How Did I Get Here?: Melbourne, Part Two.

The answer: by standing in line for more than an hour at customs in Melbourne Airport, to show them the showbag of goodies purchased for $US50 with a gift voucher from the Singapore Airlines duty-free in-flight store, given to me as an apology for having had a stewardess spill coffee on my shirt.

And so I am here, and I am safe and well. Which is rather good, considering the rather harrowing mid-section of my journey.

And so my travels have ended, perhaps sadly, but with a triumphant return to a real life sorely missed.

And so begins so much more, the likes of which I have yet to even discover.

And...

Well...

... and so ends this blog. But so begins actual conversations, and real people, and, once again, us.

No blonde, nordic girls.

Just us.

At Changi Airport, part 2.

In fact, pasta and beer and television gave way to a vegetarian lasagne and vanilla rooibos tea at a cafe in Frankfurt. And not just any cafe - this cafe was also part nightclub and part cocktail bar, just next to the U-Bahn station along the city loop. I was quite hungry on my walk back to the hotel, and decided any food would do. Particularly German food, which has the advantage of being both cheaper and far more plentiful than its French equivalent. I was greeted by music at just the right volume; candles, easily replaced when one was actually sneezed into inexistence; waitresses who understood when a weekend of forced habit caused me to accidentally speak French to them instead of German; and vanilla tea with real leaves, infused into a jug to be poured into a rather nice glass.

All of this soon gave way to my hotel room, and sleep. This was rudely ended early in the morning, whereupon it was replaced with breakfast, a U-Bahn, an S-Bahn, and then the half-destroyed Frankfurt Flughaven, amidst all its renovations. Before long, I was on a plane, facing many film choices, bizarre vegetarian cuisine (hash browns and pasta for breakfast?), and friendly German neighbours. And now, a considerably shorter wait at Changi Airport.

And soon, Melbourne, where the Erica and the Ben portions of this blog will converge once more.

And no, Justin, I won't be in the state, although thanks for the invitation. I'll call you tonight to explain.

Voila la France.

Most of the time I spent in France was in the small city of Orléans, a one
hour train ride south of Paris, with my friend Claire and her family. These people were immensely hospitable, offerring me a room, much food, gifts, and a day in their car, driving through the centre of France to see the chateaux of the Vallée de Loire. After weeks of crowded auberges and isolated hotels, this was quite a change of pace. I also spent two days in Paris - one before Orléans, alone, and one Sunday with Claire. The following are things I have discovered about les Francais.

1. They are fond of stairs. And not at all fond of escalators. Paris is accessible mostly by the métro, which is not only underground, but anywhere up/down to three levels underneath street level. Only one métro station that I saw had escalators. Also, at one Parisian cinema, I had to descend three narrow flights of stairs to get from the cassé to the salle.

2. They are fond of train stations. There are about five in the city of Paris alone, and the train routes are dispersed between them. This means that if you want to get from Orléans to Köln, as I did today, you have to get off an SNCF train at Gare D'Austerlitz, and then catch two métros, with all your luggage, to Gare Du Nord. This journey is conducted in an entirely subterranean manner, thus relieving you of the joy of seeing Paris. It is also, save for one stop, conducted
entirely with the use of stairs.

3. They are fond of monuments. But these are, surprisingly, not at all pretentious. No, seriously: they just seem to be there, without any real pompousness about them. The Eiffel Tower is really just a very large, artistic version of the Mall's Balls.

4. They are, contrary to expectations, not fond of rudeness. My experience could be exceptional to the norm, because I speak French, and because I spent one of my two days in Paris with une vraie Francaise. But most of the people I came across were extremely nice. There are always exceptions, however, and mine takes place at a small café in Montmartre (think Amélie Poulain), where our serveuse was practically at the point of splitting in half when dealing with a table of quite reasonable Italian tourists. Is it too much of a problem to replace the dessert of a fixed menu with coffee, especially when the coffee costs less than the desserts? I would think not. But by the time the dispute ended, the Italians were threatening to call the police, and the waitress was yelling, and snatched the bill out of their hands so that they could have no evidence to take with them. For our part, we were not enthused with the two hours it took to bring our three courses, nor was I enthused about the state of my hot-and-cold (i.e. semi-frozen) dessert. Being vegetarian, I was forced to have two entrées instead of an entrée and a plat de viande. I decided against asking to have this on a menu, and thus paid twice as much as I should have.

Oh, and a warning to prospective travellers on Eurail passes - if you want to catch the Thalys trains, be prepared.

I am now sitting at an Internet café in Frankfurt, waiting for my clothes to finish at a laundromat. When they dry, I will return to my Zimmer, to watch German TV with takeaway pasta and a bottle of beer. Tomorrow morning, it's Frankfurt Flughaven.

And Wednesday evening, I arrive in Melbourne.

The Shortest Blog Ever.

I don't have time to blog about Paris. I will do this, most likely, from Orléans. I do, however, have time to tell you that I walked into an Internet café to check my e-mail and get a phone number. Right now, on the radio: Split Enz's History Never Repeats. On the Boulevard St Michel, in Paris!

Neil Finn, you are a hero.

But here we sit, debating math.

It is 12.15am. I am standing in the corner of the lobby of the Teaterhotellet, my hotel in Malmö. I have just come back from the second time Low has changed my life.

Eschewing previous Scandinavian form, this time there was a support band. It came in the form of all-girl quartet Audrey, who were utterly amazing, and whose CD is now safely located in my bag. I sincerely hope Australia discovers them soon, even if just to confuse all those people who will immediately think they are in fact The Audreys, and expect violins and rollicking folk music instead of cellos and deep shoegazing goodness.

However, it was Low who changed my life. Again. Little Argument With Myself, the clear highlight, was spellbinding. I was entranced, again, by the guitar blowout of Breaker. And when Alan Sparhawk called out to the crowd for any other songs we might want them to play, he ignored the impassioned cries for Lullabye, and instead played my lone front-row request of Sunflowers.

He also asked whether we had any problems they could solve. In true Swedish fashion, the problem was political. Who should we vote for out of the democrats for the next US election?

Alan and Mimi, perplexed, both questioned why a Swede would ask such a question. But then from the back came a subsequent question so brilliant, and so cutting, I could but wish I had been its genial source.

What about Mitt Romney?

For the uninitiated, Mitt Romney is one of the leading Republican candidates for the 2008 election. He is also a mormon. Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker are full-time, travelling musicians, whose songs often carry peaceful, anti-war overtones. They are, also, mormons.

Sparhawk's cryptic response: 'I don't think the world can trust us.'

Malmö

Malmö is so much nicer than Stockholm.

No, seriously.

I think I might go and do a trip around Europe visiting only the non-capital cities. Stockholm was stuffy, its library was arse, its old town was near-satirical, and its food was rather crap. In contrast, Malmö is small, but its library is Oslo-esque in its brilliance (without the scores of screaming children). Its food is excellent: the little square (lilla torg) is lively even when midnight approaches, and today I have found a vegan café lunch, and one of those Chinese places that sells soy versions of meat dishes (which will be tonight's dinner). Everything is walking distance, including a beach for those so inclined. Alright, so it's all still at unfortunate Sweden prices. But being an Adelaide boy, it's a nice change to be somewhere modern, but still delightfully small.

So to the guy at the Deerhoof gig who laughed when I said I would be returning to Sweden, to visit Malmö, I say this: Malmö is awesome, and you are not.

First Class!

The train from Berlin to Hamburg arrived thirty minutes late. Being an InterCityExpress train, I was considering the possibility of its 300km/h speeds making up the shortfall in no time. I was to be sorely disappointed, considering we somehow managed to arrive in Hamburg no less than 50 minutes late. I sat with my gemusenudeln, and read Mark Twain for 90 minutes until I was able to catch the late connecting train.

When I boarded the EuroCity train from Hamburg to Kobenhavn, I noticed that all the seats were huge, each with its own full-sized table. I thought I might be in first class, or at least in the reserved section. I walked the entire length of the train looking for something dingier, but alas, it all looked rather egalitarian. I asked the blonde-haired guy next to me whether the seat I had stumbled upon was reserved. He said no, and that he was intending to take the aisle seat. It was five minutes later that he told me that, in the course of my travels, I had in fact stumbled upon first class.

The difference? Nothing at all, at that point.

The German conductor began to check our tickets. I was sure I would be discovered. Fear crept upon me, but I kept my cool. I showed him my second-class Eurail Pass, and admitted, 'I might have gotten this wrong. Can you help me?' He told me,

'You need to have a reservation to be on this train. It will cost you €5,50.'

So, with less than $AUD10, I was bumped into first class. This meant nothing, of course. Until we were offerred free coffee in special DSB' 1 mugs, and special DSB' 1 bottles of spring water.

My companion was a Berliner named Michael. Despite being a student of art history and literature, he comes from a first class family. Apparently, he grew up with the understanding that travelling first class separated him from the common people. When I asked, he even admitted to flying business class. I then had the nouse to ask what would happen when he finishes university, and becomes the lowly-paid curator of an art gallery or museum. His response:

'Well, I hope the family money keeps going for at least another generation.'

He left just before we entered the ferry, which takes the train across the Nordic Sea into Denmark. At this point the Danish conductor entered the train. He took one look at my Eurail pass, and pointed me in the direction of second class, to an equally-comfortable seat ten metres away, with splendid ocean views. Sure, it was just as nice - but he made sure I was as far away from the free coffee as possible.

The Wall.

The Berlin Wall. One large slice of history, composed of brick and concrete. Although once it separated east from west, now it serves only to separate the train line from the river. Along its pathway can be found many strange distractions, such as Yamm, a café which is also a skate ramp and basketball court. There is also a rather uppety restaurant, along with, of course, a souvenir shop. In fact, the souvenir shop offers, of all things, fake DDR passport stamps, which they will add to your travel documents for the princely sum of €1.

The Wall itself has been reconstructed, and some time ago young painters were asked to adorn its eastern side with their designs. These remain, and some are quite impressive, however over the years passers-by have decided en masse to offer their own additions. These range from impassioned pleas to Legalise It!, to diatribes about tourist culture, to serious reflections on the proposed wall between Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

I walked the entire length of the wall, reading these thousands of plebian contributions. And really, I just couldn't help myself.

Europe. In Miniature.

The moment I walked in to Bruxelles' Mini-Europe, I was offerred the hand of a man in a strange animal costume. Sure, this animal is well known continent-wide as the friendly, reassuring mascot of the burgeoning, expanding European Union. But can anybody, somebody, please tell me what on Earth it is actually supposed to be?



The man - or the animal, depending on how far you want to take it - shook my hand, but instead of politely letting go and allowing me to walk on, he dragged my hand to the local foliage to force me into a photographic pose. Another strange young man stood with a camera at the ready, and abruptly captured an image of me and the man/beast before I had a chance to run. I was told that I could pick up the photo at the end of my visit. I was not told that collecting the photo would attract a €6 charge, on top of the (discounted) €11.20 charge to get into Mini-Europe in the first place. And all this just to see well-moulded miniature models of European cities in the middle of Bruparck, a Belgian theme park also including a massive cinema and Oceade, the distinctly unimpressive waterslide.

I was told to visit Mini-Europe by Pat, the middle-aged Irish hotelier who sat beside me on the train from München to Bruxelles. He owns a three-star hotel in Köln, and is married to a woman who comes from the family responsible for Eau de Cologne. He also told me to try rucola while in Germany, which will be my dinner for tomorrow.

Which brings me to tonight - I am writing this post from the Easy Internet Cafe in Berlin, which will house me for the next 30 hours or so. Would you believe that the only Internet Café on the Kurfürsterdamm is, in fact, above a Dunkin' Donuts?

In case you're wondering, I didn't pay my extra €6 for the photo. I took my camera and took a photo of the photo, before a man whisked the original photo away from my grasp.

Holiday In Bavaria: part zwei.

People are getting that joke, right?

For my last night in München, I dined at the Hofbräuhaus. For the uninitiated, this is the Bavarian hall, the perpetual bastion of Bavarianness in a city otherwise occupied by Turkish immigrants, sex shops and the Olympic stadium. And the Allianz Arena, the football stadium which actually looks like a large, multi-coloured tyre. In any case, for people wishing to see a parody of Bavaria in Bavaria itself, the Hofbräuhaus is the place to be. Although you could easily just go to Hahndorf, it's really not the same thing, is it?

Hofbräu is the grand old Bavarian beer, and the Hofbräuhaus is its dining hall celebration. Every table is incomplete without a stein of Hofbräu, which will set you back as much geld as your meal. It will be served by waiters in lederhosen, and waitresses in fetching Bavarian overalls. You will eat while accompanied by a horn-and-wind band, also lederhosen-clad, which marches from one table to another to play famous German waltzes to a captive, clapping audience. In true German style, the one meal advertised as Vegetarisch was unavailable, but thankfully I was able to get bread dumplings in a mushroom and cheese soup. Yep, that was dinner.

Although the hall is enormous, the popularity of it is such that I had to share my table with a middle-aged couple from Hannover. They spoke neither English nor French, which meant that my conversation with them tested my German to its limits. I still don't know what wissenschaft means. I should look that up at some point.

Incidentally, the large hall of the Hofbräuhaus was the site of the first mass meeting of the Nazi Party, after Hitler took over and renamed it from the German Workers Party. When he arrived in München from Vienna, he made a living selling hand-painted postcards to tourists. That's Bavarian history for you, the kind not advertised as you enter.

So that was my last night in Bavaria. In a matter of hours I'll be on a train to Bruxelles.

And for those of you enquiring as to the state of my health, I'm actually quite alright. I even have a doctor's word on that, who sent me home with nothing more than a topical cream and a letter telling Singapore Airlines that I was fit to fly. However, I am still covered from head to toe in red marks, and will confine myself to single rooms for the time being. Although I intend to see quite a bit more of Europe before the 14th, I'm still absolutely delighted - nay, ecstatic - to be coming home.

Fourteen Days.

Congratulations, everyone. We have gotten through the month of July, and as our reward we are all being presented with the month of August. This means, among many things, that I have now been out of Australia for an entire month. It actually feels like about four years.

Thanks to the wonderful people at Singapore Airlines, the earliest flight for which I can be confirmed departs on the 14th of August. This is, so my totally amazing mathematics has deduced, fourteen days from now. Exactly what my spotty body will be doing for fourteen days is somewhat beyond me, but it will be staying here for a while, and then happening upon Sweden where it will see Low. It might then end up in Berlin for a while, before catching a plane from Frankfurt.

I have also, apparently, been 'waitlisted' for a flight on Friday.

Incidentally, the area just south of the München Hauptbahnhof (train station) is completely comprised of only the following things: hotels (mine included), sex shops (many), Internet and Discount Call Centers, and döner kebap shops. Exactly how a döner kebap differs from any other kind of kebap I have yet to establish, however it does show that I am located in the heart of the Turkish quarter of München. Germany is quite well known for its large Turkish immigrant population, and last night I decided I would dine on its ethnocultural specialties. This didn't work out as best it could.

For starters, what I really wanted was something resembling Koshari from the Jerusalem Shishkebab House back home. This is basically lentils and rice, with a garnish of cucumber and yoghurt. Instead, every single kebap shop offers little more than a bunch of vegetables and some rice. (When it doesn't involve meat grilled four ways, and then fried, and then grilled again. In Turkish gravy.) Also, all of the restaurants have the same menu, and many even have the same pictures. It's like I stepped into an ethnocultural twilight zone featuring streets lined with Turkish McDonalds'.

I eventually settled at a restaurant where the waitress and I couldn't communicate in each other's languages, but settled on the universal language of romance. I should call this French, because it was one of the most completely unromantic conversations I've ever had. It did involve me being told where to put my tray, and being served, so I could then pay. My rice was littered with lentils, but my 'vegetables' were really grilled eggplant in some kind of gravy, slopped on the side of the plate by a surly Turkish guy with a six o'clock shadow.

I then asked for Türkisherkaffee, hoping to experience Turkish Coffee made by real Turkish people! I was actually hoping for a recreation of the singular glory of Jerusalem Coffee from the Shishkebab House. Erica tells me this singular glory is called 'cardamom', but I like to think of it as singular glory nonetheless. Instead, my Turkish Coffee was a ridiculously thick caffeinated substance with seemingly no added spice at all.

And then I walked home. Fourteen days to go.

I Expect You All To Complain.

I'm feeling a little better today. No longer do I feel the need to sleep all afternoon. I actually felt hungry, before I actually ate lunch. I don't want to actually walk around and discover Munich - partially because I don't want to fall ill again, and partially because I still look like a freak. I'm spending all this money on a proper hotel room precisely so I can confine myself to it. So today I'm simply bored. But within days the sores will fade, the scars will heal and I'll be a normal person again.

So here's the thing. Five nights ago I nearly fainted during an Air concert, before lying awake with back spasms. I nearly fainted again the next day, in line for tickets at the train station. I had to travel from Vienna to Munich (where I actually had accommodation booked) by not one, but four separate trains, while barely being awake enough to show the Polizei my passport. I then had to walk to my hotel with all of my things; check-in, looking freakish; then ask for a taxi to the hospital. My first taxi driver refused to take me to emergency, worried that I might be contagious (he told me to call an ambulance... for chickenpox!) He ejected me outside a random hotel, and I had to haul myself inside, shivering, to ask for another taxi driver. This one finally obliged, where I finally got treatment. By this time, I was sheathed in sweat, I had a temperature of nearly 40 degrees, and I could have passed out at any moment.

In a few days, I will be completely healthy again. However, the doctor did take pains to point out that no less than 20 per cent of adults who get chickenpox are offered free pneumonia upon each recovery. (Seriously, this is real.) And after this week - and hell, after everything over the last month - I don't want to tempt those frightening odds. The only thing I want to do is catch a plane back home.

And despite any of my original plans, that is what I intend to do.

Complaints?

Holiday In Bavaria.

Where I'll do what I'm told. (Doctor's orders, after all!)

I just thought I'd let everyone know that I'm feeling a little better. I slept pretty much the entire day yesterday, save for watching CNN specials on the many ways in which products made in China are shit and will kill you. My sores are no longer particularly itchy, and are healing (slowly), so the calamine lotion is unnecessary anyway!

And yes, Henry's mother, I do have travel insurance. Otherwise the €200 hospital cost would have worried me greatly, as would all the other associated costs which are bound to arise. Actually, my travel insurance documents were the only thing I had with me which had my full address for identification at the hospital.

Who am I kidding? This is still not cool. Oh, well. Back to more old, poorly dubbed episodes of My Family on the German Comedy Channel (where everything is poorly dubbed). Or maybe MTV, whose early morning filmclip show is called 'Let's Play Some Fucking Hits', with those words scrolling constantly across the screen. And, if you like, here's one such Fucking Hit:

A Health Update.

At first I thought it was some kind of intense skin irritation. Then it seemed like it might be dreaded bed-bugs, a thought which put me into a fit of exterminate them! around my room. But no, it was when I realised that I had quite a bad fever that it occurred to me that I had...

Chickenpox.

Yep, I never got them as a kid. Everyone in my year three class got it eventually one winter, while I stayed as healthy as... a healthy person. But at the age of 23, in Vienna, I got chickenpox. On the scale of things that are not cool, this is up there with the best of them.

Especially since yesterday I had booked a train and a hotel in Munich.

So I spent all day on a series of trains which were either delayed, connected to buses (not cool with chickenpox), going back to where they came from to connect to another train, or just delayed again, until finally I got to Munich. I then asked to get a taxi to the nearest hospital to see a doctor, which happened to be the University Hospital, where I was treated immediately and four two and a half hours by three doctors! I was given a saline drip, blood tests, thermometer (39.9 degrees celsius) and blood pressure. I was also given (through the drip) medication for my fever, which cooled me down immensely and took more than half an hour of lying there falling asleep to do so. Each of the doctors treated me as some kind of excellent case study, before telling me that there wasn't much they could do, and I needed to rest for seven days.

So now I'm resting in another single room, in Munich, for seven days.

And I look like a swollen leper.

Zum Café Sacher

I'm not sure what I expected from the Café Sacher. I was made aware of it only by the guidebook of fellow travellers whom I met on the train from Prague to Vienna, whereupon I was informed that it was the original home of Sachertort, the best chocolate cake in the world. It was too good to refuse. I spend roughly five times more on my cake and coffee than I did on my dinner (two pieces of excellent mushroom pizza from a street vendor on Mariahilferstraße), but how could I possibly resist?

The Café Sacher is to chocolate cake what the Waldorf Astoria is to salad. By which I mean, it's one small part of a huge upmarket hotel, where the waiters wear tuxedos and treat their guests like superstars. The prices were comparatively reasonable, considering. I entered with a swift but friendly 'Guten Morgen', and though originally the waiter wanted to help me out in English, he quickly realised that my German was good enough to test. So I had my entire conversation with him in German, which made me feel all the better.

Although the room was practically empty, I was directed to the second table on the left. Why? I don't know. I ordered Sachertort and Sacherkaffee, the former being a chocolate cake with a slightly tart aftertaste for which the slogan 'best in the world' is clearly a marketing ploy, the latter being excellently mixed with both cream and chocolate liqueur. As is the Viennese fashion, I then sat for half an hour reading a book and enjoying my surroundings, before leaving with a heartfelt goodbye and a long, slow walk home.

The storm came at 3am this morning. I know this because I was awake. My back was so sore it was prone to spasm, and some random country's healthy insect population has covered me in deep, red swollen bites from the tip of my scalp to the heels of my feet. The antihistamine tablets I bought this morning for the latter are not doing enough, but the back's slowly improving. Any suggestions?

The Free Market.

I arrived in Vienna at 6pm on Saturday to a single room and a sore back. I also arrived to a series of brochures about the town, and an amazingly comprehensive, but also completely illegible map. One of the brochures contained information about Vienna's open air arena, with the addition of Air, 22.7. That's right... Air was coming the same time as I!

I quickly ran to a local Internet to café to find that it had sold out.

So thank heavens for my trip-shortening cash fund, and the free market. It took me two minutes to find the right tram; fifteen to twenty minutes to find the venue from the tram; and approximately ten seconds to find clever, English-speaking scalpers with directions to Automatic Teller Machines. What's best is that, because of Europe's ridiculously cheap ticket prices, paying double meant I only paid slightly more than I would have had they played in Adelaide. Besides, they probably would only have played in Melbourne and Sydney, and factoring cost of air travel...

Air was supported by - get this - Cirkus featuring Neneh Cherry. Remember Neneh Cherry? About fifteen years ago she released a duet ballad with Moroccan singer Youssou N'Dour called Seven Seconds. I remember thinking it was excellent, and sitting in the car with my parents, getting my Francophone father translate N'Dour's French.

She also had a song called Woman, as distinct from the Wolfmother song of the same name.

Cirkus played not one of those three songs, but instead a completely unimaginative trip hop melange of shitfulness. I walked outside.

Air, however, were one of the most fantastic things I have ever seen in my life, and not only because they turned the stage into an exhibition of analogue synths the likes of which I have never seen. They played everything brilliant about the near-perfect Moon Safari, including a brilliant La Femme D'Argent.

The atmosphere was stifling, and during Kelly Watch The Stars I damn near hyperventilated. Which made the encore chant of 'We Want Air!' all the more entertaining.

And though this list is getting into the hundreds, surely Playground Love is one of my top ten favourite songs, ever. And their piano and guitar instrumental rendition was, in a word, blissful. Or even just perfect.

How Did I Get Here? Part Three: Praha.

About three years ago one of my wisdom teeth became infected. The pain was excruciating, and sent waves of nausea down through my body. Antibiotics healed me, but about three months later I took a trip to a dental surgeon to have the offending bones removed. My trip to Prague really started during my two hour stay in the waiting room of the dental surgery.

It was there that I finished reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. This book made me determined to do two things. The first was to read Kafka, and only some weeks later The Trial changed my life. The second was to visit Prague.

And so I came on a quasi-pilgrimage to Prague, a city whose reputation is quite intimidating. And it's all quite false. The city is amazingly beautiful at night, sure - everyone should spend one night in Prague, with a camera and some mechanical contraption to shut properly their disconnected jaw. But during the day, Prague is getting more expensive, and more full of (mostly American) tourists grabbing bargains at the diamond and Bohemia Crystal stores which seem to be open 24 hours a day. Seriously, who buys diamonds at 1am? And exactly how do you store Bohemia Crystal in your carry-on luggage? The Anglicised Czech word for a 24 hour store is 'non-stop' - great tourist buys are what never stops in this town.

Still, yesterday I went to the Kafka museum, where I saw original manuscripts of his work, an original letter to his father, and even more amazingly, examples of the reports he wrote in his job as a legal clerk for an insurance company. Those reports go further than anything to explain the mystery and claustrophobia of his literary genius.

I also walked past the house Kafka lived in.

I also went to the Cross Club, Prague's teenager-haven nightclub. There would have been a thousand people in this place, most drunk and incredibly irritating, almost all under 23 years of age. The place is quite amazingly laid out with metal cogs and engineering contraptions littering its walls and ceilings. What is has in aesthetics, it lacks in decency.

But a sigh of relief, for tonight I will be sleeping in Vienna.

It took a while to find a lighter.

Hidden by the bright wash of daylight, Prague's centuries-old architecture shines in the night. Special multi-colour light designs throw extra beauty onto the facades of brilliant constructions; shrines to religion and power glimmer in bright blue and purple, reflecting in the surrounding rivers, shooting their brilliance into the starry sky. It was while walking through Prague's old town at midnight last night that I happened to muse aloud, 'You know what? This would be so amazing stoned.'

Will agreed immediately. John, prevented by work from engaging in such extravagances, abstained - but still agreed.

It was half an hour later, while bypassing the heady tourist spots across the water, that we noticed that very pleasant scent wafting toward us from local passers-by. 'We should ask them,' said John. Then, before we had a chance to stop him,

'Hey! How are you? You guys got any more?'

Then, from Will: 'Do you speak English?'

We were called over. Will and I went, and asked if we could pay for some of their prized possession. Instead, the tall blonde Czech simply offered us some of what he had already rolled. Then, spiritedly, he gave us the rest of his pouch.

'How much do we owe you?'

'Nothing!' he cried.

'Can we buy you a drink?'

'No!'

He waved his arm across his chest, and without a further word he and his companions were gone.

So, in front of a synagogue, and (as we later discovered) within metres of a stationed police patrol, Will and I smoked weed on the streets of Prague.

I slept quite well last night.

Goodbye Zloty. Hello Koruna!

Last night, I said my sad goodbyes to the amazing city of Krakow. For the first time since leaving Adelaide, I was actually quite sad to catch that train. Krakow is a place full of history, culture, food and life. I will miss the Elvis puppeteer in the market square as much as I will miss the crazed old woman who would stand listlessly, motionless, two doors from our hostel. I will also miss Slavek, the hostel owner, but not for long - his day job, taking Poles on international tours, will lead him to having a beer with me in Melbourne in early October.

I continued the Jewish pilgrimage part of my holiday yesterday by visiting what was once the Krakow ghetto; an area cordoned off by the Nazis, which became the scene of a slaughter. Apparently 95% of Krakow's Jewish population was killed during World War II. I wasn't any more aware of this than when I walked up the stairs to visit what was Oskar Schindler's office, in an industrial area just outside the ghetto. That was in many ways more real, and more intense, than Auschwitz itself.

There were things I missed in Poland. My first experience of potato pancakes came on the train today, having continually missed my opportunities on 'traditional' food in the Jewish quarter. I also decided to eat with fellow hostellers in the Vegetarian restaurant, rather than rush to the nightly Chopin concerts. However, I ate zurek (white borscht) and pierogi, and washed is down with apple juice flavoured with garlic, chives and cinnamon. So I think I made the right choice.

This morning's train was amazingly pleasant, considering the horrendous experience between Berlin and Krakow. This train was separated into compartments, where I spent much of my trip talking to an Australian girl whose name I am sure I never discovered. I wonder if the fragile, doll-like Czech girl beside us could speak English, and what she might have thought of our conversation. The best part of the train, however, was clearly the 'restaurant'. Most European trains have a small cafe, serving bad filtered coffee and month-old muffins at hyperinflated prices. This train, however, had a sit down restaurant, where we were led to a table and handed menus. Potato pancakes were followed by a huge omelette on a bed of baked potatoes. When an impatient, middle-aged man approached the cook, he was sternly but happily told, 'This is a restaurant! This is not KFC!'

It was a carriage on a Poland to Czech train.

At least it wasn't the night train, where I'm told many people have had their belongings stolen by enterprising thieves using sleeping gas to ensure their victims don't wake while their compartments are emptied. My fellow Krakow-Prague travellers, however, chose the night train, and when I went up to see them asleep in our dorm room, I found the only thing that went missing were John's tennis shoes. Which are still in a dorm room at the Ars Hostel.

And so I'm in Prague. This makes it eight countries in less than three weeks. And about eight hours sleep in three days. As my anonymous fellow traveller and I agreed somewhere in the Czech countryside over our non-KFC delightes - we're really not on holiday. But then, I am in Prague.

Auschwitz.

It is easy to delay well-formed plans in Krakow; even easier when you stay at the Ars Hostel, where every day a new adventure is advertised, and every night lasts until sunrise. Once I delayed my pilgrimage for reasons pertaining to a rather awful hangover; another for a trip to the mountains. But yesterday I completed my pilgrimage, and went to Auschwitz.

Many people have said many things about Auschwitz, and I won't repeat them. I will say that everyone - not just people of Jewish heritage, but everyone - should visit Auschwitz once in their lives. It was a haunting moment to walk through those famous gates, underneath the Orwellian Arbeit Macht Frei. The gates are smaller than I imagined, but more than anything, they were just there.




A few things that I did notice, though:

1. The first thing I saw as I walked off the bus was a hot dog stand. Then, inside the Auschwitz museum, you can go to the cafe and eat hamburgers. Alright, this isn't an exclusively Jewish pilgrimage, but really?

2. I appreciate that it got to 38 degrees celcius yesterday, but is it really appropriate to visit a death camp in a skimpy, cleavage-revealing midriff top and short shorts?

3. Did it add to or detract from the experience that our tour guide was a stern, expressionless woman with a stern, monotonous voice repeating rehearsed phrases in a thick Polish accent, as though she got her position through her experience as an SS guard in World War II?

In any case, everyone reading this should at least consider going to Auschwitz.



(After Auschwitz, I took my Proust-reading companion and showed him the Jazz Rock Cafe. Fortunately for both of us, I didn't see anyobdy there that I recognised from the night before. It was incredibly busy for a Monday night, even at 2am, and the music last night was far better (Beck! Massive Attack!). Will taught me to say hello in Polish, and I brazenly got him to bet me that I wouldn't say that exact hello to the cold-faced, but quite amazingly attractive black-clad girl dancing by the bar. He was far too infatuated to do so himself, even despite it being his last night in Poland. Well, he now owes me a beer in Prague.)

3am In The Jazz Rock Cafe.

'You might think I'm stupid,' she said as she leapt from her chair to my lap. 'And I don't know how long you will be staying here... But do you have a girlfriend back in your country?'

My night started at 10pm in the square at the Jewish quarter, sitting with my Spanish hostel-mate while our Proust scholar friend was scouring the area for girls he had agreed to meet the night before. I turned to the Spaniard and innocently asked:

'See the girl over there with the red top and the red shoes? Is it just me, or has she been looking in my direction for a while?'

'I haven't been paying attention,' was his guarded response.

However, not two minutes later did she walk up to me and begin with Polish. 'I only speak English,' I humbly replied. She told me that she heard me speaking English to my friends, but swore she thought I had a Polish accent. She asked what I was doing - waiting for people I had never met. I asked what she and her friend were doing. They were going to the Jazz Rock Cafe, apparently, and would we all like to join them? My companions were not so keen, but then I didn't really know what they were doing. So what the hell, I thought. The Jazz Rock Cafe it is.

Her friend started chatting to the blonde Swede at the bar while we hit the dancefloor, first to Black Sabbath's Paranoid, then to Sepultura's Roots Bloody Roots and even Guano Apes' Open Your Eyes. Janis Joplin's Piece Of My Heart was her favourite song, and she was quite enthused to hear it. We sat and had another beer, and I talked to the Swede. Then we danced some more. She looked in my direction a few times, and I looked back innocently.

I know what you're thinking... was I really so naive? No, no, I wasn't. But I wanted to go to a real Polish place with real Polish people on a Sunday night, and didn't think there could be any harm in playing along. There were plenty of people there, after all.

Her dancing became closer; her conversation became more staggerred. Her friend wanted to leave, and after getting impatient walked up the stairs without us. I said nothing, but had previously offered to chaperone her to the bus stop, where I intended to leave her with perhaps only a slight taste of missed opportunity. Instead, she decided to take advantage of my empty lap.

'I didn't think it would get this far!' I exclaimed, 'but yes. I do have a girlfriend back home.'

Though I didn't, I could have added: And I'm really ecstatic about that, and though I was perhaps deceitful there is nothing I would do, here or anywhere, to jeapordise the ecstasy which awaits back at home.

Hurt, she jumped from my lap back into her chair. I said I was sorry if I had given her the wrong impression, but I was really just happy to be somewhere with real Polish people, and that until that moment it had been fine. She apologised as well, but added 'you should have told me about your girlfriend. At the beginning.'

Well, maybe I should have - but then would she have bothered taking me to the Jazz Rock Cafe? I rather think not.

She did forceably wrest my e-mail address from me, however. If anything comes of that, you'll all be the first to know.

Absinthe In The Mountains.

And in the back seat during the two and a half hour drive home today, I had my Australian companion's sleepy head descend further and further toward my lap.

I delayed my Jewish pilgrimage until tomorrow, in order to go with Slavek, the hostel owner, to Zakopane. Zakopane is a small tourist town in the mountains of Poland, just next to the border of Slovakia. The point of this trip was to hike in the mountains, an excursion Slavek takes with hostel occupants at least twice a week. Slavek's friend Pavel was driving - at ridiculous speeds, and often on the wrong side of the road. Which to me feels like the right side of the road, of course, but other Polish drivers may disagree.

Our first stop, however, was to cross the border into Slovakia, and take advantage of the ridiculous amount of duty free alcohol stores just after the checkpoint. We also had a traditional Slovakian lunch - egg, cheese and garlic soup, followed by fried cheese. Seriously. I've never eaten so much cheese in my entire life.

As for the alcohol, it was Slovakian beer (strong, and too yeasty), and Black Absinthe. 80% proof. The effects of two shots are with me as I somehow continue to write.

The pre-absinthe hiking was occasionally difficult, but always filled with immense beauty. The scent of the air was as stunning as the large oak trees, and the nearly-freezing streams of water. On our travels, we were joined by another Australian, Hal, who had caught the bus. The three of us went then to the town of Zakopane to go 'gravity tobogganing', and eat yet more ice cream, this time in wafers called gofry. It was just before the drive home that we had our first shot of absinthe (the second came in the reception, about fifteen minutes ago, as I was starting this blog post).




I paid for one ice-cream, the tobogganing and the cable car to the top of the mountains. I asked Slavek how much I owed for everything else (lunch, alcohol, entry to the national park), and after laughing, he walked out asking, 'are you stupid?' After offering me more than the value of my night's stay, I wonder whether that question could in fact have been reflexive.

I had gotten only a fleeting impression of my companion, a traditional jock type talking of swimming and skiing and Polish girls. Only after our first shot of absinthe he revealed the real reason for his travels, that four weeks ago he had come to Switzerland for a girl. His expression soured as her memory revealed itself to her, that it 'just wasn't meant to be'. At this point he went deathly silent, and did not speak another word the entire trip. And soon, he fell asleep.

About Jesus, And Sexual Misconduct.

One of the most hilarious stories my mother has ever told me involves nuns. Nuns are quite rare to find in Australia, and even harder to recognise, since they long ago discarded their habits. But some years ago, my mother saw a number of nuns walking down Glen Osmond Road. Helping the local church with its redevelopment, they walked down the footpath, each carrying in front of them a large sign advising interested onlookers,

No Entry

While nuns may be hard to find in Australia, they are all over Poland. Krakow was a place of special importance to the Polish Pope John Paul II, and his presence can be felt all around these paved streets. And only a five minute walk from here is the quite remarkable Jewish quarter, Kasimierz. I spent the afternoon there yesterday, and intend to dine there tomorrow night, after I complete something of a Jewish pilgrimage of my own. Assad and I were going to complete this pilgrimage together yesterday, but after quite a heady night I decided to leave him to his own devices.

Speaking of Assad, he didn't end up leaving the club with the Polish girl who found us. Apparently, though she was completely to his taste, his "spider senses went off" while talking to her. He thought she may have come up to us only because she overheard our conversation about... well, I'll leave that between us. She was very insistent on his company for the evening, but he was a little concerned, not only about her, but about the older man who seemed to be hanging around her. Last night we went back to the same club, but without the beauty of alcohol it held rather less interest for me; I was much more interested in talking to Will, a master's student in literature, about Proust.

It was reading Proust in the Gallerie Krakowska today that I saw large groups of nuns carrying shopping bags.

And at the time, despite all the spirituality surrounding me, I still felt strangely empty. That was until about 15 minutes ago, when all of a sudden today became immensely excellent, and one which I will remember for my entire life.

Getting Drunk In Poland.

The train from Berlin to Krakow was quite a haunting experience. It stopped just before crossing the border; all of the German train employees alighted, and were replaced with their Polish counterparts. For the first time, I was dealing with officials who spoke no English, and even my stilted German was incomprehensible to these stern, lifeless creatures. After crossing the border, three guards in soldiers uniforms collected our passports, to ensure we were valid, and to offer us their stamp of approval. Being on the train from Germany to Poland, and harassed by passport-stamping officials, made me feel quite awkward, like a dark moment in history being hideously echoed for my benefit.

I'm sorry to play the Jew card, but Krakow itself is quite amazing for it, being a haven of relics and museums dedicated to between-war Judaism. I will go exploring at some point, but for the moment have been enjoying the city. It is quite an amazing place, with men dressed as beer bottles handing fake money to children. A quartet of accordionists were seated in the market square, playing Flight Of The Bumblebee at full speed. The destitution which is so visible around me has its most fascinating representation in the amount of people employed to stand on street corners handying out flyers, a job only given in Australia to backpackers in exchange for free accommodation. Unemployment is so rife here that entrepreneurialism is a must - every pavement has a local selling home-baked bagels for 1 Polish Zlotny (45 cents). One girl made her own matches, and sold them from the middle of a small alley.

Poland is the first country I've been to where there are actually real people who don't speak English. I know, it's amazing. I tried to order pierogi last night, exlaiming, 'No! No ham!'

Then I arrived at the hilariously-named Ars Hostel. I paid for my stay and was shown to my door. Barely had I dropped my bag that I was asked if I were 'going out tonight', and told that the entire hostel was meeting at reception at 9.30pm. I walked down, and was immediately offered a shot of sweet-tasting Polish vodka in a plastic cup. And then another. And then another.

Occupants of the Ars Hostel

We walked briskly to a local nightclub, where I met the hostel owner. He asked where I was from, and when I told him, said 'Heaven!' No, he didn't think Adelaide was a place of a glorious afterlife; he simply recalled the nightclub. I had to be the one to tell him that it no longer exists, and that something equally awful has been established in its place. He then bought me a beer.

It was good, and cost $3.30 per pint. So I had another. And then another. I danced on a platform to, of all things, Johnny O'Keefe. (Played somewhere in the middle of Eurotrash techno). I talked to Assad about his taste in girls, and then left at just the right time when a girl quite to his taste approached us. I was supposed to meet up with him this morning, but when I woke he was nowhere to be found. When Irene, a San Francisco auditor on a short holiday, decided to go home, I thought it was my time to go.

But like every night in Europe, last night didn't quite feel complete without Erica. So, as you doubtlessly read two blog posts earlier, I allowed myself one drunken phone call, from my mobile on the streets of Krakow at 1am.

And it was after hearing Erica's voice that getting drunk in Poland began to seem like a good idea after all.

From Behind The Iron Curtain.

Since my last post, I have accumulated a whopping 23 hours of train journey. I started Wednesday morning in Stockholm, and arrived last night in Krakow. I jumped on and off trains at Kobenhavn and Hamburg, and I stayed overnight in Berlin. In Berlin, I stayed at the hilariously named Pegasus Hostel, on the Strasse der Pariser Kommune, just south of the corner of Karl Marxs Allee. It felt rather odd being in East Berlin, and I have promised to return.

The train from Stockholm to Berlin - particularly the Kobenhavn to Hamburg leg - proved quite fascinating. So here, for your literary pleasure, are edited extracts from a letter I wrote to Erica, sent via photos and e-mail from the hostel that night.

So far, the Danish countryside has offered me some quite unnaturally cropped, presumably plantation forests; one vast sea and a connecting bridge; glasshouses and windmills. It is in no way as exciting as the moment, on the journey between Stockholm and Malmo, that our train passed the small Swedish town of Amthaus. Although the train did not stop, it offerred us a fleeting glance of IKEA headquarters, and of the first IKEA in the world, ever.

There is a young couple seated in the bank to my left. One is an Asian-American with an iPod, who has taken off his shoes, and i resting his besocked feet on the chair in front of him. His companion is a thin, mousey-haired girl, neatly dressed in a green shirt. She is travelling on a Norwegian passport (which is on the table in front of her), and speaks with its slight tinge on an otherwise American accent. They are currently discussing the differences between scientology and Christian Science (these are many and vast).

I have a feeling that the boy is an engineer. He is clearly a Christian, and he was explaining that the mathematical probability of everything working as it has to support human life is "practically zero". He has thus conceded, with the word "practically", that there is indeed some mathematical probability. After all, the universe clearly does support human life.

The boy just said that he believes love is everlasting. The girl is not so sure - she has been in love, it didn't work out, and since 'seeing other boys' she has changed her perspective.

The boy has now declared that he wants to have kids, and that he will stick around and be their father. But he doesn't believe that marriage need be a precursor to children.

She is by far the more interesting of the two. She is saying that one should not leave someone they love to chase a fleeting crush. But she is not saying this with the certainty of a hypothetical - she is saying this with the pained eyes and furrowed brow of hindsight. And, perhaps, even regret. Her open smile and tied hair exude an aura of youth and innocence, but I suspect far more behind her child's eyes.

* * * * * * *

On the way from Denmark to Germany, the train boards a ferry, and the ferry takes us across the sea. In the course of this, most of us went from the train to buy food and drink on the ferry. It was on the ferry that I finally met my neighbours. He's from New York, and has just finished an engineering degree (I was right). He is travelling until 31 July, whereupon he will start work as an environmental engineer with the City of New York.

She is Norwegian. She bought a 22-day Eurail global pass to travel aimlessly before going back to do a degree in development studies.

The two of them met at a hostel in Kobenhavn three days ago, and are now travelling together. They are having the kinds of conversation you can have with a close friend who is also a stranger. Before the ferry, she was explaining that sex has nothing to do with love, but that it is far better when you are in love.

And when I sat for 15 minutes talking to them, and sharing his toblerone, they not once asked me if I had been eavesdropping.

They are probably denying to themselves that they are courting. They live too far apart. They are only travelling together until, at latest, 24 July, when he takes a flight to visit a friend studying in Tel Aviv. She has been seeing people - he wants to fall in love. They are probably guarding themselves away from opportunity.

Yet he showed dramatic interest in the boys she'd been seeing since she lost her love. He was playing the romantic card, with a sprinkle of jealousy clearly visible to their crowd. He played her songs from his iPod and they listened together. They made plans, sate barely millimetres away from each other, and giggled at any opportunity.

I predict that, despite all their efforts, they will finally find themselves entangled. One night, in a faraway place, with nobody around, they will come together with fiery passion. He will return to New York longing; she will return to Norway free.

Or they could both return with regret.

Overseas.

For those of you afraid that Ben is spending his overseas trip far too sober, you need not worry.  At 9am this morning it was 1am in Kraków, and Ben was making his way home from a night club.  He was drunk and being escorted by an American girl named Irene.  And for those now worried about his safety, drunk on Polish streets, Irene assured me she was taking good care of him.  I know all this, because I spoke to both of them on the phone at 9:15am.

I didn't gather much of the story, except that when Ben arrived at the hostel they were giving out free vodka shots.  He had three.  Then, at the nightclub, the owner of the hostel bought him beer.  I've never stayed in a hostel before, so I'm not sure if this is a regular hostel happening.  In fact, I have been off this big island only twice, and many years ago.  

The first time was to travel to Tasmania.  I know that this is still a part of Australia, though some would argue very differently.  I have a friend who grew up in Tasmania, and when I was introduced to him many years ago it was with the line "he's a Tasmanian, so excuse anything he does".  This friend is a lovely guy, though perhaps somewhat uncoordinated.  But no more than me, so who am I to judge people for their level of coordination?  We made an excellent pair on the social mixed indoor cricket team we were both members of in high school.  And by excellent I mean hilariously terrible.

Tasmania was our year 9 camp.

We caught the plane there, and spent five nights in five different locations, and five days in a bus being ferried to these different locations.  We stayed in cheap motels and caravan park cabins, and you tried to stay as close to the guy you had a crush on at possible.  Well, I did.  But so did my two best friends, and, unfortunately, we all liked the same guy.

There was one afternoon when the three of us were playing strip poker with him and his two best friends.  We were dressed very appropriately for strip poker, in that we could take off a shoe, then a sock, then an earring, then a necklace...  The boys were not so lucky.  Justin, the one we all liked, kept losing, and it was when he was sitting in just his boxer shorts that one of the teachers banged on the door to tell us that dinner was ready.  Justin lept like a gazelle and landed in the bathroom, closing the door just as the teacher walked in.  The rest of us were sitting innocently, only missing our socks, shoes and jewellery.

Sadly, it was not I who ended up winning Justin's heart that trip.  It was my best friend Michelle.  She had gone the whole trip denying she liked him, yet continued to flirt shamelessly.  Much to my and Lauren's dismay.  We even confronted her one night, saying if she didn't like him then to leave him to us.  That she wasn't being a good friend if she didn't.  She still denied liking him, and still continued flirting.

Less than a week after we returned to school, Michelle and Justin got together.  And were together for about two years.  This didn't stop me from still silently loving him, and staying up until 3am talking to him on ICQ.  Michelle wasn't allowed on the computer at night.  And the fact that he had a girlfriend didn't stop him from staying up until 3am talking to me.  Can you guess what he grew up to become?  I'm very glad I never ended up with him.

My other overseas trip was in year 10.  I went on exchange for four weeks to Germany, as a joint exchange between my school and another school.

The Germans came to stay with us in April.  This meant many parties, and many parties that involved boys from the other school.  At one such party, my friend Belinda fell in love with David.  He too fell in love with her, and they started going out.  They were still going out when we left for Germany in October, and my friends were quite good friends with him and his friends.

One of these friends was Gareth.  It was Gareth who I decided I really really liked, and we flirted shyly for the first week of the trip.  Gareth confessed to David who told Belinda who told me that he also liked me, and so Belinda set to getting us alone as much as possible.

Now this is when the story gets strange.

I had also been spending a lot of time with David, as he was telling me all about how much Gareth liked me.  And Belinda and Gareth were doing the same.  One afternoon in Belinda's bedroom, after I had given her the makeup tip to put masara on after eyeshadow, because if you do it the other way round the eyeshadow dust falls on your eyelashes and dulls them again, we both started talking about David and Gareth.  It was then, somehow, that we both confessed that we liked each others' boys.  We grabbed each others' hands, dancing and laughing and shrieking around her bedroom.  We were going to swap boys!

We decided this without consulting the boys.

However, when we did, they strangely agreed they felt the same.  David became my first boyfriend.  We went out for a week, until I decided I actually didn't like him that much, and he decided he was still in love with Belinda.  Gareth and Belinda went out for about the same amount of time, until Belinda broke up with Gareth because he was too strange.

The logical thing to happen next, would be for Belinda and David to get back together, except Belinda decided that she was instead going to hook up with a succession of German ratbags and drug dealers at various discos and parties.  David was distraught, and at one particular party locked himself in the second story bathroom, threatening to jump out the window if Belinda didn't take him back.  After much drama, he was eventually coaxed out of the bathroom by Belinda, who then told him they were not getting back together again.  She went off and resumed pashing the German drug dealer she'd met that night.  David was sat down, and kept under close watch.  The German hosting the party did not want someone jumping out of their bathroom window.  Their parents would be furious if they got home to find an injured Australian exchange student being taken away in an ambulance.

So those are my two overseas experiences.  I'm quite certain, when Ben wakes up and shakes off his hangover, that he will be able to give you an equally exciting account of his drunken night in Kraków.

Thanking You For Advice.

In contrast to the itself contradictory advice this blog has offered me over the past few days, I have absolutely decided to cut short my trip. There are many reasons, and not all are reasonable; but there is one which is as important as it is, surprisingly, not at all soppy.

For two years now I have been actually earning enough to live on, and instead of living I have been storing my earnings away in order to see Europe. My ideal European adventure has pressed pause on everything else I have. That's all for good reason, but right now I'm not just missing Australia. I'm looking forward to all the potential, now that I won't have to use every effort I can muster to foist myself across the oceans.

I'm still seeing amazing things (you'll be seeing them too, when I have access to a computer which will upload my pictures), and I actually have more towns on my itinerary now than I did when I was planning my adventure back home. I'm not missing out on any of Europe; I'm just spending fewer days in each place. Which suits me fine, because I have (to my surprise, actually) found that tourist life is quite repetitive when the scenery doesn't change.

So it looks like I'll be heading home some time in early October. From now until then, I will have seen another dozen cities, at least five bands, and various assorted attractions and disgustions. Then I can come back, and do all the things that have eluded me while I was wedged between life and journeying: move out of my parents' house, release the seven-track EP my band completed days before my departure, actually do some serious work on that whole thesis thing with which I'm supposed to be making a name for myself. When I return, I can start my new life.

More than being in Europe alone, that is the most exciting thing I have, and I'm looking forward to it far more than any of the cities I am yet to visit.

I'll be quiet for a couple of days, but my next post will be coming to you from behind the iron curtain.

Tourist Traps In Stockholm.

I can describe the Stockholm Arkitekturmuseet in approximately one word: crappety-crap.

Skansen, on the other hand, is something else. In fact, it is quite a number of somethings-else: a museum, an amusement park, a zoo, a fun-fair, and a repository for a series of old, discarded buildings that, rather than be demolished, have been removed and restored on an island-set permanent history excursion. On Skansen, you can walk into an 18th century manor and a 17th century cathedral, replete with university students in period costume employeed to detail the history of the parodied building you have just entered. I was also able to take photos of (it's, it's... it's) a bison, and of a series of reindeer which, after their novelty value has worn out, may well appear on a menu at one of the expensive restaurants in Gamla Stan.



These Swedish people love preparing and eating Santa's preferred form of transport.

Stockholm is an archipelago, a series of islands connected by bridges which makes getting around rather challenging. My hostel is on the island of Södermalm, and to get to Skansen I had to walk through the island of Gamla Stan (the quite scenic, and equally parodied old town), Centrum (the city centre) and Djurgärden. Consequently, I walked about 10 kilometres today, and further to that, my feet hurt.

Girls Who Like Boys, Who Like Boys To Be Girls.

Hostels bring together temporary friends. Last night, my temporary friends and I went out on this old town.

For the first time internationally, I needed to do my laundry. As I waited for the dryer to do its drying thing, I started talking to two Canadian girls doing their frying thing on the electric stove. They had heard about a 'cool bar' they wanted to 'check out', and so before too long I was accompanying them to the excellently named Nada Bar, whose frontage simply exuded a neon sign 'Bar.' It reminded me startlingly of Melbourne; a converted house with its individual rooms in tact, short multicoloured furniture based on the interiors of the spaceships of 2001: A Space Odyssey, overpriced white beer on tap and a small drinking crowd covered with striped scarves and berets. The DJ at the front hovered between Daft Punk and Blur. My associates had no idea why I might be singing along to Girls And Boys, and though I considered explaining the seminal importance of Parklife to Britain in the early 1990s, I wisely stopped before I had begun.

My companions felt as though they were at a house party to which they were uninvited, so for the second time this trip I ended up accompanying English speakers to an English theme pub, to listen to Eye Of The Tiger while drinking local beer. We were joined by two more Canadians and a New Yorker couple, and after a few words spoken in French (a mostly shared language among the group), we moved on to the 'clubbing' phase of the evening.

This involved going to a bar which had decided it was not open to anybody under the age of 25; drinking shots and cocktails at an American-owned Bullwinkle's bar which was also a restaurant which was also a casino (with a blackjack table run by a fat guy with a tuxedo); and going home.

Commuting.

I sat on the train this morning, when suddenly my eyes locked onto a girl who stood waiting to get off the train with her bike, and an amazing coat.  I wanted it, and gazed after her with a longing I have not felt since I walked out onto the tarmac at Adelaide airport one cold and drizzly night some weeks ago.  The coat was a shade of blushing deep rose; a trench with amazing pleated detail on the back of the bodice, a full skirt below the belted wasit, a hood, and was lined with plaid woven wool.  It was amazing.  The girl left the train, with her bike, and I stared wistfully after the coat wishing it were mine.

After she left, the woman across from me with blonde dye only just hiding her grey roots, and a delicate hand knitted lace scarf began to file her nails.  She finished patting a thick, white cream into the lines at the corners of her eyes, and took a nail file out of her handbag.

Me?  I sat with an empty takeaway coffee cup, much too large handbag, scarf, furry hat.  I'd missed my train by about ten seconds and had to wait fifteen minutes for the next one.  I bought a coffee from the Organic place near the station to take the chill from the cold, Melbourne morning, and was served by a young man with a warm and inviting smile.  He blessed me after I sneezed, and in his friendship I forgot to order decaf.

On my way home, after a very short day's work, I sat down on a bench next to a grandmother, grandfather, and a little girl with a red coat to match mine.  She said hello, and so I said hello back, and we carried out a conversation until the train arrived.  They sat a few rows of seats away from me, and so I sat making faces and waving at the little girl from my own seat.  I even pretended to strangle myself with my scarf, bulging out my eyes and sticking out my tongue, which received giggles from not only her, but two other little boys sitting nearby.

Walking back from the station I heard someone call out my name, and discovered my housemate behind me.  We walked home together.  Where I am now.  And after deciding to miss choir practice tonight, I made plans to see a gig and invited a friend along.  My friend and I will be meeting at 8pm in Fitzroy.  We are so cool.

So I am home, and settled, and it's not even 5pm.

Next week, I have decided, I am starting administration work again.

Criminal.

I am thinking of committing a crime.

Many of these hostels carry small exchange libraries, collections of books on a shelf that are free to be taken, so long as a similar, already-read book is left in its place. All of the books I have with me I want to keep. However, on the shelf at my current hostel is a sadly-discarded copy of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, inscribed to Judy with the message, 'Proust will make you feel alive again.' Not only have I always wanted to read Proust (I instead took the Sartre option in second-year French), but I particularly want this copy. Tonight, when nobody's looking, I intend to take it.

Yesterday afternoon I was introduced to four Irish girls, in Stockholm for their post-graduation weekend. The entire weekend was to be devoted to dressing up, finding exclusive nightclubs and drinking cocktails. When I returned from dinner at 10pm last night, they were standing on the doorstep, hiding from the rain in anticipation of the taxi they had ordered. They wore expensive dresses and even more expensive, poorly applied make-up.

When I awoke this morning, I found that only two had returned to the dormitory.

The Value Of Breakfast.

At 10am, I was huddled around a computer trying to find directions to the library, when all of a sudden I was offered SEK70.

Truly.

Breakfast was late. No staff had arrived at the hotel until 10am, despite breakfast clearly being offerred from 8am on Sundays. So, in the spirit of giving, the hotel offerred to refund us the value of breakfast from our accommodation costs. 70Kr. Last night's dinner - quiche and salad at a nice-looking family restaurant - cost me 69Kr, and I was being given 70Kr as an apology for a late breakfast. Not only that, but the staff proceeded to put on a late breakfast anyway. Sure, a Swedish breakfast involves gourmet spreads and a selection of cured meats, but still.

Besides, they weren't even going to listen to the suggestion that I had taken some milk from the guest fridge and some muesli that was out on the table, and helped myself to breakfast before they had even arrived.

Supportophobia (-n).

Last night I went to see Deerhoof. You've heard of Deerhoof, right? That's because you've been reading Pitchfork. They're "the best band in the world," says Pitchfork. Of course they are, dear Pitchfork. Aren't you a little disappointed when a small independent website becomes big enough that they begin to deliberately create hype in order to prove that they have the power to make or break bands? Or just that they have the power? I am. Yet, somehow, I was sucked right in. I even caught the train a day early to see them.

Besides, I suspect this will be the last chance I get to see Deerhoof for under $AUD20. Plus, the bar was called Debaser, and on their cocktail list was an expensive Monkey Gone To Heaven.

But tell me this: why do these Nordic folk have a morbid fear of support bands? Doors opened last night at 10pm, Deerhoof made the stage at midnight, and in between time there was simply a DJ playing mostly predictable choices (Guided By Voices! Blonde Redhead!) to an apathetic crowd. I was the only one so much as swaying for Les Savy Fav's The Sweat Descends, and I was sitting down alone with a camera and a notebook. It is also amazing how far I have come across the oceans, to find a Swedish crowd looks exactly the same, from haircuts to boots, as an Adelaide indie crowd. It even seems that Sonic Youth t-shirts are in summer fashion here. I saw at least seven of them - I counted.

Deerhoof is not the best band in the world. They are prodigiously talented - the guitarist plays complicated stretchy jazz chords at a hundred miles a minute, using a Godin guitar and a Vox AC30 (hello Doug!), and always knows when to pull back and when to sound huge. The drummer was one of the most amazing such skin-hitting person I have ever seen - tight but completely wild. Deerhoof is The Band Pitchfork Made, but it is also a band made for Pitchfork: a cross between Blonde Redhead (complete with tuneless Asian-American girl singer) and Shellac, with jazz inclinations, they are all style and no substance, and a complete parody of the indie cred to which Pitchfork so madly strives. It was still well worth seeing, mind.

At 1am the DJ returned to play The Arcade Fire's No Cars Go, attracting a far drunker crowd to sway in the breeze. Attempting to touch, but never quite reaching far enough. A queue formed outside, making this place Stockholm's equivalent to Perth's Amplifier Bar, which only starts to fill with indie dancers after all the bands have finished. Me - I went home, back to the hostel which took me two hours in the rain to find (not knowing whether there would be a room booked for me in the end), to my top bunk bed, getting ready to face another Nordic day.

Things About Hostels, Part Deux.

Last night I went looking for live music. I had a guidebook, written by Americans, dividing each Osloeian venue into mainstream, semi-alternative and alternative. I figured semi-alternative was the way to go, and walked up to Grunerlokken to try two venues. One was, so the sign on the front said, closed for the summer, reopening in August. The other was empty and had no front signage. Walking back into town, the only other venue I found was full of black-clad schoolkids drinking beer. By 11pm, I figured it was better to return to my room to finish reading Haruki Murakami's Norweigan Wood.

By 12.30am, my only roommate had been picked up by a friend so as to go back to his home village, and I was left to sleep alone. This delighted me so very, very much. Except at 3am, when I heard a swift, subtle shuffle through the door, and some hurried words of Norweigan. I asked my new visitor to translate. 'Would you mind if I opened the window?', he asked. Yes, I thought. The street noise is unbearable. Not wanting to put up a fight, I muttered 'go ahead', and went straight back to sleep.

This lasted another two hours, before a cacophonic crash cramped my slumber. In came a tall, handsome blonde guy, propped up by the surrounding walls, shouting in Norweigan. 'I only speak English,' I replied.

'Which bed is bed four?' he asked.

'That one,' I pointed.

'I think I'll take this one,' he announced, taking bed one. Then he asked politely, 'did I wake you up?'

'It's five in the morning, so yes you did,' I responded casually.

'Oh. I was in the park fucking a girl, and now I need a shower.'

With that, he washed his face, climbed to the bunk above me, and went to sleep. Even his mobile's discrete message tone (a beep, followed by an American accented 'motherfucker') wouldn't wake him. I arose at 7am, showered, breakfasted and packed up my things, without so much as a shuffle from either of my associates. Next to my wallet I saw the motherfucker's ID card, identifying him as an employee of the Ministry of Defence.

I caught a train to Stockholm, where have just arrived, and I must now go and find my hostel.

Money.

So I have this job.  It's only a job sometimes, but the most exciting job I've ever had.  I get called up and told that there's plenty of work on, and get told that there will be a six week plan made, and that will possibly involve three days a week's work for six weeks.  Then, after working there for a week and a half and finishing the project, I ask what is happening the week after and beyond.  I get told that there will be a meeting about it, but it will probably be one or maybe two days work a week.  Then the scheduled meeting gets cancelled, because it's "not ready to be talked about yet", and moved to the next week.  The meeting will happen next week, and hopefully a definite plan will be made.  And hopefully for three days work a week.

This job really is the best job I've ever had.  If the work is not substantial enough, however, I will have to tell them I can't work for them at all, and go back to full time temp work.

I currently have a bank balance of $17.45, an overdue car registration bill, as well as an obligation to send a cheque of $340 to pay for a minor car accident I had recently in which I knocked someone's side mirror off while trying to find my way to Craigieburn.

So I think I will have to say no to building puppets for the time being, and go back to answering phones and opening mail to try and save some money.

Yes, this is completely a rant, but today I feel slightly shit about things.  I had to turn down a dinner invitation with friends tonight because I can't afford to eat out, and my sister hasn't answered her phone in two days, nor returned my phone calls.

Plus I spent today in Sticky, a zine store in Melbourne, making badges for the media organisation I volunteer for, wishing I were able to be creative and do things like make zines without having to worry about all this money stuff.

I really think I'm going to have to go back to answering phones.  It pays better than building giant puppets, and I can spend most of my day doing nothing other than picking up the phone occasionally and then browsing the internet for hours.

Asking You For Advice.

So now I sit in the Deichsmanke Bibliotek, which has just won the Ben award for the Loudest Library Ever In The World, Ever. For the last three days it has been populated by schoolchildren on summer holiday trips singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at top volume, accompanied by nothing other than a trumpet. They then walk up the stairs, screaming at each other and pulling each other's hair. It is truly quite amazing.

At about 7pm last night, for the first time since arriving in Oslo, my dorm became occupied by people other than me. Because of this, I have now solved the mystery of why there are so many Norweigan military personnel walking the corridors of the Hotel Perminalen. Norway has compulsory military service, which is paid poorly but comes with perks, like incredibly cheap train travel and cheap nights at the Hotel Perminalen. Whenever the kids get off-duty time, they can spend the night at the hotel for a fraction of the cost, and the state pays the rest.

Two such military servicemen shared my dorm last night. One of them, a tall, thin bespectacled fellow, barely spoke a word. Counter-intuitively, it was the short, well-built sportsman who talked. Firstly, it was about the sights of Norway, and the fact that one small Norwegian town is so full of European history that Hitler wanted to make it the capital of the Third Reich, as the historical home of the Aryan race. He then exclaimed, 'He was messed up. Thank God, thank God he was stopped!'

We talked about Australia, and he asked me why Australia was engaged in such dangerous relations with China, as though I were personally responsible. At the time, he wasn't even aware that I am a politics teacher. Our hour-long conversation touched on the limitations of social democracy and solutions to the middle-east crisis. Then his taxi came, and he left for the day. So, if you're ever reading this Bjorn, you were a fascinating part of my Norwegian stay, and I hope you do make it as an independent member of the Norwegian Parliament.

It is to that very Parliament, the Stortinget, that I intend to go today for a free tour.

In any case, I'm actually writing this to ask for advice. I am thinking of quite comprehensively changing the itinerary of my European adventure. I was going to spend four months here pissing about, but that was based on the naive idea that I could absorb myself into a foreign city and become one with its amazing foreignness. Instead, I have found that no matter how awesome Europe (and Oslo) is, there's only so long you can stay somewhere where you don't speak the language, don't know anyone, and don't have enough money to get really, really drunk. I walked around Oslo last night to find many venues closed, a quite awful cover band with a cover charge, and this rather amusing public toilet.




So rather than spend two weeks in Sweden, I'm thinking of spending four days.

And I'm thinking of cutting my whole trip back a month.

This will offer me three things:

1. The ability to not get bored and agitated while staying in places where I don't know anybody and don't have enough money to get really, really drunk.

2. The ability to go see Low in Malmo, and the Smashing Pumpkins in France (jealous?)

3. The ability to come back early, not to a cramped postgraduate office in Adelaide, but to an old farmhouse in suburban Melbourne.

Your thoughts?

Prostitutes.

Last night, for the first time in my life, I was propositioned by a prostitute.

Despite spending many a night on the sordid strip of Hindley Street, not to mention multiple wee-hour excursions through St Kilda, I had never before been directly propositioned on a street corner. But on a wet Wednesday night in Oslo, every street corner between the Rockefeller Music Hall and the Hotel Perminalen is owned by at least one such contributor to the Norwegian economy, compelling passers by to let her earn her keep. It is actually quite confronting to see such open, willing exploitation in the middle of town.

Having said that, I am quite smitten with this city. It is small (540 000 people), but never quaint - it is commercial without being ridiculous, and everything seems to be a short walk from my hostel. Last night I walked ten minutes to find the Rockefeller, to see American band Danielson, which is a little like seeing The Flaming Lips and the Decemberists filtered through a sieve of Belle and Sebastian. They're twee but they rock, with only slightly irritating Coyne-esque falsetto squealing. And they came on stage in perfect uniform, with name tags and matching tracksuit pants. And one girl is in the band just to play the marumba. I must say, they were completely excellent.



What was more excellent was that, for the first time in a long time, I was at a gig where I did not recognise a single face in the crowd. I could walk right up to the front when they started, and dance my little dance fearlessly. There was another girl, alone, dancing away to my right. I considered walking up to her and asking, 'So, you're here alone too, then?' In another life, I might have. And where it might have led, I will never know.



Instead, once the band finished playing, she wandered out of the building to march fervently through the tunnel, and I walked out to find a phone booth to call my amazing Erica.


(Note: Though I found a payphone, it seems Erica's mobile can't be called by either my mobile or by the phone card. I suspect there is some lack of communication between Telenor, the big Norwegian phone booth company, and Three. Globalisation, my arse.)

First Impressions: Oslo

This blog was not intended to be a study of comparative awesomeness, but on such a scale as I have just created thus, I can assure you that Olso has a far greater standard deviation of awesomeness than København. Here's proof:

1. The City

Alright, so Copenhagen's modern-period architecture shits all over Oslo's mini-New York aspirations. However, I quite like this - it feels more real, more urban. I like the look of a huge glass tower shopping mall. It's not as quaint. I think Copenhagen is a place I could live in, whereas Oslo is an awesome place to visit.

2. The Shops

So far I have found a cigarette bar called KigaretteSlutt, a CD store called FreeRecordShop (don't be fooled, folks) and a large shop in the main street called Kondomeriet. It's not as cute as Copenhagen's poor-taste English, but then I haven't been very far yet.



3. The Music

Last night there were speakers in the main Rundle Mall-esque paved shopping area playing Johnny Cash. And right by my hostel is a rock and metal club, blasting Slayer out into the open night for the benefit of the black-clad patrons sitting with beer at tables within.

4. Accommodation

Alright, so I'm paying twice as much for my accommodation as I was in Denmark. The thing is that Scandinavia is so expensive that it is impossible to attract backpackers, and therefore it has no real backpacker accommodation. My hostel in Denmark was the Hotel Jørgensen, which was actually just a cheap budget family hotel (like a large bed and breakfast) with dormitory rooms downstairs. Even this cost $AUD37, and I was in a twelve-bed dorm where the toilets where up two flights of stairs, and the showers were in little cupboards such that it was impossible to even bring a change of clothes into the room. There were no lockers in the room, and the room had to be completely emptied (including the rented linen) between 11am and 3pm for cleaning. The breakfast was awesome, and the place was relatively clean, but for the price, it was quite strange.

I'm now paying $67 per night, which is far more than I wanted to pay for a backpacker trip. However, last night I slept in a four-bed dorm by myself. So few travellers to Norway are cheap enough to require dormitory accommodation that this place is practically empty. The rooms are incredibly clean, the quilts are big and warm, and the ensuite bathrooms are excellent, with free-flowing hot water. The lifts are automatic, but have doors that you actually need to manually open when you get to your floor. And the breakfast... I got the choice between hard-boiled and soft-boiled eggs, not to mention a machine which knows the exact capacity of a cup of coffee and delivers it straight to your cup. There were fifteen types of bread, and for those non-vegetarians, an amazing selection of meats. And spreads I had never before seen. It looks like my plan of eating enough breakfast to last until dinner will work out even better here.

So I have discovered that the more you pay for accommodation, the better you feel, and the less you pay for everything else.

I got home at 11pm last night and found that I had a hotel room, in a foreign country, completely to myself. I figured this was an incredible privilege, and I needed to do something truly special. So I did what any self-respecting man would do.

I sat and watched BBC World while clipping my toenails.

I Sent A Letter

I write now from yet another Sidewalk Express, this time from the gentler surrounds of Oslo Sentralstatjon. I'm finally here, and finally writing a blog. It has been an interesting few hours.

I started the day at the Sidewalk Express terminal at København H station, an hour before catching the train from platform 9 to Goteburg. I alighted from the train at 12.23, and caught my connecting train on platform 4 to Oslo. These two train rides have easily been the most fascinating and beautiful experience of my stay in Europe. The amazingly green pastures, the ocean views, the incredible forests - including the pine forest which seems to stretch from just outside Goteburg all the way to Oslo - are absolutely amazing. Cows seem to make sense when they're eating real green grass, unlike the starved bovine death spotted occasionally while driving around rural Australia.



It was an eight hour train ride, and I passed the time by writing Erica a letter. Once I had finished, I realised that it would take at least a week for it to get from a Norweigan post office to a letterbox in suburban Melbourne. This just wouldn't do. So once I got to my hostel, I sat and took photos of all of its handwritten pages, and set about finding a better Internet Café - one with accessible USB ports - from which to send it.

In my hostel I found a series of Oslo guides in every conceivable language, except English. Fortunately my French was up to the challenge of the words Cafés Internet. There were two listed. I went back to the Sidewalk Express, where I had credit, and searched for the first on Google Maps. The address wasJernbanetorget 1, but Google pointed me to this very train station. I got up and looked around, everywhere, on both levels, but could not find the Arctic Internet Café. I even found a map of all of the train station stalls, which made no mention of any such thing. I walked down to Tourist Information, took a number, and waited fifteen minutes, to be told that Jernbanetorget 1 was indeed the exact train station from which I had come. Exasperated, I went back to the Sidewalk Express, googled for other Internet Cafés in Oslo, and found one about a fifteen minute walk away, on the other side of the hostel. Figuring it was a good way to see the city, I began to walk.

I found the café. Although the sign on the front clearly stated it was open between 11.00 and 21.30, and despite my phone telling me it was only 8.50pm, the door was closed. I walked closer to investigate, and found only the loud whirring of the burglar alarm within. I quietly walked away.

So I went back to the train station, to write a blog post about the missing Arctic Internet Café. But then, with a sense of adventure, I decided to give it one last shot. I walked to where the food stalls where, but found only another Sidewalk Express. I walked up the escalators, and found only that the post office had closed. I looked up to the ceiling in desperation. But then, it hit me - there was a third level! And advertised on this third level: the Arctic Internet Café!



Thrilled, I walked up to the man at the desk, asked for a computer, and sent my letter in full. This café is even more expensive than the Danish one, so I will try and find a library from which to post my other photos. I decided to write this blog from downstairs where I am using my remaining Sidewalk credit. And now, I will return to my hostel dormitory at the Hotel Perminalen, which cost me twice as much as Denmark's Hotel Jørgensen. That's not a bad deal, considering this one is only a four-bed dorm, and it has an ensuite bathroom. Better still, when I was last there at 8pm, it seemed I was its only occupant for the night.

So I think I can expect a much better sleep than the night before.