Berlin part the second


Berlin :: Germany

The bit after Love Parade.

Places: Berlin

Coolest thing I did: Bask in the warming glow of what may be a dying tradition of dance culture.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Leonardo Da Vinci only painted 27 artworks in his entire life. I guess he spent too much time inventing aeroplanes and open heart surgery and whatnot.

I know I don't usually do direct narratives of what I've been up to, it makes far more sense this time.

After a fairly lazy day on Friday (which mostly involved sleeping in the sun) I met up with my former flatmate Lisa and her pals. For those who know Ms Halverson, she's just the right kind of person you want on an outing like this, and the group she brought with her (one having touched down in London from Australia the day before, talk about dedicated) were more of the same, fun loving kind. We had an easy Friday night's bar crawling in the current hipness of Friedrichsshain, which included a clothes shop who were giving cheap haircuts on couches on the footpath out front, and tex-mex resteraunts with Middle Eastern hookah pipes as a crowd drawing tool. We also made it back into town to sit in the bar on top of Tacheles, a bombed out department store turned art commune, where they project things onto the blank wall the bar looks out onto.

Well, so what about the Love Parade itself? Whilst it didn't feel it, the papers today are saying that about 500,000 people attended the street party this year, which is the minimum sponsors needed for the thing to break even. The peak of the crowd was also much earlier than previous years, but this may have had alot to do with the periodic outbreaks of rain throughout the afternoon. You also notice that the crowd, whilst most top heavy with 20 somethings, contained far more people in their 30s and 40s than in the under 20 crowd that must have dominated the event when it was reaching peaks of 1.5 million people in the late 90s. Add to that most of the people in outrageous or little clothing belonged to the older set (my generation are just plain too cool/uptight for that kind of thing) and you get the feeling that techno listening crowd are getting older, without the younger blood coming in to boost it up. More on this later.

The event itself probably benefited from the smaller crowd. The crowd pack themselves into the stretch of road from the Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, where mobile sound stages wheel their way back and forth down the street, each playing a different style of music and sponsored by a different club. The crowd seemed to be more made up of revelers and less of curious tourists that I expected, so it made for more of a spirit of community, as if everyone was there for the same reason. And there is very little like 500,000 people all having a good time together.

The aforementioned rain didn't bother us one bit. With that many people in such a small area, the downpoor cooled everyone off, which was most welcomed. There was also the added ritual of thousands of people raising their hands and turning towards the sunlight as the sun finally broke through the clouds. A special moment.

After a bit of a rest back at the hostel of my comrades, we moved on to the Tresor club in downtown Berlin, apparently the birthplace of Techno (though I'm sure I've been to at least three "birthplace(s) of Techno" by now...) for the afterparty. I was initially sceptical that somewhere that big could fill up, especially since we showed up just after the street parade officially ended. However, within probably an hour of our arrival, the three levels plus outdoor garden was packed to the brim. The party continued well on into the daylight, and it's here that you got to feel the international flavour the event still has. I'd seen Polish flags around all day (one of the few nationalities who felt it was necessary to openly show national pride at an event like this), so was not surprised to meet a few. I met lots of people from Central and Western Europe, plus quite a few of the ususal suspects (Aussies, Kiwis and Saffirs). Despite the heavy presence of the Poles, there seemed to be no real other representation from those who once dwelt behind the Iron Curtain. This may have been the small sample I met, but I would have expected at least a few Czechs or Slovaks, being so close.

Don't let the slightly negative undertone of this let you think for a second that I had anything less than an absolute ball. The 24 plus hours I was awake for the event and afterparty did require me to sleep for close to all of Sunday, but I enjoyed every waking moment. Thanks to the five who traipsed over from London for making it that much better.

I have to say, however, that this event, whilst it will still continue for some years yet, may be falling prey to an aging fan base for it's key component, Techno music. Having watched many of the superclubs in London change their style of music or close their doors more nights a week over the last three years, you got the feeling that Techno was dying in the UK. Whilst this wasn't necessarily indicative of what was going on on the Continent, you still got the feeling the kids just weren't that interested. However, with the size of this, the musical form's premier event, shrinking with each year, you wonder how long the older diehards will be able to keep it going. As the charts are now filled with pop that's basically watered down hip hop, not even containing the irritating eurodance rubbish that got the kids hooked on the Techo scene in the first place, you wonder where the next generation of Love Paraders are coming from.

Or maybe this is a good thing. Perhaps the lack of commercial interest in the future will help the parade get back to it's roots. If all this started with a hardcore of 150 people dancing through Berlin way back in 1989, perhaps a smaller, more dedicated group can resurect it. It's a unique event, and one I'm glad I've seen. Even if you aren't into the electronic music scene (which I admit to being fairly ambivalent about), it's an event well worth checking out.

So, I picked up my Czech visa this morning, and bought my train ticket to Warsaw for tomorrow. I've taken up Mike's floor for long enough and it's time to get back on the road.

As a final note (which just came to me) The Czech embassy in Berlin was the most co-operative I've ever had to deal with. Friendly staff, forms with pens to fill them out and glue sticks to put your passport photo on them, explanations of the forms in 8 different languages and a clear price list and policy on how long the visa would take to process (mine was even ready a day early). After dealing with several nightmare embassies in London, this is a refreshing change. Then again, London can do that to anyone.

Berlin part the first


Berlin :: Germany

The bit before Love Parade.

Places: Helsinki, Rostock & Berlin

Coolest thing I did: Went drinking in a converted squat where the beers were 1 euro a pop and there was free pool and table soccer.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The British weren't the only archelogical gold diggers of the early 1900s. The Germans have the other half of Greece and Mesopotamia that isn't in the British Museum.

I have to warn you at this point, I may start on like a gushinig school girl at this point, but man, I do so love this city.

Thanks to the always sharp forethought of Joerg in Muenster, I'm being put up and shown the better parts of the city by his (and now my) friend Mike. After a 40 odd hour train, bus, ferry, bus and train ride from St Petes to Berlin, he was more than welcoming to a complete stranger from some remote island in the South Pacific. As a rickshaw driver by trade he's given me a ride around town to show me the things I should be looking at, including the hotel where I was supposed to show up dressed like Robbie Williams so the girls waiting outside would mob me. This, however, didn't come off without a hitch.

Going out with him and his people is also a different experience. Much of what was close to the Eastern side of the Wall was almost immediately taken over by West Berliner squatters, as it was lying dormant due to issues with East Germany having no money. Thanks also to laws that favour squatters over landlords, it was also quite hard to throw these people out. These areas, in the past decade or so, have become increasingly more gentrified, letting outsiders like me have a peek into the cheap bars and pubs hidden behind the grafitti tagged doorways. There is also an outdoor art gallery (The East Side Gallery) located inside (and on) the largest remaining section of the Wall nearby. They are currently showing an excellent display of sand sculpture. I now really, really want to know how they keep the things from falling appart or washing away in the rain.

I spoke alot about the history of Berlin last time, so I won't repeat it here. I've been far more interested in the after effects of the last century on this place, rather than the causes.

The Norman-Foster-does-the-19th-century restyling of the Reichstag building has to rate as one of the best symbols of the new Berlin and of architecture as art. You can only go up to the new glass dome, but this is one of hte highlights of the city. As you walk up the twin helix ramps that wind to the top of the dome itself, you can watch yourself reflected in the multiple, mirrored surfaces lining what can only be described as the apple core that holds the thing up. The fact that the original outer walls have been retained despite the high tech interior only adds to the building's charm. If they can churn out more like this, instead of the new concrete and glass monstrosities next door, the new face of the city will be far more attractive.

Due to it's freak postition between the two Berlin's, Potsdamer Platz was left untouched since the Second World War. This was one of the first places to get massive construction in the 90s, and I'm quite impressed by the results. The highrise of the Sony, Daimler and DB buildings are awe inspiring, and laymen like me can only guess at how such structures of glass and steel cables are made to not topple over. I was also willing to waste quite a bit of time playing with Sonys latest toys in the multi-story Style shop. All, all those shiny things I can't quite afford.

The art galleries here are a welcome change from the over whelming size of those you'd find in Paris or Florence. About an hour and a halfs worth of 13th to 18th century masterpieces, without the millions of unknown (to me at least) pieces you'd have to trudge past to see them elsewhere. A few Michelangelos, some Rubens and a fist full of Rembrants. Perfect. Lourve, take note. The Pergaomon Museum, my other big cultural foray, is testemant to the level of archelogical theivery Europe embarked upon during the 19th century. Entire buildings excavated from Pergamon in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and large sections of Babylon (including the entire Ishtar gate) are all on display in the middle of Berlin. Whilst I don't doubt the scholarship and knowledge these finds have given us, or that the Ottoman Empire probably wasn't the best guardian of the culture of their subjects, but the level of imperial arrogance shown by relocating so much of this stuff to Europe would give George Bush pause. I think it's probably time that Elgin lost his marbles, possibly back in Greece where they belong.

Ok, rant over.

I mentioned in Estonia that the urban ruins from the Soviet era were quite something else, but Berlin takes this up another notch. Artists have taken over quite a bit of the bombed out ruins of WW2 that neither side had the money to fix. Besides the Wall itself, the most impressive is the way the last remaining wall of a department store has been turned into a gallery/cafe/bar right in the middle of town. Whilst it lacks the edge of some of the up and coming squats in the former East, the large scale (and mostly illegal) reconstruction of the last open wall shows just what's possible if you put your mind to it. It's the contrast between these places and the inhuman glass faces of Potsdamer Platz that gives this place it's unqiueness.

Whilst I feel the 90s were probably the time to watch vast changes overtake this once divided city, it's still and exciting place to be. You can see the natural progression as former derilict sections move to squats, bohemia, trendiness, yuppification and finally staleness before your eyes. As that unnatural barrier came down, both halves of the city have moved very rapidly to reclaim each other, and it's that bit closest to the edge that's more interesting. Give it another decade and this may well have changed.

So, I've been going pretty easy since I got here, having alot of sleep (very necessary after you lunatics punished me so much in Russia! Yes, you know who you are), staying off the beers and eating vegetables and things. I have a feeling I'm going to need all the rest I can get before this place turns into a lunatic asylum tomorrow. For what? Just this. See you on the flipside.

Borsch!


St Petersburg :: Russia

As my comrades Russia with hammers and sicles.

Places: St Petersburg, Novgorad, Metz, Moscow, Kostroma, Oxtrino & St Petersburg

Coolest thing I did: Embark on a night big enough to have both KFC for breakfast and return to the hotel at about 7am.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: St Patrick wasn't Irish. He's from the Isle of Mann (yeah, offtopic I know...)

I'd have to say that the last two weeks in Russia have been both the most draininig and most rewarding of my travels to date. Even though the good people at Beetroot have been ferrying me around between St Pete's and Moscow, the average Russian speaks not a word of English, and even my regular pantomime confuses more situations that it clears up. Myself and Carl from England had the women at the supermarket in stitches just paying for vodka.

The people here are like no one else I've met. Due to the extreme crapness of the weather most of the year, and the violent Shakepearean tragedy that is the last 1100 years of Russian history, people are conditioned to not smile, queue, or quite often even register your existance on the street or in shops. Having said that, the second you've toasted a vodka shot to someone's health, you've suddenly got a friend for life. They like nothing better than to tell you how good and bad their country is at the same time, a strage mix of pride and shame. You get the feeling that everything is very black and white here. People are either in adject misery or having the time of their lives. It makes them pretty intense to be around.

For some reason, everytime I encounter a babuska (grandma) in a head scarf she feels it's necessary to yell at me in Russian, despite the fact it's obvious I can't understand her. I'm getting used to it.

As for cities, I'll start where I did, St Petes. It's nothing at all like the rest of Russia. This is due to a few things. When Peter the Great founded it, it was roughly at the same time as Paris had it's big surge during the Enlightenment. So, while Paris (which is a similar style) had to build on top of a century of cruft, St Petes was a start from scratch. Wide streets, baroque and neo classical buildings mixed in with traditional Russian Orthadox cathederals. The Winter Palace, built in a similar style to Versailes in France makes it look like it was a pretty humble undertaking. The adjoining Hermatage art gallery also seemed to have gotten a job lot on Picassos, Matisses and Cezanes. This place was the capital of Russia at the very height of it's Tsarist power, and it shows it, especially since it was all restored for the 300th aniversary of it's founding this year. It's the cultural capital, where the poets, novelists and composers you've heard of come from. This shows in the snobbish attitude they give to the Moscivites. Thanks to the Soviets deciding to move the capital back to Moscow, it was left to rot, rather than destroyed, saving it from the other capitals fate.

My favorites. The Church of the Spilt blood is one of those ice cream cone topped Russian cathederals, perfectly restored after WW2 and the site of the assasination of Tsar Alexander 2. His son ordered it built, the Nazis failed to bomb it and the Soviets left it to rot. As a result, it's was in pristine condition when they restored it last year. I also liked the site of Rasputins death. A Siberian mystic whose influence allowed him to practically control the Tsarina (the Tsars missus) and as a result, was killed by some nobles. It took 5 times the human tolerance of cyanide, 2 bullets, 1 stabbing and throwing him into the icy river to kill him. When they found the body, he was frozen into a position like he was trying to swim to freedom. Way cool huh?

The nightlife is far less scary than Moscow. The tour group started out for a couple of innocent beers with dinner and ended up in a night involving much vodka, including a round bought at the icecream parlor, one couple riding home on horses, a club called Money Honey, missing all the metro closings and openings, KFC for breakfast and a 7am bedtime. My memory is a bit foggy on the details.

Moscow is in very stark contrast to St Petes. If the latter is the cultural heart of the country, the former is the cold heart of it's industry. Having been raised to the ground by the Mongols, Tartars, Poles, French, Germans, it entered the Soviet era as the new capital. Stalin, being Stalin, decided to knock down most of the surviving buildings and turn it into a Soviet paridise. Somehow, he had a bad taste in architects and we ended up with Metro stations built like the inside of cathederals (a most impressive sight) and streets lined with the ugliest, grey concrete monstrosities man has ever devised. The Kremlin has been left well enough alone, but the decay in the cathederals inside shows. The most famous landmark, St Basil's (Bazzas for short) is even now under reconstruction, however it managed to survive Stalin's 'lets blow all the churches up' plan. Red Square is the momument you expected, but there's not much history left besides that. The fact that the best examples of Soviet construction now ring the city (the Ghostbusters style Seven Sisters skyscrapers) casts a gloom over the entire place.

However, the Moscivites are a hardier stock than the St Petersburgers. I admit, it's kind of worrying you have to get buzzed through metal detectors to go into bars and clubs, thanks to the heavy presence of the Russian Mafia (all those blacked out Mercs in a place where everyone drives Ladas from the 70s is a giveaway), the locals here go a bit more nuts than their counterparts up North. They do, however, close their Mc Donaldses before 4am in the centre, commercial suicide in Sydney.

The inbetween bits are a bit of a mix. The decay in the monestaries shows, and the wooden houses with sunken foundations that people still live in show who takes it in the pants when it comes to the low average wage. The forrest that used to cover European Russia is now mostly built over with the remenants of the Soviet's failed industrialisation plans, big ugly factories and smokestacks to the horizons. However, beer costs 24p a bottle and vodka a stupid 2 pounds. The results when we were left in a summer riverside camp, after a sauna or three, involved wrestling, nudity, toasts to nipple tassles and jelly wrestling and skinny dipping. Again, details are foggy.

Russia has impressed me. It's been one of those big unknowns when I've been trying to figure out all the other bits of European history, and now the gear teeth are starting to come together. Lots of blokes with names like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great make me wonder if the man on the street has a similar system 'hi, i'm Yuri the Landscape Gardener'. Ok, maybe not.

So tomorrow, I get on a train and begin a 2 day combo train, bus, ferry, train ride back to Berlin. Visa and timing issues mean it's time for me to go the long way around the baltics. I would have liked to see Latvia and Lithuania, but it's become impractical. Perhaps later.

Nokialand


Helsinki :: Finland

Where you can order coffee with a text message.

Places: Tallinn, Helsinki, Imatra & Helsinki

Coolest thing I did: Had a proper outdoor sauna and ended it with a swim in an icy lake.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Finns managed to hold off the Soviet army with far less men for the entire cold war.

If Friday in Tallinn was about going to the many bars in town, Saturday night was all about going to the clubs. There are two big ones, one for the Russians who skip over the border for the weekend and one for the Estonians. The Russian one was a bit of a spectacle. It was moving along as you would expect and overly trendy Western club to, expect there were alot more blokes walking around in suits and leather jackets with no necks. Russian Mafia? Perhaps, or maybe just blokes who want to be. Then, for no apparent reason, the music stops and there are contents, including watching two girls race through punch bowls of whiskey cola a shot glass at a time (these people are sick), and watching two sets of girls from the crowd race to undress each other with their teeth (watching the blokes do it was far less compeling for me). The Estonian one was like the first without the strange contests, but the people there are much friendlier. This may not bode well for the comming couple of weeks in Russia.

Helsinki was a return to the well designed, clean future of Scanders. I think because of the influence of Nokia in just about everything here, the Finns are far more technologically outgoing than their other Nordic mates. There are far more cutting edge trendy cafes and bars here and most of them are full of people who look like they mugged people comming off the Matrix set for their clothes.
I have just witnessed a girl order a coffee by smsing the bar, which I think may be a step too far. However, it does seem sensible that you can pre-order practically anything with your mobile and just punch a code into the ticket machine at the station instead of lining up. Quite clever these people.

The Russian influence on Finland is quite visible in Helsinki. As it's only been a serious town since late into the Swedish rule and the early Russian one, alot of the town is modelled on St Petes (the city, not the Vatican). There are baroque buildings surrounding squares overlooked by Eastern Orthadox cathederals, and I've read that some B grade movie producers shoot Russian scenes here on the cheap (much like they will probably do in Morocco now the Muslims are the bad guys for hollywood). They haven't decided (which seems to be the norm with recently freed people) to drag over all the Russian monuments, and statues of Alexander 2 (the Czar) and the Russian imperial eagle (which has two heads) still adorn the main market squares. I think there is something to be said for leaving such things intact for histories sake, however, I come from a country that hasn't had to fight for it's independance (hell we just had to vote and we couldn't even do that right) so I probably don't know.

I took a night out from cities, as I was getting serious church/castle/bloke on horse lag and went out to a place called Imatra. There isn't much there, but the youth hostel is perched on the side of one of those idylic Finnish lakes you see in tourist brochures. This gave me alot of time to myself, and to do some deep thinking, which has helped alot. I was getting a bit harried about organising everything to do with getting to and from Russia, and I feel a whole lot more relaxed. A lot of that has to do with the sauna. The had a proper pine wood sauna on stilts over the edge of the lake, so you sit inside, breathing in stupidly hot, pine soaked air until you've built up a permenant sweat. Then it's right outside to plunge into the icy lake (12 degrees, a bit warm they said!) where you get a feeling of invigoration you're not likely to get elsewhere. I was quite breathtaken by the view, which was a mirror perfect lake, the sun still over the horizon at 10pm, it's red glow contrasting with the dark pines ringing the lake. This feeling of contentment lasts until you realise your feet are getting very numb and it's time to get back into the sauna. Whilst another one go was enough for me, the Finns like to go back in and out all day.

I've found out I'll be in Russia right when the start of the mid-summer festival starts. Whilst it's not a big deal over the border, it's the biggest day of the year for Scanders. They were already piling up wood on floating pyres to burn over the lake on Friday night. Apparently, all over Scanders people abandon the cities and go out for a nearly pagan renewal with nature. For so few people (24m in all the Nordic countries) to have so much beautiful scenery, it's little wonder they hold on to their nature worship. Kind of like Australians in a way, except we only worship the sun and sea.

I got talking to an older bloke standing by the lake about things and he asked how long I had been out of the army. He was taken aback that we have no national service at all, which seems inconceivable to a country that's been the buffer against the USSR since the end of the second world war. I just told he we didn't have much of an army because we had no one to fight (despite what Johny Howard seems to think, man, did he miss a good oppertunity to shut up when the Iraq war was on). He told me the province we were standing in (the Eastern lakes of Finland) is about 2 thirds in Russia, the bit they managed to take during the second world war. What had happened was due to the pact made between Stalin and Hitler (two of the most un-top blokes that ever lived), Finland would go to the USSR if the Germans could have Poland. Thanks to the "Allies" watching things in Eastern Europe without doing anything, the Finns had to fight a winter war with the Red Army to save their homeland. Vastly outnumbered, fighting in feet of snow with bad equipment, the Finns held most of their country for the entire duration of the European campaign and maintained a buffer with Sweden over the whole cold war. This old bloke was quite proud of this, even though Finns don't strike me as chest beating jingoists. He mentioned his wife's family come from the part that's now in Russia and they recently went back to see the house where here mother grew up. These are people of about 55-60, so we're not talking ancient history here. It reminds you just how mad the world had become last century.

So, off to St Pete's tomorrow. I've been getting tips from a couple of Aussie blokes who just got off the trans-siberian from China and have just been where I'm going. The stories of bad services and theivery are everywhere, so I'm a bit more cautious than I probably would have been. We shall see.

It's just like an Estonian disco


Tallinn :: Estonia

What it's like in the former Soviet Union.

Places: Tallinn

Coolest thing I did: Decided to have a night out without scrimping and saving.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: People here think I'm poor because I drink beer. Being flashy is very important in Eastern Europe. I even heard kids refering to their big cubic zirconia medallions as "blingers".

Estonia has taken me by surprise. I decided to come to Tallinn because it takes the same amount of time on the ferry to get to as Helsinki and I needed to get out for a cheap weekend. Scanders is nice, but it was getting on my nerves having to live like such a pov just to eat properly, let alone go out.

The first thing that strikes you about Tallinn is it's far closer to Sweden culturaly than to Russia, despite the fact it's been nominally ruled from there on and off for the last few hundred years. The old town of Tallinn has been restored to it's Medieval past, which is nice but somewhat fake. Eating out here (which I can afford to do) involves alot of people being dressed in Ye Olde clothes and serving things in gobblets and sword fighting and whatnot. It feels a bit like being in Medieval Estonia Land rather than a living city. It's only once you get out past the walls into the newer bits that the recent past is more evident. On the walk to the bus or train station, you see the same kind of ultra modern buildings that are going up all over Berlin mixed in with the ruins of the former Communist Bloc. Around the stations, you have people selling things at the local markets, which involves alot of bearded, head scarfed old women fighting over the price of cooking oil. It's definetly not there for the tourists.

I'm quite fascinated by the concept of modern ruins at the moment. Like Berlin, the locals here seem quite content to let the old Soviet edifices go into decline, trying to block that part of their history from their collective memories. My favorite is the ferry terminal for shorter hops. It's a big pyramid of steps, much like an Aztec step pyramid, except made out of grey concrete. As only a small part of it is still used, the rest is going into decline, with the steps cracked and alot of grass growing in the cracks. In stark contrast to the ruins of Central America, this was built within even my parents lifetime. It's amazing how quickly things go into decline if you want them to.

It's bizzare to see the contrasts of what's left here. The new parliament building is composed on 3 sides with a 12th century Danish Fortress, which is across the road from a North German style church spire and Russian Orthadox Cathederal. All this overlooks the train station, with it's decrepit trains and flaking paint, which could only have come from a Sovient architect's pencil.

The best thing about Tallinn, however, is the nightlife. In a bizzare mix of locals (yes, they do go out in the old town) and Russian weekenders I've finally found somewhere that my Australian accent actually sounds exotic. The drink prices are about half of what you'd pay in London, the girls are beautiful and the blokes friendly. Like most of Europe, nothing gets properly started until midnight, when all of a sudden everything starts to pump. I was adopted by some English Navy blokes on leave here, who had scouted things out the night before. There is no end of trouble to get into here. Being so far north, the sun was well up by the time I found myself knocking on the hostel door at probably the brightest 5am I've ever witnessed. No being able to rouse the owner, I did get one of the blokes alseep in my room to wake up and open up the window. Which was nice.

I was also promised that Riga in Latvia is a bigger city and thus goes 24 hours on weekends. In a mad dash on my way back from Russia, I may be able to get a Saturday night out there. I've decided to try and get into Poland as quickly as possible after Russia (as my visa there is pretty tight), and the research over the last days seems to indicate it will take a train, ferry and bus to get there from St Petes. A night out on the way will probably do me good.

Let's Sweden the deal


Stockholm :: Sweden

Sorry.

Places: Stockholm

Coolest thing I did: Got all the tips on how to finance an entire winter snowboarding in Austria from a bloke I met in the hostel.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Lego now has licencees. There are nba legos with little men with lego afros and goatees in one of the shop windows here.

Stockholm is a funny place. In the whole time I've been staying in the hostel, the most regular conversation I have with anyone is "what did you do today" and the usual answer is wander around a bit. For a city that is basically a whole lot of baroque buildings perched on an archipelago of close islands there isn't a whole lot of notable tourist things to do. Which I'm quite liking after the whirlwind of Norway, I don't feel an overwhelming feeling like I have to go and see everything, that I can just relax a bit and watch life go by. This would be an even better place to do it if the weather wasn't as bad as it is. A pity.

The city itself, the new one, seems to have faced a whole lot of engineering/architectural issues due to the fact that it's sitting on a pretty uneven lump of rock. The whole thing is an escher painting of overhead walkways, roadways, raised platforms and stairways that are wider at the bottom than at the top. It could be a nice effect, but for some reason most of it seems to have been inspired by late soviet architecture. The main square (Sergels Torg) for example, has a massive, ugly concrete edifice in the middle of it that wouldn't look out of place in from of Stasi headquarters in the early 60s. It seems that alot of the stuff built this century takes away from the effect of the good work done all around it in the two previous centuries, with churches and opera houses overshadowed by big ugly concrete buildings looking like from star trek.

Which is strange, for a country so renowned for it's skill in design. Whilst there is a whole floor of the national museum here dedicated to the subject of modern design (and you would be surprised at the number of modern mass produced icons that were designed in Scanders), probably the best thing about Swedish design is it's godfather, Carl Larsson. I saw some of his paintings in Gottenberg, but the murals he painted on the walls of the museum here show his true skills. His most famous work is his pictures of his house and family done when they were all still very young at the end of the 19th ceuntury. His missus (who was a bit of a babe, judging from the paintings) had done some inovative work on the interior design and furniture of the house, captured by Carl's paintings. This did (and still does) inspire much of Swedens modern interior design. Quite cool, seeing as no one would have ever seen it if it wasn't for her famous artist hubby.

I did also see the palace, which didn't inspire me a whole lot (all these northern European palaces all seem to be lesser copies of Versailles), it did fill in the gaps I have on Nordic history. Apparently, after the Scanders powers lost prestige at the end of the Viking days, they faced become puppet states of the Hanseatic League, a kind of political corporation that controled the city councils of many of the Baltic and North Sea ports. So the Queen of Denmark got all three kingoms (Norway, Sweden and Denmark) to become one country. This lasted for a couple of hundred years, then the Swedes tried to rebel for some reason no one seems to talk about. The Danes put this rebellion down rather harshly, causing the Swedes to all rise up, and claim independence. Then during the 30 years war, the Swedes (joining the Catholics) handed out a sound arse whipping to the Danes (who were Prots) and kicked them off the peninsula. Then the Swedes got a bit big for their britches a hundred years later and decided to take on the Russians. Europhile and general renaissance man, Tsar Peter the Great didn't take kindly to this. He'd just finished dishing out arse whippings of his own to Poland-Lithuania in the Ukraine and decided to smack the Swedes off Continental Europe. After taking the Baltic states from Sweden, he founded St Peterberg on a swamp. More on this when I go there. The Russians then dished out yet another arse whipping to the Swedes in the early 19th century and took Finland from them. The Swedes did manage to kick the Danes again and take Norway from them. The Noweigens apparently liked the Danes better, and tried to rebel. The Swedish army did a bit of harsh rebellion crushing of their own. Norway finally got it's independence in 1905 and then asked the king of Denmark to be their king, kind of a last spit in the eye of the Swedes. This may explain why then didn't mind losing to them in the soccer. It's funny how ancient fueds all come up in the soccer in Europe.

Speaking of Denmark, the Danish embassy here has big lego men in the window. This reminded me that despite it's proximity to Copenhagen, I didn't visit Legoland. When I was a kid, lego was my favorite toy (as the mound of lego festering in my parents garage somewhere will attest to). I remember going to lego exhibitions in Sydney to see mermaids and whatnot made out of lego touring the world, apparently all made in a magical place called Legoland. I probably wouldn't have got such a kick out of it now, as my appreciation for artistic works in the medium of lego has tapered off somewhat (sorry, for some reason I'm preoccupied with the idea of lego as a valid artistic medium. Very few people seem to agree with me that it is).

At the end of the day, Stockholm is a big city in a region of Europe where it's best attractions are it's natural ones. I like it here, but having to choose, I would take Copenhagen any day. I think more because it's less unwieldy. The fact you can pick up free bicycle and just ride around Copenhagen means nothing is too far (even the wee mermaid), where as the 4 islands you have to traverse to get around central Stockholm make even public transport a pain. Like I said, it's forced me to take things easy and relax a bit, which has been good for me. And we get a whole 4 hours of darkness here a night, so I'm sleeping better.

Right, I'm off to catch a ferry to Estonia, this trip's first dip beyond the Iron Curtain and the cheap beer that lies behind it.

Fjord Explorer


Stockholm :: Sweden

Norway and too many fjord jokes.

Places: Oslo, Bergen, Flam, Oslo & Stockholm.

Coolest thing I did: My entire fjord/railway/mountain thing was pretty cool.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: It is possible to befriend the locals of any European country by watching their team play soccer. Be sure you know who Mark Viduka is and who he plays for though.

Norway is a very different country to the other two nordic places I've seen thus far. As it's a bit further north than anywhere I went in Sweden or Denmark, two things happened: it got colder and it got lighter. Apparently, the suidice rate in Norway goes up during summer (yes, that is the right way round) because so many people suffer from sleep deprivation due to the fact that the sun dosen't really ever go down. I found that I was pretty exhausted after a week in Norway for the simple fact that I'd wake up somewhere around 3am and not be able to get back to sleep. I used to be able to sleep through anything, so this was a little annoying. It did also kind of put me in a worse mood than I would have otherwise been, and as a result, Norway may not get the wraps it deserves.

Norway is beautiful. On the 7 hour train ride between Oslo and Bergen, you get to see all the pine forrests & snow covered mountains, mirrored in flawless lakes that you would expect. As the snow is starting to melt, there are so many spectacular waterfalls and rapids you stop noticing after a while. The snow was a surprise. At times, there was snow right next to the tracks, not high up in the distant mountains, reminding you that this is a pretty cold place all year round. I don't know why I expected it to be a bit warmer than it was, I just did. Summer really hasn't started in most of the country. My trip through the fjords on a boat (as part of the...get this...Norway in a Nutshell tour) was just the kind of peaceful rest I needed after a few days of insomina induced worrying about what everything cost. I could sit back and spend the day watching grassy feilds suddenly drop into sheer stone cliffs that seem to sweat moisture down into the smooth surface of the fjord itself. The whole thing was pictures of little wooden villages nestled at the base of huge waterfalls (mostly there to look after Norway's large hydro electric scheme) and distant glaciers in the background.

I found, however, that I was a week too early for most things. The mountain passes & narrow waterways that lead up to the glaciers and smaller, more impressive fjords open up 7 days from now. Doing the math, I was about a week and a half too early for the best bits. I wanted to walk on the glacier itself, which is a cheap daytrip in July, but can't be done now. I also wanted to go further north, as it was apparent that the best things about Norway are natural, rather than urban. This put me in quite a funk for the last day I was in Bergen, something that's a bit uncharacteristic for me. I was, however, cheered up by the fact that I wasn't bad off in comparision. I met a kiwi who was from Christchurch who had just flown halfway around the world to see, well, scenery just like around Christchurch. Still, I don't know what he expected.

With a couple of people from the Bergen hostel, I embarked on a night out to watch Norway play Denmark in the European Cup qualifiers in (what else) soccer. I've found the best way to befriend locals is to watch their team play soccer. The couple of blokes who we first spoke to gave us some good insights into things. Like the fact the big grudge is between Norway and Sweden, and they were happy enough to see Denmark win (1-0, decided in the first 10 mins). I also found the world record for beer prices. 400ml for (wait for it) 4 pounds and 50 pence. I didn't get very drunk. After our new mates did (and quite sleazy) we were befriended by some Norweigen girls who invited us to go fishing in their home town the next day. I had already bought my ticket back to Oslo, and still thought I could see the glaciers the next day, so I declined. I blame the lack of alcohol in the decision making for this rational (and ultimately wrong, as I saw no glaciers up close and had to return direct to Oslo) outcome. Sometimes I kick myself.

The best thing in Oslo is the Vigeland Park. It's a park with many sculptures made specially for it by Gustav Vigeland, who was an Oslo native. The sculptures are mostly to do with birth, life and death (not too broad a topic), depicted in nudes of both sexes in stages of childhood, love, marriage, parenthood and old age. Very Vigeland. Very philosophical. I also went to the gallery to see the works of Big Eddie Munch (as he's known to his mates). I did a project on him in art class when I was in year 7, so it was good to see things like The Scream and Madonna in real life. He had quite a gift for seeing the human side of people, even if he was a bit mad. His first marriage ended in cloudy circumstances, but involved him being admitted to hospital with a gunshot wound to the hand.

So, after another night in Olso and a train ride that was delayed by lightning striking an earlier train, I am now in Stockholm. I like this place. I needed a good night's sleep and a restful few days after running around like a madman in Norway, and this looks like a good place to get it. I'm staying in a hostel that has half it's rooms on a boat (!!!) but I havn't been able to get onto the boat yet. Here's hoping. I will say more on Stockholm once I've seen more of it.

Wft do you mean Berlin?!?


Gothenberg :: Sweden

My side trip to Berlin and some more nordic bits.

Places: Copenhagen, Berlin & Gothenberg

Coolest thing I did: Took a 19 and a half hour return trip to Berlin on a whim to see Anita and her mate Renuka. How's that for spontenaity?

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Public nudity is quite acceptable in parks in innercity Germany.

My last night in Copenhagen was one that I didn't think I'd be doing. It costs a heap of money (I may have mentioned this) to drink in Denmark and I had no intention of going out for a big one at any point whilst I was there. Eeeet! Wrong. In a night that involved something called Carlsberg Master Brew, Christiana, 20Kr bikes for hire, being adopted by random a random Canadian and his Greek mates, a U2 cover band, paying a cover charge to get into a Chinese resteraunt for Karoke and seeing the sun come up at 1am, I managed to have an excelent time, but set myself in bad stead for the 7 hour bus ride to Berlin I was about to take.

Something I noticed about the Danes is when they speak their native tounge, the inflections in the voice sound alot like people from Northern England. I was wondering if that goes all the way back to Danelaw when the Danish Vikings ruled over large parts of everything north of the Thames? Anyway, I impressed people with that theory, even if it's wrong.

I also had the story of Holger the Dane explained to me. There's a statue of a sleeping viking under the castle from Hamlet I've mentioned before, but I didn't get a good explaination until I met a Danish Arts Student (what else?) out on the town. She told me that Holger and his mate Roland (who was a Frank) did alot of good work fighting the Moors when they invaded the Iberian Peninsula. He may also not have existed. Whist there are statues of Roland anywhere in Europe that they are a bit scared of Muslim hordes (the Balkans for example), good old Holger dosen't get much of a look in anywhere except in the tales of Hans Christian Anderson (I couldn't think up a nickname, give me time). However, the statue is supposed to wake up and protect Denmark if it's ever threatened. The fact that the Swedes and Germans both spent the 200 years since the statue was errected carving the Danish empire up between itself, I don't think Holger is doing his job very well. Either that or he showed up at Stalingrad during World War 2 without telling anyone.

Berlin. I was going to go to Berlin at some point after Russia, but Anita (with whom I have a history with in London) and her friend Renuka were going to be there on Busabout and it was the closest we were going to come to seeing each other whilst we were both in Europe. I'm glad I went and we saw each other again. There will be no more details, so you gossip harpies can bugger right off.

Berlin is now definetly somewhere I want to spend a week in when I get back. It's practically the entire history of 20th Century Europe in one city. From the head of Europe's first superpower to the pawn of the world's last 2 superpowers to a city that's just starting to return to it's status as a world capital, Berlin is a pretty exciting place to be. We staying in East Berlin, and it's starting to fill in the gaps between all those Stalin Gothic appartment blocks with trendy cafes and bars. Norman Foster was responsible for the new Reichstag. Entire city blocks that were left vacant since the cold war restrained Berlin from reaching it's true potenital are now surrounded by cranes filling them with new buildings. Communes of artists have taken over the some of the cold war ruins and put a spark back into the Berlin culture that was halted before World War One.

One of my favorite stories is about the photo of a Soviet soldier which was taken as the end of the Second World War. Apparently, Stalin ordered the Reichstag taken intact so just such a picture could be taken. It took 17,000 Soviet deaths to take the building from the 5,000 German soldiers defending it, room-by-room, so that photo could be taken. It's a good indication of how one madness was being replaced with another.

More on Berlin when I return in July, I'm sure.

I usually hate busses with a passion, so I can't belive just how well I took the 12 hour ride from Berlin to Gothenberg. It was broken up with a 2 hour ferry ride from Germany to Denmark at one point, but the bulk of it took place in a single 10 hour stretch. Those wacky Danes and Swedes have built a 7.5km bridge from Copenhagen to Malmo in Sweden meaning the second ferry ride I thought I was going to take never happened. Apparently 7.5km bridges are quite impressive, and are probably pretty hard to build. The trouble is I'm not an engineer so it's hard to appreciate (well, they do call my job network engineering, but it involves no exact science and most of the time dosen't work very well, probably like civil engineering in the late paleolithic age). However, it was a very long bridge.

Gothenberg is a nice town. The most noticable differece between Denmark and Sweden is, once again, the people. Whilst the Danes are a tall, beautiful people with a variety of hair colours, the Swedes are more a cute people, and are overwhelmingly blonde. They are far more stereotypical of the Nordic people you expect. Besides that, Gothenberg could probably be anywhere in Denmark (see, I'm an expert since I spent a total of half a day and 1 bus stop outside Copenhagen). The people are also just as friendly as they were in Copenhagen. I've been promised Stockholm is the best city in Scanders, so I'm looking forward to that in about a week's time.

Tomorrow, I'll be mostly going to Norway.

In the land of the Johansens


Copenhagen :: Denmark

Man, I love this place. Hamlet and Carlsberg!

Places: Copenhagen

Coolest thing I did: Went to the castle Big Willie Shakespeare (as his mates know him) based Hamlet on.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: They don't dub movies into Danish here (viva Matrix 2!).

I think the weather here has helped my impression of the city a whole lot, but I'm loving it here in Copenhagen. It's one of those European cities where everything is big squares, cobbled streets and people on bikes instead of cars. As the days are already quite long, I'm finding myself with not much else to do after dinner but sit in the squares or on the canals and watch the people go by. I was going to go and see one or two of the other two big cities in Denmark whislt I was here, but right now, I can't really see the point. I like it right here.

The Danes, as a people, are quite easy to get along with. I think this has alot to do with the fact that they all speak immaculate English (when I say all, I mean all the ones I've spoken to. Obviously I'd need to be here a while to speak to all of them), but there isn't a time where you find yourself sitting in a park or square when someone won't engage you in conversation. I find them alot like the Dutch, except the accent is a lot easier to follow and they are way better looking here. Right now, I'm starting to think I wasted alot of my Euro time working in London. And I've been promised Stockholm is going to be even better.

I didn't know a whole lot about the country that begat my last name (has anyone noticed the amount of begating that goes on in Genesis?), except for Hamlet and Vikings. I still don't know a whole lot, but I have seen some castles, including the one where Hamlet was set. Having read McBeth at school I've only seen Hamlet as a movie, and I wasn't aware that the whole thing was made up (I mean, I assumed Big Willie took some liberties with the plot, but I assumed the people existed). Man, do I feel like such a tourist. Anyway, there's a couple of good castles within a day trip from Copenhagen, and you get to see a bit of the country too. What I did notice is one of the towns is also the closest port to Sweden. I thought alcholol was quite expensive here (ok, it is quite expensive) but all the Swedes were loading up on "cheap" grog before getting on the boat. Seeing as I've pretty much had to give up beer whilst I've been here (except for the free tasting at the end of the Carlsberg brewery tour, bless 'em) due to the cost, I can't say this bodes well for Sweden being any better

I also like the Viking gods too. They are so much better than those pissy Greek gods. To punish Loki (the trickster and devil figure), Odin (the old fella with only one eye) had him tied to the root of the tree at the centre of the world and set a serpent to drip poison into the sockets (where his eyes had been ripped from by his half brother Thor, the thunder god) for all eternity. Ouch. Seriously, if you were the norse gods, would you'd laugh out loud at the greek ones. Not only that, but you get cool axes and hammers and stuff.

Wednesday is free day at the museum. Whislt Danish history is fascinating, I've seen the Lourve and the British Museum, so the ones here kind of pale in comparison. I did learn, there was a bloke called Christian IV, who was quite important. He fought the Swedes alot. He also had a mate called Old Worm who looked at runes all day. That's about the extent of my museum tolerence.

Something worth seeing is the Free State of Christiana. In 1971, some squatters took over an old military camp over the water from Copenhagen and declared it a free state. It even has a sign over the exist stating "You are now entering the EU". I thought it was funny, anyway. It's been well and truly de-militarised and they now openly sell hash in the street there. This lends itself to a very relaxed looking beer garden, where loads of people sit around in the sun and talk bollocks. Talking bollocks being one of my favorite pastimes, I couldn't help myself, especially with the complete stoners. The topic of choice seems to be America and the evils that they do. About every second person wanted to mention Lars "maddog" Von Trier and his new movie Dogville, starring our Nic. Apparently, he's quite famous for making artsy films and is a reknowned lunatic. As a result he keeps winning things at Cannes.

Did I mention the Carlsberg Brewery has a free tour with a tasting at the end. As a result, we have a new crowned champion of Brewery tours. The title used to go to the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam, until they changed their policy from as much free beer as you could consume in an hour to 2 half litre tokens. They are such sell outs. At least someone is keeping it real.

One thing that's become apparent is I've stumbled back onto the American backpacker route somehow. I have a theory that they must stick to the big cities and only show up in Western Europe. By big cities, I mean capitals. The fact I didn't meet any in Hamburg was telling.

Right, the sun is still out (and will be for quite some time).

Stevil's adventures in Hamburg


Copenhagen :: Denmark

Everyone said it was a big night out, but I didn't belive them.

Places: Hamburg & Copenhagen

Coolest thing I did: Saw a cannonball that was fired by the English into the Copenhagen Uni library. It landed on a book entitled "Defender of Peace".

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Danish word for beer is ol.

After leaving the people I know in Germany (yes, I saw all of them I think) it was time to go north once again. I'd stagnated a little and needed to put a few miles on the clock (I have to be in Russia in less than a month, after all). Everyone I'd met in Germany had told me that I had to go to Hamburg on my way to Denmark, which was good as there is a fast train from Hamburg to Copenhagen.I spent the first afternoon getting myself settled into the Jugendheberger looking over the harbour (it's for once, in an excellent location) and taking a bit of a walk around town. I was a bit of a wreck from the previous week's activity and didn't have the energy for a full blown tour. I got the idea that it was a much bigger place than I'd anticipated.

I have to say that despite the fact everyone told me Hamburg is alot like Amsterdam (I'm assuming as Europe's other famous redlight district the Reeperbahn gives birth to this rumour), I found it alot like Liverpool in the UK (as opposed to the one in Sydney, which is more full of people with "fully sick" cars rather than canals and whatnot). I think this subconciously comes from the fact that the only thing I knew about Hamburg before getting there was the Beatles had played here in their early days. They may still have even been the Quarrymen, and George Best may have still been the drummer. I only know this from the Beatles Museum in Liverpool, so I'm a little hazy on the details. I even went to the pub they drank in on Grosse Feihart, but didn't stay long, as it's, well a bit of a tourist trap really. However, the port looks and feels alot like the one at Liverpool. The water looks about as clean as that of the Mersey too.

One of my favourite touristy things was the St Nicoli church, which was mostly destroyed in one of the Allies aformentioned firebombings in WWII. The steple remained intact and the city has left the rest of the building in it's current state, as an anti-war memorial. I liked it for this reason a whole lot better than any of the repaired churches I've seen anywhere else in the country.

My first attempt at a night out in the Reeperbahn was a bit of a wipeout. I headed out earlyish, and worked my way between both seedy and mostly empty bars. I did find a few places that had a bit of a pulse to them, or some level of coolness, but one of these was very expensive, and the other was having gay night, which is a bit much to handle when you're a single male in a country where English isn't the first language (it's hard to explain you aren't interested in German). I gave it a good go, but by about midnight I'd kind of given up on the whole thing. I also spent alot of time fending off prostitutes, who, for the most part, spoke excellent English. Whilst some sales techniques involved attempting to engage me in conversation first, there was one particularly scary moment when a woman who was no shorter than 190cm grunted "we go upstairs, make sex now!" at me and clutched onto my arm in a kind of death grip. I think I told her I was gay...

I spent Saturday touring the more studenty part's of town. The hostel I was staying in was full, so I needed to find somewhere else to stay. I'd recommend spending time in Schanzvietel if you find yourself in Hamburg. It's kind of like Camden in London, with alot of grungy eateries and cafes. I've been told you can have a pretty nice warmup for a night out in the bars around here, which have alot more character than those in the redlight district or city (the latter seeming to cater more for the suits than anyone else, judging from the prices).

I also found a whole truck load of sand had been dumped in front of the town hall and a beach volleyball tournament was taking place. This was a bit of a surprise, but not an unfortuante one. Now my pictures of the town hall have something more interesting happening in the foreground.

I hooked up with a kiwi bloke who I met in the hostel for an attempt at Saturday night out in Hamburg. This turned out to be the best night possible, as Hamburg were playing at home and the Eurovision song contest was being televised on the big screens all over town. This meant alot of people in the bars and cafes that were half empty the night before. After a few warm up beers and conversation involving things like programming, East Timor, mercenaries and rugby (as must come up when Aussies and Kiwis meet) we managed to find ourselves at a table with possibly the worst organised stag night I've ever seen. The blokes were all from Manchester and had flown one of the more unwilling stags I've seen over to Hamburg for his last night of freedom. We tagged along for the ride (or more acuately, dragged them along for the ride). There is a single street like those in Amsterdam, where the women sit in the windows and try and coax blokes off the street to sleep with them. At this point, we lost all control of the stag night at ended up with about 7 of them (less than half). Not asking too many questions, we decided to make for the Grosse Feiheit, the big club, bar street of town. Stopping for beers we lost all but the organiser of the stag do and another mate of his. We didn't ask what happened to the rest.

The night continued well into the morning, as our curfew for the hostel (2am) came and went without us noticing. We met up with some American girls my mate had gone out with the night before in one of the clubs and continued to dance until dawn. Arriving back at the hostel, we climbed through the balcony fence (hard to do in our state) and found the back door had been left open.

Needless to say, I missed breakfast at 7:30.

I checked out of the hostel at 10am and moved myself very slowly to the main train station. By the time I got onto my train at 2pm, I was pretty much asleep on the spot.

Then only thing worth mentioning about the train ride to Copenhagen is at the ferry, they put the entire train on the boat. I thought this was pretty cool. But I am easily impressed.

The most obvious change about being in Denmark as opposed to Germany was the amount of very good looking people around. I mean, people are all tall, thin and gorgeous here. It's wonderful. Having been about average height in Germany (they are also very tall) I feel like a midgit in most places here. I can imagine if you were a little Roman or English bloke in the early 4th or 5th centuries you'd have crapped yourself seeing boatloads of these fellas get out of the water and start swinging big axes about.

Further musing from Copenhagen later.

Friendly Faces


Muenster :: Germany

Where people put me up and I get to not be so much of a tourist.

Places: Gottingen & Muenster (usually, ue is spelt as a single u with 2 dots on top, but this keyboard dosen´t have that)

Coolest thing I did: Spanish Party III: Return of the King

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Most of the Grimm fairy tales were sanitised for English children. The original versions told to kids in Germany have far more gruesome endings.

My study in mass tourism took a detour when I decided to go and stay with some of the German friends who had offered to put me up during my long trip. So my first stop after Heidelberg was the student town (they all seem to be student towns) of Gottingen. Katherina is a friend of Mark´s who came to stay with us in both Sydney and London at various times, and she was more than happy to lend me her couch. So she met me and took me back to the converted hospital in which she´s got her student digs. The rooms are all high roofed and have a loft for sleeping in added, and the kitchen and bathrooms are shared between the inhabitants of the floor. i met many of these over the weekend, including Chemsy(sp?), who we´d also entertained in London.

The best thing about these towns has to be the young vibe. As I came for the weekend, I was introduced to the usual evening routine. A nice meal (Kat is a hell of a cook), followed by a few warm up drinks before getting out on the town at just after midnight (a phrase I used which seemed to amuse some for no reason I can fathom). Our first night was a couple of the later opening bar/clubs (cosy affairs, but both with slightly warped DJs and thus musical tastes), but it did seem a little quiet. I was assured this is because whilst you can go out and get into trouble any night of the week, Saturday is the night.

We started with a few warmups before I was loaned a bicycle and we were off to the campus Spanish Party, which is apparently organised by the large population of Spanish exchange students. This was the first time i´ve ridden a bike in probably half a decade, and after a few glasses of red I might not have had the best of balance. Still, the saying about it being just like riding a bike is true. The party itself was quite good, and I continued to meet people from countries around Europe there, especially some Polish blokes who have a cousin in Perth (having relatives/friends/pets in Australia always seems to help people befriend the stray Aussies) who were quite talkative. I´ve decided pop songs that were originally in Spanish sound far better than the English translations. I mean what the hell does "my breats are small and humble so you won´t confuse them with mountians" mean (Shakira sang that)?

I think one of the best thing about the weekend was seeing all the young Europeans mixing together on the campus. It seems really easy to study in another country over here, and unlike ourselves in Australia, alot of students do take that oppertunity (we Antipodeans seem to wait until a bit later to start globe-trotting). It would have been impossible even 15 years ago for young Germans, Spaniards, Poles and Slovaks to be sitting around a table with a lost Aussie discussing politics in English. Again, it´s a small gesture towards the hope that maybe the next generation will have less inclination to carry all those nationalistic hatreds that just don´t make sense in any way but historical curios. I was staying with a very educated group of people (all of whom seemed to speak 3 or 4 languages, something that always makes me feel like a bit of an idiot), all well into their long degrees (it takes 5 and a half years on average to finish a degree here) so maybe they are not the best indication of how the man on the ground here thinks, but it´s still nice to think in the post-Berlin wall Europe, people are getting on with the business of..well getting on.

One thing that I did get an answer for was the beggars and the dogs. All around Germany, you see people begging (though quite a few of them have dyed hair and decent steel cap boots and so on) with dogs the size of small horses (I think the Alsatians we have t home come from the runt stock. These things are huge). It was explained to me that the government gives better unemployment benefits if you have a dog. I didn´t however, get my next theory that the bigger the dog, the more money you got, validated. Apparently, the form dosen´t have space to put the size of your dog in cubic metres.

I did also get taken (as a touristy side trip) to Hamelin, the town of pied piper fame. Apparently there are alot of these little towns with half timbered houses all along this part of Germany, and you can do a tour of them all if you want to see the "Fariy Tale Road". I´d say you would have to be a primary school teacher or something to have even heard of half of these towns, so we just went to the best known one and ate ice-cream instead. Tiamisu is most excellent.

My last few days have been spent in Muenster staying with Joerg, who with his friend Burk, came over with my mate Rob to visit me in London. Again, they seem more than happy to return the favour and let me crash out here. Making up for the London leg of the 4 day bender Rob & I took them on, the boys have been taking me out and showing me how to string together the happy hours in Muenster (again, a large student town). In between this (and the highlight here is the people, not the old buildings), I have managed to take a walk around town and see the many, many churches and the castle, which is now a university (I think). The fact this town alone has at least half a dozen cathederal sized churches with all the artwork that goes with it, maybe all that reformation/counter reformation war thing did leave some good things.

One thing that has become apparent though is I´m mostly seeing restored works, due to the fact that nearly every Lonely Planet entry for major German cities involves the words "firebombed into oblivion" and "allies". People keep telling me to go and find a copy of Kurt Vonnegut´s Slaughterhouse Five, which he wrote on his memories of being a POW in Dresden during the Allied campaign. Seeing as I find him alot more readable than Twaino, I might do that next time I get the chance.

So yesterday I was a wee bit hung over and didn´t get out much. I did manage, however, to take in the only large Picasso collection outside Paris. I´ve seen the Picasso Muemum in Paris, and last year the Tate Modern in London had a show called Matisse Vs Picasso (Picasso, 10seconds into the 9th by knockout), so I had seen alot of his stuff before, but this was a private collection donated to Muenster last century. As a result of the collector´s career as a graphic designer, most of these were his lithograms, including alot of the illustrations he did for books on Greek and Roman mythology. It´s a very small collection compared to Paris, but very different. They tend to be more towards his earlier, less abstract works, which I like (though I do still like the Guernica in Mardrid the best, more for it´s politics than anything). Worth a visit, indeed (and like locals of any town, most of the guys here haven´t seen it).

I have to say, it´s been good seeing people I know again. Whilst you do meet people as you travel all the time (and meeting people in hostel bars and lounges tends to find you like minded individuals) it´s far better when you get shown around a place by friends who live there. There is far less guesswork involved, and it´s a self fulfilling prophecy. Now I´ve stayed with these people in both towns, I´m looking forward to seeing them in Sydney one day (or wherever I put my head next) and returning the favour.

And I would have never ordered the beer with strawberries floating in it on my own. That alone was worth the price of admission.

The lost tapes

Gottingen :: Germany

Where I try to remember the entries I deleted. This is a break from the normal continuity, and may differ from what was originally here. I´m an idiot.

Places: Brugge, Luxemourg, Koblenz, Mainz, Baden-Baden & Freiberg

Coolest thing I did: Worked my way down the 'on tap' menu of a Belgian bar.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The very idea of pension funds was invented by Otto Von Bismark during the First Reich. Before that old people had to be looked after by their kids.

Brugges, it turns out, is quite a cool place to visit. Despite the fact that all the cobbled streets and old buildings are obviously there for the tourists, the place has a relaxed feel, and people don´t mind wasting time having a chat with you. Some places I´ve been, you get death stares the second you finish your coffee and don´t leave the cafe. In Brugges, they don´t seem to even care whether you buy anything or not. The place itself is quite ye olde, as one would expect. The parallels to Venice are all there (they even have picturesque canals and everything), but it does feel a bit less of a Belgian theme park than Venice did an Italian one. For one thing, I could afford to do all the touristy stuff and actually stay in town.

To properly do the tourist thing in Belgium, you realy need to do 3 things: beer, mussels and waffles. At one point, I even had all three in the same meal.

The place I stayed in was a bunch of dorm rooms over a resteraunt (very much like the place we stayed in at my first Oktoberfest for all those who participated in that week of debauchery) and the bar below serverd as a good point for meeting up with people. This was helped by the free beer with your meal if you ate there. Man, here is a landlord that knows his target market.

My best night out involved myself, four Americans and a Candian. We went to a bar the yanks had frequented the night before that boasted a menu of 350 beers. The best thing about Belgian beer is every beer they have, regardless of whether it´s on tap or in a bottle, comes with it´s own glass. One of the best ones was a free standing conical flask in a wooden stand. I didnt try that actual one, but I was assured it was good (hey, they were all good). Myself and one of the other blokes decided to work our way through the on-tap menu, not taking into account such things as volume of liquid or percentage alcohol. This, in Belgium, can be dangerous. I was overjoyed with the world a mere fifteen euros later, but some of my new friends were a bit more than that. The conversation turned to those old goodies: politics, religeon, the environment and NASCAR racing. My knowledge of engines in cubic inches isn´t that crash hot, so I had to leave it there. Still, much fun had by all.

Do have the waffles with icecream. They are really, really good.

Whist taking a walk through town, you see a whole lot of buildings and gates with dates in the late 40s on them. You forget that just half a century ago, there was German artilery bombarding the place and tanks parked on all those cobbled streets. If you can fix things in half a century this well, perhaps places we´re currently bombing into the stone age have a chance.

So, it was then over the border to the first of those little historical curios no one can figure out why they still exist: Luxembourg.

Luxembourg City is quite an impressive thing to behold. It stands on top of three sheer bluffs looking over two river valleys. It has, surprisingly, also been occupied by almost every foreign power it borders on at one time or another. I can´t imagine taking the place was something you´d want even on your best day if you were a seige engineer or something like that. At the turn of the century, the Luxembourgers went all neuteral and decided to dismantle all their fortifications.

The modern place is something else. I´ve since discovered that they managed to make themselves rich through mineral deposits after WWII and then through banking since that became less lucrative. The streets are filled with designer boutiques, rich, goodlooking people and very expensive German cars. As a result, it´s got a very different feel to the other Benelux countries. For one thing, Luxembourg has an amazingly sophisticated nightlife compared to other cities of that size. I thought it might be a mistake to be stuck there in mid-week, but I managed to find a couple of nice grungy student cafes and a cool DJ bar. The DJ had impecable taste in beats and hip hop, something else I didn´t expect.

The view from the ramparts of the old city whilst the sun goes down over the valleys below is something worth going for alone. Whilst I´d never recommend someone spend more than a couple of days here, it did make a good buffer between Belgium and Germany.

So I crossed the border to a place called Koblenz. I knew practicaly nothing about the place, except it´s the point where the Rhine and Moselle rivers meet. I learned soon that the hostel (Yugendherberge in German!) was based in the old fortress looking over the city. Whilst this is a very cool location, it´s also quite inconvinent. By the time I´d carted all my gear up the 15 minuite climb in the pre-storm conditions I probably looked alot like I´d just stepped out of a shower. However, watching an electrical storm move over the city below was well worth it. It´s been a long time since I´ve sat and watched a whole sunset, but with the sun mixing red hues into the black clouds covering it, it was something to behold. It´s a pity none of the pictures will probably come out.

So from Koblenz, I took a river boat to Mainz, much further down the Rhine. There is nothing like sitting on a sunny deck and drinking wine whilst you watch the vineyards that grew it pass you by. Along the 7 hour slow journey there are numerous villages, nearly all having a castle perched on the hillside above it. They are in various states of repair and ownership, but it does make for some excellent scenery. You do, however, get a bit blase about the whole thing once you´ve seen your 9th castle of the day, but I´d much rather that than go along thinking "was that it?". The boat also passes the Lorelei Cliffs, which are famous for having mermaids on them that caused the sailors to crash their boats into the cliffs. Any industry that encourages lots of drinking and then accepts mermaids as the cause of an accident needs to have a long hard look at itself. Perhaps I should start making legends about the network elves whenever the servers crash. Mermaids. Pffft!

So I continued onto Mainz, not because I knew what was there but because that´s where the boat went. Most people got off much earlier, which I should have taken as a sign. By the time we reached our final destination, it was just me, the barman and the crew. Mainz, isn´t exactly the tourist capital of Germany. I was nearly going to give it a miss and try and make it to Heidelberg that night, but the woman at the train station asked if I´d seen the Guttenberg Bible yet. This made me go miles out of town to stay at the always incovenient youth hostel and spend a night watching school kids run up and down hostel stairs. For some reason, school groups have been at every hostel I´ve stayed at in Germany.

The Guttenberg Bible is just an old book, but it´s quite important in what it represents. Before big J Guttenberg (as he was known to his mates) invented the printing press to churn out bibles, only the preisthood really could read and own then. After this, richer common people (the plebs still couldn´t read) could have them too. Then people got thinking more about this whole Catholisism caper. Then a bloke called Sisigmund (who was a holy roman emperor by trade) had another bloke called Huss killed because of this. Then a bloke called Luther nailed a few complaints about the Pope and some of his mates to a church door. Then some other stuff happended and at the end, Europe had defined borders for countries and a whole lot more people could read and choose what religion they liked. Besides that, it´s just an old book.

Once I´d done the one touristy thing in Mainz, I took off for Baden-Baden.

In Roman times, Baden-Baden was a kind of ritzy spa resort for rich people. Now...well now it´s a kind of rityz spa for rich people. As it´s got money involved, the town is in excellent condition and has been restored quite alot. The revival in it´s fortunes had already started when Mark Twain (Twaino to his mates) arrived here about a hundred years ago as a part of his book A Tramp Abroad (which comes up a bit, and which I haven´t read). I decided to take a Roman Irish spa, which takes place in the restored ruins on the original Roman site. I could have just had a dip in the new complex next door, but if it´s good enough for Twaino, it´s good enough for me.

I quickly learned, that the whole thing is done in the nude. While this shouldn´t bother me (I´m not that much of a prude) for some reason the fact that the first three people who I saw inside were fully clothed and female did get me a bit on edge. They explained to me what order I was supposed to go do things and then I was off. The first bit is all blokes, so you get kind of used to greeting and chatting to people without looking at their bratwurst as you go through the various rooms. The saunas are something else, as you can see the steam rising off the exposed rockface that covers two walls of each room. They tell me there are pipes underneath, but I´d like to think it was all natural. After this section, you get to the pools, which are shared with the ladies. Again, I did get a bit uptight at first and didn´t quite know where to look, but after a little while you figure out everyone else is naked and they don´t seem to care. Once you get this through your head, you can properly relax and enjoy the whole thing. By the end of the three allotted hours, I was so relaxed I could hardly walk.

So my final lost destination was Freiberg. I liked this town. It was an immaculately sunny day and all the students (about 45% of the town´s population) were sitting in the parks, cafes and beer gardens instead of going to class. I miss those days.

Instead of trying to tackle the Black Forest on my first day, I decided instead to indulge in such laziness myself. I found (or rather, Europe on a Shoestring found) a beer garden on the top of a hill overlooking the town. I spent a few hours here not doing much but watching the little people walk about below. I met quite a few students skiving off classes who were full of insights on life (and more willing to share them as the beer count mounted) and I felt the most properly relaxed I have on the whole trip.

And that´s been alot harder than I expected. Though I was enjoying my job towards the end of my time in London, after it became apparent I wasn´t going to stay, the whole thing felt a bit mercenary. I thought it would be easy to just wander the world as a man of leisure, doing what I pleased, but I´m finding it hard to just sit still these days. I feel like I should be doing something all the time, and it´s only quite recently that I´ve managed to let myself do very little. I´m trying to do this more, as 8 months is a long time to be always on the go. Hopefully when I stay with a few friends later on, I´ll be able to let myself relax a bit more.

More Twaino

Heidelberg :: Germany

Black Forests, Pink Castles and the show that wasn´t.

Places: Heidelberg

Coolest thing I did: Walked through the Black Forest when the clouds were low enough to be below me.

Coolest thing I didn't know: All mammals, including humans, have a gene that switches on lactose intolerance shortly after birth. The only reason people can handle milk as adults is some freak mutation in Northern Europeans caused them to be able to handle dairy products as adults. Through colonialism, this has spread to much of the rest of the world´s population. (not travel related, i know, but it is the coolest thing I didn´t know).

After spending the sunniest day I´ve had on the continent lazing around in cafes and parks, it was poetic justice that the day I chose to go catch a cable car into the mountains of the Black Forest, it starts bucketing down with rain. Be that as it may, I was determined that I was going to go hiking in the forest, so up I went. It takes two buses and a funicular to reach the peak of Schauinsland. It´s a high enough peak that on a clear day, you can see all the way to the Swiss Alps, which must be cool. On my way up the mountain, at times I couldn´t see further than about 5 meters of cable disappearing into fog in either direction. This didn´t bode well for seeing the Alps, but it did create quite an eerie effect when rows of silouetted tress would slowly fade in and out of view. On reaching the top I found myself looking down into the rain clouds below, which is quite a cool thing to be doing when you aren´t in a plane. It did, however, mean I´d be walking through the rain most of the way down. Still, this didn´t make me too unhappy, just a bit wet.

So I followed the (now) muddy trail down the mountain and into the think forest below. I was told that in most places, the trees would be close enough together to stop the rain. This was total crap. For the first hour, I found myself walking in the clouds themselves, which meant I was getting wet regardless of if it was raining or not. I did, however, manage to forget this in my watching the same effect of trees and rocks slowly gliding in and out of the mist as I went along. I was quite taken by the effect (as you can probably tell) and found myself stopping every few meters or so to try and capture the effect on film. Besides a little bit of walking in the mountains in Morocco, I haven´t done any bushwalking like this in a very long time. I think I enjoyed the time to myself (as no one else was mad enough to be walking in this weather) after being in towns and cities pretty much the whole time since I left London. It gave me alot of time to get some things worked out in my head, and I felt I resolved alot of the thoughts and internal conversations you build up when you are working all day. I felt very relaxed. I can also imagine the track down would be a good run if you were into life threatening mountain biking.

This did, however, come crashing back to Earth a bit when I ran out of forest. I reached the road about 2 km lower than I should have and had to walk an extra 1 km in the open to the next bus stop back to town. This wouldn´t have been so bad if the heavens hadn´t chosen that exact moment to show just how much they could open up. I was a bit annoyed with the world when I finally got back to the hostel and removed my now wringable clothes. I have never enjoyed a hot shower as much in my life.

So the next day found me in Heidelberg, the start of A Tramp Abroad and thus, heavy Twaino country. The town itself has been saved by all the wars since the late 1600s, so the castle still stands mostly intact looking over the old town. It´s got a nice feel, and is made slightly less touristy by the fact it caters more to the still operating University in the heart of the old town rather than to the tourist hordes I´m assured line the place in July. I have been seeing whole troups of old Americans (you can tell them long before you hear the drawling start) being led down the main street. The bloke who owns the curry house assured me it gets worse. He was a good bloke to talk to, as his English was better than most people I´ve met here (being from Bangladesh?).

I liked the fact that there are grungy bars and cafes, and cheap eateries mixed in with the "traditional" German beer halls. It gives the place a more of a lived in feel. I was especially happy with the vinal only record store on the main Uni square. The collection would put most in London to shame, both in Dance and Hip Hop. I got talking to the bloke behind the counter and he told me that there was a show that night at the old station (which is now a concert venue/club) where the headline act was GZA of the Wu Tang Clan. For those who aren´t into hip hop, the Wu Tang Clan were the group in the mid-90s, and the GZA, in his day, was considered one of the greatest to ever hold a mic. It was a chance I had to try and take up, but there were not tickets going for either love or money. This was a bit of a pity, seeing as if I´d been in town the day before I might have been able to get one. Still, the tour continues through Europe so I might get another chance later in the summer.

Out in the line though, I did get to see the effects of having a single global culture is having on the kids. All around Europe, everyone under the age of 20 is dressing like they walked out off the streets of South Central LA. All the hostels have had a good percentage of their rooms taken up by school goups and every radio appears to be playing 50 Cent, almost in unison. I´ve seen the same pattern all across Europe (and in Morocco for that matter). I can´t imagine there being too much of indigenous culture in any of these places (or anywhere in the world with MTV) within 2 decades of now. Perhaps it isn´t the disaster most people seem to think it is. Who gets to decide which countries get the mod cons, satelite TV, mobiles phones and the latest music and who gets to be stuck in a theme park version of the way their country was 200 years ago? I know I´d be pissed off if I had to dress like someone out of Old Sydney Town (a crappy renactment of the first settlement of Australia near Gosford on the Central Coast) just to keep the tourist happy. I can imagine people in Bavaria don´t want to wear lederhosen anymore than the young Berbers of Morocco want to wear robes and lead camels through the desert. It may also help the next generation get along better, if they all have a common point of reference to go from. Either that, or everyone will have cancer from eating McDonalds in 50 years from now.

Right, rant over. I´m off north tomorrow.

The Axis of Stevil

Brussels :: Belgium

Where the beer is really, really strong. And leaving London.

Places: London & Brussels

Coolest thing I did: Received a shirt with a "Stevil" logo designed by my mates Tim & Tulo. Man, I'm going to miss you guys.

Coolest thing I didn't know: The Smurfs and Tin Tin both come from Belgium. I thought it was just waffles.

So, last week was where I tied up all my loose ends in London and said goodbye to the city that's been my home for the last 3 years. Well, that was the plan originally, but I think I managed to leave more than enough things undone than done. It's funny how everytime you solve one problem, another one crops up. Still, the biggest accomplishment was acquiring a Polish tourist visa. This should make my life easier at some stage in the future. Though my trip is kind of lacking in form at the moment, that's sure to stop me from having to find a city with a Polish embassy to wait 3 days in. Only Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic & Serbia Montenegro now require me to lose up to a week at a time. Man, I hate the Australian goverment's xenophobic views on letting people into our country sometimes. New Zealand solved these kind of issues with bilateral tourist visa agreements long ago. But I digress.

Friday night saw a gathering of people from all over the last 3 years of my life. I was happy to see everyone, even if I did lose control of events towards the end of the night and not get to say goodbye to everyone properly. If someone asked me what the single best thing about living in London was I'd say the people, without hesitation. When you are an ex-pat living abroad, you have a different view on life than when you're grinding away at a 9 to 5 at home, and it's good to have met so many people with the same mindset. Not to mention those who couldn't make it, most of whom don't live in London anymore. I've seen so many people come and go from that city that it's hard for me to get my mind around the fact that it's me taking off this time. It was also good to realise that I've actually met alot of people who aren't Australians. With a transient population that would otherwise be big enough to qualify as an ethnic minority, Australians can quite easily fall into the trap of not meeting a whole lot of people who aren't Australians. That's missing one of the big benfits of London; the fact that there are so many people living there who are from somewhere else. Oh, and the English can be good people too.

The highlight, however, is the Stevil t-shirt. I can't remember who originally decided to name my drunk alter-ego Stevil, but it has stuck for probably the last year. Thanks to creative work by some very talented people, I can now try and explain myself to a whole continent of strangers. Add to that the tag line of "Guten Tag, Mutherfucker" (which comes from antics at Oktoberfest last year, and is also on the shirt) I can also probably offend much of the Deutsch speaking world before I've even met them. Entertaining and culturaly sensitive, what more could I ask for?

So, far worse for wear and & one Ryanair flight later, I found myself in Brussels. I was warned that I would find the place a little dull, and it's not failed to impress in that regard. Despite having had next to no sleep and the hangover to end all hangovers I dragged myself out for a Saturday night in the bureaucratic capital of the Union. Having first taken in the obviously touristed bits around the main square, I followed the crowds of raucous French rugby players who seem to have invaded all at once, looking for the nightlife here. Whist you know everytime you are a tourist in a new city you are going to get fleeced by bars the locals would never go to, I was having trouble coming to terms with the crowds sitting lesiurly around tables on the cobbled street fronts. Whilst most of continetal Europe tends to go for this kind of setup rather than the either overly decorated lounge bars or standing room only pubs of London, it does lack the rowdy ambiance. I did need the break (and should probably get used to the fact that London is a different beast to everywhere else) and after a couple of relatively weak beers (a mere 8% alcohol) I wandered off to bed. Not being able to find an other English speakers floating around didn't help a whole lot either. While I've already discussed my German speaking skills above, my French dosen't extend a whole lot further. Some people did try English, which was nice, but after the pleasantries it was a bit of a struggle.

One thing that does strike me here is this has to be the most pro-European Union country I've ever been to. While I shouldn' be too surprised (I can't imagine Brussels was a political powerhouse of a city before the EU set up shop here), it makes a startling change from the anti-Euro backlash you see almost daily in the UK. I read today that the UK are going to talk about entering the single currency again in 2005. That debate is long over here. I think I've seen about 5 shops whose only specialty is selling EU merchandise. I can't imagine one of those opening up in high street middle England anytime soon.

One thing of note though is the rather unique Museum of comic strip art, housed in a 1906 art deco department store. Apparently both the Art Deco movement and the comic were products of Belgium at rougly the same time. As a bit of a comic geek in my early teens, it found it quite cool to wander around looking at all the original pages of things like Asterix and the Smurfs, and allow myself to be rather intelectual about the whole thing. It struck me that in the French speaking world (much like Japan) there is a lack of comics about blokes in tights and capes and a whole lot more about things grown-up adults read about. One striking set of pages were taken from a comic book about the Bosian war, including picutres of concentration camps, Serb paramilitaries and including the warlord Arkan as one of it's antagonists. By turning and otherwise useful medium into a strictly for kiddies world of x-ray vision and silly maks, I think the US has a lot to answer for. For one thing, I think it's a form of popular art that relates far more closely to the Rubens and Van Dykes I saw earlier in the day than anything in the Tate Modern.

Tomorrow, I see Bruges. I'm not sure whether to expect a functioning town that stretches back to medieval times (like Fes) or a theme park (like Venice). I've got this sinking feeling it's the latter.

My Irish road trip

Dublin :: Ireland

Around Ireland in a Seat.

Places: Cork, Berra, Bantry, Dingle, Galway and Dublin

Coolest thing I did: Observed roughly 25 hen's nights happen in sync (ahh, Galway).

Coolest thing I didn't know: The Blarney Stone isn' t very impressive. I'd expected an actual standing stone or something, not a brick.

As a quite regular visitor to Dulbin, the most common thing I heard before heading out of it was I'd find the rest of the country vastly different. This can most readily seen as true in the way the motorways give way to miles of blind corners, acute turns, cattle rails and single lanes almost as soon as you've left Dublin County. I haven't driven a car for probably going on 9 months, so trying to focus on driving a strange car in what can be trying conditions became quite tiring. I found myself hitting 100kph quite regularly in what would usualy be insanely dangerous conditions for me and building up a tailback behind me. These people are entirely fearless driving around with very little idea of what's coming around the next stone wall or over the next small rise, something I'm not quite used to. Lucky for me, I wasn't in a real hurry and didn't mind pulling over to let people pass regularly.

The country is much as I expected, but I was surprised at how regular the postcard scenes presented themselves to me. If I'd stopped to take a picture of every tall stone cross, ruined church, severe stone cliff or rural vista I'd have gotten nowhere. It's a truly breath-taking country to behold. I spent alot of time driving around the ranges of mountains that plunge themselves directly into the Altantic in the west of the country. Once I'd figured out my original plan of also visiting Northern Ireland within the week was far too ambitious, I was able to amble at my own pace around. It gave me alot of time to think about things and I think I managed to reconcile alot of things I'd had in the back of my mind for a long time. It's funny how you can start to tackle the tangle of unresolved internal conversations you have floating around your head when you've got very little else to do. That, and I listened to alot of radio. The only station that had reception all over the country (and not in Gaelic) was 2fm, which includes the countries' most popular morning talk show, hosted by Mr Gerry Ryan. Like all populist talkback radio, it concentrated on issues effecting the middle class of Ireland (SARS being the biggie, even though there are still no cases in the country), however it does have a certain irreverence you wouldn't find in the UK (the segment on strippers dressed as paramilitaries operating in Northern Ireland for example).

However, as much as the scenery appealed, after a few hours driving on your own, you do get cabin fever. The nights, however, were never dull. The places I stopped ranged from a small fishing village where I occupied the hostel alone, to backpacker-oriented towns to cities like Galway and Cork. The contrast isn't as big as you think it would be. As expected, the Irish love a drink and a chat. There was nowhere I felt unwelcome, and as there was a big soccer or rugby game every night the last week, I was never short of a starting point for a conversation (as an aside, it appears Manchester United are far more popular in Ireland than in Manchester). The young blokes here tend to treat Guiness as much of an old man's drink as the English lads do Bitter and Ale, so I did look a bit of a tourist drinking it next to their continental lagers. However, through years of self experimentation that I find the hangovers far less severe after a stout bender and I did have a fair bit of driving to do.

Galway was an exceptional circumstance. It is, mainly, a tourist town, even if most of them come from within Ireland itself for the big Saturday night. Also, Mark got a bus across the country to meet up with me. Galway on a Saturday night is a sight to behold. I managed to blow nearly 2 days budget in one night, but it was excelent fun. We did, however, peak a bit late and the whole town shuts down shop at 3am. Our roaming around town looking for somewhere to drink didn't net us much in the way of alcohol, but it did make us alot of staggeringly drunk friends. Oh, and for some reason Galway appears to be the hen's night capital of the country. I'm always a bit weary of hordes of drunk women, and the fact there was so many parties going on at once does make you a wee bit edgy. The evening ended with us drinking bad Sambuca directly out of the bottle with some students out on an athletics trip. Despite Mark's calls to go to the early bar where the dock workers drink at 8am, the whole thing wrapped up at around 5ish.

So the big question on whether Dublin is different, did that one get answered? Kind of. I've found the Irish, in general, to be a pretty friendly bunch of people all round. Sticking to the highly Disney like Temple Bar in Dublin probably won't introduce you to many Irish, but as I've worked out here so much, that wasn't too much of a problem. The diffence seems to be be that Dublin is very cosmopolitan City compared with the rest of the country. Whilst you get quite used to the sight of Japanese students walking down the streets of Dublin talking into their cellphones, you don't seen many people of non-Celtic roots outside the capital. This makes the feel of the place quite different. There are no Starbucks or McDonalds in most of the places I visited. In most towns, there weren't alot of curry houses or thai resteraunts, despite the presence of at least 10 bars in the smallest one street fishing village. I think this gives a different outlook on life. I found the Irish out in the country weren't that much different, just more traditional than those in Dublin. The story they are worlds more friendly seemed to depend on the size of the place I visited. The Irish are a friendly people, but Dublin, like London, is a huge, international city. People don't have the same sense of community as a place where it's possible to know everyone. And strangers tend to stick out more in smaller places.

I think the big difference between Ireland and other places is strangers are welcomed, rather than made to feel uncomfortable. Despite the almost language barrier accent differences, people were patient with me and wanted to listen to what I had to say. And they love a chat.

I did, however, come to realise out in all that country that I could never feel properly at home in small places. Being from a big international city like Sydney, I tend to feel more at home somewhere like Dublin than somewhere like Castletownbear. Walking around Dublin today, I did feel like I was leaving a place I had come to know quite well. Of all places outside London, I've visited none even remotely close to as many times as I have this one. For a place reknowned for exporting people only 2 decades ago, it's as cosmopolitan as either London or Sydney. Only, as with those two cities, it does retain some of the character that makes it belong in it's home country. I will probably not see this place again in the near future, and I will miss it.