Madrid!

Hola!

So I've made a return trip to Spain, this time with a little more time on my hands and a little more urge to see more. My previous trip here involved two nights in Barcelona and then heading to France. Our cheapest portal to this tanned country this time around was a flight from London to Madrid, the capital, with a population of 4.4 million.

With a mild case of what we can only think of was food poisoning, Callum, Lucy and myself left London in the very wee hours of the morning. On arrival into Madrid I thought for sure we were going to land smack bang in the middle of backpacker territory and expected Australian's to be everywhere. Our hostel room consisted of two Americans and a French couple. Things were looking good for these smelly Australians. After arriving at the dicey looking hostel at about 10am, we were all ready for a fat sleep after having not slept properly for almost two days. Before we did though, we all needed a big feed to help us sleep. We found a little restaurant-looking thing about 5 minutes from the hostel. We couldn’t understand a thing but all ordered the same 10 Euro meal. We had no idea what was going to come out, but a beer and a two course feast later, we felt like we done pretty well for what we payed. After the first dish which was a big salad with bread, oil and balsamic vinegar, we were pretty content, and just as we were about to pay, a huge bed of chips which covered the plates with a steak which hung over the sides of the plate were shoved in our faces. With this also came a beer each. I feel sorry for the cook, she must have thought we thought her steak was awful, because we could only eat a quarter of the beasts that were on our plates.

After a four-hour power sleep, we all awoke and hit up the city. Something I didn’t really get to experience on my last trip to Spain was tapas. For anyone who’s ever had tapas, they will probably know it’s probably one of the coolest and best ideas to ever have been considered in a bar. For a pretty reasonable price, at each bar there is a list of tapas items. These can include croquets, calamari rings, Spanish omelette, bread with cheese. Instead of eating dinner, you just keep ordering tapas through the night and it’s so satisfying. It’s usually cheap, always delicious and is the perfect amount to keep you satisfied. On some occasions, depending on how you treat your bar staff and how regular you go to the bar, you’ll get tapas for free. Callum and myself managed to get a seafood salad thing and on another occasion, mixed nuts, chips and dried vegies, another occasion we were given the bread and cheese. I love it!

Beer is really, really cheap, especially in the super markets. Depending on how you drink your beer, you could buy it for a Euro a litre. That being said, it’s difficult to find a good one. Luckily for us, Sangria is available. Spain is a really hot country, like really hot. I couldn’t think of a better beverage in the entire world for the kind of heat Spain is subject to. I have no idea why it hasn’t taken off in Australia. I know you can buy it at Cactus Jacks or other Mexican or Spanish restaurants, but it’s no-where near popular enough as it should be. The key to good Sangria is the temperature. It has to be icy cold otherwise the effect is so-so. Although there is no real or correct recipe, Sangria always involves a lot of chopped fruit, ice, chilled red wine and some kind of spirit, usually brandy or rum. Most places also whack in a bit of that Martini Rosso stuff too. I know that red wine doesn’t sound exactly appealing when put in the same sentence as summer and sweating, but this stuff really is brilliant. Any backpacker that has been to Spain will know and probably love the words “Don Simon”. This is the most popular and easily available form of bottled Sangria in Spain. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as good as buying it from a bar, like without the ice and fruit, but it still does the job. It’s also hideously cheap.



Most of our time in Madrid was spent eating tapas, drinking Sangria and just walking around, lapping up the culture. Unlike many capital cities, there were next to no tourists, and those that were not from Madrid, were usually from somewhere else in Spain. It was bloody brilliant.

While I was in Edinburgh, the Bellevue Crescent crew had a Sangria party, and to be in the right setting and mood, I had to shave my beard into a moustache. I felt like a dirty, French porn star rather than a Spaniard, but when we came to Spain, I felt like I fit right in. Because tobacco is so cheap, I even decided to go and buy a cigar, and I felt like a real Spaniard myself.



Prostitution is more than legal in Spain, to the point where it’s almost forced upon you. On every corner were the same girls every day. By the end of our five days in Spain, the girls on our corner would wave to me. Callum and myself would sometimes watch the girls in the morning as they would stand there and affirm ‘their’ position in the street among the other girls. If they were too close to another girl, a war would erupt. Watching the men decide which girl was pretty bizarre and unusual. For about 10 minutes, a man would stand about a metre away from a girl and just look at her. He wouldn’t talk to her, touch her, or do anything except just smile and look at her. Which ever girl he was looking at would usually never say anything to him either. If he decided after 10 minutes that he didn’t like her, he would move to the next girl and stare at her. If he did decided she was the one, he would go up, crack a shitty joke and they would walk away together, he with a massive grin.

Madrid also happens to be pretty much the gay capital of the world. Because gay marriage is legal and homosexuality is so accepted, everyone seems to come here to find their partner. Walking through the streets, it’s far more common to see two people of the same sex holding hands than a hetero relationship, if any at all.



On a late night walk one night, we stumbled across what seemed to be like a concrete park. It was just a massive slab of concrete and everyone would go there after 12 to just sit and drink. Walking around all the people were a couple Asian or Indian men who would be selling cans of beer for a Euro, so you wouldn’t even have to take alcohol there as there was ready supply. On one evening, Callum and myself decided to go there and just have a couple beers to see what all the fuss was about. We must have gone to a different one, because there were no females in the entire slab. All the chaps that were there also seemed to be kissing, hugging, holding hands, or on the prowl for someone to be able to do such things with. Callum went to have a pee in a restaurant somewhere, and within 10 seconds of leaving, a Swedish man was sitting next to me chatting me up. He was friendly, charming, muscular and had blonde hair, but in the end, he was still a man, so unfortunately I had to give it a pass.

And so despite spending a couple days in the capital of Spain, I haven’t the memory of any more stories worth telling. In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed Madrid, but I wouldn’t have any huge reason to have a return visit.

I’ll hold off on the story of our trip to Valencia and the world-famous La Tomatina (Tomato throwing festival) for now, because she’ll be a big one.



Later boyyyyzzz!

There's no place like London

Heeeeeellooo!

Leaving Edinburgh was a rather emotional experience. Living in the flat combined with Contiki, I’d spent almost 4 months with my house mates Anna and Andy. All of a sudden I wasn’t going to see them until God knows. As a final goodbye, we all drank a bottle of white star and hit up the bars in the very busy city. White Star is a “White cider”. It sounds quite fancy when said like that I like to think, but in reality, it costs about five Aussie dollars, is 7.5% and comes in a plastic 2L bottle. Due to it being made entirely of sugar and other nasties, it also makes you extremely hyperactive. In hindsight, it’s brilliant but probably the worst form of alcohol you could ever pump your body full of. From here, Callum, Lucy (friends from home) and myself were to make our way to Spain. To get there, we had to use the cheap portal that is London.


I hate London with a passion, no-one living in London is actually from England. That being said you'll still find plenty of diversity. Walking around you can pick out the Aussie's, Safa‘s, Indians, Americans, Kiwi's, Pakistani's...The list goes on and branches to every nationality and culture except the English. Ahh well, they're kind of annoying anyway.

Anyway, as I was saying, London truly is a hole, and I think I will only ever use it as a base point to go somewhere else due to how cheap and convenient it is to travel from there. People often tell me that I don’t like it simply because I don’t know where the good bits are and I haven’t spent enough time there. I’m quite happy for it to stay that way. If it's good for one more thing, London always has a large supply of good music around. This includes one of the best bands around at the moment, Tame Impala. Anyone that knows myself or Callum will know how important Tame Impala are to us. Every time I've ever seen Tame Impala, the audience has been huge, as with the stage, and I've always been blocked off to getting close to them by a huge fence. This time though, the stage was pretty small and you could touch them if you were at the front. Although it was a sold out show, the audience was still significantly smaller than what I am used to and were all crammed into a tiny room, which gave it a much more underground and intimate feel. I felt like I was part of the audience for The Beatles in the Cavern Club when they began to make it big. All in all, the show was outstanding, and although I'm pretty sure they were all high as a kite, they delivered a fantastic set and due to their new album being released not long ago, they played a lot of refreshing new songs which I've been dying to hear live.


After the show though, that was more of a highlight. It's not often many people in their lives will come face to face with their heroes. We’ve met the singer Kevin and the drummer Jay before at a performance in Townsville. I even managed to meet Jay while he was browsing the vinyls in a record shop in Fremantle. Both of these experiences blew my mind out of the park, but this experience was like no other. Before they even got on the stage, the bass player Nick stood right next to me and was bopping slightly to the music. I froze, freaked out, almost wet my pants and didn’t know what to do. Just as the first band finished, I gulped down my star-struck daze and tried to talk to him. Unlike the other two who were just normal chaps who enjoyed the odd yarn, Nick was a bizarre character who couldn’t stay on one topic for more than a minute. Despite this, he was still incredibly friendly and talking to him took away some of the mystique you saw on the stage, but it still made our opinion on the band 20 times better.


After the show, we only had one band member left on the list to check off. Dom plays a different instrument every time we see the band play and he never shows expression or even his face sometimes. To me, this makes him the most mysterious and most intriguing to meet. The entire band came out to have a few beers with the audience after the show, and sure enough he joined them after a while. A group of girls flooded him and for 30 minutes we had to simply watch and hope he didn’t go off with them. After what seemed to be a painful eternity, the girls finally left him alone with Jay and we moved in for the kill. After asking for a quick photo, he seemed more than eager to have a chat with us and was most curious to find out what they sounded like from our perspective. Dom was quiet and seemed to enjoy the low profile, so needless to say, he got on like a house on fire with Callum. To cut a long story short it was an awesome night out and the chaps were outrageously cool.



The next day consisted of looking for something to do while we waited for our plane. My old drama teacher from 10 years ago just happened to be living in London and since Lucy and her where rather good friends, we met up with her. On my last visit to Arminelle, I had short hair, was about 130cms tall, had big red lips and didn’t say peep. She was a little taken back this time around.

We all decided to grab some cheap chinese take-away and took a seat in a park with a couple beers. Just as we’d finished our food, some police officers turned up. Sitting in the park were the four of us and a couple pigeons. Apparently the officers could smell cannabis and OBVIOUSLY it was coming from us because I have dreadlocks and they couldn‘t see anyone else in the park. After questioning us (“So if I check that bag, I won’t find anything? Are you sure?”) for about 20 minutes, they decided to let us go without even searching us. Bloody idiots. To make the whole situation even more bizarre, it’s still illegal to drink in public in the UK, and all four of us were drinking beer, but they decided to turn a blind eye on it because we “seemed like nice people”.

Later in the evening, we jumped on bus to the airport, slept in the airport until 5am and then caught our Boeing-737 all the way across the water to the Spanish capital, Madrid.

More details of the trip to Spain in the next couple days!!

Secret Garden Party

Hey pal!!

The Scottish love the word pal. Instead of saying "She'll be right", it's "Nae bother pal". This isn't the reason why I decided to live back in Edinburgh for three months after my Contiki trip. Of all the places in Britain that I visited, Edinburgh was the place I could have pictured myself living. To cut a very very long story short, my plan was to get a job, a bank account and a house that I could share with Andy and Anna. Finding a house was easy enough, Andy knew a person with a house up for rent. Check. A bank account? Every bank told us we need a job. Time to find a job! That didn't happen. I am confident in saying that I applied for over 100 jobs in my time in Edinburgh. My only success were two interviews, both of which never called me back. For those who don't know, there is a month long festival held in August in Edinburgh called the Fringe Festival which is host to food, drinks, plays, musicals, comedians, street performers and most importantly, music. As soon as the festival started, jobs were popping up like mushrooms. The only requirement? You have to work until the end of the festival. On the last Wednesday of August every year, the Spanish tomato throwing festival 'La Tomatina' is on. On my relatively short check-list of things to do in Europe is La Tomatina, so I gave up searching for work and made the most of my little break in Edinburgh before hitting the road again. That is the short version.

I should also mention that I lived in a hostel for about a month while in Edinburgh, and between the move from the hostel to the house, I managed to leave The Moocher behind. She’s gone. I had her sitting on a window sill, and if I could be happy about anything, it was the situations she could have ended up in. If a gust of wind came, perhaps she could have fallen off the window into the street below and hit someone in the face. Maybe it would brighten up their day. How many of you have walked the street and been hit in the face by a rubber vagina?

Since I had no commitments and didn't have to be anywhere or answer to anyone for the duration of my time in Edinburgh, I was free to look at other festivals held around the UK. One festival we found was called the Secret Garden Party. With a name like that, how could you go wrong? You can't! The festival was bloody brilliant and by deciding to join Anna, this was one of my best decisions I've made. This is the story:

We'd managed to find a rideshare lift straight to the festival, rather than catching a 9 hour urine-smelling bus to London, than having to catch an hour long train to Huntingdon where it was held. Her name was Jo and she was from Glasgow. We had to catch a 45 minute bus out of Edinburgh to meet her. We made it there ahead of schedule and therefore sat down for a wee beer at one of the local bars. Before we knew it, she'd emerged from one of the bars holding a half-pint of Carlsberg. She looked normal enough and she was easy to understand unlike many Scottish country folk. She had to pee but told us that her van was around the corner and we could have a look and see if we liked it. While she was gone, I had myself a squiz around the corner to see nothing but an old ambulance van. I joked to Anna saying "Hahaha, there is only an ambulance, imagine if that was hers. I'd eat a cupboard in delight if it was".



There was no cupboard eating, but the van was definitely hers. She put me in the back and it was decked out complete with speakers, stretchers and sirens. Before I could comprehend what was happening, we were hurtling along the highway and on our way. After a good 6 hours on the road, we got out in a smashing little university city called Cambridge. The entire city is pretty much owned by the university. Young people frolicked in the parks, the bars, the shopping centres and most importantly, the university grounds. I loved Cambridge. It was full of life.





Jo pulled us out at her friends recording studio where there was a band rehearsing. They welcomed us in to their jam, and although it sounded pretty bloody awful (The band consisted of a drummer, two rappers and a keyboard player who's keyboard didn't actually plug into anything. Apart from the drummers and rappers, the entire ensemble was pre-recorded) but the gesture was nice. The chaps themselves were friendly enough and for accommodation, we slept in one of his studio rooms. My face was next to a drum kit as if to tease me that I haven't played mine for almost 9 months now. I almost couldn't get to sleep due to my urge to sit on them and start thrashing away.

Anna and myself spent the next day self-guiding ourselves around the city. We found big universities, little universities, heaps of Spanish and American youths, a mini Venice and most importantly, a movie cinema. Toy Story 3. What a success that was. Although I'm still not convinced that 3D is as good as they say, the movie itself was brilliant. I was terrified of what the outcome could have been due to the fact that it's prequel was made 10 years ago and this was a different director. It was bloody hilarious, and even though most of the characters were replaced with new one's, they kept all the good one's.

After buying some food and alcohol for the week, we were all ready for 4 days of camping. Until this point, Jo was normal enough...sort of. This paragraph can be dedicated to her. If Anna is reading this, I bet she's looking forward to this bit. While buying our stuff from TESCO, Jo called and told us to just give her a ring when we were ready to be picked up. I told her that we were shopping for our food and alcohol and we would be finished soon. When I rang her 10 minutes later and told her we were ready, she told us that she couldn’t pick us up because she was having a nap. That left us in the middle of Cambridge city until when-ever Jo decided that she slept up enough to come and get us. Our sunlight was rapidly diminishing and we had no idea how to get back to the recording studio. With no jumpers or jeans, we were getting bloody cold and bloody annoyed. About 30 minutes later, Jo sent us a text telling us to go to some bar and she’ll meet us there some time that evening. Upon asking where the bar was, she informed us that she had no idea where it was and that she might not even make it. Picking up all our groceries and alcohol for a week (To go and sit in a bar), we started walking, in a direction which we hoped was the correct one. Our shopping bags were heavy and we were tired, it wasn’t a pleasant situation. When we finally met up with her later (She rang us and decided to take us to her van rather than the bar) she told us how much we owed her for fuel. Before we started the trip, she failed to mention that her ambulance was a bloody diesel that chewed through the fuel like pouring water through a strainer. We owed her 30 pounds each (The bus to London was 14 pound) and we had already spent six pounds on a bus get to where she was. After buying some new speakers, disco balls, lights and transformer, she then told us that the fuel in her ambulance would be providing the power for all these things, and that the engine would be going every night at the festival. I guess we were supposed to pay for that too.

I’ll stop there because I’m just having a bitch. In the end, she turned out to be a person with two ego’s. One second she’d be really nice and charming, the other, she’d be hostile and say snide, sarcastic remarks and telling us that we’re stupid. I can’t express my frustration or experience with Jo in words that won’t offend.

After throwing us out of the van at the front gate and taking off, it was up to Anna and myself to find our own way in. On the Secret Garden Party website in big bold letters were the words “Only one bottle of wine and 4 cans of beer or cider allowed per person or 8 cans of beer and cider per person”. Needless to say, they expected everyone to disgrace this rule and try and sneak in more alcohol so they would have to pay the hideous prices for beer in the festival itself. Therefore, at the entrance were five security guards searching through the bags of 70,000 people. When I say searching through the bags, I mean that a sniffer dog would go past the bag, all the contents emptied to check for too much alcohol and dangerous items (A Swiss Army knife is a dangerous item…How the hell do I cut up my food!? We’re camping you bloody fools!). Because of the extreme precautions, this meant it took us 3 hours standing in a line, in the sun, with our bags to get from the back of the line to the entrance. I heard worse stories of up to 5 hours waiting. Thank Christ it wasn’t us.

Due to our filthy backpacker status, we decided to try and smuggle in a very large bottle of 10 pound vodka in case the situation arose where we would need it, on top of our 8 cans each of 8.6% cider. I think we were set without the vodka, but it added a little excitement to our waiting in the line. When we finally arrived at the searching zone, I thought it was all over for us, the bastard was pulling everything out of the bags and was confiscating knives, forks, and anything that could stab. I swiftly shifted my Swiss Army knife to a most uncomfortable place to keep a knife, my jocks. Taking one look at our bags and my Australian flag, the chap simply said “You guys are over here for a year, I am not going through those bags, have a good festival”. After shoving our tickets in the ticket-lady’s face, we were through, knives, vodka and all!



Anna had bought a two-man tent back in Edinburgh for about 18 Aussie bucks. Knowing the UK’s reputation for crappy rainy weather, the words “Suitable for light showers” concerned me, but we whacked her up anyway. After 3 minutes of setting it up, we thought maybe we’d been jibbed, and maybe some of it was missing, but on closer inspection, the tent that we set up was just the way it was supposed to be. If I was sitting on the ground, my head touched the roof. If we like side by side with shoulders touching, we would kind of fit. Being only 175cms tall, I’m not a massive chap, but unless my knees were bent, I did not fit. The two of us squeezed ourselves in uncomfortably, only to realise that our bags and groceries were still outside. How the hell were we going to do this I asking myself. Spooning my big backpack and using my little one as a pillow with our groceries dispersed between us, it was all good. As there was no fly for the tent, we couldn’t just throw them outside unfortunately.


Now, the festival itself on the other hand was outstanding. Music was everywhere, and as we didn’t get a chance to buy anything awesome to wear, we were pretty much the only one’s not wearing something outrageous. This was my kind of place. It seemed that we were the only people from the Southern Hemisphere - Even better!


With about 15 stages, all with a different styles of music or acts, we were definitely in our glory. One stage was an old pirate ship that was built around the trees, so they were essentially playing from the trees.

We found what we thought was just a pile of sticks, but on closer inspection was a little cubby house made of sticks. When we had a look inside, on each wall of the house was an out-of-tune harp each with a couple strings missing.



Further along, there was a piano sitting on the side of the road for anyone to play. Sometimes smoke would erupt from the organ pipes sticking out of it.


In the middle of the festival was a massive lake that filthy hippies sometimes jumped into to cover their dreads in a bit more grime. In the middle of the lake was a massive blimp that they had made. It was another stage where they were playing dance music. You jumped on a boat and paddled out to the blimp and rocked out.

I also saw a little crappy boat made from barrels and wood. On this little crappy boat was a band, drum kit and all. I wanted to paddle out and join them, but there was far too much more to see.

I could go on forever about what I saw, but telling stories serves it no awesomeness.


There were three Australian artists that played (That we knew of) and we managed to see all of them. On the Grand Stage was Sarah Blasko. She had a great set, and it was interesting to see her in a setting where no-one had even heard of her. Her keyboard player looked like Dan Auerbach with a filthy big beard and long dirty hair. He’d be close to my idol and I definitely had a man-crush. The chap sitting next to us looked about 40 and had long balding hair and every time I saw him over the festival, all he was wearing were a tight pair of black Speedo’s. He was another one of my idols over the week. I don’t think I managed to get a picture of him unfortunately.


Our next Australian musician was a fella called Matt Gresham. I’d never heard of him before, but he smashed it and I everyone thought he was bloody brilliant. He was from Perth and was an absolute champion. We saw him by chance at an open mic night which we decided to go along and have a look at. He only played 3 songs, and after his set he came out and sat in the audience. He was ecstatic when I went and talked to him. On the following night, he had a full set at the same venue, and so we made ourselves a date for the second time at the festival.



On the next night, he blew the roof off and everyone in the tent was up and dancing and I’d dare say he sold a few albums that night.

Finally, Lisa Mitchell was the last Australian on our list to see. In Anna’s words, before making it big time, Lisa would have been sitting in her room by herself with a crappy busted-ass guitar making songs. Now that she’s known Australia-wide and has some popularity, she needs to have a different guitar for every bloody song she plays. She was given 1 hour and a half to rock the house, as opposed to the standard 45 minutes that every other bastard was allowed. When one of her 20 acoustic guitars wasn’t working, she spent 1 hour and 15 minutes getting pissed off at the tech crew for not fixing it rather than just picking another one up. Therefore she only had time to play three songs. Each of those were really good, but that only heightened my anger, because she could have blown me away with all of her other tunes.




As a massive finale, on the last night there was a massive fire works display. This wasn’t any old fireworks display though. Before anything happened, there would have had to be at least 5,000 of those floating lantern things that were let go into the sky. Once they were all gone, the massive blimp in the middle on the lake was lit on fire and blown up. Out of the blimp came the fire works and all sorts of colour displays and fire. After the fire show at Woodford I saw on New Years 2009-2010, it was one of the biggest displays I’d seen.

After our previous experiences and those at the festival, we decided to not use her services for the trip. We caught a train to London, then a bus back to Edinburgh.

Another month down the line, Callum, an old friend from Townsville and his girlfriend Lucy came and visited and before long, we were on the road again and off to Spain.

All will be covered in the next edition of Eurotrip - Featuring The Heff.

Oh yeah, I've decided to add a few additional pictures of my time in Edinburgh. There are stories to them all, but maybe some of them are best left between those in the pictures.

Among other things, Anna found this cape in a cupboard when we moved in.

We built a fort made from some bubble wrap and cardboard on our couch. It last a good 3 weeks before we took it down.

Every time I went out with Andy, he insisted that we take off our shirts. Every bloody time!!

These are my gorgeous house-mates from the Bellevue Crescent flat in Edinburgh. Many fun times were had.

A massive hill in the middle of Edinburgh called Arthur's Seat.

The views are incredible.

So, we went out and bought a few banana suits. There'd have to be at least 1000 pictures of us out there.

Make that 2000 pictures.