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.