Amsterdam again

After one night at Oktoberfest I was off to the Dam, this time alone. I checked in to an even crappier hostel than the last time (no powerpoints, no hot water in the showers, smelly). It was late when I got there, so I chilled out for a bit and went to bed.

The first thing I wanted to do was go back to Vondelpark, the most beautiful park I've ever seen. I took my guitar and my mp3 player and just went from spot to spot looking at the incredible views and watching the people.
I watched a small group of musicians jamming. They played a banjo, a mandolin and a saxophone.
I was sitting by a pond when a man who looked quite a bit like Tom Morello came over with a loaf of bread and started feeding the ducks. He was wearing a blue tracksuit and always had a cigarette hanging from the edge of his permanent smile. He threw the bread as if he was playing catch with his nephew, overarm and underarm. Then a young boy and his mother came over to watch, and Feed the Ducks Guy smiled some more, and offered the boy some bread to throw, but he ate it instead.
I met some local kids, who complimented me on my ridiculous purple guitar. They were cool. One of them reminded me of Stef Gawler. We discussed how beautiful the park is, what an incredible city Amsterdam is, and how cool the Dutch are.
I saw a topless man walk past holding a chewed up stick to his lips, his eyes darting around, and when he passed me I saw that his back had welts and a big cut that was bleeding quite a lot, and he started (continued, I presume) to whip himself on the back with the stick. He stopped very suddenly opposite a playground full of children and started shouting and throwing his limbs around, like a speed freak doing tai chi. Then he went away. I wonder what else he did that day.
I watched three people, a girl and boy in their mid-twenties and their older mentor, practicing some kind of martial art with wooden swords and staffs. They would slowly go through a series of moves, step by step, then speed it up.
I lay down under a tree and watched the branches blow in the breeze, criss-crossing and forming patterns and pictures, and I felt joy like I never have before, and cried.
I sat on a small hill with legs crossed and my back straight and staring at the horizon listening to A Non-Objective Portrait of Karma by Circle Takes the Square. I felt my body join with the music, and cried.

Then the sun went down and I made my way though the streets and over canals, dodging bikes and trams, back to my hostel, in the red light district, where rowdy groups of british shouted stupid things about the prostitutes and at them, and where you can't make eye contact with anyone because they will give you one of the most heartbreaking stories you've ever heard and then tell you that Jesus said that you would give them a coin, and where every twenty feet someone hisses in your ear "hey, coke, ecstacy".

I did find a nice spot near my hostel where I could sit on some steps leading down to a canal, and smoke and listen to music in relative solitude.

I went to a bar that was mostly empty except for a few locals, and they made me feel very welcome. We discussed how incredible the city is, and I told them a bit about my travels and Australia, and how much I love the Dutch and their language. They told me where I could pick up a bike for as low as 5 euros, but I forgot.

I found a metal bar in the main strip of the red light district called Excalibur. It was run by an American guy who would drum (quite well) on the bar along with Metallica or Fear Factory whatever was playing. When a group of girls started singing some pop song he came over and told them that they have to stop because people don't want to hear that shit.

I spent my last two nights hungry due to cash flow issues, and I tried my hand at begging. It didn't work.

I was gonna go to a museum this time, but then I got high.


I love Amsterdam. There is just so much happening. I spent a lot of time sitting in the streets smoking and watching the people, and it was always entertaining. I love Dutch, and I love the way you can get anywhere in the city in 10 minutes on a bike, and I love the canals. I love so much about it. I did want to move to Berlin for a year or two, but now I'm very seriously considering Amsterdam instead.

Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest is pretty awesome. I met up there with Laura, Steph and Andria, and met some friends they'd made. We got to the first tent (it's more like a barn than a tent... possibly a hanger) at about 11. We were quickly served a litre of 8% beer each.
There were fat men in lederhosen snorting snuff and chowing on chicken, the ladies wearing dirdl, which is really a wonderful outfit. Really compliments the figure of some women.
I bought some snuff. It's really fun when you're drunk, and really unpleasant when you're not.

Budapest, Bratislava

I ran into Matt, the dude we met at Krakow. He was staying at the same hostel. The bar at this hostel is rockin'. I managed to get up for the 10am train to Budapest anyway, though, and I caught it with Matt, who was going there anyway. We went to his hostel so he could drop his bags off and did the 4 hour Budapest sightseeing tour. It's a very nice city, and I get the vibe that it'd be a good place to stay for few nights. Still, in 4 hours I saw a whole lot of cool buildings, including two castles. Kababs are called Gyros there, and they're one of the worst I've had so far.
Today I went to Bratislava, which sucked. I failed to get into the old town because the public transport system is confusing, and when I caught the bus out of town to find the comic convention I saw an ad for I couldn't find that either.
Lame.

Now I'm going back to Munich, where there is, surprisingly, still accommodation, and some of it isn't even at extortionist prices. I can't book it, though, because most places don't accept bookings from debit cards, which is dumb. So, until I meet up with Nick again, I'll be rocking up and hoping for the best.
Wish me luck.

Vienna

Well, here I am in Austria. When I got to the Wombat hostel last night, I discovered that SOMEONE had booked it for the wrong night. I went in search of a hostel, but found them to be too expensive. The park looked quite comfortable, and it was a pleasant night, so I made good on my promise to myself that I would crash in a public space at least once on my trip. Now THAT'S travelling.

I woke up some hours later when the sun came up, checked my bags at the hostel and headed into the part of town with all the cool stuff to see. Austrians LOVE benches. You shoud see their parks. The paths are lined with benches in every available space. If you need to sit down, come to Vienna. Anyway, that took me about an hour and a half. So I came here to the internet cafe to upload my photos, but that's gonna take ages, so I deleted Robot Chicken from my iRiver and copied them to that. Now I don't know what else there is to do here. It's not that cool a place.
Tomorrow I'm gonna take a day trip to Bratislava or Budapest, which are an hour or three away, respectively. The next day I'll do the other.
Then maybe I'll go back to Munich, where Oktoberfest is going on, and meet up with Steph and Ans.

I hope crybaby is having just as crappy a time in Athens.

Prague

Night trains are the way to go. All the stress of having no idea where you are or what to do is softened by the delerium from lack of sleep.
We got off our train at the main station in Prague. It was 7am and we had to wait for an internet point to open so that we could find out how the hell to get to our hostel. While we were looking we bought 2 grams of shoe polish (this time we only lost about 12 euro), and made friends with a drunk metal dude. We asked about the massive scar on his forehead, which had a dark green tint to it. He said he'd been attacked by fascists, and made a stomping action. He was fun.
We finally found out what to do, and made our way to the hostel. It was too early to czech in, so we left our bags in the luggage room and went to the park for a few hours and tried to smoke shoe polish.
That (Saturday) night we went to a couple of places on the outskirts of the city which were supposed to be rockin', but were in fact decidedly unrocking. So we called it a night.

On Sunday we went to the Prague market, but found it closed. So we made our way to Prague castle, which was pretty fucking cool. There's a cathedral in there which has an awesome gothic look, with spikey spires and gargoyles and such forth.
On the way home we spotted an absinthe shop, which was lucky, because when we went looking in our own area there was only wormwood-free absinthe. So we went there and picked up a bottle of the 35mg thujon/kg stuff. We decided we wanted to go to the park to drink it, but we lacked glasses and spoons. We had to go buy sugar from the supermarket, and there we saw the solution to half our problem: mustard jars. We would drink from mustard jars. Yes. We bought detergent as well, cos mustardy absinthe sucks. To our disappointment, we didn't get a very strange look for buying sugar, mustard and detergent.
There was still the problem of the spoons. We thought we might as well at least try to borrow some from the hostel. I asked at the bar, and was told by the bartenders "Sure thing" and "No problem." I guess maybe it's not so unusal a request.

Sweet. We had all the requisite items in out inventory, so off to the park we went. It was great fun, with the burning the sugar and the drinking the absinthe and the being drunk. I don't know about these claims that it's a halucinogen, but it's the best kinda drunk I've ever had. So excited and into everything. We got kicked out of the park at 00:30, though. What kind of park closes?!

The next day was as wasted as us. In the evening I went with a couple of American girls - Zahra and Anne - to a jazz club in the old town. I can't recall the name of the band right now, but they were fucking awesome. Piano, bass and drums. I bought a CD.

On Tuesday Nick and I gave the market another shot. There were about a hundred stalls, but they were all selling the same counterfeit designer shit. We spent a few hours walking around, but it was a waste. I was looking at jumpers, but none of them were my blue jumper. That thing is irreplacable.
Anne and Zahra were going to the jazz club again to see another pbd trio. This time Nick came along. I had a few shots of absinthe at the bar. Absinthe goes REALLY well with jazz.

We finally made time to look around the old town on Wednesday. We took a train to the middle of it and just wandered around, and ended up in the tourist shopping district, which was almost as bad as the market in terms of every shop selling the same shit. We did find a cool streetwear shop, though, and I picked up a hoodie to replace my lost jumper (waaah! :´( ) I also got a bottle of absinthe. More walking, looking at buildings, turning down offers of shoepolish, taking photos. You know. We crossed the Charles Bridge, which had a few buskers along the way, including a girl playing spanish guitar absolutely beautifully. At the end of the bridge, I found bigger bottles of absinthe for less than the smaller ones, so I bought two.
I mailed them home the next day (which was pretty complicated, but I managed it in the end). So, mum and dad, when a box rocks up on your doorstep from Czech Republic, put it away for me. No drinking it, or you'll get in trouble.

Prague has kinda a sour end. When Nick saw my last blog and saw that I'd taken his title he got really angry about it. I DID credit him with it. But he was being such a baby about it, and what do you do to babies? That's right, you steal their candy. Just as I was about to eat it he punched me in the face, so I hit him back. Basically, I left him in a bloody pulp on the ground got on a train to Vienna. I hope he died there. What a dick.

Krak... ow!

Sorry Nick, I had to steal your post title. It's just so amusing.

What an amusing morning we had, delerious from lack of sleep. We landed in Krakow at about 9, still having had no sleep, hopped on the shuttle bus to the train station, which didn't leave for about 20 minutes, and took us about 800m.
On the train we were asked for the fare of 4 slutty (the currency of Poland). Oops... we assumed Poland used the Euro. The conductor spoke no English, and we no Polish, so he just gave up and went away.
We arrived at the main train station, and wandered around in a tired daze, wondering if we were in fact at the main station, and why the directions to the hostel were so lame, and why we didn't print out a map, or pick up a map at the airport, and what made us think that peice of crap Lonely Planet book could possibly help us. Eventually, we figured out we'd gone to the wrong end of the station. We got on a tram and the directions got us to a huge intersection and no further. We wandered around some more, being tired and laughing at the language (as you do when you get to a new country). Finally we found someone who knew where the street we were looking for was.

We got to the Ars Hostel and were able to check in immediately, even though it was only 11am. The staff were SO friendly, the beds comfy, and there was a living room with a TV with 300 channels, 10 of which were music and 20 of which were porn (lame porn). There were three other Melbournians there, one of who was also named Nick. The atmosphere was so friendly and communal. It is, by far, the best hostel we've been to yet.
We eschewed sleep because we were quite enjoying the delerium, so we went in search of food. We found a great resturaunt that had delicious and cheap meals. We hung out there for a while, but at about 4 we finally had to sleep, after about 28 hours awake.

We woke up around 7, showered and were asked by Slovak, the owner, to join him and the other three Melbournians (Bruce, Nick and Steph) on a bit of a pub crawl. He bought us dinner on the way to the first bar, and took us to some pretty cool places. It was a great night. Slovak could quote Monty Python with us all... what an awesome guy.

The next day we went to the salt mine with Bruce, Nick and Steph. What an awesome place. We decended 67m of wooden stairs into a world where everything is MADE OF SALT! The stairs are made of salt, the walls are salt, the statues are salt, the chandeliers are made of salt. As our (very amusing) tour guide told us, "you can lick anything you want in here... except the guide". She showed us a display with (salt)statues of seven dwarfs. "Where is Snow White?" she asked, in her polish-accent, monotone guide-voice. "Where is she? Can you see her? ...HERE I am." LOLZ!!!1 Lots of salt puns were made (as-salt-ed, rubbing salt into the wounds) and when there was a bit of a traffic jam from the tour groups I realised the people were causing clogs in the arteries of salt. Trippy, huh?
Anyway, that place is fucking cool. We only saw 1% of it, and that took us a couple of hours.
Nick and I went back to that resturant for dinner and got a lot of beers. We realised when we left at about 10:30 that the lovely lady was just keeping it open for us. But we left a decent tip.

The next day we went to Auchwitz with a londoner named Amy and another melbournian named Matt. We had been hoping that Thush would have met up with us by the time we went to Auchwitz (it looks like we won't be meeting up with us at all). I would have been great to have him there Jew-bashing Nick. Oh well. Auchwitz was lame... it just felt like a museum, and a cheap reproduction. Big disappointment.

On our last day we went to the market, but it was closed when we got there. That sucked. We went to Schindler's factory, but there wasn't much there. But hey, it was free. We went to the mall, and finally got some breakfast/lunch (I ate SO much KFC spicy chicken, for which i would pay dearly later). We went to a Jewish cemetary, and into the Jewish quarter for a beer at Alchemia (a really cool bar). Lastly, we went to the castle, the cathedral and the old town. We should have spent more time there. More money, too, but we were running out and didn't see the point in getting more.
We went to get our last meal at our resturant, and spent every last slutty we had on pizza. We declined when she asked if we wanted beer, but the she came out with two beers. "The beer is gratis." AW! So nice!

To put a dampener on our awesome time in Poland, I discovered when I packed that my blue jumper had gone missing. OH NO! I asked everyone, and checked everywhere, but it was, and still is, gone. FUCK! Now I only have my Number Twelve Looks Like You hoodie, which is very warm and very black, and terrible for chilly but sunny days. FUCK! I loved that jumper. Damn it!

I'm all upset now. I'm gonna go chill out before I start my Prague blog.

Goodbye Berlin

I'm in Prague right now. Sorry for the lack of updates.

My birthday was supremely chilled out... I didn't leave the apartment, and i read Catcher In the Rye (pretty awesome book). It's fair enough, though; we didn't get home till about 6 that morning. We'd gone out to check out the "short shorts party" we'd seen advertised on flyers all over town. We rocked up at about 11 and nothing was happening, so we went on a quest to one of the main train station looking for supplies. 50 euros later we returned to club Short Shorts with 7 hits of artificial sweetener ("guys, i'm definately starting to feel something... yeah, i definately feel sweeter") and the worst bud I've ever come across. Oh well, it's all part of the adventure.
Before we went in we had a smoke, and were approached by a somewhat geeky-looking guy looking for drugs. We shared our useless joint with him, and he asked if his girlfriend could have some too. "This is Foxy," he said. "Hey," said foxy, posing with the joint. She exuded TC more than anyone I'd ever met. I don't know what she was doing with that guy, and you could practically hear her thinking "this party it so lame" in a french accent. We didn't see them together for the rest of the night.
We went in and Villan were on stage; two guys with fake but awesome-looking mohawks, both singing, one playing samples and synth. I really enjoyed them, but the best was yet to come: Team Plastique, an electro-clash outfit from Brisbane with two female singers and a male guitarist. Their show was great, involving toplessness and various foods being rubbed on bodies. The acid-fried old man in the audience got a fair bit of stage time. He also grabbed me from behind at one point, and I turned around to find his wide-eyed, open-mouthed ecstatic face. That creeped the hell out of me.

The internet point at this hostel has opressively limited functionality, so I can't find out the URL of the picture I want to link to, but go check out Team Plastique at www.team-plastique.com
Also check out Villan at www.myspace.com/villainoussounds

We were leaving for Krakow on Tuesday morning, so we were ready for an early night. We went to another beach bar, and went up a building with graffiti everywhere, and a bunch of galleries on 3 floors and a bar at the top. We stopped on our way home to get some dinner. I was sitting at the table eating my noodles and watching a pub crawl walk past, when who should I see but STEPH AND ANS! Whoa! What are the chances!? They were supposed to be in Greece. Needless to say, we joined the pub crawl, and any plans we had to sleep before leaving for the airport at 4am went out the window. We had a great night, and it was fantastic to see the girls again. Luckily, the crawl ended right need the apartment, so it was a quick walk home.

Left the apartment at 4, off the the airport, and off to Krakow!