Howdoo,
Me and my good buddy "Rick" have just returned to Croatia after two days in the lovely little medieval town of Mostar in Bosnia. It's a very picturesque place with lots of cobbled streets and little old Turkish-style buildings, and unfortunately it suffered a lot of bombing in the war. But now it is almost rebuilt, though you can still see old bombed-out ruins in amongst the spectacular scenery. A very eye-opening experience.
So anyway, we've got back to Dubrovnik now and we were looking forward to spending our last day going on a day trip to Montenegro, but we've found there's bugger all happening trip-wise tomorrow! So we'll be sat around getting drunk I expect. Although Dubrovnik is in Croatia, it is full of British and Australian people, so it barely feels like being away from home. Which is kinda confusing. This internet cafe is quite nice, they're playing a song by the Byrds on the CD player, but it's not as good as the last one, which was outdoors! In a park! Crazy.
Oh and at the moment I'm reading Lullaby by Chuck Palhahunihuiluiujikk who wrote Fight Club. It's a stonking good read.
Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Friday, 17 August 2007
Croatia is better
Hi there,
I`m now in Dubrovnik in Croatia. I cant write for long and this keyboard seems to have no apostrophe, possessive or otherwise. Its very upsetting. Nevertheless, its very nice here and hot and sunny. Sziget was fun in the end. We all cheered up once we located a warm shower! Then we watched Madness, who were pretty good. Then I packed up my tent, caught a train with Rick and Katy to Zagreb. Then we got an overnight bus to Dubrovnik. By the way it is impossible to sleep on one of these contraptions, but at least they played a Croatian cover of George Harrisons "my sweet lord" which was pretty funny to listen to. Now weve spent a couple of days here on the Adriatic coast, and we went on a nice cruise round some islands yesterday. I have to go now, my time is up. Take care!
I`m now in Dubrovnik in Croatia. I cant write for long and this keyboard seems to have no apostrophe, possessive or otherwise. Its very upsetting. Nevertheless, its very nice here and hot and sunny. Sziget was fun in the end. We all cheered up once we located a warm shower! Then we watched Madness, who were pretty good. Then I packed up my tent, caught a train with Rick and Katy to Zagreb. Then we got an overnight bus to Dubrovnik. By the way it is impossible to sleep on one of these contraptions, but at least they played a Croatian cover of George Harrisons "my sweet lord" which was pretty funny to listen to. Now weve spent a couple of days here on the Adriatic coast, and we went on a nice cruise round some islands yesterday. I have to go now, my time is up. Take care!
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Bloody rain
Hello,
I'm now at Sziget. I am tired. It's been raining loads overnight. My friends got soaked last night in a torrential downpour. I didn't cos my tent is ace. Ray Mears eat your heart out. The weather's not very good this year, though we've seen the Chemical Toilet Brothers and Madness, which was cool. Either I'm getting old or the weather's not like it used to be. I really enjoyed Sziget last year, and the year before that, but this year just hasn't felt the same.
We've got another three or so days of this World War One-style mud, madness and mosquitos, then we all go our separate ways. And then I'm off to Croatia with Rick and Katy, which should be good. Though I can't wait to come home all the same. Camping is rubbish.
Still... there's always tomorrow!
I think we're all going into Budapest today, to get a shower in Rick and Katy's appartment. Possibly we will enjoy some fine wines and witty banter, aboard the city's own Reggae Boat. I still have high hopes.
Anyway, I can't stay for long, there are guards patrolling the perimeter of the internet tent, with dogs on chains and freaking big guns. Tattybyeski!!
I'm now at Sziget. I am tired. It's been raining loads overnight. My friends got soaked last night in a torrential downpour. I didn't cos my tent is ace. Ray Mears eat your heart out. The weather's not very good this year, though we've seen the Chemical Toilet Brothers and Madness, which was cool. Either I'm getting old or the weather's not like it used to be. I really enjoyed Sziget last year, and the year before that, but this year just hasn't felt the same.
We've got another three or so days of this World War One-style mud, madness and mosquitos, then we all go our separate ways. And then I'm off to Croatia with Rick and Katy, which should be good. Though I can't wait to come home all the same. Camping is rubbish.
Still... there's always tomorrow!
I think we're all going into Budapest today, to get a shower in Rick and Katy's appartment. Possibly we will enjoy some fine wines and witty banter, aboard the city's own Reggae Boat. I still have high hopes.
Anyway, I can't stay for long, there are guards patrolling the perimeter of the internet tent, with dogs on chains and freaking big guns. Tattybyeski!!
Tuesday, 7 August 2007
Worst birthday... EVER!
If anyone is still reading this, you'll be aware I've not written anything for a while. I'm not dead, I'm pleased to say. Things just went "titski-up" as the Ukrainians say, and we had to fly home to Manchester on 21st July. Since that day I've been living in a horrible stupor, unable to comprehend the amazing events which befell Katy and I in such a short space of time. I've been keeping a low profile in the Huddersfield region. Tomorrow I resume my travels in Budapest with the Sziget festival.
I left off when we arrived in Lviv. On the Saturday we took a taxi to the meeting place, Polyuya 7A, which turned out to be a massive soviet... arrrrgh, I'm far too tired to explain every intricacy of our extraordinary few days right now. It's 2am and I have to sleep - I'm catching a plane in 12 hours. Basically, this is what happened:
1. We went to the volunteer camp in Zolochiv.
2. Lots of nice people at Zolochiv. Sunshine. Mosquitos. Searing heat. Very basic accomodation, featuring the world's most gruesome shower, which actually resembles the inside of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. Unbelievably cheap local beer (22p for a bottle of fantastic Lvivske lager, f'instance). I was starting to fall in love with the place.
3. Train crashes nearby, spewing toxic phosphorous over a wide radius and causing a minor environmental disaster.
4. Katy and I did as the locals did and fled the aforementioned cloud of gas, and decided to spend a few days in Kiev while we figured out what to do.
5. We arrive in Kiev on the morning of my birthday, severely hung-over from pre-birthday drinks on the night train, and without a place to stay for the night.
6. After several exhausting journeys around the city looking for accomodation (we're both carrying all our luggage with us), someone secures us a booking over the phone, and we catch the underground train to our hostel.
7. As our train arrives in the underground station, an old lady starts inexplicably waving leaflets in our faces and shouting at us. When I free myself from the gibbering old crone and make for the Metro train, I discover someone has stolen my wallet and camera from my pockets while the woman was distracting us. F*ck. This is one pickle Her Majesty's Constabulary will be unable to resolve. What's more, we now have 1 Hryvnia (10p) between the two of us!
8. We made it to the hostel and somehow Katy persuaded the dude on the desk to let us leave our bags there without paying a deposit. Phone calls to family. Tears. Expletives. Bank cards cancelled. No way we can continue; Katy has no access to funds either. Katy's mum books us plane tickets home the next day.
9. Trip to British Embassy in Kiev. We plan to throw ourselves at their feet and beg for assistance. No such luck - they've closed early as it's Friday afternoon. Leaving us loyal British subjects right in the brown stuff and with nowhere to turn.
10. Visit to police station. A nice man who happens to be there (and we were extremely grateful for this chap's help) lends us money to buy water, and acts as a translator to help us report our crime. The Soviet-style bureaucracy we encounter means it takes 3 hours for us to obtain a police report for my insurance, but at least we get a ride in a Ukrainian cop wagon.
11. Vitaliy (a dodgy American dude with loads of cash we made the acquaintanceship of in Zolochiv) comes to our rescue, chucks $100 at us, and offers to buy me three hookers for my birthday. I decline, politely, but we take the $100.
12. Next day we use the money to catch a taxi to the airport. We fly home to Manchester. Numerous delays. My baggage got lost changing planes at Heathrow but at least we got free crap food from Costa Coffee, and some wine.
Some of our fellow passengers were less impressed with the baggage mix-ups, and took it all out on the hapless airport staff at Manchester with a series of four-letter tirades, which I thought was unfair. Like Bill Hicks said, the human race is just a virus with shoes.
Oh and I lost my camera so all the wonderful photos I took to show you are all gone. Bugger. I'm hoping some of my buddies at Zolochiv will let me show some of their pics. Next I'm off to Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia.
My lack of camera will forcve me to paint pictures with words, as per the greats of classical literature. Strap yourselves in, you're in for one hell of a ride!
I left off when we arrived in Lviv. On the Saturday we took a taxi to the meeting place, Polyuya 7A, which turned out to be a massive soviet... arrrrgh, I'm far too tired to explain every intricacy of our extraordinary few days right now. It's 2am and I have to sleep - I'm catching a plane in 12 hours. Basically, this is what happened:
1. We went to the volunteer camp in Zolochiv.
2. Lots of nice people at Zolochiv. Sunshine. Mosquitos. Searing heat. Very basic accomodation, featuring the world's most gruesome shower, which actually resembles the inside of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. Unbelievably cheap local beer (22p for a bottle of fantastic Lvivske lager, f'instance). I was starting to fall in love with the place.
3. Train crashes nearby, spewing toxic phosphorous over a wide radius and causing a minor environmental disaster.
4. Katy and I did as the locals did and fled the aforementioned cloud of gas, and decided to spend a few days in Kiev while we figured out what to do.
5. We arrive in Kiev on the morning of my birthday, severely hung-over from pre-birthday drinks on the night train, and without a place to stay for the night.
6. After several exhausting journeys around the city looking for accomodation (we're both carrying all our luggage with us), someone secures us a booking over the phone, and we catch the underground train to our hostel.
7. As our train arrives in the underground station, an old lady starts inexplicably waving leaflets in our faces and shouting at us. When I free myself from the gibbering old crone and make for the Metro train, I discover someone has stolen my wallet and camera from my pockets while the woman was distracting us. F*ck. This is one pickle Her Majesty's Constabulary will be unable to resolve. What's more, we now have 1 Hryvnia (10p) between the two of us!
8. We made it to the hostel and somehow Katy persuaded the dude on the desk to let us leave our bags there without paying a deposit. Phone calls to family. Tears. Expletives. Bank cards cancelled. No way we can continue; Katy has no access to funds either. Katy's mum books us plane tickets home the next day.
9. Trip to British Embassy in Kiev. We plan to throw ourselves at their feet and beg for assistance. No such luck - they've closed early as it's Friday afternoon. Leaving us loyal British subjects right in the brown stuff and with nowhere to turn.
10. Visit to police station. A nice man who happens to be there (and we were extremely grateful for this chap's help) lends us money to buy water, and acts as a translator to help us report our crime. The Soviet-style bureaucracy we encounter means it takes 3 hours for us to obtain a police report for my insurance, but at least we get a ride in a Ukrainian cop wagon.
11. Vitaliy (a dodgy American dude with loads of cash we made the acquaintanceship of in Zolochiv) comes to our rescue, chucks $100 at us, and offers to buy me three hookers for my birthday. I decline, politely, but we take the $100.
12. Next day we use the money to catch a taxi to the airport. We fly home to Manchester. Numerous delays. My baggage got lost changing planes at Heathrow but at least we got free crap food from Costa Coffee, and some wine.
Some of our fellow passengers were less impressed with the baggage mix-ups, and took it all out on the hapless airport staff at Manchester with a series of four-letter tirades, which I thought was unfair. Like Bill Hicks said, the human race is just a virus with shoes.
Oh and I lost my camera so all the wonderful photos I took to show you are all gone. Bugger. I'm hoping some of my buddies at Zolochiv will let me show some of their pics. Next I'm off to Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia.
My lack of camera will forcve me to paint pictures with words, as per the greats of classical literature. Strap yourselves in, you're in for one hell of a ride!
Sziget road trip - read my friends' blog!
My friends Anthony, Chris and Gary are travelling from Blackpool to Budapest by road, to go to the Sziget festival, which starts this week! Then they're driving all the way back! I am now back in the UK (long story) but will be flying out to meet them at the festival! Read about their amazing encounters with bandits, sorcerers and unforgiving Eastern bloc toilet paper here!
http://szigetroadtrip.blogspot.com
Anthony, Chris and Gary are three very crazy characters. Anthony is a whelk salesman. Chris teaches monkeys to clean up inner-city graffiti. Gary flies jumbo jets for a well-respected Egyptian airline. It is my pleasure to know people in such a diverse range of occupations. And let me tell you - they work hard and they play hard. Innocent lives will most likely be lost before the end of the month as the result of our no-holds-barred partying in Hungary. But hey, these are the crazy times we live in, and we need to document our lives so as to warn future generations away from the depths of debauchery to which we sunk.
http://szigetroadtrip.blogspot.com
Anthony, Chris and Gary are three very crazy characters. Anthony is a whelk salesman. Chris teaches monkeys to clean up inner-city graffiti. Gary flies jumbo jets for a well-respected Egyptian airline. It is my pleasure to know people in such a diverse range of occupations. And let me tell you - they work hard and they play hard. Innocent lives will most likely be lost before the end of the month as the result of our no-holds-barred partying in Hungary. But hey, these are the crazy times we live in, and we need to document our lives so as to warn future generations away from the depths of debauchery to which we sunk.
Friday, 13 July 2007
An epic journey featuring people selling vegetables, and some other things.
Hello! Or to use the equivalent local word, 'greetingski'.
Well we've arrived in Lviv, the main city of western Ukraine! Getting here was an epic journey in every sense of the word. 24 hours travelling across eastern Europe by train. Very little sleep. Christ. I'm knackered!
None of the signs here make sense to me cos they're written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but I'm pleased to see there is a man working on the counter at this internet caff who has a 1980s mullet a bit like Dr. Sanchez off Garth Marenghi's Dark Place. That familiar sight in this unfamiliar land has brightened my day.
So where did I leave off...? Oh yeah, on Wednesday evening my friend Katy and I went to an underground punk gig at an east Berlin squat (that, as I have already mentioned, has its own website... or should that be a websquat?). The place took a lot of finding, and we missed the first few bands, but it turned out to be a really great night!
The Kopi squat is a huge apartment block on a backstreet near the city centre, hidden from the world by a tall gate and covered on the inside with multi-coloured paintings and graffiti. We found it packed to the rafters with punks and assorted Germanic crusty types - my kind of people! There was a great atmos, a little bit like Blackpool "rock club" the Tache but one thousand times better!
There were hardcore punk bands playing in the central room, using an immense sound setup that cleaned the cobwebs right out of my eardrums let me tell you - and there was a bar selling bottles of beer and a stall selling CDs and records (these squatters think of everything)! The music wasn't really my cup of tea but I thought it was a great spectacle to see - you don't really get the same underground music/squatter thing going on in the UK which is a shame. F*ck tha man!
Yesterday we started the journey to Lviv, catching our first train from Berlin to Warsaw. Nothing much to say about that bit of the trip other than we passed lots of green and pleasant hills and lakes and stuff, and spent 2 hours stuck outside Frankfurt when the train broke down! They sent a replacement train to tow us to Warsaw.
This delay didn't really help cos we were cutting it fine making it on to our next train at Warsaw station. We ran round like headless chickens trying to book the sleeper carriage, which it turned out wasn't as simple as we'd first hoped. But after bribing a surly-looking railway guard on the platform with our leftover Euros, we were allowed access to the train with seconds to spare! (Another guy who wanted to get on the train was trying to bribe the guards with a software CD, and he wasn't having much luck. Crazy times! This episode taught me that 9 out of 10 communist officials prefer cash bribes.)
The journey to Kovel was great fun - we shared a rickety wooden carriage with a nice Polish man called George. As the train sidled through the inky-black outskirts of Warsaw the three of us got chatting in broken English. He was heading to the Ukraine too, to see his family. He was a great bloke - really generous. He bought Katy and I a black tea, and he unexpectedly produced half a roast chicken from his suitcase and shared it out! We then discovered his suitcase was full of contraband roast chickens - he explained poultry is much more expensive over the border in the Ukraine so he was taking his family some supplies. So there you go.
We all got a bit of sleep but then at 2am we reached the border and there was a lengthy stop while we scribbled our names into immigration forms. Then the train was winched up off the ground to get its wheels changed to a different gauge! I was excited about this wheel-changing but in hindsight I would describe the experience as like spending the night inside a garden shed while a friend bashes the walls with a sledgehammer.
This is one of the profound things I will be putting in my book when I write it.
We arrived in Kovel at around 7am local time. It was grey and wet and full of grannies on their way to market. We made friends with one old lady who was 86 years old! They were very curious to see some Westerners, let me tell you. Her and her granny mates were very nice and seemed to be offering us accomodation, which we sadly had to refuse. Our train to Lviv arrived eventually - we were now only 5 hours from Lviv!
Now, I don't know if you've ever been on an internal Ukranian rail journey before, so I'll assume you're new to this particular delight: it's a bit of a culture shock if you're used to leg-room and seats soft enough not to give you terminal piles. It was bloody amazing though. There was a family of buskers in our carriage singing songs to pay for their train ticket, people on their way to market selling vegetables, bundles of wood and other random goods (like stationery and make-up!), and people trading goods each other! The guards allow it all to happen; it's part of the local culture I guess. It was fantastic to watch but it got a bit tiring to be stuck in the middle of it!
We arrived in Lviv around lunchtime today. We're staying at a new hostel in the city centre called the Sun Hotel tonight, then tomorrow we're meeting up with a lady called Olka to start our two-week volunteer placement. Who can say what it will bring? The info we have on our placement is mysterious and vague. It involves restoring an old castle out in the countryside at a place called Zolochiv but we know nothing else.
I have to sign off now. It is getting late. If you made it to the bottom of this page, jolly well done, and thanks for bothering!
Well we've arrived in Lviv, the main city of western Ukraine! Getting here was an epic journey in every sense of the word. 24 hours travelling across eastern Europe by train. Very little sleep. Christ. I'm knackered!
None of the signs here make sense to me cos they're written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but I'm pleased to see there is a man working on the counter at this internet caff who has a 1980s mullet a bit like Dr. Sanchez off Garth Marenghi's Dark Place. That familiar sight in this unfamiliar land has brightened my day.
So where did I leave off...? Oh yeah, on Wednesday evening my friend Katy and I went to an underground punk gig at an east Berlin squat (that, as I have already mentioned, has its own website... or should that be a websquat?). The place took a lot of finding, and we missed the first few bands, but it turned out to be a really great night!
The Kopi squat is a huge apartment block on a backstreet near the city centre, hidden from the world by a tall gate and covered on the inside with multi-coloured paintings and graffiti. We found it packed to the rafters with punks and assorted Germanic crusty types - my kind of people! There was a great atmos, a little bit like Blackpool "rock club" the Tache but one thousand times better!
There were hardcore punk bands playing in the central room, using an immense sound setup that cleaned the cobwebs right out of my eardrums let me tell you - and there was a bar selling bottles of beer and a stall selling CDs and records (these squatters think of everything)! The music wasn't really my cup of tea but I thought it was a great spectacle to see - you don't really get the same underground music/squatter thing going on in the UK which is a shame. F*ck tha man!
Yesterday we started the journey to Lviv, catching our first train from Berlin to Warsaw. Nothing much to say about that bit of the trip other than we passed lots of green and pleasant hills and lakes and stuff, and spent 2 hours stuck outside Frankfurt when the train broke down! They sent a replacement train to tow us to Warsaw.
This delay didn't really help cos we were cutting it fine making it on to our next train at Warsaw station. We ran round like headless chickens trying to book the sleeper carriage, which it turned out wasn't as simple as we'd first hoped. But after bribing a surly-looking railway guard on the platform with our leftover Euros, we were allowed access to the train with seconds to spare! (Another guy who wanted to get on the train was trying to bribe the guards with a software CD, and he wasn't having much luck. Crazy times! This episode taught me that 9 out of 10 communist officials prefer cash bribes.)
The journey to Kovel was great fun - we shared a rickety wooden carriage with a nice Polish man called George. As the train sidled through the inky-black outskirts of Warsaw the three of us got chatting in broken English. He was heading to the Ukraine too, to see his family. He was a great bloke - really generous. He bought Katy and I a black tea, and he unexpectedly produced half a roast chicken from his suitcase and shared it out! We then discovered his suitcase was full of contraband roast chickens - he explained poultry is much more expensive over the border in the Ukraine so he was taking his family some supplies. So there you go.
We all got a bit of sleep but then at 2am we reached the border and there was a lengthy stop while we scribbled our names into immigration forms. Then the train was winched up off the ground to get its wheels changed to a different gauge! I was excited about this wheel-changing but in hindsight I would describe the experience as like spending the night inside a garden shed while a friend bashes the walls with a sledgehammer.
This is one of the profound things I will be putting in my book when I write it.
We arrived in Kovel at around 7am local time. It was grey and wet and full of grannies on their way to market. We made friends with one old lady who was 86 years old! They were very curious to see some Westerners, let me tell you. Her and her granny mates were very nice and seemed to be offering us accomodation, which we sadly had to refuse. Our train to Lviv arrived eventually - we were now only 5 hours from Lviv!
Now, I don't know if you've ever been on an internal Ukranian rail journey before, so I'll assume you're new to this particular delight: it's a bit of a culture shock if you're used to leg-room and seats soft enough not to give you terminal piles. It was bloody amazing though. There was a family of buskers in our carriage singing songs to pay for their train ticket, people on their way to market selling vegetables, bundles of wood and other random goods (like stationery and make-up!), and people trading goods each other! The guards allow it all to happen; it's part of the local culture I guess. It was fantastic to watch but it got a bit tiring to be stuck in the middle of it!
We arrived in Lviv around lunchtime today. We're staying at a new hostel in the city centre called the Sun Hotel tonight, then tomorrow we're meeting up with a lady called Olka to start our two-week volunteer placement. Who can say what it will bring? The info we have on our placement is mysterious and vague. It involves restoring an old castle out in the countryside at a place called Zolochiv but we know nothing else.
I have to sign off now. It is getting late. If you made it to the bottom of this page, jolly well done, and thanks for bothering!
Thursday, 12 July 2007
Ich bin ein Berliner!
Guten tag,
Berlin is ace. It's a fine city with great people. But it's raining lots. Yesterday we went on a tour with a nice Canadian woman who was a bit shouty, and looked at the Berlin Wall, which I thought was really interesting. We had a look round the city centre too. Later we went to the hostel quiz night and got trolleyed. Today we went on a short train ride to a place called Potsdam that was all pretty and had loads of castles and gardens and a windmill. We went inside the windmill to speak to the man. It's all really impressive.
Tomorrow, we're setting off on the next leg of our journey to the Ukraine. It's gonna take us - wait for it - 24 hours to get to Lviv by train. It is really bloody far. We're going via Warsaw, waiting a few hours, then catching an overnight train to somewhere or other in the north of the Ukraine, then boarding another train to Lviv tomorrow morning. To survive I'm just going to buy lots of alcohol and sit in the carriage singing bawdy songs about the seaside. I think this is a good Plan.
Tonight we're off to an underground punk gig at an east Berlin squat. This officially makes me cooler than Henry Winkler, i.e. the Fonz. The squat has been going for 17 years! There is no interesting stuff like this in England. I am very excited!
At the moment I am amused by the German word for Wednesday, Mittwoch. It sounds more like a blasphemous swear-word than a day of the week. Other than that I haven't been using my brain much.
My time is up so I'll have to dash. We're off for dinner at the Mexican across the road. See you later, bye bye, auf wiedersehn!! Peace and love.
Bondy :)
Berlin is ace. It's a fine city with great people. But it's raining lots. Yesterday we went on a tour with a nice Canadian woman who was a bit shouty, and looked at the Berlin Wall, which I thought was really interesting. We had a look round the city centre too. Later we went to the hostel quiz night and got trolleyed. Today we went on a short train ride to a place called Potsdam that was all pretty and had loads of castles and gardens and a windmill. We went inside the windmill to speak to the man. It's all really impressive.
Tomorrow, we're setting off on the next leg of our journey to the Ukraine. It's gonna take us - wait for it - 24 hours to get to Lviv by train. It is really bloody far. We're going via Warsaw, waiting a few hours, then catching an overnight train to somewhere or other in the north of the Ukraine, then boarding another train to Lviv tomorrow morning. To survive I'm just going to buy lots of alcohol and sit in the carriage singing bawdy songs about the seaside. I think this is a good Plan.
Tonight we're off to an underground punk gig at an east Berlin squat. This officially makes me cooler than Henry Winkler, i.e. the Fonz. The squat has been going for 17 years! There is no interesting stuff like this in England. I am very excited!
At the moment I am amused by the German word for Wednesday, Mittwoch. It sounds more like a blasphemous swear-word than a day of the week. Other than that I haven't been using my brain much.
My time is up so I'll have to dash. We're off for dinner at the Mexican across the road. See you later, bye bye, auf wiedersehn!! Peace and love.
Bondy :)
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