Monkey Business - France

Christmas was a bit crazy, usual polish christmas on the 24th, then a party at my place on the 25th involving lots of drunk Lithuanians force feeding me honey. Ah, it was a nice christmas but it ended up with a bit of a row with Sylwia after myself, Patrick and the Lithuanians had destroyed the kitchen and the toilet after a lot of cleaning up had taken place before christmas (kinda polish tradition, to clean your house insanely before christmas).

The next morning 26th (Boxing Day but the fighting was over!).. we somehow missed the bus going to the airport and it arrived at the airport at 8:45 (5 minutes after the last check in).. well we make a deal that I will run really quickly to get to the queue at the Etiuda Terminal and Sylwia will carry the bags and arrive later. We're pissed off to discover that the small road from the bus stop to the Etiuda Terminal is being dug up, I continue to run around this huge building site and Sylwia heads back trying to get to the Terminal over a bridge. I nearly get to the Terminal after about a 1km run only to discover that the small backpack that I'm carrying is open and my passport is not inside, I run back in search of it and eventually find my passport and her wallet lying on the road. I pick them up and run back again, only then do I realise how out of condition I am ;-), running with a hangover is never nice though.

I get to the terminal and Sylwia is already waiting there in the queue but it turns out it's the queue for a flight to Luton, I don't want to go there! Fuck! I ask the woman who is supposed to be on hand to help and she doesn't seem to know anything about a flight to Bologna, eventually the security guard points out to us that it's a Central Wings flight and it leaves from the main terminal where we dropped off by the bus in the first place! Crap! Leg it back to the original terminal (this time going Sylwia's route) , she starts shouting at an airport worker in a distressed way and the woman amazingly gets us through the check in (even though it's closed), we skip a queue at the passport control, fly through the customs and da da make it on to the bus leaving for the plane! Excellent and merry christmas to you!

Once we got up in the air, I couldn't look out of the window (I'm not scared of heights) but because of the hangover, I felt sick and dizzy at the blurred view of the sky.

Arrived in Bologna on time and amazingly my bank card starts working (it hasn't done this in Poland for a couple of days) but out comes a tasty 250 euros. Catch the airport bus to the train station for the horrendous price of 5 euros per person! Bologna looks nice from a bus driver's view but we only have time to buy tickets and have a bite to eat before catching a train to Milan. Sat opposite a woman who spoke Italian and German and kept on grinning like a Cheshire cat, she was as fat as one too - strange woman! Changed train in Milan and caught one heading for Nice, got off at Ventimiglia in the evening, this is where my dad said he would pick us up! Apparently it's not too far! Eventually he comes after an hour of waiting and it turns out he set off at 11.30am (8 and a half hours earlier), after a mammoth drive across the south of France, we get to my parents place at about 4.00 AM, greeted by mum with offers of food and drink!

4 days later and we've not been doing much, just walking, cycling, eating lots, drinking, watching television and visiting some of the small towns around here. All very picturesque but the prices are crazy. The place where they're living is called La Saut de La Mounine (The fall of the monkey), there's a huge cliff going into a river and supposedly someone threw a monkey off there to show their love for their partner. Bizarre.

Photos can be found here... http://www.flickr.com/photos/dangaroo/sets/72157594446349683/

Blogs are good for hangovers

I think that blogging is a superb form of getting rid of a hangover, my brain in it's current state can't work out new things or even be arsed to read, it just likes to relay information that it already knows. Anyway, I was supposed to be hitchhiking to Fointainebleau to see my mate Julien, stopping by in Hannover to meet up with Aiste and Radek but in the end it didn't happen - I then planned to go over to Ukraine again instead.. somehow I ended up getting totally annihilated in Warsaw. I was minding my own business at home on the internet, when Sylwia piled in home with 3 completely pissed ex-work colleagues (one guy must have fallen over about 6 times on the way from the shop to our house), I had to catch up with their mood, so I necked 10 beers in the space of 2 hours and then went out partying with them, my dancing and my diminshed table football skills destroyed not only my reputation but also my lip and foot (I can't walk anymore, I'm not sure if it's broken or sprained.. my verdict is fucked). This all happened because I started a rather agressive pogoing session on the dancefloor, only a couple of people were really up for it, most of them were just angry with me for starting it. I somehow bounced incredibly high and on when coming back down realised there was no where for me to go anymore, I ended up toppling onto a stage and totally fucking my foot up.

I'm hoping it's nothing serious, nothing a joint or two wouldn't solve... if it is it means goodbye to money and good bye to hitchhiking and I'll start to sound like Jason with immediate effect!

During the week, I received news of a letter which was sent to my parent's previous address and then finally forwarded to their new one.. I have been called up for jury service in Carlisle on 19th December. I started to find out how to cancel it and discovered that there was no way to get out of it, my future looked bleak - I either had to attend or go to prison for 3 months! Ha, and then I realised I was looking on a website about jury service in HONG KONG! (No wonder Bruce Lee took up Martial Arts!!).. Anyway, I managed to "defer" it, got my mother to call them and tell them that I was in Nepal! Mr. Court Boy should consider himself lucky, I would have said he was guilty and sentenced him to death! Ha, bastard chav.

I've recently discovered a great 77' punk band called The Bleach Boys, they're from Hitchin or something like that. I urge all people to go out and buy their album/s. The one I've got has great hits such as "Stocking Clad Nazi Death Squad Bitch", "Death for Techno" and "Fee Fi Foe Fon, I smell Vagina".. the album starts off with "The Bicycle Song" basically where this guy is buying ham, cheese and eggs in a shop and gets his bicycle (which belongs to his mum) nicked.. later there's "The Motorcycle Song" where the same bloke (presumably) is in the pub having some beers and his motorbike gets stolen by a little kid whose bike has been "pissed and shat" on by the singer.

All in all a top quality album and the guys are still touring (www.thebleachboys.co.uk or apparently you can find the bands name grafiitied in various underpasses in Stevenage aswell) .. NEXT Gig: White Trash in Berlin on 13 April 2007.

Tie Me Dangaroo Down Sport

I've not bothered updating this recently because I'm an incredibly lazy person, a bit of a bozo. I've been far too busy working and drinking beer to maintain the blog... I actually stayed in Warsaw for 3 months without going anywhere, I'm not actually sure that I've done that ever. It's great weather over here - crisp but not cold and the sun is nearly always shining but it's not hot enough to burn me, Vunderbar jahr.

Now then, I recently spent a couple of days in Kaunas.. mostly drinking beer and hanging out with some friends there.. it was good good fun, though I spent 3 fucking hours stuck in Bialystok on the way up.. the hitching back was far more succesful and I got a ride from Kaunas-Lomza before you could say Genau!

I'm looking out for mass pillow fights like the one which recently took place in Buenos Aires, so if you know of any, let me know. Incidently..are there any rules about not being allowed to "accidentally" put some bricks into the pillow?

Anyway.. more recently (my memory isn't that good, so I'm not going to detail lots of past parties).. there was a good party last night at Jacuzz and Zosia's house.. (bizarre music though.. all brit pop or David Bowie). I was supposed to hitchhike to L'viv today but my bank card is playing up again (this has been a continuous theme for the last few months, it just decides not to work on certain days!), of course I could still go without money but I'm feeling rather lazy as I only came back from the party at 8am and although I don't have a headache, I seem to have similar symptoms to that Alexander Litvenenko chap. (for those who know nothing of current affairs, he's an ex KGB spy who was poisoned and killed recently)

It's the old voting in Transdniestr and in Nagorno-Karabakh at the moment and I'm getting quite excited about visiting both, quite soon. I basically have a handful of days of work left, then I'm hitchhiking to Fontainebleau via Altergessen (some place near Hannover).. and back for christmas, then flying to Italy on the 26th December. From then on, it's travelling non-stop :-).

I'm thinking of visiting Luxembourg on the way back/to Fontainebleau.. I've not been since I was about 8.