News about Christiania


Sydney :: Australia

Oh the places I've been.

Places: Sydney.

Coolest thing I did: Bought a little girls car.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The opinion section of the Sydney Morning Herald is just rife with generational bickering. And I seem to fall into the category somewhere between Generations X and Y, depending on who is writing the column.

As an interesting postscript to my trip, the autonomous enclave of Christiania in Copenhagen has again been in the news. I can't be bothered finding the original link back to what I wrote, so to give you a background, Christiania was an old military base that a bunch of liberal leftist types took over in the 70s and declared an autonomous enclave, seperate from the nation state of Denmark. The Danish government has been rather blase about leaving the hippies and alternative greenie vegetarian types who live there to go about their lives, growing and selling copious amounts of canibus without too much hassling. All that was required was an understanding that they would not move into harder drugs and that they would pay for the utilities that they use. Sounds pretty sweet, and the more cynical would belive that the government was quite happy to have all this going on in one place. As I can also attest to, it's a bit of a tourist haven, so I'm sure they aren't too worried about lots of 20-somethings jetting into Copenhagen and spending their money.

However, it appears that some of the nastier things that go along with the large scale vending of narcotics worry the police. The bikers that were apparently acting as the muscle behind the scenes are into some nastier kinds of criminal enterprise, and the local police are cracking down on harder drugs in a big way. The politicians appear to belive it hypocritical to allow one kind of dealing to go on while trying to discorage others. So a new deal has been struck to allow the community to continue, but to stamp out the drugs trade there. The locals, not wanting their lifestyle hampered, appear to have agreed.

Will it work? Having been there at several times over a week, it seems that canibus is quite intertwined with what the tourists come to Christiania to see. If people just wanted to gawk at a colourful freakish environment I'm sure they'd not bother to cross the canal and go to the Tivolli amusement park. Perhaps the other aspects of the culture, such as art, will become the main drawcard, but while I was there working artists were not anywhere to be seen. There was a bit of a nightlife around, but again, alot of that has to do with the availablity of green stuff rather than the atmosphere of the place. I'm not sure it'll still attract the same crowd, but then again, perhaps that's what the residents want.

Having seen that article this morning made me travel sick again. It seems like such a dull life in comparison I'm leading at the moment, even though it's nice. Most of the time I'd rather be somewhere with a backpack than working. Thank god I (hell, we...hi 'vette) have Canada to look forward too. Otherwise I would have gone mad by now.

I always get this twinge when somewhere I've been is in the news (the Danish royal wedding was full of recognisable places) and it keeps my interest up. Damn, I want to be out there again.

Life after the big trip


Sydney :: Australia

Back to real life.

Places: Sydney.

Coolest thing I did: Invite Yvette back to Sydney and had her say "yes".

Coolest thing I didn´t know: (This makes less sense after such a long break) You can charge people $4.50 for a cup of juice worth about 50cents. Why didn't I think of that?

Why did I decide, after all this time to add a postscript to this? Well, for one thing, I've got a whole lot of free time on my hands (more on that in a moment) and two, I have decided it's worth re-using this for my further adventures. You see, thanks to those fine people from Canada, I'm all set to do a working holiday in their fine country starting March 5 2005. Not only that, but I have an incredible ego that allows me to belive people are still intereted in what I'm doing even though it's not travel to exotic places. Humor me.

So, after Egypt, what happened next? As I mentioned, I managed to get my flight back to London via the good people at Romanian Air Transport. Despite the 3am start and my prejudice against anything from Romania, the plane was new and the staff spoke a decent amount of English. The bad side was being stuck in Bucharest airport for an extra 5 hours due to snow. There isn't much to do in Bucharest international, and it's made even worse by having to exchange money for lei, which you have no hope of returning to something convertible on your way out. Thank god the good people at the Relay newsagent took euros so I could each chips and drink coke.

My return to London was not as I expected it. When you spend alot of time with yourself, you do alot of thinking and start to build up some strange, fantastical worldviews in your head about things. I remembered my farewell with all my friends about and sort of imagined everything would be the exact same. You forget that other people's lives move on and they go and do other things. As a result, probably a 1/4 of the people I left were still there. It was good to catch up with all the different people I could, but there were no massive debaucherous gatherings, as there would have been in the past. This is probably a good thing as there is no way I would have been able to keep up with seasoned London drinkers after so many dry or semi-dry countries. Ramadan did nothing for my alcholol tolerance.

I stayed with Yvette while I was there and in talking about the Canada plan, she decided to join me in it. This is very good news, and this also means she's on her way to Sydney over Easter to stay until we go. In fairness to her, the original plan to be in Sydney til July or August has now changed to early next year so she can have at least one summer in the next 12 months. She stayed in London to finish off her working holiday there, which was smart as she won't get another one. However, the last few months have been pretty hard on us both and it will be good to be re-united soon.

This was not the only reason I felt such a sense of loss leaving London, but it was a big part of it.

Leaving London was harder than I thought. It's been such a big part of some of the best years of my life that it seems almost inconceivable that I won't be living there for the near future. Despite it's bad weather, shocking food, high prices & rude people, the place has a soul all of it's own. I miss all that history, culture and nightlife, having to now find subsitutes in my own home city. While it was time to move on, I do feel a twinge of envy for all those still there and those going back.

Returning to Sydney was a bit of a shock. While the weather has been spectacular, and seeing all my friends and family I've missed while being overseas, I would challenge anyone to tell me Sydney has improved over the last 5 years. House prices, for one, are demoralisingly high. While I entertained some hopes of putting down some stakes in Sydney, buying a house would lead to inconceivable abouts of debt. I will have to face this one day, but not now, buying a house for the kind of money people want these days would be downright nutty. I also belive the level of pretension in the social circles of Sydney has risen somewhat. As pointed out recently, all the new bars are blandly identical, picky about sneakers (a mortal sin in my book), give you your change on a plate (a tip?!? for pouring a beer? Get stuffed) and sell something called a "skiddy". A skiddy is the invention of some genius who decided that people would pay more money for less beer. What's worse is everyone has just accepted it. So when I left the (non-gst) price of a schooner was about $3.40 (425ml) and the price of a skiddy now is $5 (345ml). Bargain.

Still, bitch as I may, Sydney, she is home.

So after a fine summer, including a road trip to Brisvegas to see Rob Lowe (my mate, not the actor), I set myself the serious tasks of finding a place to live and work. This dragged on because of severe inefficiencies in the IT market in Australia and my lack of a job causing real estate agents to laugh out loud at my applications to rent a house. Recently, both these problems were solved.

My rental house is a 2 bedroom terrace on the end of the row with a spare block next door as a yard. It's located in Newtown, which has changed from it's smack addict, crusty student feel to housing advertising executives and dot.com refugees like me. It is still very trendy, but with a more upper market clientelle. I will be sharing with Yvette alone, but there's a spare bed for anyone falling into Sydney in the next 12 months. Right now I'm by myself, with no TV so I've taken to watching sport in the Union Hotel on the corner, which is nice. I miss having a good local.

My job, well I got myself a 12 month contract with IBM GSA as a "Storage Consultant". As far as I can tell this has nothing to do with designing efficent use of space with flatpack furniture. Right now, as I have no laptop, access or ID card, it appears that my job is to read the paper. Hey, if they want to pay me by the hour to surf the web, that's their business, not mine. The contract and house work out well because we'll be off to Canada right after both end.

In short, I'm treating life in Sydney like I used to treat life in London. I'm living somewhere different, working somewhere different and have a shelf life here of 12 months. It helps put things in perspective if I treat this like just another stopover on the great voyage. I have in the past been accused of having a fear of commitment but I'd rather see it more as a fear of abject bordem. I could take the route of getting an infinte mortgage, a job I'm attached to and the like, but it just dosen't appeal to me. I like this life and fears about my future aren't strong enough to make me stop living it the way I want. Well, not yet anyway. I can see myself on and off the road at least until the free work visas dry up.

We shall see what come next.