Cos thats where I am. But I'll backtrack. Flew into Bankok Suvarnabumi Airport (silent i, don't ask me why) two weeks ago, and met up with Josh. Very good to see him again! We stayed in the most amazing guesthouse ever, the rocking Sukhumvit On Nut Guesthouse. Run by a Japanese guy, it is not only a guesthouse, but a community centre, restaurant, internet cafe, language school, cooking school, web design company and 24-hour hairdresser (for when you get that late-night haircut craving). I arrived, and met a few guys that had been there for weeks, running up a tab because their money had been stolen/ were waiting to get more from family. They told me there' been a guy there that had stayed, teaching at the language school, for three years!
Sukhumvit On Nut is a little oasis of calm in the crazy commotion that is Bangkok. There isn't much to see in the way of sights, apart from temples (and I did drag Josh into a few) but just the streetscape is enough to keep you occupied for days. In Asian cities (and in some places in the country, like in Laos) people live their lives out on the street and with doors open - working on a street stall, eating at tiny restaurants which feel like you've walked into someone's living room (and in many cases, you have), and playing soccer and looking after their children outside. The concept of privacy is a bit flexible. But we were staying in a non-touristy area (i.e. not Khao San Rd) and didn't get any hassle at all, even with our extremely limited Thai, and my ability to complicate even the simplest of orders in restaurants.
We escaped the smog and traffic of Bangkok for a few days and went down to a tropical island a few hours south of Bangkok called Ko Samet. That place was heaven. A bungalow 200m away from the water, incredibly cheap, fresh seafood (for Josh), cocktails on the beach, a massage every morning...it felt like a million dollar retreat yet was no more expensive than staying in Bangkok. But we had to head up to Bangkok, to go to Chiang Mai.
I had my birthday in Chiang Mai - wandering the incredible night markets, getting Indian (preparation for Delhi!) and eating gigantic ice-cream sundaes with all our bags around us. We didn't stay there long though, only two nights, and headed off by minibus to the Thai-Laos border, the stay of three exhausting, but amazing days of travel through northern Thailand and Laos. We had decided to take the infamous Mekong slow boat, a two day, 16 hour boat ride, that was rumoured to be crowded, hot, and boring. And it was. But it was also amazing. We rode, in our little long boat, past some of the remotest parts of Laos - tiny villages, a few of which had cars, and you had to wander how they got there. Villages built into mountains so steep that I'm sure the effect of them getting onto flat land is akin to sailors on dry land. They kept hauling sacks to the villages, full of rice and other grains. We were evidently the star attraction of the day - some places it looked like everyone had come down to the dock to see us. Eventually we got to Luang Prabang, the second biggest town in Laos. Its tiny, nestled between two rivers, and everything was within walking distance of our guesthouse.
One day we were walking along a path towards the smaller of the two rivers, when we saw a sign saying there was a handicrafts village across the river. The only was to get across was by getting this old Laotian guy to take you across in his little canoe. We did, and for the first hour, wandered around the village sticking out like a sore thumb. Eventually we found the handicrafts stores and a temple and had a look around, then went back to get the guy to take up back across to the town. I learnt a good lesson about Laotian riverbeds that afternoon, because when I stepped off the boat, I stepped into a foot and a half of mud! Lost my shoes, although managed to fish them out of the mud again, the guy grabbed his bailing bucket and helped me wash it off (about 2 inches thick!), all while he, Josh, and the guy's wife were cracking up laughing at me. We managed to get we somewhat clean, but not respectable enough to go inside a shop, anjd walked back to the guesthouse, through the town. Everyone we passed - rickshaw drivers, women with the kids in their shops, kids playing beside the road, monks...smiled when we went past, then slowly realised what had happened to our feet (a very common thing to happen to a farang, or westerner, I imagine) and started laughing too. It was hilarious, to them and to us.
I also rode an elephant, called Nam, while I was there - I was wary of doing a packaged tour, but when I did it ended up being really good. It was through this absolutely gorgeous set of falls, and the animals were just beautiful. On the way back to the boat we encountered some kids with this little animal on their arms. At first I thought it was a kitten, but turned out to be a crazy, really affectionate possum called Ting Ting. I really liked Luang Prabang, and would have loved to have travelled more of Laos, but unfortunately we had planes to catch in Bangkok.
A word on overnight travel - there is a clear hierarchy. First, most comfortable, and the nicest overnight travel is by plane - there is no movement, you get a pillow and blanket, perfect temperature and if you have an aisle seat you may even be able to stretch your legs somewhat. Next down is the train. Extra points if you're in a booth and you can lie horizontally. The rhythmic motion is somewhat soothing; you can get some sleep. Next on the list is boats, and waay further down the list under bike, donkey, and turtleback, is a bus in Laos. We had the luxury of taking one from Luange Prabang to Vientiane on our last night in Laos, which was an experience, to say the least. Along with having enough space to fit maybe someone half my size, and a bus that looked like it was going to fall apart (in fact, it did; the bus broke down a few hours out of Luang Prabang and we had to wait by the side of the road for the new one, as it started to rain), the ride through mountains on the most interesting definition of a road I have ever seen was something akin to being in a washing machine. We did get a stop - at 1am in a tiny roadside cafeteria where it looked like the bus driver had woken the kitchen staff up to serve us (which they probably had). I did enjoy some of it, though...mainly the parts that involved pissing Josh off by stepping on his feet, or taking up too much space :P Vientiane does easily take the prize for most laid-back capital city in the world - even the notorious Asian driving was subdued somewhat. Getting back to Sukhumvit On Nut was awesome - the staff were glad to see us back, and, although Josh got a bit adventurous and went on a rampage trying every streetside thing-on-a-stick he could find, then suffering the consequences throwing up the whole night, it was good to be back. Next post, Delhi and Himachul Pradesh.
(Side note - Josh is now allergic to anything edible that comes in stick form.)
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Oh dear...
I´ve been travelling for quite a while since I last posted. Bit of an issue. Anyway, I´ll see what I can do about catching you all up. First of all, the Fusion festival was incredible. Out in the middle of nowhere north of Berlin, this five-day festival is ridiculously cheap (€55 for the whole festival, including camping) and involves the largest assembly of hippies, punks, goths and freaks I have ever seen. It was actually eventually so normal to see peple dressed up that walking past someone dressed in a Pikachu outfit, or entirely in purple, wouldn´t cause me to bat an eyelid. It was huge, with about 20 stages, scattered around an old Soviet airfield filled with fighter jet hangars covered in grass and street art. All the food was vegan or vegetarian, and everyone I met there (mainly the people I camped near) were incredibly nice. ne of the hangars had been converted into a workshop space, where you could learn things like slackrope walking, juggling (I can almost comfortably juggle three clubs now), capoeira, tango and trapeze (definitely not my forte, although I managed to get ON the bar, which was an achievement). I hung around there quite abit during the day, and at night one of my favourite places was the Firespace, where jugglers and other fire artists performed, sometimes as many as eight in the ring at one time. Their abilities were absolutely mesmerising - one of my (and the crowd´s) favourites was a guy performing with a length of rope with a fireball on each end,which he could use like a baton, or throw, making it slack, or send in two different directions at the same time. Most of the music was techno, (ridiculously loud as well, a lot of the kids ran round sporting big noise-blocking headphones to protect their ears) but I managed to see quite a lot of awesome gypsy music, which was my favourite. And I discovered a face- and bodypainter there, who was doing UV light painting during the night, and who I watched for hours over the days of the festival. I eventually knew him as Wolf Reicherter, world-reknowned UV light painter, and the creator of BodyMagic, and he eventually helped me a lot to get to know other painters later on at the World Bodypainting Festival.
Anyway, after Fusion I headed off to Prague, Budapest, and Zagreb, all similar cities, but with their own peculiar characteristics. Prague was quite touristy; one of the highlights for me was watching all the other tourists watch the show put on by the Astronomical Clock, which always disappoints, and watching them burst into laughter when it finished, with a kind of incredulous `Is that it?´ look on their faces. But I spent a bit of time painting in the Jewish Quarter (and got very sick of smazeny syr, the only vegetarian dish in the national repertoire, which is basically breaded fried cheese.) and discovered that you could see pretty much the whole city from the hill behind my hostel. And I stayed in probably the best hostel to date, Hostel Marabou. Very friendly and welcoming, with a beautiful view out of the bedroom windows and a well stocked kitchen, free internet and an interesting, halloween-style basement. I met so many other travellers there, I felt like I knew pretty much everyone in the hostel.
But I moved on to Budapest, which had a very similar feel to Prague, minus some of the ´architectural overachievement´ (a Lonely Planet phrase I think perfectly describes Prague) and with a completely incomphrehensible tongue. So getting a new phone there (after weeks of procrastination) proved to be very interesting. I went to some Turkish baths while I was there, and enjoyed it a lot. And went to the Hungarian National Art Gallery. And in case you´re wondering, it isn´t really worth seeing. Very small, with a handful of Baroque and Renaissance paintings and heaps of mediocre religous works (they weren´t mediocre because they were religious, I think that was just the only thing the Hungarians could think of to paint about). But it is in Budapest Castle, which is, while somehwat of a tourist trap, still very beautiful and worth a visit.
Then I headed off to Zagreb on my way to the World Bodypainting Festival. An internet-related stuff-up and a very inflexible receptionist meant I ended up staying there for 4 nights, which most people had told me was more than enough. But Zagreb ended up being one of my favourite cities, with a beautiful Catholic-village feel to it, and some of the most amazing fresh food markets I have been to anywhere in the world. Picture dozens of red umbrellas set up over trestle tables upon which fruits and vegetables are piled like at a swap meet. Not only lettuce and pumpkins, but striped and purple tomatoes, many different kinds of mushrooms, fresh white cheeses, fig honey, more types of green leafy vegetables than I have seen anywhere else, and all of these being sold by Catholic widows in their black mourning dresses and headscarves, or mothers with their sons and daughters, not bored kids hiding under tables, but active little sellers hawking what they honestly believe is the best produce. And not a trace of English in the air. I felt like I had wandered back in time. And I went to mass at the local Cathedral on the Sunday, and it was packed, with families, older widows and widowers, and young couples. Religion is not dead in Croatia, far from it. And twice while I was there I got stopped by evangelists, which hasn´t happened in any other cities (although one was an American born-again Christian on an exchange-type trip, who didn´t speak a word of Croatian). I spent a long time just wandering the old winding streets in Zagreb, people-watching. It is a very beautiful city, not very touristy at all, and very relaxed.
I left Zagreb, heading for Seeboden, in Carinthia, Austria, via Ljubljana in Slovenia. I´d heard many things about Ljubljana, many of them along the lines of ´You don´t need more than a few hours there´. And in some respects they were right. It is a pocket sized, beautiful city, that you can walk around in a few hours, which I did. I went up to Ljubljana Castle and had a look around - a lot was still beng renovated. There isn´t much to see in Ljubljana that you can´t see in other cities, but it does have quite an intelligent, international feel, being one of the original members of the EU and the first country to adopt the euro., Anyway, I headed on to Seeboden, which is by a lake called the Millstaetter See, and one of the first things you notice about this town is it´s a tiny, obscure place to hold the biggest bodypainting event in the world (which is evidently the biggest thing that happens in Millstaetter See or anywhere in Carinthia). But its a place that is instantly recognisable for face and bodypainters. ´My dream is to go to Seeboden´ `I´ll see you in Seeboden then?´. And the place is very used to hosting the festival. Magnificently organised by local Alex Barendregt and his Australian wife (and presenter on Bodypaint City TV) Karala Barendregt, signs of the festival everywhere in Seeboden. Posters everywhere, painted mannequins on hotel balconies and in the middle of the main roundabout, and a tourist office, that is not very big, but completely dedicated t making sure participants in the festival know where they´re going, what´s happening when and how to get to and from the festival.
I stayed with Wolf, his assistant Shaun (and his dog Merlin, who has the biggest blue eyes you can imagine), and their Dutch friends Danni and Mirte (can´t spell it properly, although he explained it to me a million times) in a beautiful apartment a 5 min walk from the Highschool where the workshops were being held and a 15 min walk from the festival grounds (through cow and wheat fields!). This meant the average conversation was being conducted in at least two, generally three languages (I was the only one who didn´t speak German, but all of them spoke perfect English). I did two workshops with a Belgian facepainter called Michael from Fantasy Worldwide, who brought his two gorgeous kids with him (who only spoke Dutch, although I had many interesting conversations with them) as models to work on, and I walked around for two days with a monster face, or a vampire face, and learnt heaps of new techniques and ideas. On the Wednesday night was a party called the BodyCircus, which I knew about and assumed I couldn´t go to (You have to have a costume and/or bodypaint). But, after a detour to watch the world airbrush champ paint at a gallery in a nearby town, some of my classmates and I decided to make some costumes so we could go. We must have looked strange running around picking vines and wrapping them around ourselves, and we spent a good hour looking for some paints to use, but we were finally ready to go. And I am very glad we did. It was a fantasy ball in the local castle (because, like any good Austrian town, it has its own castle, complete with torture museum), with fire torches, UV lights and a contortionist. It was amazing.
But the actual main days of the festival were incredible too. 200 artists from 40 countries compete in different categories, and I spent hours just wandering around and watching the best at their art. I got to know quite a few of them as well, like Alex Hansen, the afor-mentioned airbrush genius, and his models Jay and Abby, and Yolanda Bartram, an amazing New Zealander artist (closest thing i could find to an Aussie, apart from Karala) who specialises in prosthetics and trned Jay into a monster more realistic than many I´ve seen in films (she did work on LOTR though). And of course Wolf, who came second in the UV competition with a new, 3D style of UV painting. The thing I noticed the most about all of them was their willingness to help newbies, and each other, and to answer my questions and tell me as much as they could about the industry and the art, and I am really grateful for that. The afterparty on the final day was amazing too; let me just say that there was a lot of paint involved, and most of my clothes have at least a little bit of paint on them now. I am so grateful to all the painters, models, photographers and organisers that I met at the festival that took the time to talk to some random Australian girl who´s just starting out as a facepainter, like Craig Tracy, who runs a New Orleans-based bodypainting gallery (the first in the world) who taught me a lot about the business of bodypainting, all the painters who I just watched, or who I had long conversations about what makes a good artwork(good ideas for competing as I plan to get together the money and go back next year!), and of course Wolf for taking the crazy Australian backpacker under his wing and teaching me it IS an art, not just a business, amongst many other things.
Anyway, as much as I would´ve like to stay there forever, I did have to leave, and flew to Dublin to meet Kim, an Irish girl I met whilst in Amsterdam. I´ll admit. I didn´t see that much of Dublin. I spent a lot of time on her couch watching movies (also dyed my hair a colour that stretches the definiton of red immensely) and can now say I´ve seen a lot more of the must-see movies than I had when I started - Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, Edward Scissorhands, American Pie amongst others. We had a great time and she did show me around her city (when she could; it rains several times a day in Dublin). And yesterday I left (I was very sad to leave, it was great to be there and I really enjoyed spending time with Kim) at 5:30am, took a bus to the airport, then two planes, another bus to the tran station, then three trains, and crashed at my hostel in Vienna at 10pm. That was my most intense day of travel so far. And I fly out of Vienna this afternoon to Bangkok. Crazy amount of travel much? Anyway, if there is internet available I will be blogging in the next two weeks, in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, before I head off to India.
Anyway, after Fusion I headed off to Prague, Budapest, and Zagreb, all similar cities, but with their own peculiar characteristics. Prague was quite touristy; one of the highlights for me was watching all the other tourists watch the show put on by the Astronomical Clock, which always disappoints, and watching them burst into laughter when it finished, with a kind of incredulous `Is that it?´ look on their faces. But I spent a bit of time painting in the Jewish Quarter (and got very sick of smazeny syr, the only vegetarian dish in the national repertoire, which is basically breaded fried cheese.) and discovered that you could see pretty much the whole city from the hill behind my hostel. And I stayed in probably the best hostel to date, Hostel Marabou. Very friendly and welcoming, with a beautiful view out of the bedroom windows and a well stocked kitchen, free internet and an interesting, halloween-style basement. I met so many other travellers there, I felt like I knew pretty much everyone in the hostel.
But I moved on to Budapest, which had a very similar feel to Prague, minus some of the ´architectural overachievement´ (a Lonely Planet phrase I think perfectly describes Prague) and with a completely incomphrehensible tongue. So getting a new phone there (after weeks of procrastination) proved to be very interesting. I went to some Turkish baths while I was there, and enjoyed it a lot. And went to the Hungarian National Art Gallery. And in case you´re wondering, it isn´t really worth seeing. Very small, with a handful of Baroque and Renaissance paintings and heaps of mediocre religous works (they weren´t mediocre because they were religious, I think that was just the only thing the Hungarians could think of to paint about). But it is in Budapest Castle, which is, while somehwat of a tourist trap, still very beautiful and worth a visit.
Then I headed off to Zagreb on my way to the World Bodypainting Festival. An internet-related stuff-up and a very inflexible receptionist meant I ended up staying there for 4 nights, which most people had told me was more than enough. But Zagreb ended up being one of my favourite cities, with a beautiful Catholic-village feel to it, and some of the most amazing fresh food markets I have been to anywhere in the world. Picture dozens of red umbrellas set up over trestle tables upon which fruits and vegetables are piled like at a swap meet. Not only lettuce and pumpkins, but striped and purple tomatoes, many different kinds of mushrooms, fresh white cheeses, fig honey, more types of green leafy vegetables than I have seen anywhere else, and all of these being sold by Catholic widows in their black mourning dresses and headscarves, or mothers with their sons and daughters, not bored kids hiding under tables, but active little sellers hawking what they honestly believe is the best produce. And not a trace of English in the air. I felt like I had wandered back in time. And I went to mass at the local Cathedral on the Sunday, and it was packed, with families, older widows and widowers, and young couples. Religion is not dead in Croatia, far from it. And twice while I was there I got stopped by evangelists, which hasn´t happened in any other cities (although one was an American born-again Christian on an exchange-type trip, who didn´t speak a word of Croatian). I spent a long time just wandering the old winding streets in Zagreb, people-watching. It is a very beautiful city, not very touristy at all, and very relaxed.
I left Zagreb, heading for Seeboden, in Carinthia, Austria, via Ljubljana in Slovenia. I´d heard many things about Ljubljana, many of them along the lines of ´You don´t need more than a few hours there´. And in some respects they were right. It is a pocket sized, beautiful city, that you can walk around in a few hours, which I did. I went up to Ljubljana Castle and had a look around - a lot was still beng renovated. There isn´t much to see in Ljubljana that you can´t see in other cities, but it does have quite an intelligent, international feel, being one of the original members of the EU and the first country to adopt the euro., Anyway, I headed on to Seeboden, which is by a lake called the Millstaetter See, and one of the first things you notice about this town is it´s a tiny, obscure place to hold the biggest bodypainting event in the world (which is evidently the biggest thing that happens in Millstaetter See or anywhere in Carinthia). But its a place that is instantly recognisable for face and bodypainters. ´My dream is to go to Seeboden´ `I´ll see you in Seeboden then?´. And the place is very used to hosting the festival. Magnificently organised by local Alex Barendregt and his Australian wife (and presenter on Bodypaint City TV) Karala Barendregt, signs of the festival everywhere in Seeboden. Posters everywhere, painted mannequins on hotel balconies and in the middle of the main roundabout, and a tourist office, that is not very big, but completely dedicated t making sure participants in the festival know where they´re going, what´s happening when and how to get to and from the festival.
I stayed with Wolf, his assistant Shaun (and his dog Merlin, who has the biggest blue eyes you can imagine), and their Dutch friends Danni and Mirte (can´t spell it properly, although he explained it to me a million times) in a beautiful apartment a 5 min walk from the Highschool where the workshops were being held and a 15 min walk from the festival grounds (through cow and wheat fields!). This meant the average conversation was being conducted in at least two, generally three languages (I was the only one who didn´t speak German, but all of them spoke perfect English). I did two workshops with a Belgian facepainter called Michael from Fantasy Worldwide, who brought his two gorgeous kids with him (who only spoke Dutch, although I had many interesting conversations with them) as models to work on, and I walked around for two days with a monster face, or a vampire face, and learnt heaps of new techniques and ideas. On the Wednesday night was a party called the BodyCircus, which I knew about and assumed I couldn´t go to (You have to have a costume and/or bodypaint). But, after a detour to watch the world airbrush champ paint at a gallery in a nearby town, some of my classmates and I decided to make some costumes so we could go. We must have looked strange running around picking vines and wrapping them around ourselves, and we spent a good hour looking for some paints to use, but we were finally ready to go. And I am very glad we did. It was a fantasy ball in the local castle (because, like any good Austrian town, it has its own castle, complete with torture museum), with fire torches, UV lights and a contortionist. It was amazing.
But the actual main days of the festival were incredible too. 200 artists from 40 countries compete in different categories, and I spent hours just wandering around and watching the best at their art. I got to know quite a few of them as well, like Alex Hansen, the afor-mentioned airbrush genius, and his models Jay and Abby, and Yolanda Bartram, an amazing New Zealander artist (closest thing i could find to an Aussie, apart from Karala) who specialises in prosthetics and trned Jay into a monster more realistic than many I´ve seen in films (she did work on LOTR though). And of course Wolf, who came second in the UV competition with a new, 3D style of UV painting. The thing I noticed the most about all of them was their willingness to help newbies, and each other, and to answer my questions and tell me as much as they could about the industry and the art, and I am really grateful for that. The afterparty on the final day was amazing too; let me just say that there was a lot of paint involved, and most of my clothes have at least a little bit of paint on them now. I am so grateful to all the painters, models, photographers and organisers that I met at the festival that took the time to talk to some random Australian girl who´s just starting out as a facepainter, like Craig Tracy, who runs a New Orleans-based bodypainting gallery (the first in the world) who taught me a lot about the business of bodypainting, all the painters who I just watched, or who I had long conversations about what makes a good artwork(good ideas for competing as I plan to get together the money and go back next year!), and of course Wolf for taking the crazy Australian backpacker under his wing and teaching me it IS an art, not just a business, amongst many other things.
Anyway, as much as I would´ve like to stay there forever, I did have to leave, and flew to Dublin to meet Kim, an Irish girl I met whilst in Amsterdam. I´ll admit. I didn´t see that much of Dublin. I spent a lot of time on her couch watching movies (also dyed my hair a colour that stretches the definiton of red immensely) and can now say I´ve seen a lot more of the must-see movies than I had when I started - Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, Edward Scissorhands, American Pie amongst others. We had a great time and she did show me around her city (when she could; it rains several times a day in Dublin). And yesterday I left (I was very sad to leave, it was great to be there and I really enjoyed spending time with Kim) at 5:30am, took a bus to the airport, then two planes, another bus to the tran station, then three trains, and crashed at my hostel in Vienna at 10pm. That was my most intense day of travel so far. And I fly out of Vienna this afternoon to Bangkok. Crazy amount of travel much? Anyway, if there is internet available I will be blogging in the next two weeks, in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, before I head off to India.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Just catch you all up...
I left Amsterdam. Was very sad to see it go, because its an amazing city and i met some very cool people there. I took a train to Cologne. Poor Cologne, it never had a chance. The night before I left Amsterdam I stayed up all night talking to an Irish girl called Kim on the couch in the lobby of my hostel, about everything under the sun. And then in order to get to Cologne, I had to get 4 trains, each lasting between 30mins-1 hour. I was so tired, and missing Amsterdam, and then I got off at the wrong station in Cologne and had to walk for two hours in the rain. To find that my hostel was right next to the train station I failed to get off at and my room was right next to the tracks. No sleepytime for Jess. Needless to say it wasn´t the most fun I´ve had here so far. But I took a long walk around the city the next day, and i think maybe if I ever went there again I wouldn´t hate it. Maybe.
My train to Berlin was a lot easier, and my hostel easy to find. However, i arrived to find my room was in the basement of the hostel, and there were 29 other people in it. I have since moved to a hostel on a boat on the river Spree next to O2 World, a huge ugly concert hall in the middle of avant-garde Freidrichshain and Kreuzberg. But I am less than 50 metres away from the East Side Gallery, the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall. I´ve been on quite a few tours of Berlin while I´ve been here, and I´m picking up little bits of German, which is cool. I find it fun to try and translate things I have no business translating, and imagine they say weird and wonderful things when in reality its more like `fish and cheese´or something like that. On Sunday I woke up to find that the huge Fete de la Musique was on, a giant free festival with performances all throughout Berlin. I ended up participating in an experiential performance art kinda thing involving lots of paper hearts and LOVE for everybody, run by this artist called Oliver, and spending the day with some German uni students writing on Oliver´s installation-poster and listening to very good music played by an indie rock band, a gypsy band and a plain rock band near a little cafe in a park in Kreuzberg. Lots of fun.
While I´ve been here I´ve eating so many felafel kebabs its insane. That and Vietnamese noodles. They are very cheap here, and there are stalls everywhere that make the felafel fresh in front of you. Anyway, I´m planning to go to a music and theatre festival near Berlin this week called Fusion, which sounds like it should be awesome.
My train to Berlin was a lot easier, and my hostel easy to find. However, i arrived to find my room was in the basement of the hostel, and there were 29 other people in it. I have since moved to a hostel on a boat on the river Spree next to O2 World, a huge ugly concert hall in the middle of avant-garde Freidrichshain and Kreuzberg. But I am less than 50 metres away from the East Side Gallery, the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall. I´ve been on quite a few tours of Berlin while I´ve been here, and I´m picking up little bits of German, which is cool. I find it fun to try and translate things I have no business translating, and imagine they say weird and wonderful things when in reality its more like `fish and cheese´or something like that. On Sunday I woke up to find that the huge Fete de la Musique was on, a giant free festival with performances all throughout Berlin. I ended up participating in an experiential performance art kinda thing involving lots of paper hearts and LOVE for everybody, run by this artist called Oliver, and spending the day with some German uni students writing on Oliver´s installation-poster and listening to very good music played by an indie rock band, a gypsy band and a plain rock band near a little cafe in a park in Kreuzberg. Lots of fun.
While I´ve been here I´ve eating so many felafel kebabs its insane. That and Vietnamese noodles. They are very cheap here, and there are stalls everywhere that make the felafel fresh in front of you. Anyway, I´m planning to go to a music and theatre festival near Berlin this week called Fusion, which sounds like it should be awesome.
Things I´ve learnt while traveling...
1. When you bring so few things with you, it is important that the things you do bring are beautiful and you enjoy them. Otherwise you will get tired of seeing them everyday.
2. Travel doesn´t need to be meticulously planned, and it often turns out better if it isn´t.
3. Travel is not a competition.
4. One of the few ways we actually learn anything is by simply observing.
5. People you meet while traveling are generally friendly and normal, and have more in common with you than you think. The only thing holding you back from talking to strangers is fear of what they´ll think of you.
6. The ability to read people is a useful necessity when traveling alone. Not just for security reasons, sometimes just to avoid being stuck in a boring conversation.
7. Language barriers are molehills, not mountains. And fun to overcome.
8. Being able to judge other people is hard. Harder is being able to judge yourself.
9. Loneliness happens. Sometimes its necessary, like being stuck in a room with yourself until one of you wins.
10. Age is a construct; some people fit the mould better than others. The most interesting people you meet while traveling are those who ignore the mould entirely.
11. You can always leave.
Now read again, substituting the world `travel´ for `life´.
2. Travel doesn´t need to be meticulously planned, and it often turns out better if it isn´t.
3. Travel is not a competition.
4. One of the few ways we actually learn anything is by simply observing.
5. People you meet while traveling are generally friendly and normal, and have more in common with you than you think. The only thing holding you back from talking to strangers is fear of what they´ll think of you.
6. The ability to read people is a useful necessity when traveling alone. Not just for security reasons, sometimes just to avoid being stuck in a boring conversation.
7. Language barriers are molehills, not mountains. And fun to overcome.
8. Being able to judge other people is hard. Harder is being able to judge yourself.
9. Loneliness happens. Sometimes its necessary, like being stuck in a room with yourself until one of you wins.
10. Age is a construct; some people fit the mould better than others. The most interesting people you meet while traveling are those who ignore the mould entirely.
11. You can always leave.
Now read again, substituting the world `travel´ for `life´.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Carcassonne, Avignon, Paris, Amsterdam
So I left La Barraque last Monday, catching a train from Auch to Avignon, stopping at Carcassonne on the way. Remember the photo of the quite small backpack in one of the first posts? Here's where that comes in handy. I wanted to visit La Cite, the medieval city outside the modern town of Carcassonne. i read a book with a lot of Cathar history that was set there, and it seemed really interesting.
Mistake 1: Not hunting around well enough for a locker to put my bag in. That thing was heavy, schlepped around a city on a hill.
Mistake 2: Not checking how far the ruins were from the train station before I left. It was a lot farther than I thought.
Mistake 3: Going in the middle of the day, when the only language you won't here in the Cite of Carcassonne is French. There were a LOT of tourists.
All in all, the site was pretty interesting, if extremely touristy. People hike up to this medieval city to eat fish and chips in a restaurant on the sidewalk and buy plastic souvenir swords. The church was beautiful though, as was the view. Anyway, I was only there for a few hours on my way to Avignon.
That is a nice town. Its a walled city, so you get the contrast of stylish 10 year old apartments set into medieval stone ramparts. I was staying at a hostel/camping ground on an island across the river from the main city, so there were beautiful views of the church, and the Palais des Papes, which was briefly the papal seat of power a few centuries ago. The last day i was there I went for a walk to Villeneuve-Les-Avignon which is not too far from Avignon. There were cool walks to do along the canal that encircles avignon, and into the gardens of an abbey (I never managed to find the actual abbey, but the gardens spread out for ages and were gorgeous) and I walked through a park where they were installing some sculptures made by local art students into the grass.
Anyway, TGVs are fast, so it took me less than three hours to get from Avignon to Paris, where I stayed in the same hostel I did the last time, and met a bunch of French Canadians, and we all went and took a picnic dinner and ate in front of the Eiffel Tower, watching it all lit up, and the light show that happened every hour. I left for Amsterdam at an ungodly hour in the morning (the definition of ungodly being too early for breakfast, which is included free in most hostels) and arrived at around 11am. I've been in Amsterdam for a while now, and I've been on quite a few free tours, which are really good, and visited the Rijkmuseum, Van Gogh museum and Anne Frank House.
Anne Frank House is one of the best places I've been so far. I've read the book, and seeing where the Franks actually lived, in such cramped quarters, was really interesting. But the best parts were the video interviews with Miep, a helper who smuggled food to the Franks while they were in hiding, and collected the parts of Anne's diary, and Anne's friend Hannah who saw her for the last time in a concentration camp, and her father Otto. Otto's interview was very emotional to watch, and you could tell how passionate he was about spreading his daughter's legacy after his entire family was killed. I was very affected by the house, and if you're ever in Amsterdam go visit it.
I love Amsterdam's bicycles, and the tram system. Roads in Amstersdam are very complex, and there are very few that cater just for cars. Most have a pedestrian footpath, a bike lane, and a tram line which may or may not be used by cars and bars as well. Crossing the road is an experience. I'm staying next to the beautiful Vondelpark (try saying that out loud and with a German accent) and its a 10 min walk to Dam Square, where there is beach volleyball going on at the moment, and heaps of street artists. Its a very lively city, especially in contrast to the car-oriented cities in Aus and the US which can often seem like robotic ghost towns. In Amsterdam EVERYONE cycles. Old, young, with children (the most I've seen is three kids on the one bike), with dogs (I saw a huge golden retriever on the back of one bike) brightly coloured. But all the bikes are pieces of junk. This is because the average Amsterdammer goes through about 30 bikes in a lifetime, and around 40 000 get stolen every year. But its a very small, flat city, which makes it a perfect place ofr cyclists.
Anyway, there's a free concert in the Vondelpark, which is where I'm off to now. Ciao!
Mistake 1: Not hunting around well enough for a locker to put my bag in. That thing was heavy, schlepped around a city on a hill.
Mistake 2: Not checking how far the ruins were from the train station before I left. It was a lot farther than I thought.
Mistake 3: Going in the middle of the day, when the only language you won't here in the Cite of Carcassonne is French. There were a LOT of tourists.
All in all, the site was pretty interesting, if extremely touristy. People hike up to this medieval city to eat fish and chips in a restaurant on the sidewalk and buy plastic souvenir swords. The church was beautiful though, as was the view. Anyway, I was only there for a few hours on my way to Avignon.
That is a nice town. Its a walled city, so you get the contrast of stylish 10 year old apartments set into medieval stone ramparts. I was staying at a hostel/camping ground on an island across the river from the main city, so there were beautiful views of the church, and the Palais des Papes, which was briefly the papal seat of power a few centuries ago. The last day i was there I went for a walk to Villeneuve-Les-Avignon which is not too far from Avignon. There were cool walks to do along the canal that encircles avignon, and into the gardens of an abbey (I never managed to find the actual abbey, but the gardens spread out for ages and were gorgeous) and I walked through a park where they were installing some sculptures made by local art students into the grass.
Anyway, TGVs are fast, so it took me less than three hours to get from Avignon to Paris, where I stayed in the same hostel I did the last time, and met a bunch of French Canadians, and we all went and took a picnic dinner and ate in front of the Eiffel Tower, watching it all lit up, and the light show that happened every hour. I left for Amsterdam at an ungodly hour in the morning (the definition of ungodly being too early for breakfast, which is included free in most hostels) and arrived at around 11am. I've been in Amsterdam for a while now, and I've been on quite a few free tours, which are really good, and visited the Rijkmuseum, Van Gogh museum and Anne Frank House.
Anne Frank House is one of the best places I've been so far. I've read the book, and seeing where the Franks actually lived, in such cramped quarters, was really interesting. But the best parts were the video interviews with Miep, a helper who smuggled food to the Franks while they were in hiding, and collected the parts of Anne's diary, and Anne's friend Hannah who saw her for the last time in a concentration camp, and her father Otto. Otto's interview was very emotional to watch, and you could tell how passionate he was about spreading his daughter's legacy after his entire family was killed. I was very affected by the house, and if you're ever in Amsterdam go visit it.
I love Amsterdam's bicycles, and the tram system. Roads in Amstersdam are very complex, and there are very few that cater just for cars. Most have a pedestrian footpath, a bike lane, and a tram line which may or may not be used by cars and bars as well. Crossing the road is an experience. I'm staying next to the beautiful Vondelpark (try saying that out loud and with a German accent) and its a 10 min walk to Dam Square, where there is beach volleyball going on at the moment, and heaps of street artists. Its a very lively city, especially in contrast to the car-oriented cities in Aus and the US which can often seem like robotic ghost towns. In Amsterdam EVERYONE cycles. Old, young, with children (the most I've seen is three kids on the one bike), with dogs (I saw a huge golden retriever on the back of one bike) brightly coloured. But all the bikes are pieces of junk. This is because the average Amsterdammer goes through about 30 bikes in a lifetime, and around 40 000 get stolen every year. But its a very small, flat city, which makes it a perfect place ofr cyclists.
Anyway, there's a free concert in the Vondelpark, which is where I'm off to now. Ciao!
Thursday, May 14, 2009
A Day in the Life of a La Barraque WWOOFer
Anywhere between 6am and 8am, depending on my mood, the temperature, whether its raining, what I ate for lunch yesterday, I get up. Dash to the outdoor pit toilet that I'm actually quite fond of (don't laugh; it doesn't smell; and the toilet room walls kinda things are made out of raspberry canes) Maybe spend some time slughunting in the garden before breakfast. Spend another 20 minutes washing my hands to get rid of the ever present eau de la limasse (French for slug).
Around 8am Sophie, Johanna and i have breakfast (Leilani having left at 6 for school). Usually consists of fresh, homemade bread, homemade butter, a bol du chocolat (recipe. take a bowl of warmed fresh milk. Add cocoa and sugar. Mix. Drink.), yoghurt or fromage fraise, which is kinda like cottage cheese crossed with ricotta, with homemade raspberry or fig jam or the honey the neighbours gave us and maybe an apple. All is awesomely good - sounds poncy saying homemade with everything but they really do make a good deal of what they eat, and some of it (like mayonnaise) is almost easier than going to a store and buying it. Its a case of 'we're out of bread, are we? Ok, I'll just make some more' rather than a mad dash to the supermarket (which I haven't seen in Mirande yet, althoght there probably is one; we went to an organic shop in Miraic where everything is in bulk this morning to buy stuff, mainly because it was raining rather than anything was urgently needed). Anyway, continuing...
After breakfast Sophie and/or Johanna goes to get the cows and we bring them to the calves, then milk them. I'm getting pretty good at it, although I'm still not as good as Johanna, she's a machine! if there's more than a bucketful the cats and dogs get their share; nothing is wasted. Also let the chooks out and change their food.
In the morning we normally work in the garden, either weeding or slughunting (or both) or mulching. The first day after I arrived I spent until 5:30 after lunch pulling a particular plant thant's bad for the cows out of one of the fields; most of the time we do more work in the morning and its more relaxed in the afternoon.
We make lunch at around 12, and Johanna takes some in to Leilani in town and gives some music lessons at her studio there. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and it always involves stuff from the garden. its always different but today we had celeriac and carrot salad with olives, leftover couscous with chickpeas, raisins and celery leaves, a cooked grain Sophie could only explain as grain the chickens eat, but which takes a loooong time to cook (as in its been cooking for the past three days, on and off) and is very tasty, and a cheese crepe. Always with fresh bread and a constant supply of mint tea. Sophie and I stay at the house and have lunch there, then do a little more work, and laze around, go on the computer or read, or play with the dogs (Sophie's playing the piano now; they're all really good at the piano, and recorder, and guitar, and singing...).
When Johanna comes back she brings Leilani home from school, we might work in the garden again, or lounge around, cracking nuts and eating them (Leilani broke a window pane that way) or sometimes playing the guitar. Its very relaxed and a lot of playing with dogs occurs. At around 7.30 we go get the cows and milk the cows again, then go inside and have supper at like 9pm, which is basically the same as breakfast, although sometimes we have sugar crepes. I most go to bed after that, sometimes watching a video called Les Guignols on the internet with everybody squished in behind the compûter. Its like Team America met the Glasshouse; literal political puppets. I don't get a lot of it, because of the language and because i'm not familiar with French politics, but its still funny.
Then bed, to do it all again. Sometimes a neighbour comes over, or we go to the neighbour's place; foodstuffs are generally exchanged; there is a lot of talking are generally following too much French makes my head hurt. But its a lot of fun, and I'm enjoying it here immensely.
Around 8am Sophie, Johanna and i have breakfast (Leilani having left at 6 for school). Usually consists of fresh, homemade bread, homemade butter, a bol du chocolat (recipe. take a bowl of warmed fresh milk. Add cocoa and sugar. Mix. Drink.), yoghurt or fromage fraise, which is kinda like cottage cheese crossed with ricotta, with homemade raspberry or fig jam or the honey the neighbours gave us and maybe an apple. All is awesomely good - sounds poncy saying homemade with everything but they really do make a good deal of what they eat, and some of it (like mayonnaise) is almost easier than going to a store and buying it. Its a case of 'we're out of bread, are we? Ok, I'll just make some more' rather than a mad dash to the supermarket (which I haven't seen in Mirande yet, althoght there probably is one; we went to an organic shop in Miraic where everything is in bulk this morning to buy stuff, mainly because it was raining rather than anything was urgently needed). Anyway, continuing...
After breakfast Sophie and/or Johanna goes to get the cows and we bring them to the calves, then milk them. I'm getting pretty good at it, although I'm still not as good as Johanna, she's a machine! if there's more than a bucketful the cats and dogs get their share; nothing is wasted. Also let the chooks out and change their food.
In the morning we normally work in the garden, either weeding or slughunting (or both) or mulching. The first day after I arrived I spent until 5:30 after lunch pulling a particular plant thant's bad for the cows out of one of the fields; most of the time we do more work in the morning and its more relaxed in the afternoon.
We make lunch at around 12, and Johanna takes some in to Leilani in town and gives some music lessons at her studio there. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and it always involves stuff from the garden. its always different but today we had celeriac and carrot salad with olives, leftover couscous with chickpeas, raisins and celery leaves, a cooked grain Sophie could only explain as grain the chickens eat, but which takes a loooong time to cook (as in its been cooking for the past three days, on and off) and is very tasty, and a cheese crepe. Always with fresh bread and a constant supply of mint tea. Sophie and I stay at the house and have lunch there, then do a little more work, and laze around, go on the computer or read, or play with the dogs (Sophie's playing the piano now; they're all really good at the piano, and recorder, and guitar, and singing...).
When Johanna comes back she brings Leilani home from school, we might work in the garden again, or lounge around, cracking nuts and eating them (Leilani broke a window pane that way) or sometimes playing the guitar. Its very relaxed and a lot of playing with dogs occurs. At around 7.30 we go get the cows and milk the cows again, then go inside and have supper at like 9pm, which is basically the same as breakfast, although sometimes we have sugar crepes. I most go to bed after that, sometimes watching a video called Les Guignols on the internet with everybody squished in behind the compûter. Its like Team America met the Glasshouse; literal political puppets. I don't get a lot of it, because of the language and because i'm not familiar with French politics, but its still funny.
Then bed, to do it all again. Sometimes a neighbour comes over, or we go to the neighbour's place; foodstuffs are generally exchanged; there is a lot of talking are generally following too much French makes my head hurt. But its a lot of fun, and I'm enjoying it here immensely.
Other things in Paris, TGV, La Barraque
I promised...
So other stuff i did in Paris... I went to the Jardin des Plantes and the Menagerie (which is an infinitissimally cooler word than zoo, I think) and wandered around a bit ' the Jardin des Plantes has what i think is very undervalued in other countries such as Aus - a catalogue of the flora of a particular place, grown in each plant's respective climate. I like places like that, and I think they will become increasingly important as we lose more species to global warming...people run in there too. As a place to run it gives the bay run a run for its money...argh too many runs. Also lots of school groups being dragged around although I can't imagine they'd learn much botany in school anymore. Also the Menagerie, which is kinda small compared to the London Zoo and Taronga, but again focussed on cataloguing and conserving rather than just showing off (on a side note, something i forgot: the Aquarium at the London Zoo is the oldest of its kind, and they actually invented the word aquarium of it - a combination of the previous name for that kind of thing - aquatic vivarium. End of irrelevantness). There were awesome Orangutans at the Menagerie, and a flock of flamingois that all had their right wing half cut off. That was sad...
I spent a lot of time just walking in Paris; like many pre-car places its a very walkabke city. Their hawkers are a lot more refined than in either London or New York - thing original handpainted watercolours and handpainted snuff boxes rather than I heart NY baseball caps or British flags. Even still, they have the annoying 1euro guys - the guys in baseball caps who sell overheated water in bottles to unsuspecting tourists for '1 euro, 1 euro'. They weren't too hard to ignore after a while.
So, TGV. i went to Montparnasse train station the day before i left Paris to book my ticket, confused a very helpful train worker, and didn't get lost. Score. I caught a 8.10 train bound for Toulouse, arrived in Toulouse at around 1:30 with a stopover of about 4 hours, succeeding in both arriving on a Sunday (where there is REALLY nothing open) and about half an hour after the local markets finished. Found a Hungarian Fiorint on a chain; highlight. It looks like a relatively interesting city, though.
Anyway, continued on by bus and train to be met at Mirande by Johanna, my lovely WWOOF host (if you're wondering, she isn't reading this; she really is lovely) in her exceptional artwork of a car (think the offspring of an old 4 door sedan and a kombi the hippies painted on their day off) and taken to La Barraque. La Barraque is a very old farmhouse that is home to Johanna and her daughters Sophie, 19 and Leilani, 13. The farm is also home to Kai, a golden retriever who will nidge you until you pet her, Reglisse, a mutt with SEVERE stick issues and Ferdiez, the maltese whose left eye was taken our in a fight with another dog. Make no mistake, she's vicious. Also two cats, one of whom has an adorable balance problem, about 10 hens and a rooster, and a peacock who never gets as much attention as he wants, gets into squawking matches with the farm's human inhabitants and spents much of his time attempting to woo the chickens with his beautiful tail. Also two donkeys, two horses, about 4 cows, two calves and about 53 million slugs.
Slugs. Mmmm. They are the bane of my existence here at the farm, they are everywhere. There is a strawberry patch here; I like strawberries. Fair enough. But the slugs like them too. So every time it rains I go on slug patrol (and here in the Mid-Pyrenees, every time it rains is awfully often), nabbing buckets and buckets of the little buggers, which Johanna then kills with hot water. But they return, en masse. Anyway, will post again extremely soon (as in the next twenty minutes) with an average day at La Barraque.
So other stuff i did in Paris... I went to the Jardin des Plantes and the Menagerie (which is an infinitissimally cooler word than zoo, I think) and wandered around a bit ' the Jardin des Plantes has what i think is very undervalued in other countries such as Aus - a catalogue of the flora of a particular place, grown in each plant's respective climate. I like places like that, and I think they will become increasingly important as we lose more species to global warming...people run in there too. As a place to run it gives the bay run a run for its money...argh too many runs. Also lots of school groups being dragged around although I can't imagine they'd learn much botany in school anymore. Also the Menagerie, which is kinda small compared to the London Zoo and Taronga, but again focussed on cataloguing and conserving rather than just showing off (on a side note, something i forgot: the Aquarium at the London Zoo is the oldest of its kind, and they actually invented the word aquarium of it - a combination of the previous name for that kind of thing - aquatic vivarium. End of irrelevantness). There were awesome Orangutans at the Menagerie, and a flock of flamingois that all had their right wing half cut off. That was sad...
I spent a lot of time just walking in Paris; like many pre-car places its a very walkabke city. Their hawkers are a lot more refined than in either London or New York - thing original handpainted watercolours and handpainted snuff boxes rather than I heart NY baseball caps or British flags. Even still, they have the annoying 1euro guys - the guys in baseball caps who sell overheated water in bottles to unsuspecting tourists for '1 euro, 1 euro'. They weren't too hard to ignore after a while.
So, TGV. i went to Montparnasse train station the day before i left Paris to book my ticket, confused a very helpful train worker, and didn't get lost. Score. I caught a 8.10 train bound for Toulouse, arrived in Toulouse at around 1:30 with a stopover of about 4 hours, succeeding in both arriving on a Sunday (where there is REALLY nothing open) and about half an hour after the local markets finished. Found a Hungarian Fiorint on a chain; highlight. It looks like a relatively interesting city, though.
Anyway, continued on by bus and train to be met at Mirande by Johanna, my lovely WWOOF host (if you're wondering, she isn't reading this; she really is lovely) in her exceptional artwork of a car (think the offspring of an old 4 door sedan and a kombi the hippies painted on their day off) and taken to La Barraque. La Barraque is a very old farmhouse that is home to Johanna and her daughters Sophie, 19 and Leilani, 13. The farm is also home to Kai, a golden retriever who will nidge you until you pet her, Reglisse, a mutt with SEVERE stick issues and Ferdiez, the maltese whose left eye was taken our in a fight with another dog. Make no mistake, she's vicious. Also two cats, one of whom has an adorable balance problem, about 10 hens and a rooster, and a peacock who never gets as much attention as he wants, gets into squawking matches with the farm's human inhabitants and spents much of his time attempting to woo the chickens with his beautiful tail. Also two donkeys, two horses, about 4 cows, two calves and about 53 million slugs.
Slugs. Mmmm. They are the bane of my existence here at the farm, they are everywhere. There is a strawberry patch here; I like strawberries. Fair enough. But the slugs like them too. So every time it rains I go on slug patrol (and here in the Mid-Pyrenees, every time it rains is awfully often), nabbing buckets and buckets of the little buggers, which Johanna then kills with hot water. But they return, en masse. Anyway, will post again extremely soon (as in the next twenty minutes) with an average day at La Barraque.
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