Hamsters Need Love Too

Last Stage of the Citric Dairy Diary - Riga to Warsaw

2007-03-29T14:26:00.000-07:00

We woke up far far too late, no one had set an alarm clock and everyone was tired. Toni woke up about 11am and cooked breakfast for us, he had a poker tournament on at 8pm and doesn't like night driving much. I still had to pick up my sleeping bag and do a bit of shopping but we just decided to forget about everything, including a shower and Martyna looked incredibly rough.. I think she just went in her pijamas haha.

Stopped in Bauska on the way down, for a few more boxes of cigarettes and then headed for Kaunas where Toni got a coffee, I did some more "shopping" and Martyna just strolled around in her pijamas looking pregnant and liked she'd escaped from a mental ward haha.

Straight down to the Polish border and stopped twice for coffee and got to Warsaw for around 9pm.. Not bad. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, we didn't hear from the Spaniard and the French guy may or may not have been waiting for us at the hostel, he'd agreed to come with us but he was rather drunk at the time and knocked over a chair and then disappeared from the bar, with or without his jacket/passport.. we're not sure.

Lemons and Milk on the Move - Stage 4 - Tartu to Riga via Viljandi

2007-03-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

We had some breakfast with Tonu, took a couple of photos and then headed for Tartu centre where we met up with Babushka, she showed us some places to buy dictionaries, postcards, Vana Tallinn and a bit of a sightseeing tour. Then we headed off for Viljandi, the 75km went fast.. probably because Toni had started driving fast again was cheerful to have an extra person in the car. We took a few photos of Viljandi and spent our last Eesti Kroner on some things (bananas I think, can't remember actually), then said good bye to Babushka and headed for the Latvian border.

My map showed a Latvian border directly below Viljandi, so we took that one.. it was dirt track for the last 20km and we only saw 1 car but all of a sudden we hit a shed at the border with a barrier across the road and a sign saying Latvia. There was also a dog but it was unclear whether he was a custom's dog or not, he spent most of the time trying to get into our car and trying to lick my face.

Over the other side of the border and we filled up on petrol, then picked up a russian speaking guy and took him to Valmiera, Toni had a former guest from Valmiera but it turned out she was in Riga, so we drove straight to Riga and went to Marcus's hostel. Toni met up with his friends and cooked us all a meal, whilst me and Martyna tried to recruit people for the journey down to Warsaw. She'd managed to convince a Spanish guy to come down, as he was heading for Krakow anyway and I managed to get a french guy roped in, promising him more weed than in Finland where he was currently studying.

We also met a German guy, who was travelling with some Erasmus students and one of them (a Mexican) managed to get stuck on the boat without a passport, all a bit strange! Then we went out partying together with another Latvian HC member and met up with some brazilian/german drunk guys... the brazilian dude was convinced he was pregnant, and all together a totally insane bloke.

Got back to Marcus's around 4.30 and crashed soon after.

Lemons on Tour - Stage 3 - Riga to Tartu

2007-03-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

We left Riga well into the afternoon and Toni went insane, turning off the road at high speed because he'd seen his "Riga bus" - he collects his photo next to sightseeing buses. After that we drove up to Cesis, mostly eating crisps and singing the whole way. Had a little look around and photographed the place including some girl that everyone was taking pictures of because she was making a point of having her photograph taken.

That's where we split with Kruopa and Tuchkus, Tuchkus wanted to continue to Tartu but that grumpy old Kruopa forced him to go to Kaunas. Anyway just exiting Cesis and I realised I'd lost my passport, so we tip the whole car upside down looking for it and make the lithuanians look for it in their bags on their way back to Riga... it turns out it was in the small gap between boot and back seat.

After that we picked up some Latvian guy who was heading to Valmiera... and then we went over the border at Valga, which we somehow struggled to find (kept on hitting parts of walls in the town that marked the border).. the border crossing was kinda quick considering they'd probably never seen a Singaporean passport before. Just then we received a call from Babuhska, the Estonian girl - turns out she'd picked up my note and had decided to be our tourguide for the night. We got to Tartu met our host Tonu and his family (including very friendly dog), then we headed for the city centre, went to an Indian restuarant.. which was pretty damn awful. Met up with Babushka (who was visiting her.. yes, you guessed it.. Babushka), Toni told a lot of his jokes and then we headed home.. agreeing for another sightseeing tour in the light and to take her home to Viljandi on the way back to Riga.

Went back home and slept like a baby :)

Tandoor Lemons - Stage 2 - Kaunas - Riga

2007-03-28T10:39:00.000-07:00

Toni comes round to Tomas's house with Martyna, Ruta & Tuchkus and we cook up an enormous breakfast using Toni's spices and Ruta's ginger. Legendary egg. Also had a chat with Tomas's father who thought we were frenchmen coming for the Lithuania v France football match... no no much better looking!

Tuchkus has decided to join us - so we're up to 5 people! Great! Then whilst we were waiting for him outside his house to pack a bag, Roy tells us he'd like to go to Vilnius and then head back to Poland.. hmm so that leaves another space in the car, and we can't have that.

After a little negotiating in quick Lithuanian, Tuchkus says Kruopa is coming too - but only as far as Latvia. We leave Kaunas kind of late after buying dictionaries and what not. We decided to cross the smaller border in order to have a look at Birzai.. we were the only ones there but they kept us at the border for over an hour, giving Toni's passport some strict studying and then telling him he needed an address to tell them that he was going to. So we rang Marcus who is illegally living in Latvia and had to give his address haha.

An hour later and a bit of fooling around with the RIGA sign as you enter (I.e. me putting my arse through the hole of the G) and we started to meet up with some people. First one is Marcus who takes us to the Old Town Hostel where we met up with about 6 or 8 others. A good night apart from some moronic Latvian baby skinheads shouting abuse at Toni. Around 1 or 2, we headed for the hostel that Marcus worked at, so that Martyna could have a shower. That's where me and Tuchkus started recruiting for a replacement for Kruopa. We met an Estonian girl who was heading back to Tartu herself the next day.. and tried to convinve her to show us around Tartu for some babushka rock concerts. She was nearly up for it but the last words which were from Marcus "yes, they're all bastards".. didn't sound like she'd want to come along. I left a note downstairs at the reception with our phone number on just in case, she changed her mind.

A girl called Anda had agreed to host me and Toni in order to take some of the weight out of Marcus's house.. well we went to hers at 4am, after having had a 15 minute conversation in messed up English and Russian with her friend Cristina, who I thought had 2 children but I think only had a child who was 2 years old. Ended up talking about Eleja of all things, since it was close to where she worked in Jelgava! When we got home, Anda asks "you don't mind sharing do you"... hmm it was the day Warsaw no.1 and 2 slept together and I tell you, there's not much to be desired in the Tomato flavoured crisps belly of Warsaw no.2! About 2 or 3 hours later, it was time to leave already, Anda's cousin was coming around and might have felt uneasy in our company, so we dropped her off at work and then went to Marcus's. It's actually the first time in a while that I've had 2 hosts for 1 night. Marcus's toilet is one of those platformed ones, so lacking in sleep, I for some reason photographed the evidence to show him later.

The Lemon Tree Party in the Tonimobile - Stage 1.. Warsaw - Kaunas

2007-03-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

Well on Tuesday 20th, Toni says to me "I'm bored in Warsaw and want to go somewhere", I said "let's go to Latvia, I need dictionaries and cigarettes", so we try to recruit a few more people and set off from Warsaw on Thursday morning, with a bag full of food, some CD's, me, toni, martyna and an englishman called Roy that Ula has sent to us..

Toni has a new style of driving, about 100km/hr slower than last year and Martyna's on the verge of giving birth to a german.. that's never good. We make it up to the Lithuanian border Ogrodniki by lunch time and head for Druskininkai.. which is going under an enormous amount of refurbishment. In fact the whole town was in a right old mess, but Toni took a few photos and the pregnant one went for a piss. After an hour there, we headed for the Soviet Park on the way to Merkine... plenty of Lenin/Stalin statues and even one of them wrapped up in huge black plastic bags which kind of gave the impression that Lenin was a kinky sod. It's a nice park, a little pricey to get in though.

Then up to Kaunas, Kruopa had sorted us some hosts out so I directed Toni to the supermarket near her house and we meet in the centre with Tuchkus & Ruta before heading to a "Jump Up" concert in a local bar. It's all very strange to be in Lithuania and not drinking btw.... Tomas later arrived, a cool young guy who hosted me and Roy. I've been to Kaunas quite a lot of times, so nothing special to go looking for.

No drinking.. Sheize

2007-03-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

Hmm, so I've not put anything on here for ages.. mostly because I was organising a big trip to Africa which at the moment has failed to materialise.. well I guess I just don't do planning. Everything almost ready to go and I end up with liver, gall bladder and kidney problems - mostly from drinking and not saying hello to monsieur le toilette as often as I should. The old liver is twice as big as it should be and the gall bladder almost 3 x the size of a regular one...bloody killing after the Ultra Sound Jelly lark. The doctors orders were for rest, pills and no beer... as strange as it sounds, it seems to have done the trick.

and the president is.... a mouthful

2007-02-14T03:47:00.000-08:00

Turkmenistan confirm that Gurbanguly Mälikgulyýewiç Berdimuhammedow was the winner of the presidential ellection... don't know why I mentioned that really.

I'm off to the dermatologist later to find out what's up with my skin (although it seems to be getting better actually, I still think it was flea bites from a cat), I'm having a legendary Valentinki at the moment... also got some news from an English bloke that he's interested in hitching with me next month. He'll be popping round the Warsaw next week... googled a post on the HC hh forum and I found this..

MISSING RUSSIAN HITCHHIKER - http://serber.by.ru/english.html

In fairness, it's a bit mad to hitch through the old Afghanistan at the moment and the Russians are the only ones I know who do it. Well here's hoping that the guy is alive and just a "wee bit stoned in Afghanistan".

No wonder people don't go back to Sudan

2007-02-12T13:51:00.000-08:00

Looking at getting my Sudanese visa before heading on this trip because last time attempt in Cairo was a bit of a pain in the arse and I could never get to the embassy in time after nights in the Stella (legendary bar in Cairo).. there's no Sudan embassy in Poland and I'm not going to Germany, I thought about sending my passport to UK but the bastard embassy there says it will take 1 month.. woah. Not only that but they charge Sudanese, 22 pounds for a visa for their own country, what on earth is going on there!?!

The Syrian visa also poses a pain in the arse here in Warsaw but I had a similar problem last time in Turkey in that I could never get to the embassy in time, being the lazy git I am. Ho hum. I'm working on a couple of other visas which are cheap and easy to get here and will save me time arseing around elsewhere.

Still got the itchiness, went to a pharmacy and they looked horrified and called me a chicken.. hmm off to the dermatologist tomorrow. Talking of chickens, I had a beer in KFC today and it seems they've finally changed the barrell, it seems no one else drinks there so it's bloody horrible. (that's probably why, come to think of it).

Another 3 girls (12/13 y.o) raped by a CS member (guest) who was in Latvia, bloody hell. Makes me want to join Servas!

Itchy and Engaged

2007-02-10T14:08:00.000-08:00

Ah, forgot to mention that it's the first time I've been to Zakopane since 1996 and it hasn't changed much really. Well today, it's official that me and the Mrs Dangaroo are engaged. She's got a ring and everything.. and it wasn't from one of those slot machines either.. At this rate, she might be a widow before we're married.. my itching is not good!! It had calmed down but it's a bit out of control today, had a look on the internet to what it could be and apparently I'm not yellow enough for liver failure so that's good.. but what the fuck could it be. I was quite amused to find that djdirect (Paul) had measles, I'll be pissed off if I get it too. Well I think I'll go to the doctors tomorrow and find out. I've got a new backpack by the way, it's my 4th in 4 years, it's the most expensive and looks pretty top quality, add to that it's bright green which makes it good for hitching.

I'm getting some visas next week ;).

Zakopane

2007-02-10T13:17:00.000-08:00

Hitched down to Zakopane on Tuesday, longest wait was in Warsaw.. about 40 minutes, after that we got a car to Radom and a ride immediately from a truck driver to Krakow, caught a bus a little bit out of a center and hitched the last car down to Zakopane, took about 7hrs in all.. not too bad. Spent 3 nights there, drinking beer (had stopped for a day or two but started to get itchy so thought some beers would help), walking around, eating lots of cheese... spent some time with our host there, a guy who had worked in London for 4 months, we were staying at his grandparents in Szaflary most of the time.. about 20km from Zakopane and either hitching in or getting the local bus.... one night, we met some old friends of Sylwia's and went to a reggae concert... left the place at 10.30 and that was it, no transport back to Szaflary, so hitched our way up to Bialy Dunajec and after that.. nothing! Grrr... supposedly it's 3km from Bialy Dunajec to Szaflary but they are both pretty long and we were at opposite ends of either place, so we ended up walking 7km along an icy, dark road with cars flying passed us every so often.. bit dangerous but we made it home.

Only, what's this... the house is locked. Bollox! Try knocking on the door and nothing, there's no chance they can here us and for some reason the dog is being totally useless and not barking! I ring Wojtek at 1am to ask him how to get in contact with his parents, he's like "umm.. knock louder" but it would seemed he telephoned them and they did open up in the end :). Ah, bed at last!

To save some time on Saturday, we caught the night bus back on Friday.. not many people on it actually, I used Sylwia's scarf as a sort of pillow against the window and somehow managed to lose it, I have a little look for it and guess what... the fool behind us is using it.. git! He dropped it too though and I managed to pick it up afterwards, even so - what a git.

Red eyed back to Poland

2007-02-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

So, I managed to get my flight to Toulouse.. bloody german buses grrr, I sneaked onto the back of one heading to the Hamburg airport and hoped to get away without paying but the bus driver shouted "will the ugly bloke with a big nose please get to the front and pay for his fahren karten"(something like that).. 3.90 euros for a 3km journey, disgraceful!!!

Spent Friday and Saturday at my parents by Villefranche, not doing much.. just playing table tennis and eating a lot really. Was able to get my hands on my money for the first time in ages... still left a bit of money in my bank account though and sent off for a new bank card again, hopefully it will turn up this time. I'm furious to find out that they are still charging me high prices for withdrawing money.. it doesn't show on the internet bank statements but it does on the paper copies. Oh, how I wish I was with Nationwide (they won't let me, say I'm too good looking).

Flew back to Hamburg on Sunday with tonnes of cash and didn't want to hitch with a load of money (actually I just couldn't be arsed), so headed to Berlin by train.. an insanely expensive ride which we won't talk about too much. Went to visit my Colombian mate Camilo :), spent the night watching punk dvd's and smoking some very good weed, ended up totally destroyed by the time I fell asleep and woke up in the morning at 5 to get the first train to Warsaw, in a pretty happy way. Incidently - snus (latvian girl) who I haven't seen for about 18 months was also staying at Camilo's, only she was too busy shagging her date to gift us her presence.

Passed over the border with cartoon eyes and slept it off all the way to Warsaw... I'm here now, just sorted a couple of things out and heading down to the mountains first thing tomorrow morning.

No lust for Ludwig - Mad hitch to Hamburg

2007-02-01T03:31:00.000-08:00

Hmm, armed with a fucked up nose and my Poznan sign I headed to the suburbs to hitch to Germany. 30 minutes later and a truck driver picked me up, after a while I discover that he´s heading all the way to Germany and will drop me off on the Berliner Ring.. perfect. We stop for an hour in Glowno (small Polish village near the beginning of the motorway), he asks if I´m coming out or staying in the truck.. thinking we were heading to the trucker´s bar, I agreed to come but I didn´t know we were going for a hike through Glowno looking for the police station to get some paperwork and then stocking up on sausages! Over an hour later, we return from the snow and get going again. As it gets darker, he realises that he won´t make the border in time for his rest, so we stop off at the BP garage just 2km from Nevada (legendary truck stop), waiting there on the corner of the road in the dark (for some reasons the lights around me weren´t working) wasn´t perfect but eventually a guy going to Rzepin stopped. He dropped me off at the last petrol station before the roads split and the hitching becomes a catasrophy (apparently).. hmm this station was no Nevada but a dodgy dodgy place full of drugged road prostitutes and a very drunk/stoned pimp who was being generally abusive and hit one of the girls in the face, then walked over to me and seemed to want to do the same but one of the girls managed to calm him down. It wasn´t an ideal place to get a ride from but things don´t get any better any closer to the border, they just get darker. The police came and the pimp with two of the girls went into hiding, not quite sure what they were in trouble for but they were running around the station hiding behind all the trucks before they eventually got caught and taken away.

After that it all calmed down, the well behaved girls which were allowed to stay by the police, were at a seperate area to me and it wasn´t long before a car stopped but it was a crazy skinhead guy who got a bit pissed off by the fact I was heading for Germany. Few minutes later and a small truck stopped, ah saviour! A nice dude from Warsaw who spoke good English, German and Polish.. his wife was an English teacher and he had a small business, he dropped me off at the Orlen station just before the border after trying to get rides for me on his CB radio.

Walk to the border and over it and this German Border guard starts shouting at me, however - he´s a happy fellow and just wants to help me get a lift.. so the first car he asks took me to Michendorf.. hmm I hate the Berliner Ring, it´s not the ideal place to get a ride to Hamburg and surprisingly it´s empty. I decide to walk in to Michendorf and find the local train station, not too difficult but I went flying down a bank which I thought was a path and turned out to be a water run-off... I also noticed steps opposite.. bollox.

Arrived 10 minutes before one of the last trains to Berlin, great.. no one checks tickets at this time on an empty suburb Berlin train.. straight to Berlin HBF and then get the S-bahn to Pankow is the idea. However.. I get to Gesundbrunnen and the fucking S-bahn finishes (eh, I don´t remember it closing for a few hours?!) oh well.. I have a two hour walk to Pankow and then there´s still nothing happening so I walk a bit further and wait for a few hours in the cold. By now it´s 5 am and I´m a bit pissed off, not to mention freezing, so I remembered there was a train leaving Berlin Hbf at 5.59, hop on to a bus, then the early morning S-bahn and back to HBf, where I was about 4.5 hours before.

I have to get to Hamburg for this flight which leaves at 12:10 and the train would get in to Hamburg at 8-00.. not bad! The plan was to pretend that I had lost my ticket and hope that people would help me around me, gah.. the guy didn´t check for about 35 minutes and then went crazy at me and told me I had to get off.. non of these early business morning commuting cunts would help me, even though I was trying to explain I#d miss my flight. Bastard people! I get thrown off in Wittenberger, walk around trying to find my way out and finally get a lift to Perleberg, where another car picks me up.. he#s heading somewhere near Ludwiglust (the only place on my map) but he said that I´d never get to Hamburg in time so took me to a truck depot where a truck was leaving for Kiel. Turns out he meant at 9.30 and not 8.30. By the time, it was loaded and we left it must have been about 10. FUCK, I´ve missed my flight :(

The guy dropped me off at a service station, where it was impossible to get a lift.. not sure if it was because of my fucked up nose, because I looked like shit or what but a fat woman agreed to take me before realising she had to go to the restaurant first..she said if I was still there when she came out, she´d take me but she must have forgotten about me because she just drove off. GRR! Eventually a nice british guy took me to Hamburg and dropped me off quite close to Felix´s house. AH, I´d given up on the idea of hitching down to Switzerland and onwards, it would never work as Pinnochio.

I´ve booked another flight for Friday and I#m just hanging around Felix#s place until tomorrow morning without any money! ha, what a nice guest.

Snozzenstein

2007-01-28T13:15:00.000-08:00

Anyone who likes anything electronic needs to get hold of this new game...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIP7djqpeK0&mode=related&search

Right, I'm still waiting for my bank card. It's absolutely disgraceful and I might set up a fuckbarclays.com website but I'll probably get a ticking off for slander and god knows what they'll do to me. So I'm withdrawing all my money by sending it to a relative by cheque and then picking it up. Ridiculous, I know but it's necessary to get travelling - I can't wait forever for this bloody bank card.

I've spent the whole month arseing around waiting for my card, doing a bit of work and getting drunk on the odd occasion. Party at Wojtek's on Fridays was carnage, went a bit crazy on the Slivovice and lost my trousers, nearly fell out of their 8/9th floor window (someone had fallen asleep in the toilet, so me and some of the boys had attempted to relieve ourselves from it), then later was unable to stand up properly and injured my nose by falling on it presumely. It's a bit of a mess, yellow sprawling mess of a cut- very reminiscent of my younger days. Couldn't find the bus home and ended up changing twice before getting a lecture on the public transport system of Warsaw and how it was better before 1984 by some old guy.

Disgraceful hangover on Saturday and it's still going today.. I think I nearly drank myself to death. Not good. Today, I spent the best part of 3 hours cleaning up the kitchen because Sylwia forgot to put a pipe (ass of the washing machine) into the sink, so it just pissed water all over the kitchen, only I was in the shower and didn't notice for ages.. so by the time I came, it looked like the bloody Nile had burst it's banks in to our kitchen.

Well.. I'm heading West tomorrow, got a flight from Hamburg to Toulouse with GermanWings on Wednesday, aiming for somewhere like Szczecin or Swinoujscie or maybe even Berlin tomorrow night. If I can find a host, that is.

Hardcore hitching

2007-01-05T15:34:00.000-08:00

Pissed off at yesterday's hitching I re-considered my route, I want to get out of Italy as soon as possible and this place is really not far from the Swiss border. I had also found out that there had been a death in Sylwia's family, I'd intended to go back to Warsaw to the funeral but she said "read my e-mail". So I thought I'd go to Wien where I could read the e-mail, work out whether to go to Warsaw and if not, head to Romania.

I hitched a small ride out of Edolo and then caught a truck that was going to Trento (that's right on the border), I caught a number of rides to the beginning of the Benina Pass and then another up to the beginning of a hiking pass.. although tempted to hike through the mountains, it's incredibly snowy, a long way and generally a bad idea, so I stick to hitching. I get a ride from a truck going through the Benina Pass to St.Moritz and beyond. The truck with chains across its wheels is making an almighty racket as huge amounts of snow fall onto us from the mountains, I'm glad I'm not walking here! This road is crazy, it's one of the nicest I've ever been on. I get dropped off by Saint Moritz and hitch about 12 different cars to the Austrian border, all kinds of people are stopping for me.. old men, women, trucks, Italian Swiss, German Swiss, French swiss! I never had to wait longer than 5 mins for a ride and it was great! The swiss were great and I loved hitching there, beautiful country! A wholly wunderbar experience.

Right by the Austrian border, I had a piss next to a sign which said "Native Spirit".. it was too tempting to resist. It's their fault for having an ambiguous sign. As far as I can work out, it's a group of hippies dressed in face paint, running around with bows and arrows. You can find the website here http://www.native-spirit.at/

Got a ride to Landeck in Austria and that's when the hitching became harder, waited about 40 mins there and got a ride a few km up the road to a petrol station. It was a bit chilly but eventually, some germans called me over and said hop in, we're going to Munich. They were driving in two cars, one full of guys and the other full of girls, the girls are a bit surprised when the man I was talking to puts me in the cars with all the girls! Nice enough girls - bit boring though, Vee Verr in Svitzerland, Jahr... Vee go Munken Jahr, Mein name ist Gertha, they gave me a bit of food and dropped me off just before Innsbruck.

What a miserable tankstelle, that turned out to be.. I'd do anything to switch back into the car going to Munchen with The Gertha's. Waited from 18.30 to 01.00am, originally looking for a ride north of Innsbruck, going to Salzburg, Rosenheim or Linz. Around 11.00pm, I had a little look around for somewhere to sleep, nothing going though.. so continued hitching. Eventually an Iranian guy took me to the Krankenhaus in Innsbruck, can't kip there though.. it's the Children's Ward. I walked around Innsbruck for a while in the early hours of the morning and finally found the train station, this place is perfect for sleeping. Loads of warm waiting rooms and no mentalists as you expect in most train stations. Infact, it was mostly filled with backpackers saving money by not going to the hostel or waiting for trains in the middle of the night going to Beograd, Budapest, Praha etc.

I thought about sleeping but like in Italy, I was pissed off with Austria and wanted to get out of there asap, I hate Western Europe (except Switzerland!), so I took a look at my map instead. Noticed that Linz was near the Czech border, hitching in Czech Republic was always a breeze for me, so I find out how much a ticket is to Linz, great.. I've got just enough!

I thought I had 3 and a half hours to have a sleep on the train but it never happened, the compartment was freezing and the lights kept on getting turned on. Get off in Linz at about 5.55, and look around the train station, there's an Internet Cafe opening at 07.00 am and an hour is supposedly 1 euro, so I'll wait for that to open and in the mean time work out how to get out of the city. Having not slept since Italy, I'm getting a bit tired but a coffee costs 3 euros, so fuck that! Internet - 1 euro? what the fuck, it's 5 euros for an hour, grrrrrrr.. disgraceful country, Austria!

I use it for about 10 mins and then start walking to the outskirts of the city (incidently, if your hitching out of Linz to CZ, just catch the bus no.33 until the last stop.. it would have been much easier). I try hitching onto the highway a couple of times but no success, so around 10 am, I think about getting to a cash point to get some food! Only problem is, i couldn't find a cashpoint, so I walk back about 3km where I saw one.. and what the hell? I've lost my bank card! How the fuck did that happen? Grr, i've not even been pissed this time.

Walked back 3km and began hitching, had to walk another 1km and finally got a ride around 11.30am, a combination of walking and hitching really small rides and I eventually got to Gallneukirchen. From there a ride to Freistadt and after realising I was holding my CZ sign the wrong way round, I got a lift up to Kaplice in Czech Republic. 5 rides got me up to Praha by about 17.30 and the last car dropped me in a good place having been a hitchhiker himself, I soon got a ride to Hradec Kralove.

In Hradec it was absolutely pissing it down and I was a bit fed up but a Polish car stopped and took me to the border at Nachod/Kudowa Zdroj. An old guy (who wanted to Napalm the Arab World and America in order to stop them selling petrol which would then stop global warming and stop Europe from sinking.. strange strange stuff!) but his son was much more peaceful and they invited me to stay in Kudowa Zdroj with plenty of moonshine and whiskey. I decided to continnue hitching though.

I had a bit of money on me, so finally had something to eat and then observed some strange stuff (2 gun shots went off and then two people legged it across a car park and over a fence at the TIR park, then a man in one of the Exchange places discovered his car tyres had been flattened, lots of shouting went on but I just ignored it - not really sure what happened!). After 4 hours though, a car took me to Wroclaw.. the guy had been to Praha airport to drop his friends off who were going to Sheffield (my birthplace)! He'd worked there and loved the place, wouldn't stop talking about it! Cool guy, he dropped me off on the outskirts of Wroclaw, where I waited under a bridge because it was pissing it down for 3 hours, it seemed much longer though.. perhaps because I'm not used to waiting such a long time in Poland or maybe because I hadn't slept since Italy and the road was empty... either way I had a strange experience, saw a guy walk up the stairs and across the bridge, then come down to my side, he looked a bit dodgy.. I kept an eye on him and he was looking at the bus time table, I stuck my thumb out for a car.. turned around and he was gone.. but there was no way he could have left to anywhere in that time! About 30 minutes later, I smelt a strong smell of aftershave, so turned around expecting to hit the guy but there was no one there!!

At 4.15, a car stopped and drove like a maniac to Warsaw, I finally got 2 hours sleep and I was at Janki by 7.45 and then caught a bus into the centre and that was the end of a bastard hitch!

Jan 2 - Monday bloody Monday!

2007-01-05T12:51:00.000-08:00

I saw Sylwia off on her flight at 12:00 and the plan was to get onto the motorway that was right next to the airport. Shouldn't be a difficult task really??? I prepare a sign for Venezia and stand just outside the airport, hopefully someone is going!! I intend to hitchhike to Ljubljana, I have hosts there and in Pecs, then in Romania, Bulgaria and even in Istanbul. Should be a good week.

That was in theory though and what was going to happen was a bit unexpected!! After waiting 2 hours, I get bored and walk up to the beginning of the highway, I wait there in the sun for 1 hour and get my cheeks red (face not ass), traffic is too fast and it doesn't look as though somoene is going to stop any time soon. I take a look at my map (a Europe map which can't always be trusted, big roads look small, small roads look big and places are not always where they look like they are!).. I began looking for an alternative route and it looked like I had one.. I'll head to Bolzano and then pop into Austria, going to Lienz, Spittal, Villach and down to Ljubljana, should be ok I think!! Or perhaps not?! I walk through Bergamo for about 6km and visit the bank machine and the shop, stocking up on supplies for the journey ahead (bread, cheese, mini pizza and some water).. at the edge of Bergamo, Seriate starts. Seriate was a nice looking town and I enjoyed walking through it, I began hitching from the outskirts. An hour passed and still no luck, I was just getting irritated by annoying Italians on their scooters beeping at me. I walked up through Albano Sant Alessandro, all the time hitching.. to no avail. After 18km of walking from the airport, I was at a junction in the road where there had been a car crash and managed to get to a ride up along the northern shores of Lago d'Iseo (stunning at night) to Pian Camuno.

A car picked me up from Pian Cammuno and took me back to the main road but further up, the traffic was going too fast and it was too dark for them to see me, so I tried my luck at the beginning of the road. After waiting for quite a while, no luck - fucking Italians are pissing me right off!! The previous driver had told me that there was a mini train going up the valley to Edolo.. on my map this looked like a town on the main road to Bolzano and looked like a good option. I asked a man who was faffing about with a hose pipe where the station was and surprisingly he took me to Darfo in his car and to the station.

20.30: I board the train for Edolo, it's not busy - just 5 other people in fact. The conductor explains to me that I'll have to get off at Breno, since we're going by bus.. there's something wrong with the train line further up the track. For the last 20km of the journey, I was the only person on the bus.

Tried hitching out of Edolo but there were no cars at all, I ask at a Pizza place if I can sleep there but he turns me down, and tells me to go to the Piazza, apparently there are hotels there. Hmm, sounds expensive. The train station is closed, and Edolo (in a beautiful location in the mountains).. is fucking freezing. Eventually I find the main square and I stay there at the cheapest hotel, not as cheap as I'd like mind.. and the "breakfast" simply consisted of stale bread and nothing else.

Happy New Year - Jan 1/2

2007-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

Happy 2007 everybody! I've got one resolution only and that's to travel much more than the last one and to plenty of new places. Here's a little summary of the last couple of days. Well it turns out that the country region that my parents live in don't celebrate New Year! There wasn't a firework to be seen or a cheer to be heard and I actually failed to notice the clock strike 12! We ended up celebrating it at 01:00 am (Midnight in UK). Actually got to bed relatively early at 02.30 after escaping from any more Pernod.

Woke up at 07:00 to leave for MILAN! Which is about a 1000km away, the first lift of the day is from my dad who takes us about 5 hours away to the highway! It's a good job because all the roads passing through Villefranche, Rodez, Mende, Le Puy to St.Ettiene, were as dead as a dead person's sex life.

From St. Ettiene we hitched a car from the petrol station to Lyon with some Algerian looking dudes, they dropped us off in a good spot more or less, just had to climb a small embankment and walk along the road a bit before stopping another car - this time a pompous old git (thanks for taking us though :-)), with two kids in his car who took us to the Peage.

At the peage, we caught a ride to Chambery with a stereo typical old french bloke playing mad music and talking to me with a funny accent. From there we caught a ride to the Torino suburbs with a youngish Italian couple. An hour of waiting (after getting a bit worried due to noticing that the station wasn't a 24hrs one) and then another young couple stopped and took us to Milan in a very flash car.. (had a tv screen and went like shit off a shovel)

Catch the metro into Milan Centre, have a bite to eat and then get on the airport bus to Milan (Bergamo).. (can't remember the real name of the airport but it sounds something like Orio .. I thought they were biscuits though). So we're at the airport at 12.00 am (that's 13 hours before the flight after unbelievably quick hitching on a Sunday and on a holiday - insane, I'll have to wear that mini skirt more often!)

At around 01.00 am, we were rounded up by security and there was mutterings about tickets, this got me a bit worried since I wasn't actually boarding a flight and didn't feel like sleeping outside.. it was cold. About 30 people (everyone in the airport at that time) were moved to a terminal for charter flights, the security were acting like right little mussolini's talking only in italian and just pointing to random things and we could have been being rounded up to a concentration camp for all I knew. A flight to Bradford (all of places) had been delayed by 14 hours by weather conditions. We slept on the floor in a sleeping bag and at 3.30, were ushered back into the other terminal again. Fuck sake, I just wanted to get some shut eye. Unable to sleep on the shitty steel chairs, I read until 7pm and then dozed off for 30 mins. Looking forward to leaving Italy, everything is expensive.

Monkey Business - France

2006-12-30T05:01:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-17T05:07:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-10T15:50:00.000-08:00

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.

Core Blimey, what a cracker

2006-10-10T04:30:00.000-07:00

Hmm been fucking around with computers mostly, managed to destroy my laptop somehow and had to buy a new PC, but it's Linux.. a bizarre version at that and it's in Polish, so it's not too comprehendible. Apart from that.. had a mental birthday party with a lot of booze and saw Taraf el Haidjouks live which was pretty good. An insane HC party on 7/8 October, where I seemed to walk just about everyone to the bus stop and still get mentally drunk playing table football and steal some girls umbrella in the central station to have a sword fight. I assumed that they quite liked this but they turned out to be some special business umbrellas.. yes that's right business umbrellas.. a group of about 20 snobs walking with company umbrellas. They looked like swords to me.. raah.

The "binging" went on to the next day where I MR very Drunk Organiser took everyone to Kampinos with Sniffy, who decided to eat a girl's shit that she'd sneaked off into the woods to do and cover himself in this black mud or tar or something.

Well, I hope a bit more travelling will be coming in the next few weeks since I'm just about to quit the English teaching, it's pissing me off. People always cancelling.

Madness in Warsaw

2006-09-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

I've not gone to Portugal.. I'm still here at home. Bloody Paul came down from northern Poland and we had a legendary night to celebrate England's victory against Macedonia. We started the evening off by warming up in Biba bar, close to mine... the problem with Champion's (the place showing the football) is that the beer is disgracefully expensive @ 12zl! Happy Hour was rapidly running out, so we ordered 4 each and had to down them before the match.. this wasn't the easiest task but one which led to relative drunkenness and mayhem. Julien joined us and then met some Italian guy who was doing business here - Paul bloody starts throwing beer all over me, so I give him a helping push down the stairs and he goes flying.. quite an impressive fall, resulting only in this tiny little cut (because the gay was carrying a beer bottle.. it's good that he dropped it or we would have been arrested anyway)... the result is we weren't allowed in any of the bars in the central station and we were covered in blood from his small cut. A plaster and a bit of a clean and everything was good - we go off to the alcohol shop near my old house and buy a beer.. which we then play football with in the street.

We then went to Swingo on the way home and met these bizarre gay germans who wanted to talk about motorbikes and try to chat up Paul.. who actually had no where to sleep because we didn't know the nightbus to Toni's house.. they were hinting about their posh hotel... haha

Anyway, I gave Sylwia a ring and he stayed in our kitchen.. a noisy sleeper though, my god.

On the piss again.....and off to Portugal

2006-09-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

Last night was a good night, went to see the old Jasonium and had a bottle of vodka with him, slagged off shit clothing and then joined Sylwia for beers, dancing, metal and table football in Biker's.. we weren't up to form, or perhaps far too pissed.

My mate Hana from Oradea in Romania (the girl who was supposed to do the hitching race with me).. has finally hitched over from Kyrgysztan to China.. last I heard, she was heading down to Pakistan and wants to work as a voluntary teacher with some children by the Afghani border.. so if you're passing by, bring her a beer or two.. I don't know if there's that much there.

Paul and Ula, somewhat in search of football are supposedly heading here on Wednesday but I may be long gone.. I'd planned to join them for the Kyiv Camp and then head up to Bydgocscz for beering it with Wojtek, Marcin etc but it looks like all my plans have changed and I'm hitching down to Portugal in the next few days. One of my mates is in a bit of trouble, so I'm heading there to try and sort some things out. Arse of a problem is that I've only got about 20zl (5 euros).. which I can spend on the trip, talk about a shit budget. Anything else I have is tied up in business.

Back to Poland

2006-08-31T09:06:00.000-07:00

Well we'd overstayed our time in Vama Veche and after one night and a morning in Cernivci it was time to leave- stocked up on cheese, we were told how to hitch out of Cernivci by our host, after a couple of minutes a Lada Riva stopped and the driver a Russian/Ukrainian/German/English speaking guy from Cernivci who worked as an agent for an Austrian timber company was nearly driving to Lviv.. perfect... a 300km ride. He was a fast driver and unfortunately after about 70km the Ukrainian police pulled him over, he refused to sign the documents and so they wanted to take him to the police station. We got out and began hitchhiking, his car broke down and the police had to push him to get him going before running into their car to take him to the station... quite entertaining.

We were stuck in the middle of the Ukrainian countryside, on a fairly large road but it was filled with full minibuses and the occasional truck, after 30 minutes.. a guy with a mad moustache stopped and took us all the way through Ivano-Frankivsk and dropped us on the road to L'viv by a gas station.. after a few seconds, a man came running towards us and pointed to his car.. he took us to a city 30 or 40km away called Bielszyn. The locals seemed quite worried about us and were trying to explain to us we were in the wrong place for the bus to stop.. we explained we were hitchhiking and they tutted their head.. but after a few minutes an elderly wealthy man stopped in a brand new car.

This guy was Ukrainian with Russian parents and was going somewhere near the Poland border.. he dropped us off north of L'viv about 20km from Rawa Ruska, a young man in a Lada stopped immediately and the guy didn't really know where in Rawa Ruska he was going for.. so he took us to the border, we offered him our last 10 hryvnas but he turned them down.

The Ukrainian border guards told us we had to get in a car to cross the border and that no one was allowed to walk over, despite Sylwia waving around her Polish passport when knocking on people's windows (all the cars were polish).. no one would listen and some wouldn't even open the window. Eventually a father and son, bringing alcohol and cigarettes from Rawa Ruska to the other side of the border took us over.

From then on.. things were simple.. one lift by a funny Italian guy and his polish girlfriend (who both lived in London) to Tomaszow, where we met some people hitching to Ukraine in the other direction, immediately an old guy stopped and took us to Zamosc, then a guy (with excess gas to share... :0).) in a Mercedes took us rapidly to Lublin.. and the last ride was from a trucker who took us close by our house in Warszawa. It was 12.5hrs from Cernivci to Warszawa.. not bad.

Cernivci

2006-08-30T02:16:00.000-07:00

The hitch the next day was one of the easiest, we had a little picnic in Adjud then left around midday... the first car stopped and an elderly woman took us to Bacau, to the correct hitching place to Roman and Suceava. Romanians are wonderful, they're very helpful and friendly to foreigners. Once again, the first car stopped and took us all the way to Suceava...this time it was a young English speaking couple, when we got to Suceava they told us how to get through the city to a good hitching place. It took a while but we stopped a car that took us to Seret, the guy surprisingly asked for money - the first time it ever happened to me in Romania.. we had no romanian lei or any other currency so we could only offer bread or water. He wasn't too happy, we walked a little bit and then stopped a Ukrainian car which took us to and over the border, helping us out with the immigration cards.

He was only going to the exchange offices on the other side and we hitched a romanian who was going to get diesel from Cernivci because it's half the price. Cernivci is a nice Ukrainian city, the old town is untouched from the war and the people are friendly, the roads and transport incredibly old but it's cool. Our host - Zetlee, was a really nice girl who cooked us Borsch, showed us around the city and helped me to buy some things.

Adjud

2006-08-30T01:20:00.000-07:00

We left Vama Veche at around 2pm, got a ride immediately from a german guy to Mangalia and had to wait there for some time to get a car to Constanta.. an army officer who took us to the right place to hitch to Bucharest and a small truck took us to along the highway, we jumped off on the junction where the road goes to Slobozia... here we waited for a few minutes before a truck took us up to Focsani, a huge thunderstorm began and the sky was really beautiful on the way up, anyhow the week of partying had taken it's toll and we both fell asleep. Waking up at around 10.30pm in Focsani, we waited in a petrol station for a while until the weather calmed down. We started to hitch and a car soon stopped, some rich romanian who worked in Italy was driving an empty minibus.. he dropped us off in Adjud, we couldn't get a ride to Bacau because the cars were limited and those that were there were full. The weather was bad, so we found somewhere to sleep - the whole town was filled with loud music and wedding parties.

Vama Veche

2006-08-30T00:58:00.000-07:00

Hitching to Vama Veche was not too bad, some bulgarian hippies that we had met by the fire one night took us to Sabla.. although there was about 4 more people than capacity in the car, it was just about possible. From Sabla, someone moved us to the correct place to hitch and then we got a van to Durankulak, where a Romanian couple took us to the border, we walked over.. had to wait a bit.. bloody hot, 40 degrees. 1km over the other side of the border and we are in Vama Veche.. we couldn't find the hc members but we found two metal bars, where we spent most of the night - we decided to stay in a house for a change.. it cost 5 euros per person.. the water there was nice and the beach (another nudist colony).. was pretty nice. The next day, in the evening..I saw a girl with an HC t-shirt on and finally we met some of the people who were there before the HC meeting. We had a good evening in a bar on the beach, reasonable music.. lots of people partying on the beach and quite cheap beer (from 2zl to 3zl for 500ml). We spent the week camping on the beach with the hc crew, swimming, drinking (mostly).. that metal place was a godly bar.

It's fair to say that a week of such high alcohol content finished in a bit of a mess, we managed to get both phones wet, lose our camera with all the holiday photos on by leaving it in a bar and receive several injuries.

Kamen Bryag

2006-08-30T00:44:00.000-07:00

So.. the reason I haven't updated the blog for a long time is the lack of internet connection.. we stayed in Kamen Bryag for 5 days.. Kamen Bryag is a wild place in Bulgaria where you can camp on the cliff or stay in caves.. there is a small village near by where you can buy food and also rent houses for around 3 euros per person. There's also a bar which is nearly always open - supplying you with coffee, food and also showers. Over 20 years ago, the Bulgarian government were looking for gas supplies, they discovered small reserves here but decided not to use them.. a small pipe goes into the ground and there is a small fire burning 24hrs for the last 20 years from natural gas.. perfect for cooking muscles or potatoes. There are also loads of archaeological ruins from people who lived in the caves here some hundred years ago.

Snorkelling is quite nice in the area.. we made the mistake of going to Russalka one day.. this is a nearby place... 8km by road, we thought we could camp there but it turns out that it was just a small beach which we could use, the rest was controlled by two hotels (one resort).. staff were rude and unhelpful bastards, Russalka is also the name of the local toilet paper - quite appropriate.

We had problems to hitch out of Kamen Bryag, we tried to go Sabla and eventually a car took us.. they were also going in search of a Bank Machine, when we got there.. our cards didn't work and the driver kindly took us 40km extra to Kavarna to get money there.

Varna

2006-08-16T01:45:00.000-07:00

Hitching out of Bucharest was no problem, we got a car that was going to the coast along the motorway and managed to get off at Lehliu Gara, where we walked a few metres and managed to stop a truck going to Calarasi. For some reason, I think that this guy has taken me before - either that or he just has a friendly face. Well, who knows - we hitched a working truck to within 2km of the border.. the whole road is being repaired (or destroyed?!), immediately switched trucks and that one took us to the river. We just missed the boat across the danube, so we went to the bar for a couple of beers.. a couple were wandering around panicking.. trying to find out if they should buy tickets.. no one else seemed to care (I've never bought a ticket or seen anyone buy one, but there is actually a small Kasa). I noticed that these panickers had a polish registration, so Sylwia went over to thave a word with them.. they agreed to take us as far as Golden Sands, this dreadful resort a few km's north of Varna. It was good that they took us but they were very irritating, complaining about everything.. the lack of signposts, the condition of the roads, the time waiting at the border, the romanian drivers.. fuck knows why they decided to come by car through Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria if they are complaining about all that!

The woman was a dreadful map reader and the guy quite a clever little shit, I tried to direct them.. because I've been that route several times, but they weren't really listening to me and insisted on turning back, driving around roundabouts about 233 times and moaning about everything, including the hot weather now..anyway we got the bus from the outskirts into the centre of Varna.

Our host in Varna was not an HC member, she was a french girl called Helene.. I sent her an sms asking for a place to stay and she replied telling me.. "Who are you, a friend of Caro maybe?".. Caro is infact an HC member who was working as a volunteer in Varna, however she returned to Germany and gave the sim card to Helene. Helene knew nothing of HC or who we were but still agreed to host us. When we met her, she turned out to be a very nice girl who told us she didn't know what she had done agreeing to let us stay - maybe we were from a highly religious community! haha

We;ve stayed with her for two days, drank beer together and she introduced us to a great beach called Galeta which is quiet, nice and clean with warm water just a couple of kilometres south of Varna. If you want to go there take bus 17 from the cathedral or train station, get off at the last stop.. walk back a bit, turn right, keep right, go straight and eventually you will come to some stairs,, walk all the way down and dah dah :-)

Varna is a bit of a noisy resort town with shit music and dirty beaches but Galeta is paradise, anyway we are off to the north today.. a bit of hitching then camping, exploring villages and the coast..

Vive Le Placebo... :-).. Cluj and Bucharest

2006-08-16T01:30:00.000-07:00

That night in Cluj was good fun, we went to visit our hosts grandparents who were quite well travelled and a really nice old couple, living in a small village on the outskirts of Cluj. Her grandfather picked us up in this very old army van with space for all the troops in, by then we'd met another active Cluj member - Luciano. After being loaded with palinka, homemade turkey sausages, bread, vegetables and some amazing paste made from ground up marrows, we were all given insanely large pijamas in err vibrant colours. I thought that I looked like an ageing jazz musician but Sylwia just defined it as stupid, meanwhile the Romanian girl described me and Luciano as teletubbies :-(. Haha

Hitching down to Bucharest the next day was fairly easy, we didn't leave until 2pm, first getting a ride to Turda.. waiting there for a while and discussing with the old bloke where we were from and where we were going,he was eager to point out that he was Romanian and not a foreign hitchiker.. I would never have guessed.

From Turda we got a massive ride from a guy going to Pitesti, driving like a mad man and playing the same 10 songs incredibly loud for about 4 hours. We ate our packed luinch in the car, which supergranny had given us :-). Hitching to Bucharest from Pitesti was easy, we got a lift from a nice couple but the road was being repaired, so we crawled for 40km into Bucharest.

After asking people in the streets, we eventually got to Piata Romana where we were supposed to meet our host after the Placebo concert. We just waited for a few hours, whilst drinking some of Bucharest's beer supply.

Olivier, our host - a guy from France who has been living in Romania for 3 years, was a nice fella - keen to give me a few tasters of some alcohol he kept in a cabinet. Have to say the French one.. of which I can't remember the name, was pretty goodf stuff. Certainly slept well.

Earlier than expected in Cluj-Napoca 11/12 August

2006-08-12T04:15:00.000-07:00

We expected to arrive in Cluj tonight but we already arrived this morning. Setting off from Warsaw, we were a bit late after a late night the night before.. on the road at 9, there were 3 girls hitchhiking, followed by 2 polish girls - they both got rides before us.. finally after an hour, we got a ride to Radom.

Hitching from Radom was dreadful, firstly we were waiting in a rather poor place, just near the roundabout to hitch to Warsaw but in the direction of Rzeszow and Lublin, then we were told by a guy to get the bus no.21 until the roads seperated, this was a good piece of advice and recommend it to anyone else! Anyway.. it started to rain and no miserable Radom kurwa's wanted to stop.

After 3 hours, a Ukrainian truck stopped, a nice guy who offered us lots of sweets and biscuits, whilst playing mad Russian music.. he wanted to take us to Rzeszow but a smaller truck decided to stop directly in front of him, we had to swerve and managed to miss him more or less but destroyed the wing mirror on the truck, this pissed off the truck driver, he lost his concentration and that resulted in us getting lost.

The weather was bad, the roads were flooded and at 5.30, the truck had to stop for a few hours, so he dropped us off about 65km from Rzeszow at a petrol station, I managed to convince two guys to take us to Rzeszow...we waited there for about 15 minutes and no one stopped, so we went for something to eat and some beers and then I just stuck my thumb out at the end of the carpark as a joke. The car stopped and took us a few km's out of Rzeszow.. we then got a ride to Dukla by these insanely slow drivers who apparently were hospitality club members. Although they didn't offfer us any hospitality (apart from the initial lift), they dropped us in the middle of nowhere.

We were cold and tired and considering putting up a tent in the dark, Sylwia (who incidently is being a very well behaved girl..) begged a truck to stop.. and sure enough it did. A Turkish guy driving to Istanbul, he took us through Slovakia and Hungary through the night to the Romanian border by Oradea. A really nice, calm and old guy who unfortunately was fined 15 euros for having two passengers by Slovakian cunt border guards. He was going to sleep just after the Roomanian border, so he dropped us there at 4 am ( 5 am romanian time).. we changed some money, went for a piss and had some drinks then started hitching again.

Waited a while outside this dodgy "nightclub" with some of the laziest dogs hanging around in the road and almost getting run over all the time, finally a custom officer stopped and took us to the other side of Oradea. After about 30 minutes, we got a lift all the way to Cluj from a Hungarian/Romanian guy driving his BMW insanely fast through all the mountain roads.

We hit Cluj at 10, now we're staying with our host from HC.. off to Bucharest tomorrow. Must have had about 2 hours sleep max because I was sitting crushed on the floor of the truck but the Hard Rock Cafe calls.

Little Round-Up....

2006-08-10T05:30:00.000-07:00

Not updated this for a while, not really been anywhere. Just in Warsaw.. spent the first week with Sylwia and then she went up to Olecko for a voluntary camp, I hosted about 25-30 people in a 2 week period..generally had 2 or 3 guests every day. All of them nice, in their own funny way.

One chap, a Siberian hitch-hiker introduced me to the world of Russian hitchhiking.. it's much more organised than it is in Europe and there is a lot more information on it.. it's all in Russian though. So I better improve my Russian skills. To all my guests over that fortnight.. thanks, it was nice having you here :-). I also discovered that I had two HC neighbours.. Zosia and Jacuzz.. quite pleasant people really! Also, Julien my old flat mate moved back to Warsaw and lives just a few metres away!

My parents are supposedly coming from the UK today but there's all this insane terrorism stuff happening in the UK. They've unfoiled plans to bomb 10 planes.. madness. They're coming over here to visit Poland and look after Sniffy while we are away. I'm leaving tomorrow morning with Sylwia..heading for Bulgaria. We tried to find hosts in Croatia but nobody replied.. Toni had the same problem. I don't expect every HC member to host hundreds of people in their house but I think that a quick fast reply is just politeness!

Last Furlong

2006-07-19T02:57:00.000-07:00

Hitching from Kosice to Warsaw was pretty fun and quite easy. Got one lift from Kosice to Presov and there I met two English guys hitching to the Ukraine border..after a bit of a joke, I went to hitch behind them (which is common courtesy among hitchhikers).. something 3 bloody Slovakian girls didn't know about or didn't want to know about.The 3 girls came and caught a ride, then I went and finally the guys got a ride and overtook me. Then the two roads split and I waited on the road to the Polish border with the 3 slovakian girls, who soon got a ride. After a while, I got a ride up to near the border too and on the way I saw them waiting..haha.

Soon made it to about 5km from the border and some guy took me to a place near Krosno in Poland, from there it was a few rides up to Rzeszow.. walked through Rzeszow which is surprisingly small and hitched there for about an hour before getting a ride 15km.

I remembered that Kruopa (Vita) had left her book of signs in Wien and that I have them, so I used her Radom sign. Within seconds an old dirty van stopped and the driver explained that there was no space in the front, so I went in the back. Bit uncomfortable, the diesel fumes seemed to make me a bit high but it was good fun and he dropped me in the perfect place to get a lift to Warsaw.A few minutes of hitching and a car stopped, some old guy was also hitchiking there and he decided to join me in the car... whilst muttering something about Warszawa. The old guy was seriously hammered, looked like he'd obviously had a good time in Radom. When we got to Warsaw, he seemed to know a lot of the old homeless guys at Central Station which was not too surprising.

Stuck in Kosice

2006-07-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

I get stuck at the border for a couple of hours, all the cars are Polish but none of them are stopping as they are full.. this is irritating. It also may have something to do with the fact I look like a really ugly cousin it *hairy guy from adam's family*.. the wind on this border is insane. After a few hours, some guy takes me but he's only going as far as Kosice.. which is actually within walking distance (18km).. although with the lack of sleep, I'm in no mood to walk.

Arriving in Kosice, he drops me off at the beginning of the city.. no idea why!! After a few hours of unsucessful hitching, I decide to get the bus into the centre but choose not to buy a ticket and then jump off the bus when the inspectors came on. However, it turned out they weren't inspectors but were guys in a navy uniform.. I didn't know Slovakia had a navy.. it doesn't have any sea!

I'm completely knackered by now with no food and no money, look and smell like shit and the only thing I posses is some Croatian Kuna and 25 slovak crowns to use the internet once. I have no tent and no sleeping bag, it's not looking good. What I decided to do was get a message to my parents to see if they could Western Union me some money which I would send back from Poland when I got my bank card. Only problem.. no Western Union until Monday, bugger.. well I spent a few hours looking for the cheapest hotel and managed to convince them to wait for payment.. I managed to change the Croatian Kuna which kept me in food for a day. Not too shabby in the end.

Anyway Kosice is quite a nice town, it's a little bit boring though...

Mad day!

2006-07-18T05:13:00.001-07:00

I left very early and the hitching went well, the roads were terrible and there wasn't a great deal of traffic, so I really do believe that woman when she said there was no point hitchiking at night. I got a car from Vama to Campulung and then from Campulung to Iacobeni, from there an old guy took me into Vatru Dornei... all these places are wonderful little towns and villages in the Romanian mountains, the air is clean and the rivers flow. Unfortunately, so do the roads.. they've all been washed away during the winter and they're working hard to repair them this summer.

Somehow from Vatru Dornei, I managed to stop a car that went all the way to Dej.. it's quite a long way and takes forever considering the roads but it's a nice journey and I would have enjoyed it a little more had I not been in a rush and had no money. The hitch from Dej to Baia Mare was easy and so was the ride to the Halmeu turn off. I went for a piss, turned around and stopped a car before I had time to fully close my zip, that's how fast it is in Romania - never longer than about 5-10 minutes.

(Apparently 2 girls struggle to hitchike together and 2 guys too.. but singles or couples, you'll be fine)

A lift up the Ukraine border at Halmeu, where I was shitting myself because I know it's basically impossible to enter without any money. I clear the Romanian border, then get to the Ukraine border..

Ukrainian guards: How much money do you have?
Dan: Enough
UA Guards: How much?
Dan: 50 euros
UA Guards: Let's see it
Dan: Erm well it's on my bank card - I point..
UA Guards: That's a telephone card
Dan: Oh sorry, my bank card must be at home..

So the result is that they wanted to send me back to Romania with a no entry stamp in my passport, I explained to them that I would not be allowed back into Romania when I tell them why I was thrown out of Ukraine. They know that's also the case and one sympathetic guy brought me aside, he explains that according to the rules.. I should fuck off.. but they will give me a Transit stamp which allows me to travel 17km in Ukraine to the Hungarian border by Vilok. Where they will ask me no questions and I will be back in the EU.

It's not the best thing because I wanted to hitch to Uzghorod but it's pretty good of them to help me out like that. Not many cars in that part of Ukraine but I managed to hitch a religious guy in a Lada who trapped my hair in his sun roof accidentally... bloody hurt that.

After a while, I arrive at the Hungary border..go through without any problems but I have no idea where the fuck I am and I don't possess any maps because the way I was going, is the route I knew.. well I just approached some people and asked which way is it to Miskolc, they pointed in one direction but said it was about 200km. My hungarian hitching was going bloody well, cars stopped quite quickly and the roads there are superb.

By 10pm, I arrive in Tokaj.. which looks to me to be a very fun town. I then found out, that there having a huge hard rock/metal festival there with lots of good hungarian bands and Motorhead. I asked someone for directions to Miskolc and they're like no, no stay here, we drink beer. So I drank some beer with them and after some time the guy told me he lived right next to the Slovakian border, he's going there by train and then would take me to the Polish border by bike for a little adventure.

They went off to the Motorhead concert, I went and talked to some more people..students from Miskolc who for some reason thought that I owned a motorbike and when my first new friends came back, the guy had met some girl... it was clear he wasn't going to the border in any time soon. Well I went off for a swim down by the river and then had a few more beers with him. The town was seriously insane, full of lots of good people though.. around 9.00 am without sleep, I decide to hitch to Poland because the guy seems to have fallen in love!

I get a lift after seconds from this Hell's Angel guy who is going in the wrong direction, well so was I to be fair. He's a 200kg tatooed animal driving a BMW at about 200km/hr with a group of about 40 bikes circling us going RAAAH AAAAAAH UUUUUUH. He'd also split his pants, wasn't sure if he was aware about that, his CD player certainly had capabilities to play music very loud.

He dropped me just outside Miskolc and I got another car, a slightly more peaceful fella to about 13km from the border. I walked to the border, feeling pretty knackered. Absolutely no traffic there, just rich Poles coming back from holidays with about 8 children in the car. Bloody catholicism, it should be banned.

Campulung Moldovensc

2006-07-18T05:13:00.000-07:00

I left Iasi kinda late because we woke up late and then went to Andra's house for some soup and to stroke her Schnauzer (Rudy, who is an insanely friendly dog!).. perfect soup by the way! When I hit the road, there was another guy hitching.. I thought I'd be at a slight advantage to him because I had some teeth but he caught the bus anyway in the end. I picked up a ride to Suceava, a town near the Ukraine border. Without my bank card, the chances of getting into Ukraine at the border were about 0, so I was heading over to the Halmeu border in the west where things are more relaxed.

From Suceava, a car took me to Gura Humorului.. the scenery up here is gorgeous and I highly recommend the area to everyone (except George Bush and Adam Ostrenga.. you are both wankers). A car stopped in Gura Humorului, an elderly couple who spoke only French and Romanian. My french is becoming terrible but I understood that she didn't want me hitching to Baia Mare at night.. so they took me to this cottage where I began to speak with two french girls. The french girls explained that the old woman said I could stay the night for free in the guesthouse that she ran. I was ushered to the kitchen where I was given a huge soup, lots of bread, some meat, some palinka (lethal romanian liquour), some water and some wine. I refused the alcohol as didn't know how it would react with the sensation of having drank the warm vodka... the soup was great!

After that, I was shown my room... which was amazing.. a huge comfortable bed and an enormous bathroom. I was offered all this for free, I would have actually given her some money had I not lost my bank card and not had any.

Iasi - Wup Wup Wup

2006-07-18T05:01:00.000-07:00

Iasi is quite a nice town, I had an enjoyable stay.. with some Czech guys from HC who were also being hosted by Andra and Marius. We had a few beers and lots of joking about armpit hair.. men in Romania shave off their armpit hair you see, an idea which is particularly harmful to my mind! We met some Russian girls who were studying Romanian in Iasi and were also from HC and then some friends of Andra and Marius.... then went looking for a bar with a table football.

By the way - they have great Shoarma's in Iasi.. especially that one in the University Campus. The beer there is pretty cheap too.. the most expensive we paid was 2.5lei (it's about 60 cents).. the cheapest was 1.8 lei. Apart from the insane thunder storm, the city is a pretty good looking one... it also helps that the whole particularly beautiful female population don't seem to believe in wearing bras!! Men without armpit hair, girls without bra's.. it's the cultural centre of Moldavia and beats Barlad anyday!

The campus was a bit deserted and the bars kinda strange, insane Wup Wup music and hardcore porn playing at the same time. Whatever floats your boat. Anyway.. we decided to call it a night and head off home when Martin (one of the czech lads) goes for a piss, I smell bread and have a little wander into what looks like a factory. The idea at that time was to see if we could convince them to give us some free bread.. somehow I found this insane pub with about 4 people in, 3 guys insanely drunk, semi-naked and very friendly and one girl who was looking a bit embarassed (we decided that she was from Chisinau for some reason). They spent most of their time dancing to Wup Wup music (that balkan music where it's like Wup Wup Wup) and demonstrating their opinions on the Zidane-Materazzi incident in the world cup final.

We joined them for some beer and then I had the great idea.. let's get a shot of vodka. It was absolutely lethal and warm too - baaaaah, we all nearly died. Fucking disgraceful vodka, I can't remember the name of it though. There was one called Perfect though, and perfect it certainly wasn't.

Thanks to Andra and Marius.. I found the perfect hitching spot out of the city to Suceava.

Barlad be my name

2006-07-18T04:38:00.000-07:00

The Bulgarian part of the hitch was less than impressive, I waited 3 hours in hardcore sun next to these guys who were waving loads of cash about - black market money exchangers. The guy was a little bit irritating, kept on offering his driving services for an insane 80 euros.. I was inclined to headbutt him.. the cheeky sod!

My sun cream was at the very bottom of my bag and I'd been too lazy to reach for it.. the results were not particularly inspiring!! Anyway after 3 hours, one guy took me about 10km and after about 30 minutes a bus stopped and agreed to take me to Silistra for free after I explained that I had spent all my Bulgarian money already.. a free 120km bus ride, is not too shabby.

I love the Silistra border crossing, it's very special - I must be one of the only foreigners that uses it but everybody is very kind there. The bus driver dropped me right next to the border and I was through in no time, all the border guards were full of smiles and there were a lot of puppies playing on the border for some reason.

The Silistra-Calarasi border is pretty cool, after you clear Romanian customs, you turn left and then right and within about 800m you reach the River Danube.. every 30 minutes a raft takes you across to the other side for free. From the other side, I hitched a car that was coming off the raft and it took me into Calarasi.

Romanian hitching is legendarily easy, everyone will tell you that drivers ask for money but it's not true.. I've never been asked in all my hitching there, they expect money from locals and of course it's accepted if a guest gives it but no one will ever ask. From Calarasi, I got a lift from a brewer to Slobozia and from there a truck to Galati.. this truck driver had spent a lot of years driving to Iraq and spoke fluent Arabic, Turkish and Russian, he let me ring Andra (my host in Iasi) to tell her what was happening and then wouldn't let me hitchike a car, so he flagged all the trucks down himself and found me a ride to Tecuci.

Tecuci is a bit of a shit hole but I almost managed to get a ride from this Moldovan chap with a stunning girlfriend who was going to the border, however his boss who was Chinese.. said no. Fucking businessman. I did succesfully get a ride from a trucker going to Barlad, Barlad is about 140km from Iasi and when I arrived there, there was no traffic at all. The local gypsys in a bar next to the hitching place were drunk and I was arousing an interest which I didn't like too much. Something happened in the bar.. seemed like a bit of a riot and an elderly woman started to throw everyone out with a stick.

I decided to enter the factory that the truck had drove to, to see if I could sleep there. I talked with the security and they said I could sit with them in the room until the morning. Around 2am, they changed shifts and they failed to tell them about me, this was unbelievable! The new guys come in and they're like.. who the fuck are you? I try to explain that I'm sleeping there for the night and there like no no, taxi, taxi, taxi, centre. I'm like... no, no, sleep, sleep, here (in a german accent for some reason) and oh shit, I have to leave.

I see a mini bus going the other direction from Iasi-Galati.. so I thought it would be a wise decision to go to a bank machine and get some money incase one goes the other way. I got the money out, put my bank card in my pocket and then felt something hit my foot. I got a bit bored of waiting to see if a mini bus would come and went for some kip in a field (just sleeping on my backpack, as I failed to bring a sleeping bag or tent.. pah, who needs them..only girls), the field actually turned out to be loads of ant hills, which is also the reason it was a tickling field.

Wake up in the morning because of the heat and I realise that I've lost my bank card.. I also realise I have a huge hole in my pocket, great it was that thing that hit my foot my the bank machine. Anyway, hitch to Iasi wasn't too difficult and I arrived about 11;30.

Sofia and Rousse

2006-07-10T23:34:00.001-07:00

I had a great time in Sofia, as I said before it is one of my favourite cities. My hosts Mitko and Nadia were quality people, Mitko possibly one of the funniest guys I ever met.

"I am from a different country, we don't shout yeah yeah like stupid girls.. we sit proudly and make VAAAAAAAAA"

Anyway.. did a little sightseeing in the city with two other hungarian guests, bought a shit load of dictionaries and continued the standard evening at their place.. which involves lots of cheese and amazing food, some Rakija, some beer, some weed and lots of good music. The next day we spent in the nearby mountains, messing around in the snow and cleaning rubbish from the hiking paths.

Every day in Sofia was filled with lots of fun, I highly recommend everyone to go there and in particular to stay with Mitko and Nadia!!

Hitching out was a hell of a job, it seemed as though I had the perfect instructions to get to a hitching spot on the road to Pleven, Rousse and Varna. I have no idea what happened but I found myself in totally the wrong place by the road to Skopje and Thessaloniki.. I'd been buying bus tickets for the majority of my time in Sofia but had decided to hop on to a bus that was running round the ring road. Sure enough, a ticket control guy came - I was surprised, he was an old guy and not the standard bulldogs that you get in Poland.. I gave him a ticket that had already been used, he checked it and found that it wasn't the same, he asked for money.. I shrugged my shoulders and acted stupid (I kept a good position next to the door and just had to keep him talking until the bus stopped).. sure enough the bus stopped and I ran out of the door. He wasn't too eager to chase, in less than a minute later.. I hitchhiked a police car! I continued to hitch round the ring road which was taking quite a long time and the rain was heavy. Eventually a car took me to the correct place.

One more ride 50-60km up the road and there I had a two hour wait, some old woman was hitchhiking with a baby.. I was later told by the driver that stopped for me that she is always there and when a car stops for her, she gets in and starts screaming at them to give her money. The dude took me to Veliko Tarnovo and after that 3 more rides to Rousse.. just in time for about 20:30.

Now what to say about Rousse?? Well, it's famous for the border zone which is filled with ugly looking prostitutes, the architecture in the suburbs is less than inspiring but the city centre is very nice and the border guards are bastards!!

Apparently.. no walking over the border between Rousse and Giurgiu (romania), the trucks are not allowed to take me, the cars won't stop for the fear of me being an alien, the only way across is by bus or train.. which are twice a day or by taxi.. I enquire about how much the taxi costs, after all it's only 1km, it can't be much... 20 euros! 20 fucking euros? What?! Apparently they pay most of that back to the border guards in taxes.

Well, I'm not paying anything towards this particular border... I'll try from the Silistra/Calarasi border as I know that one well.

Anyway, I'm trying to get back before the weekend and have no time to stop in Bucharest now, so it's a direct hitch to Iasi.. we'll see how it goes.

Nothing's gonna change my clothes

2006-07-07T03:31:00.000-07:00

As some people will know - particuarly my hosts, up until now I have been travelling without underwear. I left it in Poland for some reason, so I've been wearing swimming shorts and washing them everyday. Well in Belgrade, I finally opted to invest in some boxers, they're a bit small though!!

Didn't leave immediately to Nis because by the time I got ready to hitch it was getting a bit late. Myself and Knedlik managed to find a new host. A girl called Branka who was avidly supporting Italy against Germany. To be honest, I dislike both teams so had to wait for them both to get knocked out. I'm supporting France!!

Anyway, it was a nice evening but the next day was a difficult hitch from Beograd, I had to walk about 20km up the highway to the toll and there the police were stopping all the cars for themselves and hitchhiking to another town. Bastards! There were 2 other guys hitching and a car stopped for one of them and took me also. A Macedonian/Bulgarian./Serbian guy who smuggles 400+ packets of cigarettes across the border in his car. Quite a friendly fella though and he dropped me off in Nis.

Nis, is quite cool - pretty small but you can see normal people their compared to the usual over-dressed Belgrade bunch. Spent a nice evening down by the river, drinking beer and talking to some Serbian guys from HC.. aswell as this bizarre romanian guy who spoke about 10 languages.

Hitching out of Nis was bloody difficult, in fact I couldn't wait to leave Serbia just because the hitching was a pain in the arse. Waited over 4 hours in the direct sun but was finally rewarded with a lift from a Swiss couple in an old campervan.. they were driving to China overland through Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, pakistan, India and Nepal. Amazingly cool people, we had to wait for 3 hours a the border, the queue was quite big (well about 10km for trucks)... insane cigarette smuggling going on, everybody selotaping them all around their legs and stomachs etc.

The last hour was wating for the border guards to change shifts, god knows what they were doing but it took them forever.

Now I'm in Sofia.. I love this city, it's one of the best in Europe.

Zagreb and Beograd

2006-07-04T04:24:00.000-07:00

Core.. crazy few days. In Zagreb, I was staying with 3 hc members (pocket, vrbova4grana and kangia.. ok she-s a dog but she counts too)..who had 4 guests, two girls from finland, one girl from Switzerland and the Swedish supermodel (me!)... I watched the England match on a big screen in Zagreb with the wonderful Dejana (dj), who saw me growling at the game, it was a fucking disaster.
That referee was a total clown. Rooney should have got man of the match and not sent off. The England fans were being very well behaved, seemed to be dancing with the Portuguese fans... not sure what that was about... all a bit pissed.

Anyway, it ended in tears and for me it ended in beers.. I don't know why but I decided to hop on the Tram 1 for a change instead of the one which takes me home... left me in a strange part of the city but I managed to make it back home in time for the wine which this guy Phillip (another cool dude from Sibenik) was happily swigging. I remember very little apart from repeating myself about the bastard referee.

Next day, I woke up with a rough hangover and tried to work out why, then remembered about the World Cup - bollox, a nightmare all over again!

Pocket's landlord was coming, so me and knedlik (the swiss girl) found a new host.. a girl called Tanja. Amazing view of the whole city from her place.. watched some bizarre film about some guy who was going through a mid-life crisis and bajomping half of america, one girl in a polar bear suit. Fuck, it reminds me of the England match.

Next day, it was time to move on. Knedlik had decided to come along with me to see Beograd because it's kind of on the way to Hungary (err not really but Serbia is Serbia and it's fun!). Absolutely mental rain when we were leaving, got immensely soaked but finally got a lift from some guy to Novsik (or something like that..), he dropped us off by a petrol station and after a banana or two.... a german fella took us to a few km's away from the Serbian border. The guy was fairly entertaining, he knew the whole history of Europe and then started to tell me about some club called Big Sister in Prague.. it's what he describes as good value.. 17 euros for all you can drink, all you can eat and a girl for an hour.. ahem. The reason it's cheap is because, as you are in the middle of a bit of humpty dumpty.. a film crew comes in and starts filming you. Insane stuff... so if you want to see what my driver look liked.. http://www.big-sister-club.com/

When I told him about my plans for the Siberian hitch.. his answer was.. Yakutsk? People get stabbed there all the time..so it certainly sounds promising. Then again, this chap had been robbed twice in Ukraine.. he went to visit a girl in her flat and was beaten and robbed by some big dudes and the second time he picked up a well dressed old woman hitchhiking and a few minutes later, a car pulled up behind him and started to raid him with a gun from her bag. Entertaining stuff, it's more or less what happens to single old german men. So Zak0r, if you are reading.. marry Nata while you can!

After a few more rides, we arrived in Beograd. Finding a host without much notice was impossible, we rang loads of numbers but most people were unable to host for one reason or another, lots of empty and dead profiles, lots of people who haven't logged in since they signed up, some people who put the phone down when they heard a foreign voice. So Mr. Veit.. if you think there are really 158,000 members, you are kidding yourself.

We went with one guy.. User:dobri, to one bar and met half of Beograd (non-hc.. but from some student organisation), a bit of a crazy night.. people insanely drunk and the nightlife is still the best in Europe. Convinced one cool guy who was crazy about english football to host us. Ha we met this guy in the street with what looked like a postage stamp on his head, either that or he'd head butted a pavement.. anyway for some reason he was trying to convince us he was a film director and also that he was the king of some ecological group and he was going to party down near the lake the next day. Bizarre guy who looked like a homeless Bill Oddie.. we played around with him for a bit, as he was clearly after only cigarettes or something.

Bill Oddie: Do you know the ecological group.. "some name"
Me: Is it like naturalism? Nudism.. this guy loves a bit of that, always running around naked in the street
Bill Oddie.. hugs me and starts laughing, NO NO my friend.
Some Serbian guy pretending to be English: I am the new James Bond, do you need me for your film..
Bill Oddie... ignores James Bond and starts talking about some club that he works in (highly unbelievable)
Me: I tried to become vegetarian for a while but my girlfriend threw me out because I was farting too much.. you know.. PPPPPPPPP PPPPPPPPPP
Bill Oddie.. ah so you love vegetables..

It was all very strange, the young Serbian guy who was pretending to be from Trinidad and Tobago claimed he'd studied at the University of York Dwight, postage stamp Bill Oddie guy was like.. Oh, yes I have heard of that one.

Ha, I can't wait to do more of that in Istanbul ;-)

Off to Nis in a moment, as I have a host and two or three people who want to meet up. Should be fun, providing the hitch is easy.

Excuse me miss...

2006-07-01T05:12:00.000-07:00

Hey, well I stayed an extra night in Wien because of the weather and I couldn't find a host in Slovenia. Dario and Isa were amazing hosts, I have a lot of memories of them.. everything from the rum in the shop, to the enormous ice creams, the bread and borek in the middle of the night from the turkish market.. the radio Austria studios and the grumpy austrian feckers who wouldn't let us move the table on to the pavement in the bar.

The next day, I hitched from the newly discovered hitching spot in Wien (it should be on wikipedia soon) , realised I'd left my Zagreb sign at my hosts, so I used Kruopa's book of signs which she'd left to get to Graz. Caught a ride pretty quickly but was sceptical because I've spent about 12 hrs there once at a petrol station, however the guy dropped me in a much better place.

While I was waiting, the traffic was going slow.. I went to point out to a woman that her petrol cap was open and she wound up the electic windows almost cutting my head off and screamed something about Police. Mental woman! Also had an argument with some austrian hitchhiker because he started hitchhiking in front of me.. what a dick, anyway I got the lift first. being the better looking one haha.

I got a ride to the border and from there got a lift to Maribor by some football fanatic who offered to take me to Maribor v Beograd the next day in Beograd. One more lift from a man with a dog and I was in Ptuj near the border, from there an enormous bosnian guy who resembled a war criminal (and a really bad one at that) picked me up - I was surprised to discover that he sang girly pop songs like a girl. What a nancy, I didn't point that out though ' thought he may kill me.

Now, I'm in Zagreb and hanging out with some cool hosts. I'm a bit stinky though..

Wien

2006-06-29T03:34:00.000-07:00

I didn't expect to visit Wien but when I met up with Kruopa in Bratislava, we decided to go there to see a lithuanian friend but our sms's were not received, so we ended up looking for hosts..note to Wien members: Why don't you have phone numbers on your profiles - bastards! The hitch itself was pretty simple, although some kind fellow had to inform us we were hitching on the wrong side of the road.. then I was holding the sign the wrong way round, a bit of Lithuanian mental dancing seemed to impress a woman at the petrol station and her and her husband who were going to Munchen, took us most of the way, then a Polish guy took us to the centre.

Eventually, after much arseing around at "Big Internet Cafe" - you have to set up an account there to use it for 10 minutes? Bollox! We managed to call a couple from Switzerland and Uruguay that Kruopa knew. They are both really cool people and definitely recommended as hosts... comfortable bed in the kitchen and good conversation.. I've been through Wien many times to hitchhike south but never actually visited the centre.. it's nice but very expensive!! Internet in the centre - 6 euros, holy fuck. Anyway, supposed to be hitching to Maribor later but I still don't have a host, so may go straight through to Zagreb.

Bratislava. eventually

2006-06-28T04:08:00.000-07:00

My hosts from Roznov dropped me off in the early afternoon and I got a ride by some business man, then immediately picked up by some guy who was going to Bratislava. We passed over the Slovakia border, sold some batteries at a petrol station opposite the castle Elizabeth Bathory used to live in. Well that was quite fun, after that I learnt that the guy wasn't going direct but heading for the Hungarian border 100km from Bratislava, where he would visit his family. His family turned out to be a community of err hungarian/slovak gypsy's and some dreaded guys, there house was dedicated to marijuana. Well we smoked a couple of bongs full whilst sacredly watching the Ghana v Brazil game and then they went in search of more, they seemed to be having problems finding stuff.. so opted for cocaine instead, it looked like it was going to be a long dodgy night there because it was already 20:30, so I decided to leave them there and then and try and hitch to Bratislava. I got one ride eventually, 40km up the road and it was very dark, cars couldn't see me and were repeatedly shouting abuse at me, eventually I got a ride from a relatively old guy who called himself "John"... his son worked in England and after ringing my host, he decided to take me to his place, I was given an enormous chicken meal, bread, cucumber, tomatoes, beer, whiskey, an enormous bed in a seperate room and in the morning.. 2 red bulls, breakfast.Ha - the guy had a Rhodesian Ridgeback too, friendly guy but I reckon the AC-DC song "I've got big balls" was written about him, fucking gynormous conkers.

The next morning, I hitched up to Bratislava with one lift, after John had given me a lift to the hitching spot and given me 500 sk (it's about 18 euros), had a quick look around and joined my Lithuanian friend Kruopa at her hosts for a couple of beers.

Just about to go hitching to Wien..

Roznov Pod Rahostem

2006-06-27T03:01:00.000-07:00

I'm now in the Czech countryside, in a town called Roznov.. i've not seen much of it yet because I arrived last night after an easy and rather uneventful hitch from Poland and my hospitality club hosts who are theatre actors took me to one of their rehearsals. A russian play called 5 matrioskas.. or something like that, anyway despite it being in Czech, it seemed pretty amusing. After that we hit the bar outside for a couple of cold ones, then went back to their house and spent the evening listening to metal, smoking a bit of weed and drinking plum brandy - fire water!

I woke up this morning and looked at my camera which had lots of strange photos on from the night before including a very artistic view of a cat's arse and another of the inside of my mouth. Well I'll stick them up on flickr when I have time, at the moment there is an insane thunder storm and I'm just supposed to get out on the road and hitch to Slovakia.

Czechowice-Dziedzice

2006-06-26T03:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I've left for a 3-4 week trip to Istanbul and back and packed my bag much more carefully this time, I even took my passport. I left to the bus station to catch the bus to Centrum Park Janki but realised I had to leave some money at home, so ran back home and fell over a bottle of empty kwas, right on my nose.. that bloody hurt.

All my running around proved worthwhile though as I made it just in time for the bus, waited about 40 minutes and got a ride to Rawa Mazowieckie.. walked a bit up the road and hitched on the highway. Now most people, see nice things like the Pyramids on their trips, I witnessed quite a disgusting thing instead... I was waiting there on the roadside, when a drunk looking shepherd herding some cows, decided to look towards me and masturbate in the field. This went on for some time and was not particularly impressive.

After over an hour, I got a ride to Czestochowa with this well-dressed looking old guy who was the worst driver I've ever seen, he regularly veared (is that a word?) off the road, repeatedly got beeped at and didn't seem to know where he was going. Even though the road is a direct road to Czestochowa.

Of course the fool leaves me in the centre of the town, so I had to walk a couple of km's to get out of the city, eventually getting a ride from this half gypsy guy (or so he says) who has been looking for a job in Germany, he informed me that the meaning of life was anal, oral and suckfuck. He's a 38 year old guy with a 25 year old wife and likes his brutal sex. He said that Austria was a beautiful country and Belarus too, but Czech Republic is only good in certain places - like the 29km road of prostitutes going to Dresden!!!

This guy dropped me off just north of Sosnowiec and this is where I proceeded a 10km walk in the dark on the side of the road, going along the top of a river, through old buildings and lots of broken glass. By the time, I finished it.. I was absolutely knackered, I was on the south side of Katowice and had fallen down a hill and became really dirty, walked through all kinds of shit and had bonded with a cat who had decided to follow me for a couple of km's.

For whatever reason, there were no open petrol stations on my side of the road.. otherwise I would have stopped before. When I finally made it to an open one, the first person I asked took me down to Tychy, because he was going to Tesco and from a petrol station slightly south of there, I managed to get my last ride at about midnight.. to the wonderful Czechowice-Dziedzice.

I was there for only a second, when my host Ula and her brother came to pick me up. I went back to their house, had a great meal, a shower and then went into town for a stroll. Being a Sunday night everything was shut apart from one alcohol shop, so we bought some beer and sat at the market place, then went home and talked whilst drinking warm wine until 5.30 am (her brother went to work at 6!)

I'm off to the Czech Republic in a few minutes, we'll see how the hitching goes.

Kinga Freespirit Funeral

2006-06-25T00:39:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks, Kinga Freespirit.. probably the most-well known (and deservedly) hitchhiker contracted cerebral Malaria in Ghana, cerebral malaria is a terrible disease with a high fatality rate, unfortunately a few days later she died. I was trying to collect funds here in Warsaw, some people gave money but generally I was a bit disappointed and classed my fund-raising efforts as a bit of a failure.

Her friends and family are now setting up a foundation which will continue some of the work that Kinga started and donations are wanted, so please contact me for more details.

On Friday evening, I travelled up to Gdansk by hitchhiking.. it took about 6 hours, the traffic was heavy, there was a 10km queue after a crash and the police asked us to leave the "droga expresowa".. hmm none of the police have ever asked me to do that before here.. bizarre? I was hitching with my friend Martyna and they wanted 200zl from both of us, so we opted for the "we will disappear and you will never see us again" choice.

Kinga's memorial service took place on Saturday 24th June at 10.00am, it was in a massive church in the old town of Gdansk, it was my first funeral experience.. (actually about the second time I've ever been in a church), many good-looking people attended, from all different kinds of backgrounds, ethnicity and countries. Some people were there who had not met her and some journalists were there. Taxis were provided for everybody from the church to the cemetery. Overall the funeral was a very sad affair but there were inspiring parts and it was great to see lots of people there.. I am a bit disappointed in the local HC members though, where were you guys?

I didn't know her very well to be honest but there was a time when she was hosting many members in Gdansk and I was hosting in Warsaw and we swapped guests. We'd also talked about hitching in Africa, mainly Gambia and down towards Ghana (but I didn't make it because I was too ill to leave Berlin and had to return to Poland). It's quite sad that I didn't know her better as she was a good and interesting person.

You can read more here... www.kingafreespirit.pl and www.ledbydestiny.com

We were then invited to the wake by Chopin and her mother, amazing vegetarian food and good company. After that myself and Martyna hitched back from Gdansk in 4.5hours.. Jason (who has grown his hair and shaved off his beard, barely recognisable) and Magda (who hopefully won't grow a ginger beard) took the train which was 5.5hrs, plus they had to pay for it ;-), haha we win!

Guests & World Cup

2006-06-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

Hey, didn't update this again for a while.... I've managed to sort out the old business so that it makes just enough, so that I can keep on travelling without doing too much. Which is good news for the Round the World Trip which will start in October. (not round the world with 80 gays, that's djdirect's schedule)

Had some interesting guests in town, unfortunately I managed to miss "kenkenfujita", he's the japanese dude who hitchhiked all through Africa, Middle East etc in insane countries like Congo, Angola and Yemen.. he popped into town on his way to Russia but I was out of the city at the time, camping in Zegrze with my guest "urg" who spent a couple of days, drinking beer, viewing the "centre of warsaw" as he calls it - which basically was rural places slightly outside of the city. There was talk of doing some old fashioned fishing but it never materialised.

The camping was good fun, or perhaps it was the Polish gin.. (evil Lubuskie).. our neighbours were insanely pissed guys listening to dodgy techno and trance, talking about as Sylwia put it... "trying to find girls for bad reasons".. hmm to be fair the whole camp ground was quite inhabited by chavs. One of the points of this camping trip was to see how the dog would survive in a tent, apart from initially ramming his head into the opening of the tent and then panting all over my face, he actually seemed to understand and my clumsiness was the only thing that would destroy it.

An enormous thunderstorm took place at night, which I liked.. Sylwia was terrified though, apparently it wasn't my best idea to put up the tent within a metre of an electrical plant.... well I went back to sleep and woke up without singed eyebrows and horizontal hair, which is more that can be said for that stupid american fuck Adam, who flew back to Poland (yes, that's right - not Hong Kong) from China just to get a Chinese visa again and then had to cancel his flight because his visa would only come a few hours after his flight left. The total and utter fuckwit now intends to teach in Turkey, which is without a doubt the last we will here from him. He may have a moustache like Ataturk once had but he has more chance of becoming a kebab.

Now then, Urg.. aka Patrick my guest, was an all-round good bloke, who enjoyed a mad night out with insane dancing and 20 beers a day, at first sight he looks a very smiley fella but I've come to realise, he is a bit of a mentalist, who intends on cycling through Central Asia in relatively cold months (November, December) and on through the Himalayas, finally finishing in Singapore.. now I only cycled the bike recently for between 15-20km and I can tell you that his arse will be in endless pain after such a trip. I forgot to mention that he is carrying more baggage than a saharan truck.

Basically he stopped here in Warsaw because both his tent and bike had broken (he cracked the frame, the bloody elephant), fortunately after a lot of time-wasting in Polish shops, with the polish branch of Trek and the stupid american bloke who is replying to his questions.. he seems to have sorted it out. It will take one month though.

You can read more about him here.. www.slowride.org

The World Cup - Polish team was an utter disaster.. the Germans are progressing in a serious und sheize manner, England are playing poorly and still progressing. Spain and Brazil aren't doing too badly but GHANA.. what a team! They're great aren't they?!

P.S.

Can't touch this

Woof and tweetcore and now the pope is in town

2006-05-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

The old woman downstairs spent an evening ringing the doorbell, I decided to ignore her.. she continued in the morning and it turns out that our leaking pipe had pissed through her roof and the flat below us..always happy to ahem.. share with the neighbours. OOps..

I'm still off the beers, it's a bit boring and the time takes forever.. we had an HC meeting on Wednesday with ZDF (the 2nd german tv channel after RTL) filming us. Quite a lot of new or previously hiding members turned up but after 12 o clock the bar (Indeks), stopped serving us alcohol because of the 2 day prohibition taking place in Warsaw (because the pope is in town), there are loads of police on every corner, particularly near my place. (thought I'd done something wrong but it's because the pope Benedict the boring german is visiting the Jewish Memorial near by).

Myself and Takki (Belgian dude who was born in Korea.. Asia's boyfriend) went to the kebab place next door only to find the kebab guy high as a mad man on pills or speed, dancing insanely to some 50 cents song, throwing sauce, kebab meat and pita breads in the air and generally being a lunatic! One of the most entertaining things that I have ever seen!

Anyway quite a big argument ensued about where we were going to go, some friend of Wojtek's managed to meet some turkish business men who wanted to go to the old town and we wanted to head to Pole Mokotowskie to a few bars to drink and play table football. Also the bar decided to overcharge us by 3 beers.. so we had an argument with them for about an hour, also pissed off a couple of policeman that were near by and eventually seperated into two groups with some others going home, the whole of Pole Mokotowskie was shut.. considering the alcohol ban it wasn't too surprising. Agnieszka (agak) had some at her place, so I went there with Ugur, Takki and Agak's new boyfriend, who she is living with now. Ran from hers to the bus station to get the night bus but it was waiting in a queue to leave the central station and the unhelpful CUNT of a bus driver, refused to let us on. What an ungenerous bastard!

Apart from that, not a lot is happening.. it's been pissing it down here. I was going to hitch up to Lithuania on Thursday but overslept a bit after getting back at 6am or something.

I'd like to introduce you to two metal bands..

Firstly.. Hatebeak, a death metal band with a parrot on vocals, they don't play live because the parrot doesn't like loud noises.. including his own music! It's mainly insane squawking but there is talk of him actually learning English in the future.

Secondly.. Caninus, a grindcore band with two pit bulls fronting the band! They originally produced an EP with Hatebeak and proved the more succesful of the two. They now have an album out called "Now the Animals have the Voice".. it's quite good and fairly entertaining.

Track list:

1. Intro
2. Basil *
3. Brindle Brickheads (unprecedented ferocity)
4. Bite the hand that breeds you
5. Studio guy gets pissed
6. Fear of dog (religious myths)
7. Budgie *
8. New Yorkie Crew (loyal like a stone)
9. No dogs, no masters
10. Human rawhide
11. Misunderstood Machines
12. Locking jaws
13. Canine Core
14. Fuck the AKC**

*Budgie and Basil are the names of the pitbulls
**AKC = American Kennel Club

Anyway, it's definitely worth a listen and beats the shit out of the James Blunt album!

Bloody HC Dictatorship

2006-05-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

Hospitality Club are behaving like full-on bastards at the moment with their censorship on the forum and unwillingness to listen to members, preferring just to send some robotic letters. Everyday more and more members are expressing their concern, normally pretty active members with a bit of sense in their head. Natjv (ok so he complains a lot and has a gay choice in pillows.. but he's not all bad), Zak0r, Ortopelea, Naila, Vikingbeard etc. Bah, when will they learn!

I came across a blog today of someone who dislikes James Blunt equally as much as me, he's quite a humorous guy and enjoys slagging things off.

http://www.20six.co.uk/LordToucan/weblogEntries/send.htm?entryId=1wcvf4e695ok7

Powsin, Wilanow Palace.. Mongol Rally

2006-05-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

My parents have been over.. so I've been spending a bit of time with them. Visited the zoo again, bloody hell - I'm getting bored of the place! The elephants were shit this time and the polar bears weren't having sex.

Powsin.. the Botanical Gardens and the park up there is beautiful, apparently it is packed on the weekends but I went in the week and it was very nice. Bus 129 from Centrum or Central Station will get you there. The old women working in the greenhouse weren't particularly friendly, considering they probably hadn't seen anyone all day.. I expected a slightly less aggressive welcome! A nice selection of cactus's so make sure you tie your shoe laces.. I got some rather large needles in my arse and back when I was about 7, quite an unforgettable experience, the doctor asked me to sit down.. what a joker she was!

Wilanow Palace is also quite impressive, at least it was from one side.. the other side was being renovated. The river running through it and the park is very nice and for the entrance fee of 6zl, it's worth going there just to drink beer in a nice surrounding without having to hide your beer in plastic bags or up your arse. Damn Straz Miejska (Street Police with very little tolerance to public drinking)

Photos will be posted later at www.flickr.com/photos/dangaroo

my business.. are sponsoring "Team Escapethestoke" in the LONDON-MONGOL rally, a charity drive from London to Ulan-Bataar in cars with engines less than 1000cc's. You can find out more about the team and the Mongol Rally on the links below.

http://escapethestoke.mongolrally.com/the_team.html

&

http://www.mongolrally.com/

Krakow, Transylvania and back to Warsaw

2006-05-12T23:51:00.000-07:00

Bloody have loads of work at the moment, I've been off the booze for 10 days now.. that's 6 days longer than my record. Well, I've given it up for a couple of months.. or at least that's the plan. Too much heavy partying is paying it's toll, the old DT's were in a bad way. Feeling much better already.. it does however mean that I won't be very prominent at parties for a bit.

At the end of April, I went down to Romania with Sylwia, taking advantage of the "Romania Special" offer which offers cheap tickets (it's about 60 quid return... Warsaw-anywhere on the Budapest-Bucharest line).. there's a direct train from Krakow to Bucharest which I never knew about. Anyway, we were supposed to leave on the Sunday but I read the information in the train station wrong.. and it happened that there was a train arriving from Krakow at the same time as one leaving. We were waiting on the wrong platform and the voice on the tanoy was to distorted to understand. Bollox!! Had to wait until the next day and lost a bit of money on the reservations.

We left the next morning, down to Krakow.. the train didn't leave to Bucharest until the evening.. so we had the whole day there, it was raining and having been there about a millions time before, we opted to just go to the bars. Starting off in Kazimierz and finding our way to the Old Square, where we ended up in some bar offering Warka for 3.5zl or Zywiec with a free sausage for 5zl. It was called Protest or something like that. A few beers in to our stay there and Lucasvegan (Lukasz from Gdansk) also appears there with some of his mates, so we go downstairs and have a beer or twelve.. then Lukasz goes to do his fireshow, I go insane on Florian Gate - telling some Aussie guy that I am the King of Kielce and that that's how I knew he was Australian, Sylwia disappears into some park, so I go to buy some beers and join her.. then it's offer to the train station, I am a bit tipsy now and somehow manage to fall in the gap between the train and the platform, crikey.. it was a pain in the ass to get out of with a backpack on, Sylwia was fuming (and later sympathetic), so no help from her! Great! Manage to climb out just before the train gets moving but I bruise my side in a really nasty way and fuck my leg up, not to mention rip my trousers and cover them in diesel or oil or something black!

The trip down to the Slovakian border was quite good fun, a bit of romance ;-). After that it was a hungover and fucked up sleep down through Slovakia and Hungary, we forgot to buy anything to drink (apart from beer) and there was nothing available to buy on the train. Bollox again! I was dozing about 11am, only to be woken up by loads of shouting "Occupado, Occupado!!" and people running around, thought that maybe there was a fire or something.. so I had a look what was happening and it was about 10 romanians (still in Hungary.. I think Szolnok), loading a platform full of goods onto the train. As the train only stopped for a few minutes, there was some seriously hardcore loading going on. Sooner or later an old woman asked if she could put about 20 of these enormous bags filled with heavy items in our compartment.. no problem, until I found out I had to do it haha. Christ, it's not the best hangover cure in the world.. however she gave us two Red Bulls for our help which was a gesture my hangover appreciated! Turns out they were bringing loads of food, washing powder and brands of things that were expensive in Romania from Hungary (I thought it would be the other way round but there you go).

Spent the evening in Sighisoara, since I'd only ever spent a few hours there before. Nice place, bit dead but good for a day. Then moved on to Brasov and spent most of the days in the mountains.. good times over all. I still think that Bella Musica, is the best restaurant in the world.. insane dishes, huge portions, good service, free palinka, free nachos, you can choose your own songs to play and it generally costs no more than 12 euros for 2 people including beer.

Anyway, I'm back in Poland now and my parents are over, so I've been doing a few things with them. I'm off to Kazimierz Dolny tomorrow and Wilanow Palace for the first time on Monday. My digita camera zoom needs to be repaired though, since I dropped it a few weeks ago at the insane party in Trojmiasto.

A month of silence

2006-04-24T00:54:00.001-07:00

Core, not updated this for a while.. What have I been up to? Well, I've been insanely busy with a month of partying and working and no time for blogging. It's been good fun, involving an attempted naked run/swim from Gdynia to Helsinki which would have been achieved had the damn aussie not have been acting like such a girl! Also a Friday night to Monday 5 am party with "Paluch" from HC, visiting just about every bar in Warsaw.

I also graffiti'd Martyna's wall with humorous drunk bullshit.. last weekend I practically died.. they had an offer on in Biker's 20zl for all the beer you can drink.. now that for me, is a bloody good offer..works out at 1zl a beer basically.

Bloody rough beer though, resulting in everyone who was their puking up (some people in the bar still, others at the train station).. and the ones who had been drinking heavily were fortunate to survive the next two days of non-stop vomiting. Disgusting and not great fun! I tried to blame it on a kebab, could not believe that a friendly beer could do such damage.

Erm, I was in a car crash a few weeks back on the way back from the party in Trojmiasto, some insane polish driver just launched himself from one side of the highway to another crashing into two cars and finishing in a ditch. One of those cars happened to be us, we had to wait for ages for the scuffers to come and when they finally did they were interested to extort money from us because "our lights were broken" (because of the crash).. fucking idiots.

I visited Warsaw Zoo for the first time yesterday, it's quite reasonable really.. not what I expected. After watching some of them playing, I decided I really like Coatamundi's. They are damn cool animals. After the zoo a drinking session started in Pole Mokotowskie, which is now live and kicking as it is when the temperature goes above 15 degrees. Had a few beers with Sylwia and some other guys, then her friend brings me to this tent where they're selling organic alcohol and the blokes need a hand packing up.. so they give me an organic beer, five glasses of organic honey vodka, an enormous jar of alcoholic cherries and cherry liquour, some bizarre ogorek type things or maybe they were pickled mushrooms, I was a bit too pissed to work out really and by the time we'd finished they had packed up anyway.

I highly recommend their produce though, good stuff it is. No hangover this morning.

Fucking fascists in Merlin wouldn't let us enter with the dog unless he had a muzzle on but we go in anyway, then the guy starts complaining that he is spilling beer. What an utter wanker, the dog is having a sleep under the table and the cunt is telling us that he's knocked some drunk guys beer over on the other side of the bar. I'd made friends with some friendly chavs and they were not happy about this and were looking forward to fighting with the bouncer. Some of us managed to calm them down and the guy left, only to go and start bothering Sylwia (who was dancing) about the dog.. she asks the bouncer for proof that Sniffy has spilt the beer and the guy seems a bit confused and eventually buggers off.

Generally though, Merlin is not a bad pub (good caraoke).. and you can normally bring your own beers in without anyone caring too much.

I recently discovered..

British Hamster Association
P.O. Box 825
Sheffield
S17 3RU
United Kingdom.

London might have The Eye and Liverpool have The Beatles but we have conferences for hamsters, something really to be proud of!

More quality music for you to listen to: Zombina and The Skeletones (a band recommended to me by my mate Perry last year), The Madmen.. a legendary croatian rockabilly band http://www.geocities.com/band_mad_men/home.html that I saw last year in Zagreb in a huge warehouse turned into a rock bar not too far from the club"Spunk"

Week in Sinai, Egypt

2006-03-24T05:31:00.000-08:00

Just spent the week in Sinai.. flew into Sharm from Warsaw and a transfer up to near by Taba. Took 12 hours to get there including arseing around at the airport etc, the mini van going up to Dahab was full of some rich drunk Polish guys being wankers but the trip up to Taba was good fun, hehe the driver even decided to mollest Sylwia's leg... how's that for service.

The hotel that was part of the deal was empty and in the about 6km south of Taba, opposite the famous Pharaoh's Island, absolutely nothing around there.. it was all good, until I discovered that beer cost the insane price of 20 EGP (that's 2 quid or 12zl).. usually in Egypt it costs about 5-7 EGP (a more reasonable price of 50p/70p, 2.75zl/3.75zl).. anyway despite the price it's good to be drinking Stella again.. it's a nice beer, especially to drink by the sea when you can see Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and a big fuck off fort on an island!

Have a bit of a walk around, some food, some Cleopatra's and a Stella or two then off for a kip. Woke up the next day with the intention of putting thing's right.. we head off to Taba in search of beer. Taba is the Israeli border crossing and there is a high military/police presence (even more so than usual). Anyway, there are banks in Taba.. but I couldn't find an ATM machine, and after a mooch around the shops we also found out that there is no beer in Taba.. only in Nuweiba (about 70km south) and in Israel (but I don't really want to risk the israeli stamp in my passport for a few beers).. so it looks like we'll either have to buy expensive beer or drink less.

A day or two later, it was off to Dahab.. the idea was to get the bus which had been told we were waiting on the road... well it didn't stop, so we began flagging cars down. Hitching in Egypt is easy, however similarly to Albania, almost all cars are taxis and you will get nowhere waiting for a free lift. Anyway, we flag down this 9 seater van - the driver Majdy Al Prince (002 010 10 17 804) tells us he'll take us there and back, with a bit of sightseeing for the reasonable price of a 100 pounds egyptian. He's taking four old English tourists from Leeds down there for a bit of shopping and they're paying twice the price than we are.. they're amusing and harmless, one of them learnt a bit of Polish from a girl she used to work with, they were however.. highly dangerous if you were a fly.

We stopped at a place called Diana Beach on the way down, Diana Beach is part of "Beer Sweer" a bedouin camp that's 20km north of Nuweiba and has cheap huts on a very very nice beach. A nice atmosphere, with a few backpackers, hammocks, tasty bedouin tea, hashish, great snorkelling opportunities and a camel visiting.

After that it's direct to Dahab, with a small stop to look at "Camel Mountain" and "Sinai", two mountains which supposedly look like their names. What were they thinking? One looks like a dinosaur and the other a splodge! Oh well never mind - you can see photos on my Sinai page (which will be added shortly).

Into Dahab and finally some shops.. oh yes, Dahab is a windy little town with a lot of backpackers in, good for windsurfing, the two ATM machines were not working when I was in town, lots of bars by the beach with cheap beer, reggae music, sheesha and good grub. It's a pretty nice place for relaxing or simply getting pissed. We were hanging out in Yum Yum's because the beer was reasonably priced (6 EGP) and the food cheap (potato wedges come highly recommended - you get loads plus a lot of tasty dips and bread for 10 EGP, sheesh kebab costs about 25EGP), plus they were playing good reggae and it was in a nice location but in fairness, none of the places are too different from each other. Had a bit of an argument with a cat about him trying to eat my dinner, the legendary waiter gets a squeezy water bottle and has a water fight with him, top banana.

Off to Adam's bar after that - beer there is 5 EGP and they have a good variety. Stella, Stella Premium, Luxor, Luxor Special, Luxor 10%, Saqqara, Saqqara Gold and Meister.

Luxor is a tasty beer that is a wee bit stronger than Stella and a pound or two more expensive, Luxor 10% does what it says on the bottle. Luxor is my no.1 beer, closely followed by Stella.

So after a few beers, it's time to get back to the car.. we bring back 20 bottles, bloody heavy - traipsing through Dahab in a rush with them. The others have bought a few things and are sitting with Majdy, who is having a sheesha and says he will take us to his mates alcohol shop in Nuweiba for a few more beers.

Nuweiba is a shit hole really, a poor Egyptian town with a few children asking for money, nothing there at all - Nuweiba Port and Nuweiba City are seperated, anyway the alcohol shop is pretty standardly ugly, similar to the ones in Cairo and not dissimilar from some legendary drinking holes in Portugal. Load up with a few more beers and a bottle of wine... decide to stay away from the Racardi, I used to drink a lot of the Egyptian brandy Vat 69 and it is not good for you in anyway or form.. I'd stay away from all the spirits. Whether it's Chavs Regal, Racardi or Stolichnova. The Arak looks deadly.

Ok, now we're sorted! The grub in the hotel which is included is the same stuff everyday, it's not bad but the beef is a bit dodgy.

Spend the next day relaxing in the sun, got these bastard sea urchin things in my feet.. that hurt. I popped back to the room and bumped into the beach cleaner/helper (virtually useless) guy who gets out a big newspaper filled with Bongo (an Egyptian blend of Marijuana.. bloody good stuff) and rolls up a joint or two, legendary fella.

I'm smiling for the next couple of the hours, not realising the sun is burning me like hell. I come back red, have a huge meal, already had enough beers..play table tennis, go to bed, visit the toilet a few times and then fill the sink up with puke.. lovely.

A day or two after, it's off to Pharaoh's Island, just across the way.. it's only 200m but it costs 8 dollars to get there and visit it, crikey. Oh well.. this is the island where the King of Jordan has his birthday parties, such stars as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Whitney Houston have visited and of course the Egyptian president Hosny Mubarek likes it, and we have it to ourselves. Snorkelling there is superb, the fort is reasonable (supposedly as grand as the citadel in Cairo and the fort in Alexandria) they're all nice but I can't get overly worked up about them. The fish though, were stunning.

Be a bit careful, there's a few dangerous things.. namely jellyfish (that can kill if not treated), a grumpy black sausage that stings you when you stand on it (1. don't stand on it, 2. if you do, don't worry it will only hurt for a while) , sea urchins (the spikes hurt when you get them in you, so try to avoid them, they don't do any real harm, don't try and take the needles out, just put a bit of lemon juice on them) and of course some wanker from the Hilton speeding through and hitting you on your chops with his flippers.. CUNT!

Off to Diana Beach for the last day, the plan was to try and get a camel to ride unfortunately it passed us while we were snorkelling. Delicious grub, spectaculr snorkelling, lovely beach with relaxed atmoshphere... a room there - which is warm and comfortable in a hut with a tele (ran by generator) costs 60 EGP for double.. but I reckon you can get it a touch cheaper. Hashish smoking was superb.. I'd had a few joints rolled by the guy who runs the place - Ali but they weren't up to much then Majdy and this guy dressed like Yasser Arafat invite me into a room with some fat Egyptian girl, they get into a "Who can roll the meanest, biggest, strongest joint" competition, I can't work out who lost but I couldn't stand up after smoking them, they were all excellent and I had been sitting on one of my legs.. thus the inability to walk for about 2 hours after that.

Good, good fun.. I'm not sure what went on after that.. we came back, met some Polish woman in the restaurant who invited us to hers to use a shower, apparently some guys gave us some strawberries but I don't really remember this very well. I slept off my state on the way to the airport, where we arrived 4 hours before the flight, thanks to our insane driver and the unorganised receptionist, we have no egyptian money or euros at this point, so just try and have a bit of a kip, when they finally let us through baggage to the check in desk, I discover.. I've lost my ticket. Bollox, eventually some guy turned up and wrote me a new one for free.. lucky that. We clear immigration, wait, the flight run by Central Wings was distinctly shit with no space to move at all and no food available to buy on the way back.

My Rant!!! Postman Pat Ran Over His Cat!

2006-03-12T14:31:00.000-08:00

Thinking about it, he's a bit of a legend really.. if you are not familiar with him do a google search>image, his cat Jess is pretty well known and in the UK, we made tunes in the playground about the postie running him over (I'm not sure if kids still do that or they're too busy shooting each other and what ever else the little rascals get up to these days)

Anyway basically the lyrics to theme tune are as here>

http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/p/postmanpat.shtml

We sang: postman pat, postman pat,postman pat ran over his cat,all the guts went flying,postman pat was crying,never seen a cat as flat as that,splat!

or

Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat ran over his cat, all the guts went flying, all the children were crying, now pat's a very happy man.

and a few years later....

Postman Pat, Postman Pat,Postman Pat was done for screwing his cat, Pat was feeling randy,Jess was sitting handy, So Pat just had his pussy there and now Pat's a very happy man!

Basically my point is.. changing the lyrics of popular songs was fun and I'm sure possibly helped you in an educational way (though I'm not 100% sure of that) and now the little kids in England just go around shooting up heroin and killing each other, and they're not even "hard", they whinge about everything. Give me a Thai kid any day, when I was over there - they were well behaved, happy and playing as kids (the ones that weren't part of the sex trade that is), Polish children are quite reasonable - though there's not a lot of kids around in Warsaw - I don't think the pope's message about condoms is working and as for Meditarranean children - Italians, Greeks, Egyptians, Portuguese (well it's Atlantic officially but same mentality).. forget them, they are spoilt little metrosexuals walking around with mobile phones from the age of 4? 4? 4?! The cunts can barely speak? What are they doing, organising drug deals of baby food or something! Go and play football with a tin can, a ball of wool or an empty bottle (not glass, you'll kill your mate when he heads it)

BAH, you watch how messed up people are going to become in this century! Geronimo knew what he was talking about.

Sorry for the swearing, hope it doesn't offend any girls reading or any of the 4 year olds who are reading it when they're not on their bloody telephones.

I've not done a lot this weekend, mainly been having a few beers, working and listening to music. Found out one of my old mates from Portugal has died of diabetes, that's a shame... he owned a bar which did a stunning beans on toast (I know it's hard to go wrong with beans on toast.. but they had a belarussian waitress once and she had no idea what was going on, I think she was trying to make them look like kidney beans or something)

For the non-british readers - Beans on toast look like this... http://www.fotosearch.com/comp/ITS/ITS185/ITF085009.jpg

They're beans with a sweet tomato sauce on, a delicacy in the UK - said to make little boys grow strong. Goes down well with some Daddies Brown Sauce:

http://www.plugger.info/elite/Product_images/daddiesbrownsauce4.jpg

When you eat some beans with daddies, as a young boy - it makes you feel two years older ;), it's to be blamed for missing panties from washing lines, I'm sure of it.

I've decided.. there's no way I will ever stop travelling, true I've been a bit stationary recently but even after you've been to every single country in the world.. there's parts of those countries you haven't visited. There's islands and islands and islands! The only way, a true traveller could stop.. would surely be by death!

Hey, I look forward to the day.. I'll be able to visit a safe Baghdad, it will mean the USA, UK and and all the other hangers on.. i.e. Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland..pulled out. (They are just as bad, arse licking Bush for a bit of money rather than doing the good thing and pulling out (or better still not joiing in the first place).. Co-Allition forces, Co-Allition bollox. It's corrupt rubbish and now here in Warsaw we have police walking around and people thinking the place is going to get bombed, there is no need for that threat to be created, just for a few dollars)

Not only that but the people of Iraq would have to have calmed down a lot, I don't see it happening though, it seems to be escalating into a bit of a Somali scene. What happened there... peace keepers involved, they escalate the war, kill thousands of people, bomb the shit out of Mogadishu, make people hungrier and poorer and now it's in absolute state and shows very little sign of recovery.. The Somalian flag is great to look at by the way - not sure what it symbolises.

Check out the The Tuamotus (they're a group of islands that cover the span of Western Europe in the Pacific Ocean..), The Paracels (disputed islands by Vietnam and China), The Aleutians (that's the pointy finger of islands spanning from Alaska over towards Russia) and of course in the UK, the island with cult status "Rockall".. (check out www.therockalltimes.com ) to mention islands in the middle of nowhere off the coast of Africa such as St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension Island where some bloody bizarre expats must live. Hey, I've even got to go to The Falklands.. I hear they do a good fish and chips there.

While I'm chunnering, I'm getting a bit bored of hearing about people going on and on about British Comedy being funny, that stuff like Fawlty Towers and Monty Python, granted it's good stuff.. some of the best and I'm glad you like it.. but download or ask me for some more up to date stuff, if you think we didn't laugh since the 1970's, you probablywear trousers like John Cleese!

Ok so here's a list of stuff you should look out for.. old and new, download or ask me for some copies

Little Britain
The League of Gentleman
The Office (Most people like it, I'm personally not a fan.. make sure you don't get the American version)
Bottom
Billy Connolly Live
Alan Partridge (He looks like djdirect only better looking)
The Young Ones
Only Fools and Horses
Dinnerladies
Goodness Gracious Me
The Fast Show
Blackadder
Father Ted (it's Irish but we seem to steal it, not sure why?)
Dave Spikey Live, Peter Kay Live, Max & Paddy's Road to Nowhere, Phoenix Nights, That Peter Kay Thing (you'll have to brush up on northern slang and be quick though to understand what's going on)

Well that will be enough to keep you going, let me know what you think and come back for more.

P.S. You can't beat a bit of Dangerman either!!

Sleep at last

2006-03-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

Slept like a baby last night, 14 hours.. wahey. Everything is good in the household ;-), hey if you like chocolate and skulls - check this out.. http://www.chocolateskulls.com/ bit pricey that isn't it!? Wonder whose noggins' they are using as a mould. Try downloading or buying The Bloody Hollies album "If Footmen Tire You".. they're a nice little garage punk band. Off to Egypt still on Tuesday, well I've got it all booked and paid for, so bar the dog eating.. the passport, bank card or all of my trousers, I should make it to the airport OK. Not sure where I'm going from there, I'll just sit down with a Stella (legendary Egyptian brew) and have a week relaxing.

Recently got an unexplained taste to go to Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome e Principe and yet at the same time learn how to snowboard in Uzbekistan. Strange how these things happen, maybe some people would class it as alcohol abuse. It's my girlfriend's brother's birthday tomorrow so should be back on the beers, hopefully not too many.. can't be doing with the itchy skin malarchy again for a while. Still not found a partner for the hitching race ( in JULY.. it's getting close, a girl is preferred for getting speedy rides.. preferably polish, lithuanian or latvian but I'll take pretty much anyone along happily.

Still on the beers!

2006-03-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

Bit of a break on Tuesday, just watched the football.. Barcelona v Chelsea, Ronaldinho a genius as usual. Wednesday and I'm expecting my mate Radek from Poznan (Heinz Meenz Beans) to arrive for a few beers as he's got a few hours to kill in Warsaw between flight time and the train to Poznan... his flight gets delayed for three hours in Paris though and I'm already on the beers with the aussie lad anyway.. I found out half way through the day that it's International Women's Day, bah I didn't know it existed, it's virtually unheard of outside of Russia and the former communist satellite countries.... but it turns out to be a big thing over here.. I kinda under-estimated it and went out on the piss for 3am, getting into no end of trouble on my return with Sylwia, which I guess was deserved.

Anyway enough of that, it was a good night out. I'm trying to keep readers informed of up to date bar news in Warsaw, so that you don't end up in the crappy metrosexual filled bollocks in the centre of Warsaw which is known as "one of the best nightlifes in Europe" - yes, if you wear a pink shirt with a collar bigger than nelson's column, go to the solarium three times a day, act like a complete cunt and have three telephones...

We started off by going to Champions as Martyna wanted to buy us a meal to say cheers for buying her a few beers, great food there - Chicken Buffalo Wings come highly recommended from me! All the stuff is bloody expensive, beer is reasonable during happy hour (Zywiec for 6zl) which happens around 17:00 on weekdays and lasts the whole weekend including Friday night.

Full of business men, irritating after a while, especially if a match isn't on... so we head across to the other side of the station and into the old Bar Ania, if you want to visit a dirty, small place by the central station with 80% losers and 100% psychos in, this is the place. It's not too bad in the summer, terrible if a football match is on and shit in the winter. It does however offer cheap beer - Cans of Wojak, Faxe and possibly the legendary Karpackie for about 3zl, a beer on draught (they have the choice between Herman Miller or Brok.. both pretty crap beers) but for 4zl, you can't complain and if your American or Italian, the chance is you wouldn't know a good beer if your wife through it all over your face, which to be fair would probably happen if you were italian, quite regularly.

Move on again, passed the Marriot again and up Emili Plater to Bar Piekna on Ul.Piekna, they offer cheap internet, and Tyskie for 5,5zl, not too bad but it used to be better.. no life at all and yupee customers. Then down to Cztery Katy on Ulica Wilcza... this is personally one of my favourite bars in Warsaw.. been going there on and off for a couple of years now, beer is 6,5zl now (Lech), used to be 5,5zl but it's easily one of the best bars in Warsaw, with comfortable seating, good classic rock music and usually a mixture of young up for fun, down to earth students (not the snobby type) and older eccentrics.

The aussie guy, Michael (Godwinistravelling), eats a hell of a lot.. so we head for more food from A-Petit... then catch a tram to Biker's/Club Rock.. it's basically any tram except for erm.. 19 i think. The place is quiet as it's a Wednesday and even then most of the couples seem to be somewhere else.. there is still the cheap beer (6zl - Krolewskie), nice company, table football, unbeatable music and a tight little reggae band playing some of their songs. By the time we left, we're well into the double figures on the beers and ended up losing 2-1 to two really pissed guys (one really pissed guy with dreadlocks who wanted 100 euros for winning), they stop serving beer, we leave and it turns out we missed the night bus by 3 minutes... so try hitching for a bit but there's not a lot of traffic, end up getting a cheap taxi ride to the centre.

Good fun but I've got to get off the beers for a while now, the skin is as itchy as hell from the insane beer consumption.. it is really irritating. I'm still off to Egypt next week, not sure what after that.. we'll see. I've got to try and have fun going away and keep the business(es) going.

Music Part 1 - gonna include some decent tracks/bands over the next few days.

If your into Rock, you better download some Wolfmother, really decent Aussie rock outfit (yes, I can't believe I said that either).. I'd download/buy the first album (I think it's called Wolfmother too) if I were you, my favourite songs are Dimension and Where Eagles Have Been, but there's not a lot wrong with any of them to be fair!!

Also Stahlhammer are a quality Austrian metal band with interesting twists, download the Feind Hort Mit off the internet or buy it off e-bay...DAN'S CHOICE OF LEGENDARY ANTHEMS.. would be the songs.. Jeanny and Der Mann Mit Dem Koks (sounds a bit kinky to me)

The old roots reggae, apart from Bob (Marley) and Pete (Tosh).. you can't really beat Abja.. the album Inna Red I Hour is top banana.

Current Brit bands.. I am Kloot and the Arctic Monkeys (from Sheffield woohoo) are pretty damn good.

Big fan of Katedras (Lithuanian metal), The Bambi Molesters (Croatian surf music), trusty Alice Cooper's most recent album is Dirty Diamonds and that gets played quite a bit in this house. STEAL THAT CAR!!

Off to bed now and don't want to see a beer until Easter, after all it is Lent.

Weekend fun :)

2006-03-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

We had a great HC meeting on Friday night, a party in Indeks Club, small labrinyth of tables and chairs in a smokey little pub with really friendly and helpful staff. The music varies from crap hip hop and rnb to reasonably good reggae but the best thing about the place is that it's one of the few bars which serves my favourite beer - Tyskie! At only 6zl, it's not too pricey either.

Most of the regulars (agak, kriti, natjv, cynamon, meglok etc) stayed away for some reason, might have something to do with Adam, bloody hell he was retarded. Toniwalia (owner of the best Indian restaurant in Warsaw - The Tandoor Palace) and Marcin, two relatively new active Warsaw members were present and Toni brought a group of girls with him who wanted to leave quite rapidly thanks to Adam's disgraceful mollestation and bullshit loudness.

A few visitors there including, a chap from Australia and a girl from Austria. Lots of beers and some mad dogs (vodka and tobasco).. resulted in a good night, almost killed Adam though, he started complaining that he hadn't had 5 beers but had 4, either way he was totally smashed and so were some glasses around him. Bloody stupid American/Mexican/Iowan/Chuck Norris guy bah.

We got to the Central Station around 3 am, I get on the bus 604 which flies past my house, the problem is there are two 604's that sit next to each other and go to the opposite parts of town, I get in the wrong one, fortunately manage to jump out just as the doors are closing, leg it into the other one and get home. Not good running around after drinking so much though.. makes the heart race like an OAP watching Baywatch.

Woke up with a mild hangover on the Saturday but veins full of alcohol, so decided to stay off the beers for the weekend.

Met up again with the aussie and martyna on Monday, to show him around town and have a few beers. Culminating in us getting a bit tipsy around Kino Femina/Diver's etc and me hitching a car which turned out to be an Egyptian guy who owns my favourite kebab place by Rotunda. He gets the wrong night bus home in the end and ends up in Stare Bemowo haha.

Was gonna go out for a meal tonight and along to Club Rock for the live metal gig but decided to stay off the beers, concentrate on working and have a "quiet evening in" ;-). Reserved a package deal to Egypt today - 250 quid for a return flight and 8 days in good accomodation in Taba.. tried to stay from Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh because they are corrupt bollox resorts that are full of northern europeans and russians that fucked the coral reefs up and got rid of the local bedouin.

Trying to work out exactly what to do after that - a bit of hitching in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon etc or maybe up to the Caucasus, also Africa-Argentina is still a possibility.. ah we will see.

Change of plan

2006-03-03T04:29:00.000-08:00

There's been a change of plan.. looking at my finances and considering the savings I'm trying to keep.. it will be a whole lot cheaper for me to travel Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Poland.. all of the countries (apart from Turkmenistan) have active HC members willing to host me, which will save nicely on the accomodation, plus the visas for the mentioned countries aren't too pricey and the hitching is supposedly pretty easy.

Will try to make this eclipse malarchy HC meeting in Turkey too. Not too sure it's viable though, and I could probably watch it on the TV anyway!

Glitter in the Shitter!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4769164.stm

Could get out by christmas? That's ridiculously soon, he should be in prison until christmas just for having that beard! Dirty bastards, a lot of the expats in S.E. Asia, governments should do a bit more about it.

Nic Nac Paddy Wag..

2006-03-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

Eating some "nic nac's" right now - they have to be the best snack in the world. Made by Lorenzo, I've only ever come accross them in Germany, Poland and Lithuania. If you know where I can get them in your city or elsewhere - please let me know, I am a bit addicted to them.

Last night was another good night, had 4 or 5 beers which warmed me up for a good evening out with some HC members.. I chose Cztery Kąty on Ulica Wilcza 31, it's a good place to go, I've always liked it, it's very close to Nathan's Villa hostel so good for pub crawls. They play good music, normally either classic rock or popular 80s-now tunes.. that people tend to go a bit insane too.. I LIKE THE WAY YOU MOVE!!! Plus they always show the football (England 2 Uruguay 1 hahaha) and unless it's the weekend it's not normally too busy, especially since they've expanded the place... beer is only 5,5zl (10 are still 55 though :-(), the chicken salad apparently lacks in chicken according to Jason (natjv) but it's just aswell really.. no one should be getting bird flu.

The usual hc members natjv (jason) and buzi (martyna) were there, plus the turkish chap cinarugur (ugur) who is studying here and becoming a regular local member :-), a greek cypriot guy who lived 12 years in London.. not a bad lad either, plus Martyna's guest this finnish girl who arrived half way through the old party.

Strange thing in Poland... even the biggest beer swilling of the blokes are nambies when it comes to weather, there always dressed in about 5 coats and a scarf and people look at you mad when your walking around in a t-shirt, it's -3.. almost summer for fuck sake. My girlfriend insisted on me buying a coat over the winter.. I think she had had enough of the old leather jacket and so I gave in and bought one but I'd rather have spent the money on beer, food and travelling.

Missed the night bus on the way home so had a kebab on the way home, for any muslim chaps reading or people who prefer halal meat... according to the guy cutting the meat, Dubai kebab below the central station serve halal style meat, much to the satisfaction of Ugur who enjoyed his first meat whilst in Poland. It could be halal but whether it was chicken is debateable, not the best kebab in Warsaw that's for sure. Missed my stop on the bus and ended up walking quite a bit in the snow, it's good though - walks off the beer.

There's another party on Friday but it's 50/50 whether I'll be there, as I'm off on Saturday, the plan is down to Cairo, probably via Serbia and Istanbul because I have 100 euros in serbian dinars still. After that I want to make it across to Argentina through Africa. We'll see how it goes.

Winston's hiccup, my burp

2006-02-28T14:00:00.000-08:00

What have I been upto? Hmm.. well working mainly and then went out to the Pizza Dominium, had some good beer, pizza and garlic bread, Sylwia on the contrary ate a popeye version of lasagna.. it was called lasagna but consisted of 80% spinach.. bizzare. Now I'm back home, drinking some beers and watching one of those American war films that everyone thinks is wonderful. Ah I was searching on the internet today and came across this Andy (www.hobotraveller.com).. now he might be an alright lad but he comes across as fucking irritating. If I meet him on the road (highly unlikely since his idea of adventure is girls that apparently shower not so often in Paris), I'll sort him out don't worry.

Also came across this..

Winston's Hiccup: The strange kink in the eastern border between Jordan and Saudi Arabia is known as 'Winston's Hiccup', supposedly because Winston Churchill drew the boundary of Transjordan after a more than satisfactory lunch. The story, unfortunately, is a myth.

A satisfactory lunch huh.. he certainly wasn't eating the spinach (shit boil in a bag spinach at that) lasagna was he.

I've made a full recovery now, I knew beer would do the trick.. off to the chompalooloo's tomorrow (the dentists) and after that.. wahey, who knows. Well I have an idea but I'm keeping it under my armpit for now.

Right, I'd just like to ask my readers to READ THIS:

http://www.protectseals.org/

No need for that at all is there? BASTARDS. Help out by signing the pledge.

The Spice of Life

2006-02-27T04:41:00.000-08:00

A little ditty I just wrote:

The spice of life
Is a life of spice
I wish I'd ordered much more rice

It was hot going in
It was hotter going out
My arse is on fire
So pass me a wet trout

I was out last night with Martyna, her mate Ania, this Turkish guy from HC and bloody Adam Ostrenga... woh-oo-oh we're in the army now. He's a disgrace that guy, got us thrown out of the first bar more or less for pissing off some skinheads with his loud American whaleing, then he starts mollesting the shit out of this Ania girl, so she asks me to sit next to him. Brilliant, the thing with Adam is, he's not that much of a bad lad but his breath is disgraceful and he chose this moment to ask the girls if they could say..

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickling pepper
A peck of pickling pepper Peter Piper picked
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickling pepper
Where's the peck of pickling pepper Peter Piper picked?

Apart from the fact it's fucking annoying, he spat all over me for every single P! Unbelievable.

After the drinking, I popped over to Luksor Kebab with the Turkish dude, he was looking for Halal meat, if he can't find it.. he doesn't eat meat... so basically he's been a vegetarian in Poland and as I was in the mood, I thought I'd have a spicy kebab, oooh my arse feels it now. I'm enjoying my kebab and grooving to some Tarka when this guy comes in and goes "FUCK IT'S YOU", I have no idea who the guy is but he seems to know me, apparently he knows me through some girl called Kasia.. Perhaps she is an HC member, I'm not sure.. maybe she's a friend of Ania (sicherheitsnadel) and Ewa. He for some reason thought that Jason lived with me, I think I perhaps met the guy at this insane party involving 4 bowls of vodka jelly. Anyway, the guys keen to share a bag full of beers with me, so he's not a bad guy.

Rang my mate Paul's uncle (the messiah), last night to ask him what "the blue drink with coffee beans that you light and I normally fuck it up" (Sambucca) was called, he was a bit surprised to hear from me. Fucking hell were his exact words lol.

Just a bit of info for you, if you want cheap flights.

Lose weight, find an albatross... err

www.whichbudget.com - has tonnes of cheap flights between destinations, useful
www.point-afrique.com - paris to loads of african cities (and vice-versa) - cotonou, lome, ouagadougou, noukachott etc for 170 euros one way.

Snowflake (gay name I know) are flying Copenhagen to Cairo for 75 euros, not bad that.

I wouldn't mind flying down and crossing in to Libya, up to Malta and hitch back visting Vatican, San Marino and Liechenstein.. never been to Copenhagen, Libya or the latter trio. I love Cairo, it's a fucking crazy place.

In the dog house

2006-02-27T03:59:00.000-08:00

oh oh, everything was going well last night.. Sylwia had passed exams, I popped out for a little bit and came back in the early morning, pissed as a rat after a little pub crawl around Jana Pawla (there's nice cheap beer there) if you're in the vicinity.. start off at the pub opposite A Petit by Kino Femina.. Okocim for 5zl, used to be 4.. but someone has to pay the bill for los diablos (a legendary old guy with a keyboard), often looks full but there's plenty of seats upstairs... if you really want to do the full tour, pop over to KFC, there is beer for 4zl there but the pipes are a bit dirty and the girls don't know how to pour beer. Then down to Diver's Pub - Krolewskie for 5zl.. Zywiec is pricey though. Move on to Biba Bar, beer is 6zl there unless it's happy hour. Dominica the girl that runs it there, is an easy-going girl.. except for when foolish cornish people put telephones in beers. There tends to be reasonably good music played there.

Extensions of this little drinking area: pop in to Pizza Dominium for a beer and a pizza, on the otherside of the road there's Giuseppe's (a crappy disco place with lots of skinheads and some karaoke nights), the last kebab place on the way back to Kino Femina also serves beer at a cheap price and has a few slot machines. There's a few bars just off Jana Pawla on a small side street just before the Greek restaurant. Another thing you can do is go to any of the alcohol shops, buy some beers and take them in to Luksor Kebab, the guy working there at night is an Iranian guy who lets you drink in there and talk utter bollox to him. There's often drunk youngsters in there and it doesn't take long to get invited to a house party.

So that's my little write up on the swinging nightlife of Kino Femina.. and I didn't even mention the cinema.

Anyway basically got wasted and forgot to ring home, had about 12 missed calls when I checked and Sylwia was not happy. Bloody good night though, I love bars. Will have to make up for it somehow, I'M YOUR PRIVATE HAMSTER, DANCING FOR MONEY, ANY OLD MUSIC WILL DO!

My brother thinks he's a chicken. We'd tell him he isn't but we need the eggs.

Blummin 'eck

2006-02-26T03:08:00.000-08:00

You lovely readers are probably awaiting an update from the continent of jungle music, well.. it's not going to happen.. not yet.

Here's a little update..

I left the house after writing the last blog, waited for Martyna at Metro Ratusz, called her to ask her where the hell she was, turns out she's waiting at Kino Femina (it's one tram stop apart) but what she's doing there.. I don't know! So I tell her, if I am on the no.26 tram.. jump on it. Turns out a no.26 has just left before I get to the little platform and she embarks it and rings me to see if I'm on it.. I say no, she gets off it but bloody hell, now we're two tram stops apart. I jump on the next tram heading her direction but there's one of the ticket control guys on it and as I never have a ticket, find it a wise decision to jump off... fuck my ankle up a bit in the process though.

Finally get up to Wola Ratusz to meet her and then get the tram no.26.. by the way for hitchhikers this is how you should get to the hitching place West...

Tram no.26 from Ratusz metro stop
Tram no.10 from Central Station

until the stop "Fort Wola" then walk over to the bus stop and get 713 until it leaves the main road (2nd last stop)

713 was bloody late, so we ended up waiting at the bus stop for a chuffing long time.. hitching wasn't a big problem, it took about 30 minutes to get a ride to Poznan... it's normally a bit faster but there was a single girl hitching just behind us, so she stole our ride.. still, I bet she had to give head ;-).

The driver is taking quite a slow route to Poznan so we decide to get off at the Toll (bit where you pay) on the Konin-Pniewy motorway, within seconds we got a lift from two gay guys in a van.. YMCA came on the radio, they loved it.

They dropped us off at the motorway services just before Poznan.. I always end up there grrr, not that many people use the motorway in Poland so it's a bit of a pain in the arse to get a lift there.. finally got a lift from a trucker heading to Bremerhaven in Germany.. legendary guy but because it was the weekend he couldn't travel on the motorway there, so was heading to Nevada (it's a great trucking stop just before the border).. beer for 3zl and cheap grub, I love the place. I'd had a few beers that I bought in Warsaw, on the way to Nevada.. so I was well up for some drinking by the time we arrived. Got out on the road after 4 hours of drinking with the guy, decided it was time for some food.. so just popped across to the place on the other side of the road and ordered some Bigos and Potatoes plus.. some eggy soup, great! I love this place.

Tried hitching for a bit but decided to go into the petrol station and ask drivers, got a ride from this chap in a BMW playing metal :-), nice guy... he was heading to Hannover, poor guy got pulled for speeding just on the other side of the German border (on the autobahn) and fined 200 euros, the police are a bit cuntish around there, always looking for polish drivers to fine because there are certain areas of the motorway where you can only go 130km. We missed the turning to Konigs Wusterhausen because Martyna was sleeping and the driver thought I was insane... I'm like cekaj, martyna wakey wakey, pomoc pomoc kurwa! (translates to wait, martyna wakey wakey, help, help, whore) lol, anyway the guy drove on to the next petrol station and we hopped over the motorway to the other side and hitched a ride from another pole, back up to the Konigs Wusterhausen exit. The guy asks where we want to go and I'm like "right", martyna for some reason tells him to go left.. bloody useless that girl! So we have to walk back another km and then towards the S-bahn in Konigs Wusterhausen, I'm getting a bit ill now.. coughing lots of phlem up, we popped into a petrol station and I asked a guy if he was going anywhere near an S-bahn stop.

I hate asking germans questions, if you ask anyone else they're like "yes" or "no".. these guys get a map out, start drawing scales on the floor with their feet and what not. After 10 minutes of fooling around, basically the guy is going. The lad in the front doesn't look too well, he's sleeping in a "I'm a bit of heroin addict" way. Turns out he's been at a party and had a few too many, didn't quite realise how many until he winds down the window and pukes this red stuff all over Martyna's window.. lovely, she deserved that haha!!

Got the S-bahn up to Wedding where Perry my mate and host is at, but I'm feeling well shit, shivering and sweating and coughing up a lot of crap. Meet some guy at the s-bahn who wants a fag, he speaks in a really shit Brummy accent, would be good company for Alexei! Eventually Perry turns up, he's a legend that chap.. takes us to the place where the party is at. We've got a bottle of vodka for him and so the party begins, some insanely drunk guy (non hc I will add), puts a plastic bag full of weed smoke over his head and starts trying to suffocate himself.. a total nut job. Perry's flat mate Krystof.. is like ok gay boy, get the bag off your head now.. he goes crazy "FUCK OFF ZISS IS MY PERFORMANCE".. it's nice to see the boys from Poznan (falk mit trabant and Jens), meet some new faces Gru, Krystof and another dude with glasses. The boy with the bag over his head buggers off on his bicycle, which makes for quite an intersting sight.

We pop back to a Kebab place and then go back to Perry's, boy I could do with a sleep I feel shit. I basically slept for 24 hours, woke up a few times, coughing and spluttering phlem ( i mean real dark green.. hardcore phlem and a bit of blood), got up once and fell over, shaking like a leaf (with a vacuum cleaner hovering over it) and sweating more than a sumo in a big microwave. In other words.. nicht healthy. The lovely Ieva, my mate from Lithuania pays Berlin a visit from Magdeburg, it's nice to see her.

Missed my flight to Spain during this sleeping lark, and decided to get the train back to Poland the next day.

Felt shit for the rest of the week, particularly on Friday when I wake up with a throbbing pain on one side of my face from my head to my teeth, swallow some pain killers and have a few beers but it still doesn't feel better.. I go to the dentist on Saturday and he gives me this kind of "bloody hell, been in a fight lately?" look, turns out my teeth don't close tight in the way they should, so they're all banging against each other causing pain, I need to get them straightened out with some braces (bollox I always took the piss out of kids with braces on.. calling them metal gob and waving magnets in their faces).

I go to the dentist today to meet the girl with the moulds, turns out she's Czech and doesn't speak any Polish or English, well what bloody use is that.. who does she cater for aliens?!?! So I'm heading back on Wednesday, bit annoying because my cold/cough thing is getting a bit better so I fancied going somewhere next week. Oh well, life is life (fucking hate that song)

Got pissed on Wednesday, now on my way to Berlin

2006-02-17T23:19:00.000-08:00

Crikey! Wednesday was a good night, went out to Zielona Ges - a bar celebrating it's 12th birthday.. beer for 1zl, an offer that couldn't be refused, went with Sylwia, her friend Agnieszka and Martyna.. Martyna met some insane guy who wanted to marry her, but it was ok because he ordered 20 beers :-).

I got wasted on the 1zl beer, well into double figures, won a dvd player in a "put your name in to a box type game." Sylwia was overjoyed, I was hammered and would have preferred free beer at the time.

I bought some new jeans yesterday, seems they might be nicer than I thought! At the bar last night some girl kept on grabbing my ass everytime she walked passed, so I went up to her and told her she was a "nie dobry pies" (not a good dog).. I'd tried to get her to kiss some guy in the toilet before hand (well I shoved their heads together!).. she'd been in an "under the red cover" contest with him. Bizzare night, that culminated in me waking up, choking to death and puking this strange black stuff all over Sylwia almost.

Not good, great night though!

Now I'm hitching with Martyna to Berlin, but she's late as usual so I'm writing this.. we should be picking up Radek (meenzer) somewhere a long the way. Still got to get a sim card that roams.. by the way I didn't tell you guys where I'm off to, did I?

I'm hitching to Berlin, then taking a cheap flight to Malaga, hitching to Algeciras and then the boat across to Ceuta.. from where I'll travel down through Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso and if I have time Ghana, Togo and Benin.

For info in the future.. it would have been cheaper to hitch to Sete, where there are boats at a reasonable price to Tangiers.

By the way, I have those google ad sense things on here now, so click on them and look interested. I'll buy you a beer!

Welcome - Bit of background info

2006-02-09T02:37:00.000-08:00

Welcome readers,

I did keep a few rough blogs of the past two or three years of travelling but I doubt I'll sort it out and put them online.. sorry about that.

I'd like to introduce readers to www.hospitalityclub.org a great source of cool travellers. Here you can offer/receive (hopefully both!), hospitality and cultural exchange.. also has plenty of meetings in different towns around the world... where partying plays a big part! I use it a lot, if you need any help.. my username is "dangaroo"

Bit of background info:

I am currently living in Poland, with my beautiful girlfriend and dog and selling a wide selection of dictionaries, maps, books etc.

I was born in the UK, grew up in Portugal and then moved back for one year, deciding it was bloody boring..

So I decided to hitch-hike round Europe and Turkey, hitching through Netherlands, Germany, Czech Rep, Poland and then made plenty of friends in Lithuania, freezed my balls off hitching to Nord Kapp and back in the winter, spent several weeks travelling/constant drinking with an English fellow called Paul (djdirect), quality guy whose idea of travel literature is pornography.. we managed to get in to all kinds of trouble in Krakow, Budapest, Zagreb, a host of Croatian Islands, Dubrovnik, Montenegro and Beograd. He lost/spent all his money, I continued travelling through Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and ended up working at a hostel in Romania.. then to Bulgaria to do some scuba diving and hitch-hike to Turkey. Travelled around Turkey with an irritating Canadian girl, that I finally lost in Sanliurfa (really great city near Syrian border)..headed on towards Iran but didn't have enough money for the visa.. so I hitched back from Iran non-stop to the UK.. getting a nice lift from Beograd-UK from a friendly Turkish truck driver who almost blew his head off with a gas cooker.

Had planned to get a job and save up for some visas, but decided against it.. went back to Lithuania... hoping to work as an English teacher, but instead ended up spending most of the time drinking and having the most insane parties with some friends.. ended up living with them & a totally mad American LSD lover called Gardner who looked like a yetti and was banned from Latvia and the USA, not too mention Paul decided to move in and come back every night telling of us his fun and thrills in Broadveijus (crappy Lithuanian disco with hot but "fifa" girls).. eventually got so drunk that one morning, I decided I would leave the house and hitch-hike to Iraq, by the time I got to Krakow I changed my mind to hitch to Africa.. nearly died hitching in the rain with a t-shirt on in Bielsko Biala and ended up going back to Krakow and catching the train to Budapest where a girl decided to mollest me whilst talking to her boyfriend on the telephone.. very strange!!

Hitched Budapest-Salzburg-Genoa.. and then attempted to get a lift to France but no luck, so hitched my way down to Bari and caught the ferry to Greece.. where I ended up working in a hostel bar in Athens with some seriously mental alcoholics! Travelled to Cyprus for christmas, then to Egypt where I got various jobs including hustling for a travel agent in a local bar (Stella Bar - quality place, don't take your girlfriend though and every single person in the bar (apart from the guy working behind the bar.. will be trying to rip you off, 100% without a doubt!) and working in films as a white boy for some film mafia guy called Sadani (probably one of the ugliest men on earth.. who always asked me to ask him if he washed his ass with shampoo.. not sure what that was about!) If you want to meet him, go to the little alleyway by After Eight and ask around. Also watch out for Ashraqat who hangs out there.. gorgeous belly dancer girl, an absolute mad woman!

Couldn't work out whether to go to Sudan or Syria, so I flew to Thailand with the hope of working as an English teacher.. settled on buying fake t-shirts and flying back to the UK.

Then planned a hitch-hike to Afghanistan, but it didn't quite go ahead. I went up to Berlin for a big party, met a really cool hospitality club member called aozelis (from Lithuania) and ended up travelling with him for a couple of weeks, drinking our way around Poland, by the time I hit Warsaw.. I managed to get locked in my hosts' flat for a day where I had become acquainted with her cat, headed out to a bar, got absolutly wasted, scarred my ass and met a girl (Sylwia) with the craziest hair ever... who is now my girlfriend.. a good beer-drinking quality girl :-)

Got myself a flat in Warsaw, and a French flat mate who smoked more weed than the whole of Jamaica.. held parties every night for about 2 months, travelled to a Midsomer Party in Latvia and spent a while hitching around Czech Republic, Hungary and Croatia. Also spent 2 weeks having fun in Montenegro with Sylwia... by the way the Montenegrans seem to look down on skinny dipping at night. To be fair it was a bit cold, so I doubt they could see much in the way of the dangaroo tail.

Apart from that, spent most of the year concentrating on my business, future travels and a few trips here and there to various HC Parties.