that is just SO much about the 'city' and the business and the tall buildings and the no visible sky anywhere, is a total relief. You can wander for hours and only once or twice catch the sound of cars or buses or police and ambulance sirens - that's something you hear ALL the time, in fact I can hear one right now! Constantly, 24x7, sirens. And there are cops everywhere! Traffic cops, normal cops, whatever, just cops. Watching, eating hot dogs, chatting.

Yesterday I did a big walk around the Times Square area, went up the Rockefeller and checked out the city view from the observation deck, saw Radio City, all the tourist crap. It was cool.

Tonight I'm thinking maybe, if it's still not too hot outside, I'm going to wander up to the Seinfeld diner and check that out. Then possibly see the Sex and the City movie, depending on how far the nearest cinema is. The heat really kills moving around, it's horrible! You just want to lie in your underpants somewhere really well air conditioned and not think about anything ever again.

My internet is going to kick me off in 30 seconds.

Love you all, miss you heaps.

Salvation Mountain, Hollywood, New York

2008-06-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

There's a lot to catch you up on!

I'll do it in order, starting a few days ago.

Allison, Alyssa and I drove out to Salvation Mountain on Thursday, which is about a three hour drive from Long Beach, way into the desert. It was a killa drive, sandstorms and crazy wind and no visibility ... it was scary shit at some points! Salvation Mountain is basically this big mountain that this dude, Leonard, has set up as a 'shrine' to Jesus, I guess. He covers the earth on the mountain with this clay-like substance called adobe, which hardens after time, and then he paints it. Check it out:

So you drive for HOURS, and there's no colour, no life, no nothing in the desert - literally just a trailer park, and then a little town which is the exact same town that you'd see in any horror film, the town that the van full of young kids stop at on their way to the campground to pick up some beers, and the locals look at them and spit their chewing tobacco and there's flies and silence, and then the store is all dark and low-ceilinged and it's about 100 degrees ... that was the town that we passed through to get there, and then all of a sudden, like a mirage or something, this mountain appears, all colourful and amazing. It was so stunning. You can walk on it and climb it, and Leonard was there and gave us a bit of a tour, and then got us to help him make up some adobe. It was so tight.

Me and Allison on the 'yellow brick road', which leads up the mountain.

Here you can see the stark contrast to the desert surrounding it.

I have 1000 more photos, none of them do this place justice. Incredible.

So that was Wednsday. That night, Stacy, Allison, Kate and I went to this bar called Red Room, near their house. We just had a few drinks, this girl there told me I should go to Oregon, and she kept telling me, then we sang songs in the car and went home...

Stace, Kate and Allison...

Thursday I hit Hollywood Blvd, walked the Walk of Fame, all that shit. It was all very nice, but actually a bit tacky and gross. Had fun at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, taking photos of all the hand- and footprints of the celebz! On the left there are the Harry Potter kids, but there's also Shirley Temple and Matt Damon and Brad Pitt and George Clooney and Meryl Streep ... is that the gayest collection of names you've ever read? Shithouse.

Managed to somehow score a $25 front row ticket to Wicked, in the lottery. Right in the front, dead centre ... it blew me away. I still get tingles just thinking about it! Amazing show, going to try and see it again in New York (where I am now) and in London, too, with Jes.

Friday I flew to New York, leaving behind the LA girls. I can't even explain how good it was to be with them and see them again. It's hard being so far away from your own world, but these girls were so incredibly warm and welcoming and just really cool.

So, now I'm in NY. Haven't seen a whole lot yet, the big week starts tomorrow. I did, however, see two shows yesterday - Dangerous Liaisons with Laura Linney (really great, very enjoyable) and Top Girls with Martha Plimpton and Marisa Tomei (good, too, but the British accents were so unbelievably bad that it was really offputting). Today hopefully going to see Spring Awakening, tomorrow the Sex and the City movie, and then a play pretty much every night for the rest of the week! I'm staying with Erin, who I met at Interplay, and she's showing me around. But I'm checking into a hostel tomorrow, so I'm going to be flying solo for a little bit! Yesterday we wandered around the top part of Greenwhich Village in between shows, and went to Magnolia bakery, with the amazing cupcakes - so good. Erin's in Hamilton Heights, just near Harlem - very diverse, noisy, but a really cool vibe.

Heading to NikeTown now, to scope some clothes out for my brother. Tomorrow is hostel checkin, walking through Central Park, and possibly the Guggenheim!

Sorry if this is boring. Missing all you guys quite a bit, really.

Chicken and Waffles...

2008-06-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

The Hollywood sign!

What I've eaten since arriving:
2 x tacos
1 x rice and veggies
1 x oatmeal
1 x In-n-Out burger, fries, root beer
1 x Bud Lite
1 x Dodger dog

Aside from the hippie shit, it seems all this country offers are burgers and dogs. I'm sure that's not the case, but having only been here 2 days, that's what's sticking out. There are fast food places ... everywhere. And not just Maccas and KFC and Burger King - oh, no. In fact, I've only seen one or two of each. There is all KINDS of shit - drive-thru Chinese, drive-thru donuts, one thousand burger places, drive-thru tacos, drive-thru chicken, it's all here.

Last night, on the way home from the baseball (more on that in a minute), we passed a big place called Popeye's, offering 'Chicken and Biscuits!'. I laughed, of course, because what the fuck? Chicken and biscuits? Who thought that those two things went together well? The girls asked what I was laughing at and I told them and they were all a little confused. "Yeah, dogg, after some chicken you just want a nice biscuit, with a little butter on it". What? Obviously I kept probing ... American biscuits turn out to be, like, bread. Or something. Flaky, buttery bread. Which makes more sense with chicken, I guess. But then Alyssa informed me that, although in that instance the Chicken-and-Biscuits combination did make sense, there was a place that sold 'Chicken and Waffles!' Chicken being chicken, and waffles being waffles. No translation necessary.

So yesterday was checking out LA - didn't get to Hollywood Blvd (that's tomorrow), but did see a whole bunch of other cool shit. We went to the Getty Museum, which is built up in the hills, and you have to park at the bottom and get a tram up. They had an exhibition of Californian video installation artists, which was interesting.

Me and Allison on the tram up to the Getty.

Then we had lunch at In-n-Out, which was kinda hilarious. The only things they have on the menu are: cheeseburger, hamburger, soda, shakes, fries. That's it. It's totally old-skool, and everything's made fresh on site. The potatoes are cut up every morning and not frozen. The fries come in a little tray. And the burgers taste 'fresh'. It actually wasn't too bad, for burgers - I wanted to giggle every time I ate my chips (fries) and dipped them in my little cup of ketchup, and took a sip of my root beer ... you can't help but feel like it's a movie. I know that sounds so dumb, but it's true!

After lunch we hit Griffith Park and the observatory on top of it, and from there you can see over all of LA. The observatory is the place in Rebel Without a Cause where James Dean's character gets stabbed ... there's a big (ugly) statue of his head and a little plaque. Because it's all built on top of a hill, you've got a 360degree view, which is really stunning - you can even see up to the Hollywood sign! The smog was really shitty yesterday, though, so the pictures aren't great. The whole city just kinda has this grey smoke hovering over its head at all times. It tends to lift toward the end of the day, but the heat's been trapped in all day and it's kinda yuck.

Last night was the Dodger's match, out at Dodger Stadium. Just because I'm on the other side of the world doesn't mean I'm going to enjoy sport any more than I do at home. Having said that, it was fascinating. I was in this weird state of excitement at seeing and experiencing something new, but it also felt really familiar. That's partly to do with the 'vibe' you get at a big stadium match, of any sort I guess - there are people and kids and yelling and sometimes its boring so no-one's watching. The game moves really slowly, though, or at least it did last night. Foul balls here and stupid pitches there, and then once something interesting happens, everyone runs off and has a break. I honestly believe the game was designed so that the spectator can consume as much food and beer as possible. Food is a massive component to the whole experience. I guess it's the equivalent to our pie-and-Coke at the footy - but here there's so much more on offer! You get beer in big cups, and then Dodger dogs (hot dogs), and nachos in big plastic containers (with the grossest melted cheese you've ever seen and tasted ever in the history of forever), and big helmets full of popcorn so you can wear the helmet after you've eaten, and cotton candy, and BUCKETS OF ICE CREAM. Seriously, little buckets. Just smaller than Sara-Lee sized. People sit there and eat the whole thing. It's amazing.

The girls are at work this morning, so I'm here at Portfolio again, having my coffee and writing all this up. It's good, quite comfortable, and nice for someone who is alone, because you can feel like you're part of some little community, even though no-one's interacting with each other. The girls' friend, Kate, who I met the other night, is coming by in a little bit and we're going to have lunch together. Then I'm meeting Allison and Alyssa and their friend Bill, and we're driving out to Salvation Mountain. It's a few hours out of town, and in the desert, so I'm not really sure what to expect. Very exciting, though. I've been looking forward to this for ages! I'm starting to form some ideas about this place, from what little I've seen and experienced. There's a lot of poverty, a lot of shitty and gross areas, and I guess that's the same with every city, but I don't think many cities offer the same kind of 'hope' that LA does, few other places have the kind of weight that LA does - when I think of LA I think of Hollywood, and the OC, and summer, and beaches. That's the myth, I guess, the image it tries to project. Then you see the smog and the gangs and the graffiti and the Mexicans and the poverty. Alyssa told me this great story, which I think maybe starts to sum the whole place up, if you can do that. At the beginning of the 20th Century, whoever was in charge of LA at the time wanted people to start moving here, so they planted a whole lot of palm trees to give the illusion of it being a tropical destination, by the beach. The place was, in fact, a fucking desert, with lots of hills and sand. You see the remains of that on the outskirts, like out near the Hollywood sign, in Hollywoodland (the name of the housing development on the hill where the sign is) and even at the Getty, there's a big cactus garden. The palm trees are still here, though.

Ok. Lunch, the mountain, and then tomorrow the Blvd, with all the Hollywood stars and the Kodak theatre and all that shit. I fly out of here Friday morning, land in New York on Friday evening, about 5.30pm my time. New York is only 14 hours behind Melbourne, compared to LA's 17.

So good to read all your comments ... xd

PS. I don't know if the video below will work ... it's me filming the LA streets out of Alyssa's car window. Let me know if it shows up. I'll take more video, proper ones. x

Long Beach and Soy Lattes...

2008-06-03T11:02:00.000-07:00

So I'm here!

Currently staying in Long Beach, California, with Alyssa and Allison, who I met whilst in Europe in 2006. They have this cute little place, a one-bedroom apartment - they sleep in a bunk! - and I've got a 'cot' in there with them.

The flight over was fine, the usual amount of uncomfortable. I was at the back of the plane, where it starts to curve in, so where I was sitting there were 2 seats where there usually should have been 3, so I had a bit of extra room on the window side to stick my legs out. You don't realise how good it is to stretch your legs out fully until you can't do it for fourteen hours! I watched some movies - '27 Dresses' was pretty much the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life, as it involved no commitment on my behalf. I tried to watch a few others that were a little too cerebral and I just fell asleep. But then I watched 'Summer Heights High' and 'Frontline' and something with Jamie Oliver - that was all fine, really good short snippets, and when you watch 5 episodes, all of a sudden you've killed 2.5 hours!

The queue (they call it a 'line', here - I kept talking about queues and the girls had no idea what I was on about) at LAX to go through customs was crazy, probably about an hours wait just to get passports checked and be quizzed about your intentions. What do you do at home? How long are you staying? Who are you staying with? On and on and on. The only saving grace was that Delta - THE Delta Goodrem - was in line behind me. She was on the flight from Sydney that came in after ours, and she must have been first off, because I was last off my flight, so we connected in the queue/line. I looked up and saw this bitch in fancy clothes and kinda went "Whatever, who wears that on a plane?" I still had crumbs and omelette on me from breakfast, mind you. Then I did a double take and realised who it was. She was standing and talking in a very public way, her eyes not connecting with any of the plebs, but her head up and shoulders back so we could allll see who she was. Nice.

Speaking of nice. There was this American woman on the plane, sitting just across from me. Spent half the flight laughing out loud to what ever she was watching, about ten times louder than she needed to. Everyone's sleeping and she's cackling away like it's the last time she'll ever laugh again. The first time I heard it, it woke me with such ferocity that I thought the plane was going down. Her conversations were loud, too. Everyone's gotta hear.

Yesterday the girls took me to lunch (that's them over on the side - Allison with the lollypop, Stacey's blonde, and Alyssa just graduated from College last week). We went to this little mexican place, and we got tacos and Coronas and the service was amazing, people just DOTE on you. Then I sorted my phone situation out - I have a number, it's 562-279-4641 - and then we went out to San Pedro, which is kinda a poorer district where lots of Mexicans live, and we went to see the Korean Bell and sat on the hill, which has ocean views on three sides ... beautiful. Excecpt the smog kinda prevents you from seeing anything too far into the distance. It's so smoggy! The pollution here is terrible, and kinda sits on top of the city, trapping in the heat. So even if it's not sunny, you feel sticky. It seems to get better as the day progresses, though.

That's us at the Korean Bell.

Last night the girls made mushrooms and rice and asparagus for dinner (they're vegetarians) and their friend Kate came over to eat with us. We watched Planet Earth documentaries and freaked out at elephants being eaten by lions and had some sangria and talked about crocodiles. It was ace. Later on, their friends Bill and Lindsay came over.Today we're going to go hang out in LA, on the Walk of Fame with all the Hollywood stars and shit, and then we're going to see a baseball match, the Dodgers and some other team. That's really exciting me - chilli dogs and beers in cups and peanuts and nacho hats! Tomorrow I think we're going to Salvation Mountain in the afternoon, and then Thursday we might go to Disneyland or do some other stuff. I fly out for New York on Friday.

I'm writing this from a little coffee shop called Portfolio, and it's like an indie Starbucks. All the coffees are still at least a litre of milk, and the emphasis seems to be on milk rather than coffee itself. I just got a latte, and it's not bad. I got a small and it's still the size of my face. Everyone is pretty much here by themselves, on their laptops or cell phones, but in this incredible performative way - whilst they're all alone, no-one's really 'alone' in that they're in their own world. There's a lot of 'presenting' hapenning, loud conversations on phones or very grand sweeps of the hair as arty looking people try to express frustration at their writer's block without words. Everyone's writing a screenplay, probably.

I should go, but I'll finish just by saying that it really is like being in a film or something. All the cliche images of LA exist - the really wide roads running along the water, the streetlights that hang over in the middle of the lanes, the hanging street signs, the palm trees, the muted pastel colours ... it's bizarre. The supermarket next to the girls' apartment is like Officeworks or something, warehouse-sized with enormous displays for odd things. Like, a sausage meat aisle. A whole freakin aisle for sausage meat. And cheese! I pointed at it and laughed and the girls said "Haven't you ever had cheddar before?" and I insisted that I had, but it was just a nice normal colour, not fluro fuckin orange.

Nothing too outrageous has hapenned yet, but I live in hope. Text me, ya bums!

xd

not on an airplane yet...

2008-05-20T01:29:00.000-07:00

Melbourne, still.

In two weeks I will be in LA, with Alyssa, Alison and Stacey.

This is my route:

Los Angeles
New York
London
Paris
Netherlands (Amsterdam/Utrecht)
Berlin
Switzerland (Geneva/Lauterbrunnen)
Japan

I'll meet up with people I know in almost all those cities, which is very exciting. I'm meeting my homegirl Jes in London, and we'll do the European countries together...

xd