Reeperbahn

Hi!!

In Sydney, you go to King's Cross. In Dublin, you go to Temple Bar. In Amsterdam, you go to the Red Light District. In Hamburg, you go to the Reeperbahn. Anyone who has gone to Hamburg has probably found themselves at the Reeperbahn. Here you find streets full of bars, clubs, sex shops, prostitutes and it has it's own Red Light District of it's own. This is my story:

For a couple weeks, Sonja had news that she'd been invited to a Hen's night, a party for a girl she didn't even really know. She was invited because this girl doesn't have many friends in Hamburg, so Sonja decided to go and make the most of it to give this girl her special night. I was left at home to chill out with Gina and Rainer. Rainer had perhaps the biggest music collection I've seen, and what was in display wasn't even all of it. When it was just at home, we would often sit on the couch and he would play me music from all over the world, all of it brilliant. He even introduced me to a Tom Waits song called "Reeperbahn', who'd have thought? So this particular evening, we were going back and forth with each other, as Gina would have to ask me something through Rainer, and Rainer would translate it to me, and I give my answer to Rainer (Sometimes I would have to spend a little while explaining) and then he would have to translate it back to Gina. I'll be honest, it was draining if we carried on too long like this, I can't imagine how Sonja or Rainer felt when I would do it to them every day.

After just getting comfortable, having sunk a few Holsten's (Top 5 beers of my life), we got a call from Sonja. She was telling me that the groom also happened to be having his Stag's night, and we knew absoultely no-one as he was from Canada. Great I thought! English speaker! The chaps on his Stag night so far were just the boyfriends or other friends from the Hen's night. I was invited to his Stag's night to make things a bit better for him. Having never been to a Buck's party myself, going on a Canadian/German Stag's night on the Reeperbahn with complete stranger's sounded like a bloody good start to me. I got changed, Rainer gave me his phone and he dropped me off at the first pub of the night. A billiard's bar. On my arrival, the chaps had already had a couple beers and a couple games and were just about ready to get out of there.

It turns out the Canadian groom was living in Canada, but had originally come from Austria, where they speak German as their first language, so I was still the only one in the group who could speak no German, but I still felt comfortable enough, probably more comfortable than the groom himself unfortunately.

As I said, the boys were just about ready to leave, so after only one beer, we all jumped in someone car and made our way to the Reeperbahn. Our plan was to wait out in a bar, and we would get a call from one of the girls when the Hen's party were going to arrive, and the boys would run out into the street and give the bride-to-be a huge surprise. From that point, we would all go out as a massive pre-wedding party I guess. Before all this took place, we decided to have a gander at the Red Light District, no Buck's party would be complete without it on the Reeperbahn. This Red Light District is one long street rather than spread out over a large area like in Amsterdam. On each end of the street is a huge wall with posters and graffiti on it that basically tells girls to piss off. No girls are allowed on this street. Apparently, the girls in the windows would throw urine or other nasties on any female caught on the Red Light District. I'd love to remember the correct German name for this street, but alas, this street is usually only combined with drinking alcohol, so whatever brain cells were created to remember the name were probably killed in the same night. The girls in these windows reminded me a lot of the one's in Amsterdam...The one's who stand in there and tap on the window and encourage you to go and talk to them. It was only a brisk walk and we got out of there pretty quickly. Sure enough, there were red lights, windows and girls wearing not much at all. Fairly predictable and not so much of a shock to see any more.


The wall.

The real shock lies in the girls who work the streets. As soon as you catch the pattern, you can spot a prostitute a mile away...Enough time to veer your course. How they decided this would be the dress code...I will never know. The prostitutes that walk the streets of the Reeperbahn are easily identifyable by their ridiculous white joggers, plain jeans, bum-bag (or fanny-pack, however you like to call it) and a bright, puffy jumper, usually white, pink or purple. I think it looks awful, but that's just what they wear. Anything else and no-one would be interested in them. Walking alone around these girls can be dangerous...They see you, hold on to your arm and will talk with you for ages, through streets, bars and whatever, until you forcefully push them away and get angry. Safety in numbers - Or if you have another girl with you.


Anyway, after the Red Light District, we made our way to the bar where I met the other half of the group who I hadn't met yet. I couldn't understand half of their names and can't remember the other half but they introduced me to a thing called Mexicana. They seemed to be far more drunk than I, which improves their English like crazy.

Felix - "Heyyyyyy, you're Geeeeoffffffff, the ooooshtraaaalien...Have youuu drinked MexiCANA!??!?"
Geoff - "Naaaaaaah man, what is it?"
Felix - *walks away and speaks to bartender* "Haaaaallloooo!! DREI MEXICANAAAAAAAA!!"
Everyone - "Prooooosst!!"

And the rest is history.

That night I will never forget, the night I discovered the Mexicana. Of what I can remember, mexicana is vodka, tequila, tomato juice and the most important ingredient - Tabasco sauce. Whether it would take off in Australia, I do not know, but after freezing your ass off, a Mexicana burning up in your gullet is exactly what you need on a night out in Germany.

So eventually, the girls finally made it. Hen's nights (And I assume Stag nights) in Germany are a lot more different than in Australia. The organisation factor goes beyond ok for my liking. Although I've never been to a Hen's night in Oz, I assume it's usually just a theme, something to dress up as, and maybe a stripper, and then everyone gets blind rotten drunk. I can't remember all the finer details of this one, but there are all these crazy activities the Bride-to-be has to do. For example, while on the underground trains, she had to get a group of chaps to sing a couple songs with her...They went to a hospital for drunk people (Drunk people were taking up too much room in the regular hospital, so this was specially made) and she had to carry out a number of tasks, like find all this stuff...And fundraising. To make money for the Hen's night, so the bride wouldn't have to pay for any drinks, the girls bought a couple boxes of cheap, nasty shots and sold them for a euro or two to people walking past in the street. With each shot probably costing like 50 cents, they basically made a 100% profit. Then they cut up a massive peice of sheet into a game. The sheet had two holes, one hard and one easy. The idea was to get people to kick soccer balls and try to get the soccer balls into one of the holes, and if they got it in, they would win something awesome. I don't really know successful it was.

In the end, everyone met up successfully, but 75% of the group disappeared. The remaining 25%, myself included kind of felt a bit bummed about it all and after sending out some texts with no replies, we decided to call it a night.

Despite a let down at the end, I believe the whole night went pretty well, I made enemies, friends, discoveries and can now say I've been to the Reeperbahn. Believe me, this was definitely not my only time at the Reeperbahn, there are plenty more stories, but that will do for now.

Thanks :)

This isn't relevant, but this is Sonja with the result of a bull castration:

The Lake Alster

Lake Alster

I awoke in the morning to find a German stabbing me in the back with her finger. "Get up you lazy shit! It's a sunny day, they're pretty rare in Hamburg. I have a surprise for you". For weeks I'd been hearing all about this "surprise". My only clues were that it would have to be a sunny day when I get it, otherwise it wouldn't work very well. I didn't know if it was an object I'd be getting, an experience, a new friend, a story...Who would know. After a brilliant breakfast (Sonja told her mother that Australians eat bacon, eggs, sausages and toast every day for breakfast, so that's what they bought me to eat) we set out on our big adventure to whatever my surprise was. As we were leaving the house, Sonja gave me a big bag which weighed probably 6-8 kg's. I wasn't allowed to look in it though, otherwise it would ruin the surprise. After getting on a bus for 20 minutes, then a train for 10 minutes, we found ourselves walking for about half an hour. We went past her old school, a couple parks and ended up walking around the most prized and loved natural landmark in Hamburg, the Lake Alster.

While we were walking through the parks, I decided to sneak a quick feel of the bag...Maybe I could make out something. I felt a couple pole-like objects, I thought maybe it was a set of goals and she was going to take me to a park to play soccer...That wouldn't explain why it was so heavy though...And I couldn't feel anything ball shaped. She caught me feeling it and got angry, so I just had to walk along thinking about it.

Eventually, we arrived at the point of the lake and Sonja said "Ok, so I do have with me...An INFLATABLE BOAT!!". Words cannot describe how excited I was at this point, I could not for the life of my suppress my smile. Our only problem was that there seemed to be nowhere to launch the bloody thing, all around the lake seemed to be dangerously sharp rocks, or it was just far too shallow. Unlike in Australia where you just take off your shoes and push the boat out, here you would have to take your shoes off, roll up your jeans, somehow not get hypothermia and die, and avoid stepping on any broken glass or whatever else is floating around in the lake. Therefore finding a good take off point is critical. After walking and walking and walking, we finally found somewhere that looked relatively suitable.



Sonja went for a pee in a cafe, and I pumped up the boat. It's ok if there are two people pumping up an inflatable boat next to a lake, but I looked like a lonely loser. Anyway, when she came back, she had with her a little feast from the cafe so we could have a lovely lunch out on the water. As soon as we got the boat in the water and launched with the pair of us in it, the clouds came...And the wind. For starters, I've never rowed a boat in my life. I've been in canoes and kayaks, but never a row boat, so paddling this thing was challenging enough as it was, let alone the fact that the bloody oars were only slightly bigger than my hands. I couple times I thought whether I would have just been better off paddling with my hands. Oh well.



Shortly after making it into the water, it was decided that we go to the very middle of the lake, and there we could sit somewhat peacefully and eat our food. After a painful and exhausting paddle, we made it and ate our sausage meat with salad. It quite lovely sitting there then, the waves were only gently rocking the boat and the sun would spit through little bits of open cloud.



After lunch, it was time to paddle again. Sonja had a plan of paddling to a particular end of the lake which connected to I guess the other half of it. This was against the current and due to my lack of fitness, lack of experience and teeny paddles, there was no hope, so we just made our way to a little bridge and it looked like it would have started raining soon. My lack of experience definitely showed when the waves pushed us to the other side of the lack, when we were getting dangerously close to the jaggered rocks. Through this bit of the ordeal, the waves and wind had gotten stronger, and water was now spilling over the side of the boat, onto me and running down into my bum. Everything on my lower half was wet. In a hot place, this is fine, and even refreshing. In the September temperatures of Germany, it's bloody outrageously cold and uncomfortable.



Some of the people standing on the side of the lake were staring at us, probably wondering if I had some kind of disability due to my paddling skills. They looked genuinely worried and I'm sure if I saw someone in our situation, I probably would have been too.



Somehow, I managed to get out of that, and we made it to the bridge, just as it started raining, so we camped under the bridge for a while and when it started to clear up, we went beyond the bridge. Contrary to what we though was going to be beyond the bridge (Another lake), it turned out to be a long canal that stretches through the whole city. This was the highlight of my day.

With bugger all current and the sun finally out, Sonja cracked open a couple beers, whipped out her mp3 player with speakers and we floated along the river listening to The Beatles. Although still bloody freezing, I was happy as a pig in mud.




Paddling past house-boats, ducks and swans, children who pointed and stared and trees that tried to eat us, we eventually reached a point where we had to get out. It was getting late, cold(er) and the speakers had run out of battery. Just like getting into the lake, getting out of the canal isn't an easy task. You can't simply find any wall and just climb out of the boat. We went past a couple ladders, a couple more bridges and we considered climbing onto one of the house boats to escape. By our luck, we managed to find a little jetty/dock thing. Getting out was probably more stressful than getting in, because we had to somehow make sure that the boat didn't float away. No way was I swimming after it, I was wet enough as it was.

We managed to get ourselves, our bags and the boat out after a little while...But to a place we didn't know. We had to ask some strangers for directions and eventually we found a train to get home. There was dirt, water and grass all over us, and the bag with the boat had stuff coming out of it, because we couldn't get it back in properly, so I'm quite sure we probably looked homeless walking around the train station...I didn't care though, I just wanted a shower and a soup.

After an hour or so journey home, we gave our boat a wash, deflated it and roll 'er back up for next time.



All in all, I had a pretty good day I like to think. That being said though, I wasn't in any hurry to jump back in and do it all over again.

Hamburg P.1

Guten Morgan!

Translation: Good morning.

My bus from Amsterdam left at 11pm and arrived into Hamburg at 7am. This meant no sleep for Geoffy boy. About an hour and a half into our journey, we stopped off at a little petrol station for what I thought was going to be a 10 minute break, or maybe we were going to pick up some more passengers. This wasn't the case. Instead, we stopped for over an hour and the bus driver went for a walk. To me, this seemed like a complete waste of time and I was pretty pissed off because of it. Maybe it's the European ways rubbing off on me that you always have to be on the move and in a rush, or maybe sitting on a bus for an hour not able to do anything or go anywhere is a valid reason to be annoyed. Especially at 1am in the morning.

After setting off again, we arrived early in the morning and stepping off the bus I heard the words "You must be Geoff". I turned around and Sonja's (my German friend from Australia) stepfather was standing there with a huge grin on his face. The plan for my arrival in Hamburg was a secret from Sonja and for weeks, her stepfather had been contacting me sorting out when I should arrive. Sonja told me quite often neither her mother, father or stepfather knew any English and that it would be very weird when I came to visit. Yes, well, unbeknownst to her, Rainer (pronounced like Ryan-er), her stepfather, had reasonable English, enough to hold an intellectual conversation about music, politics, war and embarrassing stories of Sonja.

We arrived at the apartment and her Mum (Gina - Short for Grazyna) ran up to me and gave me a big fat hug. She pointed at Sonja’s door, gave me a huge grin and thumbs up and pushed me towards it. I opened the door and gave Sonja a huge hug. She knew I was coming one day, but because I was in her face right then, I think she was pretty surprised. The four of us had what I know now as a typical German breakfast. Contrary to what I thought they would have for breakfast (Sausages and a litre of beer) we sat down and ate fresh rolls and strange bread with all sorts of toppings.

When you set a breakfast table for Germans, you need coffee (Real coffee, it’s pretty uncommon to find instant coffee in Germany, let alone catch a German drinking the stuff) cheese, salami, ham (a couple kinds), tomato, fruit, Philadelphia, jams, Nutella, butter, a couple kinds of bread (I’ll explain the bread thing later) and a couple kinds of rolls. They are the normal things, and then come the things I was not accustomed to. Also on the table is teewurst, or leberwurst, a kind of meaty paste that looks, smells and probably tastes a lot like that sausage dog meat you can buy in Oz. Sometimes, salty gherkins are on the table, whole gherkins. When you bite into them, there is usually a hole somewhere else on the gherkin and the liquid in it squirts out into someone‘s eye. Then there are a few kinds of salads, known in German as salat. I can’t recall the others, because they weren’t anywhere near as good, but I discovered my most loved breakfast item on the earth. Despite the awful name they’ve chosen, Fleischsalat is by far the best thing I could ever have stumbled across. On normal toast (Our bread is called toast, and children usually only eat it.) Fleischsalat is nothing special, but still pretty good if you were sick of all the crappy sweet stuff you would usually put on it. On German bread (Again, I’ll explain soon), it’s magical, like the first time you drive by yourself after getting your P’s, like the first time you ever heard Stairway to Heaven in it’s entirety, or like putting on an awesome new shirt for the first time. I should probably explain exactly what it is, and I’m sure it doesn’t sound too appealing, it didn’t to me the first time.

Translation:

Fleischsalat = Meat salad.

Fleisch is the German word for meat. That alone scared me. The word fleish sort of looks and sounds like flesh, not a particularly nice or pleasant word, especially when it involves something you’ll be eating. Every time the word comes up, I have an imagine of someone out in the back yard tearing some flesh off a bone of some poor beast. It’s barbaric and terrifying. To make matters worse, the word for mince meat is…You guessed it, Hackfleisch. Ewwwwww!! My imagination goes into overdrive when I hear that word too. I picture Gina hacking up the flesh of a cow when she’s cooking with mince.

I’m getting off topic - Fleischsalat is basically a really good mayonnaise, finely chopped gherkin and finely chopped/shredded ham/speck. There are more little and finer things which I don’t know, and they’re probably what makes the difference as to why it’s so good. I eat Fleischsalat every morning, and I’m sure my cholesterol is through the roof because of it, but I DO NOT CARE. We have a personal joke in the house that it is now called Flesh Salad, rather than the German Fleischsalat (Pronounced like Fl-eye-sh salat) because of my disgust in the name.

Moving on with the breakfast table, we arrive at German bread. I have no idea what the names for the bread is except pumpernickel and toast, because we have these in Australia. Pumpernickel is a kind of bread you’ll find on the lowest shelf in the supermarket, or in health food stores. To, it’s a heap of seeds and rye squashed together to make a very dry and hard to eat substance. This is the base of most German bread. Sometimes there are more seeds, or more rye, but most of it is similar to that. Toast, as I mentioned before is not commonly eaten, among adults anyway. Where we have white, wholemeal or wholegrain, to a German, it’s all just toast. Another bread that sticks in my mind is a really dense and REALLY hard to eat bread, I can’t think of it’s name, but when you buy a loaf, it is literally as heavy as a brick and if you threw it at someone, you would give them a concussion. To cut it, you almost need a chainsaw, or in the case of a knife, huge biceps. The crust is where most of the weight lies I believe, it’s really tough and babies or old people would have no hope getting through it. I don’t know why, I should hate the stuff, it doesn’t even taste that good, but I’m growing awfully fond of it. To eat it you have to smother it in something, something like flesh salad ;) I think I’ve just discovered why I like it so much…

Another thing I found pretty cool about the country is that instead of having one or two big chopping boards for the whole house, they have a mini chopping board for each person, so instead of having a plate, you just take the little chopping board. Oh they have a couple big chopping boards too for big chops, like the brick bread.

Moving on from breakfast, Sonja took me for a walk around her area, around her city centre and we just chilled for the day I suppose.

At lunch time (The main meal of the day), Gina had cooked Sonja’s favorite dish. They were just meatball things in this kind of sauce with potatoes. Gina is a brilliant cook and would never do something from a can or packet, everything is fresh.

Another fundamental for German cuisine is potatoes. With every main meal you have to have potatoes and to the Germans, potatoes aren’t considered a vegetable. I think they think of potatoes rather as Gods than food, they love ‘em! Their food is more about the flavours in the sauce and meat rather than the nutrition it seems. The potatoes are used more like rice or noodles, to soak up the flavours. Vegetables are a bizarre idea. If vegetables were in a meal (there were many occasions where they just simply weren’t present), they were prepared a bit different. Sauerkraut, a vegetable I don’t think many Australians are familiar with is pretty good if prepared properly, and in this case, it was cooked in the juices and fats of the meat that was the main part of the meal. Of course it tastes brilliant. Steaming vegetables is out of the question and I think I saw it once for the duration of my stay. Even then, the vegetables were then drowned in butter. How Australia is the fattest (Or 2nd, I keep losing track) nation in the world, I have no idea.

So, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m about two months behind in my blogs, and for this whole time, I’ve been in Germany. For the next couple blogs, I’ll just tell a couple stories about my time in Hamburg and then eventually I’ll catch up. I apologise profusely.

In the next edition, Sonja and myself find ourselves struggling for our lives in the lake Alsta with burger patties, beer and The Beatles.

Ciao!

Amsterdam: Return of the Dark Side

Hoi!

Stepping off the plane into a new country is always pretty exciting. Landing back in the land of crepes, canals, cheese and cannabis, we find ourselves again in the city of Amsterdam to pollute the eyes of Callum. On the last visit, our campsite was over an hour away from the city centre, which was a real a pain in the arse, especially in a place like Amsterdam. This time, the hostel we booked was smack bang in the middle of the Red Light District.

Our plane arrived in Amsterdam at about 2am and so rather than spend a night’s accommodation money on only a couple hours, we just decided to wait it out at the airport until morning. This was probably the longest and draining stay at an airport I’ve had to date. Everything was closed except a couple café’s and bars. After trying to spend as long as possible at a café without getting kicked out, we still found ourselves with another 2 or so hours to waste before we would make our way into the city. I had about 2 weeks worth of beard, filthy, tomato coloured dreadlocks, jeans stained with sangria, tapas and sand, shoes stained and smelling of tomato and it was cold enough for me to wear my brown homeless jumper. In combination with all this, I was laying on the floor of the airport using a dirty towel as a pillow. At this point I was too cold and tired to care what I looked like but people looked at me as though I was some kind of beast.

When the time finally came that we were to make the journey into the city, I was ready to fall over and sleep. Everyone says that Amsterdam doesn’t sleep…Those people have never been to Amsterdam at 7am in the morning. Nothing was open and nothing was around, so finding out where to go was a toughie to say the least, but we made it. We didn’t really realise that the hostel was in the red light district until we arrived. Next door to our hostel was a couple windows for the girls to sell themselves in, and on the other side was the Cannabis museum. Across the street was a coffee shop (Remember that a café sells hot beverages and delicious cakes and a coffee shop sells the marijuana and space cakes - Still delicious) and more windows for the working girls.
We dropped off our bags and went for a long walk as check-in wasn’t until 2pm.




After smashing up a HUGE breakfast we explored the place and to show Callum what a coffee shop looks like, we found an open one and had a tea. It turns out that they sell hot beverages too! Everything smells like drugs though. I found the coffee shop cooler than most café’s, due to the nature of what they were selling, the staff are really cool and chilled back, and the music is easy and relaxed. They found it bizarre that we went there and didn’t buy any of their ‘specialties’ but were still cool about it all.

Finally, after what seemed another eternity, we checked in to our hostel, had a shower and all went to a pub for dinner. Being right in the middle of the Red Light District, we didn’t have to walk very far to see what we came for. Lucy stayed back and Callum and myself had the ‘man’ walk. It’s someone daunting walking around the area. Some of the girls behind the glass smile and encourage you to have a closer look, others seem like they want to hurt you and whack the window really hard and order you to have a closer look. Some girls would weigh 200kgs and don’t look like they could get off the chairs they sit on. The streets are filled with the red glow from the windows, the potent smell of weed from the coffee shops and the general feeling of skank and grotty sex. Among the hundreds of buck’s and hen’s parties, business men and backpackers are really the only other people you see walking around. Some of the business look like they’re making a really important decision for their business, an idea far from the truth. I assume they’re probably on a ‘business trip’ too. Callum’s reaction was exactly what I hoped for. Sometimes his jaw would drop, his eyes were extremely wide open and he was pointing at everything. I think the whole experience was a pretty big learning curve for him.

Hitting up the beds pretty early due to lack of sleep was next in the books.

We spent nearly a week in Amsterdam which was way more than what we needed. Apart from the Red Light District and the couple museums and history tours, I find that it doesn’t offer much else. To see the real Holland, you would have to go much further into the country than Amsterdam. I plan on seeing these bits on a return trip.

One day though, we got on a train and at almost the last stop, we got off in a little town on the outskirts of Amsterdam. I feel pretty bummed that I don’t even remember the name of it, but here we found a bicycle hire shop. Everything was medieval looking and in a typically Dutch nature, everything was mega-chilled out. In all of my time in Amsterdam, I never once found a Dutch person who was upset, angry or in a rush. I’m sure it does happen, but it’s pretty rare. It seems that everyone is just happy living life exactly the way it is. Riding through the city was so relaxing, especially on the Dutch bikes we were on. Unlike BMX bikes and mountain bikes, these one’s seem to be made for the road and to not be raced, so they’re really easy and comfortable to ride.

One day when I was feeling a little more bold I decided that I would buy some truffles. I can’t remember if I explained them in the last Amsterdam blog, so I will in this one. Truffles are basically magic mushrooms. To sell magic mushrooms is illegal in The Netherlands, but the stuff that makes mushrooms magic can be drawn from the mushrooms and made into these truffles. So you eat them and become really silly. I was scared of them on the last visit, but talked to heaps of people about them, and have heard that they’re quite safe, and you would have to eat a couple packets before elephants start coming out of walls.

When buying truffles, you choose which kind of trip you’re going to have. Each truffles has a different reaction. There is a packet that makes you super giggly, one that makes you hear things, one that makes you see things, one that gives you incredible boosts of energy, anything you could imagine. Then there are truffles that have all of these effects, just on different levels. I bought a packet of them, with high effects in visual hallucinations and ate half of the packet. The other two were going to the Van Gough museum and so I decided to join. My truffles took a very long time to set in as they have to digest. They also tasted like an ass, so I bought some peanuts and ate the truffles with them. About halfway through the museum I started feeling funny and was getting pretty excited, not about what the next reaction would be, but for no apparent reason. I was just excited. I went for a walk with Lucy and Callum to the toilet and waited outside. The floor was made of wood and as I was staring at it, the patterns started moving. When there was a shiny surface, it was gorgeous, and it took a lot of effort to not let my jaw drop from being mesmerised.


Van Gough on a good day was a very colourful artist. He loved his colours and a lot of his paintings are pretty far out, even for the mind without truffles. When we went back to the room with the paintings, I almost lost my mind. It looked as though the walls were breathing, going in and out. The borders on the paintings we sort of dancing. Where-ever I saw a pattern, the pattern would move, kind of like water. Callum would have to remind me to move from painting to painting otherwise I would have stood there all day. I think a couple people realised I wasn’t in the right frame of mind so they left me alone, but others scared me when they stood too close.

The things I went through that day were so bizarre and so unreal. Later in the day, some of my effects turned to my sense of touch. It was as if I could feel EVERYTHING. When I felt the grass, it was as if I could feel the little fibres that are in the outside. I found a screw on the ground, and it consumed me. I was just rolling it around in my hands and I threw it away, but before long, I started to miss it, so I would have to run back to it and pick it up again. I know how Gollum and Frodo feel in Lord of the Rings now with the ring. I almost felt the urge to apologise to the screw for throwing it away. For an hour I was staring at a couple people playing lawn bowls, and I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

To describe my experience properly, I would need to use gestures and a lot of time.

For my time in Amsterdam this time around, I didn’t really touch weed. It’s hard not to as it’s all around you and everyone else is smoking. Although I didn’t physically smoke a joint, the second hand smoke alone that was present made me a little loopy.

One museum that I found quite interesting was Anne Frank’s house. Although I knew next to nothing about her, Lucy forced me to go, and I’m pretty glad she did. Basically, Anne Frank, her family and a couple other Jewish people lived in a house for a couple years throughout WW2. Jews were being sent to concentration camps, but they hid out in this house. Throughout the entire ordeal, Anne Frank kept a diary, which was them published years down the line. Although I still haven’t read the diary, I think it would be worthwhile. For those years, her and her family COULD NOT leave the house at all. With friends delivering food packages weekly, they could barely look out the window for fear of being seen.

This is a mint tea, they're AWESOME.


A public pissoir.

After Amsterdam, I parted ways from Callum and Lucy and went off to see a friend I met on my Australian road trip, Sonja. I travelled with Sonja for about a month and she even came to Townsville and spent a week with me there. I was able to show her my home and where I live and most importantly I was able to introduce her to my friends. This was her opportunity to do the same, and I was pretty bloody excited.

So I jumped on a bus and headed for Hamburg, the second biggest city in Germany. Woo-hoo!!

More details to follow…

Barcelona!

Hey,

So after seeing a little more of Valencia the three of us got on another bus and smashed up the city of Barcelona. This was my second trip to the tourist trap of Spain. Unlike Valencia and Madrid, tourists are everywhere, not only from Australia, but Canada, America, Asia and even a lot of Spanish tourists.

When we got there, we had to find our hostel somewhere 30 minutes from the city by train in the mountains. For every person who stayed there, a massive donation to an organisation that supports the disabled was made. It was a pain in the ass getting there, but at the same time, the idea was brilliant and the hostel itself was really good. They even had a pool, a feature I haven’t seen since my trip in Oz. On our first night, we decided to have a quiet one and chill there rather than visit the city. After the treacherous walk up the hill the hostel was on top of, Callum and myself had a long swim in the pool, ate some vegetarian lasagne cooked by the hostel, had a couple night caps and smashed up some sleep for the night.

On the morning after, we discovered that not only did the hostel donate all this money to this organisation, but half of the employees were disabled. The girl who served us breakfast had down syndrome, and some of the cleaners also had down syndrome. The lady behind the bar maybe had autism of what I could gather and the list went on. I thought it was really cool.

Heading into town, we again saw La Rambla, the main street of the city with all the street performers. They’re always fun to watch.



When hunger set in, we stumbled across a huge market selling all sorts of meat, cheese, fruit, nuts and deli items. It was one of the biggest food markets I’ve ever seen. To eat some watermelon in the scorching weather was refreshing and was a feeling I was becoming unfamiliar with. It triggered memories from home and for a second I started missing home, but quickly dismissed the thought and made the most of the moment.


In the same market were a couple big bars where you would drink a beer and watch all the chef’s cook you food. These were not chef’s, but performing artists. I’m sure if they were behind a wall, they wouldn’t be as flamboyant and crazy with their skills as they were showing off to the people.


We decided to not eat too much seeing as there was a Hard Rock café in the city. For my entire time in Europe, I’ve crossed maybe 5 Hard Rock’s and for some reason I never decided to go in. When Ben was with me, we decided that before we leave we had to go to at least one. Callum had never been to one and so we decided now was a better than time than ever to step in and have a gander. It far exceeded my expectations. I knew that they had merchandise from all the big names, but I had no idea what sort of merchandise. I saw the guitars from everyone, Aerosmith, The Beatles, Jethro Tull, The Rolling Stones…It was awesome. A visit would not be complete with actually sitting down and dining. Everything on the menu was far out of our price range, but for this kind of experience, I was more than willing to pay it.

There was only one seat available and so we were sat down next to Janis Joplin’s guitar. A pretty good spot I like think. Without even looking at the menu Callum and myself knew what we needed. In such an American restaurant, the only thing that speaks out would be a hamburger. When it came out, I wasn’t surprised to see that it would feed a family, but still, foolishly, I told myself I could finish it, did so, and had a stomach ache for the next hour.

After sitting at the harbour with a beer for a while feeding the fish, we headed back to the hostel and met a couple Germans, a couple Americans, a couple Australians and a couple Poms. They were all pretty cool and the usual conversations and arguments took place.

The following day consisted of more sightseeing and more touristy stuff, visiting churches, town halls and other big buildings.

Seeing as a friend I met from Edinburgh on a pub crawl was in town, we saw it to be fitting to meet up once again, on a pub crawl. Janine was her name and she brought with her a friend she’d been travelling with for the past six months.


Most of the bars were pretty ordinary, as were the people we were crawling with, but everything changed in the final destination. Every pub crawl in the world finished with a night club, usually a pretty crappy one, but this one was playing Elvis, Little Richard, The Beatles, Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys and basically anything before 1980 and more importantly, anything awesome. Everyone in the night club was on absolute fire, including our boy Callum. For the quiet type, he absolutely ripped the dance floor apart, and everyone was watching him. A couple girls even started copying his style and if it wasn’t for Lucy, I’m sure they would have all tried to have a piece of him. My moves weren’t so powerful and even my moustache proved to be a failure, but I still had a brilliant night out, arriving back at the hostel at 8:30am.

When I awoke from my pretty awful slumber at 11am, I decided to cook up some toast with avocado and eat two Ice Creams. I think my combination of copious amounts of alcohol, the two Ice Creams and the fact that the bread I used was very very mouldy with a not quite ripe avocado was the reason I spent half an hour throwing my guts up. This was the second time I’d thrown up in Europe, not a bad effort I like to think, but this time it was different. For starters, it hurt, it really hurt. My stomach muscles must have been sore from tearing up the dance floor, and every other muscle that a person uses when throwing up. To make matters worse, the other end was more of a liquid than what was coming out of my throat, but just as much was coming out. I wasn’t in a good mood.

Needless to say, I decided to have an easy day and had a quiet one in the hostel playing Starcraft on my computer.

Our next day consisted of getting on a plane flying to Amsterdam for a week. Lucy had been there, I had been there, but a return trip was definitely not out of the question. Callum was still a fresh traveller and hadn’t been exposed to too much of what is vulgar in the world. To destroy his innocence, we jumped on that plane.

On that note I will leave you again and explain more of our trip to Amsterdam in the next addition.

Bye-bye!!

Oh yes, I've attached a little video for a friend called Spanner. Janine, my pub crawl friend from Edinburgh, decided to educate us in the coolest dance move ever, especially for those who like dinosaurs ;) It's called the Tyrannosaurus Rex.