Pen´s Portable Closet

Holocaust Tourism: Auschwitz and Phnom Penh

2011-11-19T03:17:00.000-08:00

As luck, or fate, or low-cost airline schedules would have it, I ended up in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, about three weeks after I visited Auschwitz near Krakow in Poland.

To quickly summarise 20th Century history:

Auschwitz is the site of the largest concentration camp used as part of the Nazi holocaust of about six million people in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
Phnom Penh was the centre of the Khmer Rouge’s holocaust of at least one million Cambodians in the 1970s and 1980s.

The closeness of the two trips was coincidental. I was in Krakow with a friend because we wanted a break from the expense of travelling in Western Europe (have you ever tried to get drunk in Rotterdam? Well, I have, and it’s extremely bloody pricey), and everyone raves about Krakow (which is warranted – it’s a lovely place. Medieval castles and cheap beer).

I was in Cambodia because I stuffed up booking the connection between leaving Bangladesh and arriving back in Sydney (by, like, a week, because I’m just that hopeless), and Air Asia offered me a cheap and easy way to re-brand myself from “possibly illiterate, definitely incapable travel organiser” to “intrepid south-east Asia adventurer!”

There is a lot to do in both Krakow and Phnom Penh aside from visiting the sites of and memorials to massacres. Fun, life-affirming stuff (take note, Switzerland). Krakow has a castle, a salt mine (no really, trust me, all kinds of cool) and a museum with a handbag exhibit.

Phnom Penh has a royal compound with bright and shiny treasures on display and more temples than you can waft an incense stick at. Moreover, it has that spark that I sometimes find absent in ancient, eroding Europe; Phnom Penh is still recovering and reconstructing, and people move from place to place with purpose and urgency. They’ve got stuff to do - rebuild their city and do aerobics in public squares and start really awesome fashion lines that they sell out of their Dad’s garages (I, ahem, may have shopped).

So Krakow is more than a place near Auschwitz, and Phnom Penh is more than Khmer Rouge collateral.

But.

I'm unsure about what to write about the actual visit to the Auschwitz camp and the exhibits. It’s unsettlingly familiar, partly because you’ve seen it before on TV and at the cinema, and partly, for me at least, because the duplicated buildings and institutional layout reminded me of a primary school.

There’s lots of other people there and you don’t actually look anyone in the eye but everyone goes out of their way to be polite and behave respectfully. You lower your voice and hold doors open for other people and just try to be good.

Trying to be good, or at least better, is, I think, kind of the point of Auschwitz as a museum/memorial/monument. Or, as Seth Freedman writes when talking about the Holocaust Industry in Poland, the continuing existence of the place is “a necessary course of treatment for humanity”.

Unfortunately, as Freedman points out, Auschwitz as a memorial and a warning, whilst absolutely necessary, is a treatment rather than a cure. Holocausts have continued to occur since the end of World War II. Which brings me entirely too neatly to Cambodia.

As with Auschwitz, I’m not sure what to say about the actual visit to the Cambodian memorials. The first place I visited in Phnom Penh was S-21, a former school where the Khmer Rouge detained and tortured political prisoners. It still feels like a school, and as with Auschwitz, visitors behave like very well-behaved students. Heads are down, you speak only when spoken to and read every sign and leaflet or plaque conscientiously, as if there’s an exam at the end.

Several classrooms are now galleries, full of mugshots of people killed there. At first glance (before you register the bruises and the cuts and black eyes), the photos could be reprints of all the images taken one year at a particularly busy passport photo booth, or a big company’s database of photos from employee identification badges. There are people with freckles and pimples and bad haircuts and sometimes, somehow, people with smiles on their faces.

From S-21 I followed all the other tourists out to Choeung Ek (Holocaust tourists, even the Intrepid South East Asia Adventurers like myself, move as 12 little girls in two straight lines), a Killing Field on the outside of Phnom Penh. It’s exactly as described – a field where 17000 people were taken to be killed, and about 9000 were buried in mass graves.

Not that I would have been able to recognize the mass graves, if they hadn’t been signposted. Choeung Ek now features buildings developed since the site became a memorial, but there’s little obvious structural evidence of what happened there. In the years since the killing stopped, the man-made traces have faded and trees and grass have grown in their place.

And I guess that’s why I’m glad my dwindling budget and my woeful attention to detail led me to both Auschwitz and Phnom Penh; because tourists - as nosy, ignorant and loud as we can be – will help keep Auschwitz and the Killing Fields memorials going, long after the physical evidence has eroded.

Well, that was different: Bangladesh

2011-01-23T06:25:00.000-08:00

I went to Bangladesh in July 2009 to visit my friend Lyrian, who spent a year there as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development. I was there at the same time as Sally, Lyrian’s best friend and a good friend of mine, too.

I’ve been trying for to write cohesively about my trip to Bangladesh for almost 18 months now. Then I decided that cohesion (and structure, and narrative, and order, and control) and Bangladesh were un-mixy things.

But I still wanted to write about my trip to Bangladesh. Firstly, because, well, really, I went to Bangladesh and I want some travel-blogger-credibility for it, thank you very much.

Secondly, Bangladesh is impressive. It should be written about.

On a map Bangladesh looks like it’s held in a protective embrace by Grandmother India. Or slowly smothered. Depending on your perspective. It is a small land area (and ever-diminishing, thank you global warming/rising sea levels/crazy weather) filled with a large (and ever-increasing, thank you, um, reproductive activities) number of people.

And all those people, so crowded together, live in a pressing, dirty heat, dressed in life-affirming Crayola colours. Like Melbourne through the looking glass.

So, rather than an actual composition (with a rational beginning, middle and end), you’re getting a list. In no particular order, a list of things I can’t forget about Bangladesh:

1. Getting on an overnight bus from Rangpur (in the north) to Dhaka (kind of in the middle), and being video-taped before the bus set off so they could identify our bodies if we crashed.

Bangladeshi highways are narrow, lined with pedestrians, cluttered with rickshaws and other slow moving vehicles and just terrifying. Bangladeshi bus drivers are very young man who don’t own X-Boxes/ Wiis/ Sega Master Systems IIs and as such must unleash their aggressive speed and overtaking urges in an un-simulated environment. Un-simulated environment in this context meaning my bloody real life when they are responsible for my very mortal flesh and blood body.

2. Learning to love squat toilets. Learning to love the amazing healing powers of Gastrolyte. Learning to accept that some food is going to treat your digestive tract like a nightclub dance floor.

Bangladesh: the country that made me finally open my travel medicine kit.

3. Having a rikshaw driver turn around and stare at Lyrian and I (his passengers) for an entire unblinking minute.

I've been told that most Bangladeshis go through life without ever seeing a white person in the pale, veiny, freckly flesh. I suspect they only see a scattered few on screens and in print – there’s still far more concern about everyone living in rural areas having access to clean drinking water, rather than access to broadband internet.

I’d probably stare (and take photos, and exclaim, and point and laugh) too. I get it. If everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other (almost as poignant as Groove Armada's other great social observation, "I see you baby/shaking that ass").

And at first, I sort of enjoyed being nominated as special. I’ve always been a bit of an attention whore. I remember leaving Dhaka airport in a crush of men, all clambering for our attention, and giggling at how absurd it was.

And then, after about a day, I began to feel like a different kind of whore. The rickshaw driver is the incident that stays with me; we were quite vulnerable, and he was so close.

In retrospect, the catcalls on the street and the groping on the buses were actually no worse than you’d get in King’s Cross on a Saturday night. The difference is that on Sunday morning in Sydney you walk through the Cross and no one makes eye contact with you or even acknowledges you and you get to hide in the bliss of anonymity.

I did find the unrelenting attention difficult to deal with. Leaving the house was sometimes a bit of an effort.

But leaving the house was always worth the effort. And our novelty factor was also a door opener. We were let into museums outside of opening hours and mosques that aren’t actually ever open for visitors. We were taken into a Hindu temple that had been built within the root system of an ancient tree. We wandered into an enclave of houses after tramping across muddy shipyards (cooler than they sound, actually) and my feet were covered in gunk and a woman gave me her soap and instructed me to use the village’s one clean water pump to clean them and her kindness was probably more confronting then all the staring put together.

4. Visiting Little Bangladesh, a selection of Bangladesh’s tourist attractions, duplicated as miniatures, and collected in one handy location.

Those of you familiar with Leyland Brother’s World will understand the concept. Little Bangladesh negates any need to travel around Bangladesh, and thus avoid unsettling bus trips as described in Item 1.

Ironically, the thing that stays with me about Little Bangladesh was the sense of space and freedom – we were there on a very quiet weekday, and it was the only place we were able to run around and not be stared at too intensely. You can’t really see Bangladesh for the Bangladeshis. Who, of course, are Bangladesh. It's all very confusing. Where's your philosophy now, Groove Armada? Huh?

5. Squashing into a local bus, perching on the back of a flatbed bicycle taxi and lazing on a ferry raft in order to visit an extremely isolated temple.

Feeling quite proud of ourselves for being such extreme tourists, when two coach loads of Indian teenagers turn up, obviously bored out of their iPods on a school excursion.

6. Having a better latte than I’ve ever had in the UK at a new café in Dhaka called Barista.

It is hard to explain exactly how out of place a café in Dhaka is. Dhaka does not have a Starbucks. Dhaka does not have gutters or footpaths.

It is difficult to buy Diet Coke in Dhaka. It can be difficult to buy bread in Dhaka.

I still keep the cafe owner’s business card in my wallet, because his enthusiasm and optimism impressed me so much. I cannot imagine what he went through, importing everything, sourcing the location, training the staff... Apparently, no matter where I am on Earth, I'll always be the daughter of small business owners.

Obviously there’s a leeedle bit of cultural homogenisation at work here, but I say embrace it. I like my coffee like I like my healthcare – universal.

7. Speaking of healthcare, passing a hospital with an open sewer at its entrance.

I asked the ex-pats at the Australian and US Embassies what they do if they get really sick. The answer is “hop a flight to Bangkok or KL”.

Life in Bangladesh is hard. Which is a woefully inadequate thing to say, but, yeah.

8. Visiting the Australian, US and some typically immaculate and well-organised Northern European Embassies.

Walled-in compounds with swimming pools, tennis courts and margaritas. It was all a bit Rudyard Kipling.

9. Leaving Bangladesh

I love airports. I love that they’re full of book stores and food outlets, and that you’re not allowed to do anything other than read and eat and sit-around. It’s enforced slothfulness, and it’s awesome.

But arriving back at Dhaka airport, ready to leave Bangladesh, I realised I also love airports because I love rules and regulations and systems and the reliable environments they create. Like the dozens of other airports I’ve been to around the world, at Dhaka airport I had to line up and check-in and pass security and it was so comforting and predictable after all the curliness and squeezing-five-people-on-a-rickshaw-designed-for- two of Bangladesh.

Not that I wanted to leave Bangladesh desperately – I loved the clothes and the kofta and how sharing a toilet and weak western stomachs made Sal, Lyrian and I that much closer as friends (there is nothing too gross between us anymore. Nothing.).

And I loved that Bangladesh is like a Jackson Pollack painting – at first you’re all confronted and confused by the colours and the mess and the noise, but you keep looking and you start to feel less trapped and you see more and you see differently, and it makes you look at every other painting in the gallery and every bit of graffiti on the train differently.

So I guess why I was really excited to leave Bangladesh was so I could begin seeing every other city and country differently.

And also, so I could buy some more Gastrolyte at the pharmacy at KL Airport. Seriously, that stuff is manna from heaven.

An Open Letter to My Brother, on His 39th Birthday

2010-01-11T08:53:00.000-08:00

Dear Big Brother,
Congratulations on not quite being 40!

To celebrate, I hear you are going to tour the Margaret River wine country. An excellent choice for someone as interested in fancy booze as yourself.

I also hear that you will be joined on this sojourn by our esteemed parents.

A brave choice.

It’s not often that this flighty, dependant, head-in-the-smog baby sister is able to offer her steady, dependable, even-tempered elder brother advice. However, having met our parents this past July in London, then travelled with them to New York, then reverse-Titanic-ed the Atlantic with them by cruise ship, then toured southern England with them, I feel uniquely qualified to pass on some words of advice.

To prepare you, some might say.

To warn you, some others might say.

#1 The Mother is Not a Quiet Woman
The Mother is a generous, warm, caring woman. The Mother, however, is not without un-generous, un-warm and un-caring thoughts. Such thoughts are regularly articulated at the top of the Mother’s voice.

The condition of being a guest in another’s country does not remedy this behaviour.

For example:
"Are all English people this ugly?" Paddington Station, London
"Americans are fat, aren’t they?" Times Square, New York
I did not join the Parents on their trip to Paris, but I imagine she broadcast “Gee, the French smell funny!” from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

#2 The Father is Not a Stranger to Vanity
The Father is a very masculine man. We know this because he has a large moustache and (it is whispered reverently, if rather vaguely) once played rugby at Quite a High Level.

The Father is also a bit of a girl.

For instance, the only thing the Father loves more than clothes is shoes. In London, the Father spent many happy hours wandering through the menswear sections of Harrods, Marks and Spencers, Liberty, Selfridges, a different branch of M&S… He would lovingly caress the brogues, nuzzle the knitwear and throw out phrases such as "that’s rather dapper, isn’t it?"

In New York, we almost missed the boat because the Father was having A Moment of Perfect Happiness in Brooks Brothers.

To style his beloved sartorial purchases correctly, the Father will also spend BLOODY HOURS dressing and grooming himself. Our 6 night journey on the Queen Mary included 3 Formal Dinners, 2 Cocktail Events and 1 Casual Night (jacket and tie still required, of course). This gave the Father more opportunity than he ever dreamt possible to fuss over his appearance, and explore the answers to some of life’s most challenging formalwear questions, including, “is my new houndstooth tuxedo scarf too short?”

Yes, Brother, I seriously had to try and formulate an answer to that question. Start practising now.

#3 The Parents are Spoiled Brats
Obviously, the Parents spoiled we Children during the 80s and 90s. Our lower-middle class domestic splendour was sprinkled with such luxuries as recycling-only wheelie bins, televisions in both the lounge room and kitchen, and a dinner choice of mince meat served three different ways (Dinner Winner, spag bol, and because we were always taught to embrace multiculturalism, tacos).

Whilst spoiling us, the Parents were careful to continually remind us that they had no such luxuries in their childhoods, and that they worked very hard to be able to give them to we Children (these reminders were particularly loud after the Father returned from a “Ski-Conference” at Thredbo, and when the Mother won especially big as part of the horse gambling ring she ran with the couriers at her florist shop).

As such, I approached the sections of our trip that I was in charge of booking with a degree of financial caution. I’m a hostel/kebab style traveller myself, and whilst I knew shoving the Father onto the top bunk of an 8 bed dorm room wouldn’t be wise, I googled hard to find good deals at solid four star establishments.

For instance, I was delighted with the hotel I booked in London. It was in the City, an ancient yet thriving section of London. It had an elevator, air conditioning, and our room even had self-catering facilities. I checked in the night before they arrived, and to my sleeping bag/lice infected pillow eyes, the place was actually pretty plush.

The Parents did not share this opinion. The room was too small (the room was a good 5 x 5 metres, bigger than your average flat in London). There wasn’t a spa (the Mother once famously slipped in a hotel spa, and spent months in physiotherapy afterwards repairing the damage). There wasn’t a mini-bar (there was a fridge, and a 24 hour supermarket 100 metres down the road). There wasn’t enough hanging space in the wardrobe (there was, if certain Fathers had not brought their entire wardrobes with them). There weren’t enough mirrors (and after all, who are the fairest Senior’s Card holders of them all?).

For you reference, Brother, they also don’t like:

To wait for anything
To sit too near the toilets on the EuroStar
To sit too far from the toilets on the EuroStar
To travel anything less than Business Class
To walk more than 30 metres at a time
Hire cars that are not Mercedes (“A Saab? Is that really Luxury?”)
To go more than an hour between coffee breaks. And We don’t do Starbucks, apparently

#4 The Parents Are Obsessed with The Grandchildren
As you are probably aware, Brother, the (Elder to me, Younger to you) Sister has reproduced twice over the last half decade. The Parents, whilst never overly fond of we Children (eg, the infamous case of the electric guitar, balcony, and the Menopausal Mother), think their Grandsons are ace.

To the point where they never stop talking about them. Ever.

Example:
Scene: The Contemporary Art section of New York’s Metropolitan Museum. The Parents and the Baby Daughter (actual age: 28) are confronted by Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living . This piece takes the form of a dead shark swimming in formaldehyde. The Baby Daughter is a little nervous about the Parents’ reaction. Whilst the Parents would probably class themselves as Arty Types (the Father, after all, had a fine collection of dogs playing snooker hanging in the Billiards Room), they’re not really Taxidermy Types.

The Mother (decidedly): Well, Toby wouldn’t like this. He hasn’t been fond of sharks since Finding Nemo.

The Father (chuckling): Little Rory would love it, though! He’s got a killer instinct, that one!

Baby Daughter (trying desperately to draw attention to herself): You know, a skull covered in diamonds by the same artist recently sold for $80 million.

Pause

The Father: So we can’t buy one to take home for Little Rory, then?

#5 The Parents Love the Father’s Oxygen Generator More Than You
Yes, even you, oh their blessed Boy Child. To be fair, whilst we Children have proved a bit useless so far, the Oxygen Generator allows the Father to breathe.

With every movement, the location of the Oxygen Generator will be questioned, confirmed, reassured, discussed and regretted. The Oxygen Generator has feelings too, you see. Or, at least, it has a five figure price tag and isn’t covered on Travel Insurance.

#6 The Father Has This Weird Thing About Buying the Music Being Played in Museums
Plus, the museums actually have the CDs available for sale. Who knew?

Do not make fun of this habit of the Father’s. You will be forced to listen, and critically respond to Museum Muzak.

#7 The Parents Might Be Gambling Addicts. Both of Them.
Ah, the Queen Mary. A ship created to let the Middle Class die as they imagine the Upper Class live. There is a morgue on board that slowly fills with sequin-clad passenger corpses, as inheritance-spenders give in one-by-one to the temptation of a private tango lesson too many.

Not for the Parents, however, the attractions of cabaret nights or Othello (abridged) productions or How to Write Your Memoirs workshops. They didn’t even fall for the charms of the onboard “Nite” Club, where the margaritas were always blue and the DJ would play Daft Punk’s One More Time one more time if you asked nicely (the DJ and I shared the same not-very-ironic sense of irony).

No, every night, without fail, the Parents could be found in the Casino.

And not for them, the thrills of the Blackjack Table or Roulette Wheel. No, night after night the Parents could be found sitting happily in front of a Garfield poker machine. They somehow managed to turn inserting money and pressing a button into a two-person operation, and would stay happily occupied for hours on end, hoping to see five Odies in a line, or even nab a Lasagne Bonus Feature.

The Mother also developed a secondary addiction to Bingo. As I share this addiction, no fun will be made of it.

#8 The Parents Are Ridiculously Generous. Take Advantage!
Aside from paying for my planes and hotels whilst I was with them, the Parents would insist on buying me anything that I expressed even the slightest interest in. Because of this impulse, I now own a pen shaped like a lipstick. To be fair, I also acquired some Very Nice Things.

I entreat you, Big Brother, to alleviate some of my sibling guilt by letting the Parents buy you something expensive. My sincere gratitude, etc, etc.

Please, Big Brother, feel free to contact me for clarification on any of the above points, or any questions. Please also feel free to have a fabulous birthday, great trip and amazing 2010. Thank you (along, of course, with the Big Sister) for keeping the Parents safe and occupied with Lotto syndicates and clean skin wine. I’m only able to be irresponsible and carefree in the Northern Hemisphere because my amazing siblings are all responsible and care-laden in the Southern.

With all my love,
Pen

Cities in a single sentence

2009-08-03T07:19:00.000-07:00

So. I’ve been on the road since early June and only now am getting around to blogging about it. There are a couple of reasons for my slackness (other than my general, all-pervading laziness, which is a big factor, to be honest):

I haven’t been the sad lonely single female traveler. Yes, I’ve had friends! I do have friends! I promise!
What this means is that I don’t have to save up all my, ahem, witty observations throughout the day and then unleash them onto the keyboard at night, Instead, I get to unleash them immediately on my poor travel companions. Who get to try and respond to statements like, “if Amsterdam was a song, it would totally be Amsterdam by Coldplay”.

Be thankful for that extra filter the act of writing provides, gentle readers. Be very bloody thankful.

I was initially traveling in Western Europe. I have run out of things to say about Western Europe. This is not Western Europe’s fault. It more reflects my limitations as a writer.

Just to seem slightly less like a total Philistine: I really like Western Europe. Stone Churches? Gorgeous! Old Masters’ Masterpieces? Masterful! Turkish food outlets? Delicious!

I just don’t have that much more to say on any of these topics. Except for kebabs. Mmm, kebab.

Other people have said fascinating and insightful things about Europe, and I don’t enter competitions I’m not going to win. Seriously, kids. Go read A Room With A View (or watch the movie, it’s adorable). Watch the televisual oeuvre of a certain Mr Clive James. Read the lyrics to Adam Ants’ Young Parisians (They are so French/They talk nothing but French!).

However, I’ve recently traveled to places that I do want to write about. At length. But I don’t feel I can write about them until I cover what I’ve left untold in here. So, basically, here’s my experience of nine European cities I visited during June, squashed into one sentence. Meaningful observations abound, obviously.

Amsterdam – Amsterdam would be awesome if the ubiquitous tourist crap didn’t make it seem like Van Gogh had vomited sunflowers over the entire metropolitan district.

Rotterdam – In a city of amazing, revitalising architecture, we stayed on a boat that had been converted into a hotel, because we’re perverse, apparently.

Delft – So pretty.

The Hague – I lost my Rough Guide here, and I suspect it was stolen by the local tourist bureau in an effort to stop us from escaping this, erm, city of enigmatic attractions.

Brussels – A tiny statue of a little boy peeing is a garden water feature, not a tourist attraction.

Barcelona – Fabulous lives lived on streets crowded with Gaudi’s awesomeness – I love it more than shoes.

Granada – The Alhambra gave me the chance to imagine being a Moorish princess, which is all I really want out of life.

Malaga – Loved it, because European beachside resorts give Aussies a rare chance to feel superior and be condescending (You have pebbles! How quaint!).

Madrid – Barcelona’s more serious, but still ridiculously beautiful older sister.

OK, so now we’ve got Western Europe out of the way, you can look forward to future blog posts on topics like traveling with lung disease and Auschwitz. Fun stuff like that.

Munich – A German Tale (with a smattering of Greek)

2009-02-26T10:27:00.000-08:00

I went to Munich to visit an old friend from school. I’m going to go with a pseudonym, and call her… Nike… mostly because she probably doesn’t want her business in my blog. And because I’m staring directly at my sneakers right this minute.

Plus, I just finished reading The Secret History, which is all about cover-ups and Greeks, so it seems appropriate.

Also, I just like the word pseudonym.

Anyway, Nike and I studied German together in Years 9 and 10. Frankly, Languages Other Than 4 Unit Maths were never going to be a priority at our school, and the 10 or so of us who kept up German after it was mandatory were allowed to potter away several hours every week watching Derrick and planning German food days.

When I abandoned German for the exciting world of Business Studies, I was a bit like one of my favourite Germans, Sergeant Schultz, in that I knew nothing, nothing.

Me and Sergeant Schultz. Only our mother could tell us apart, etc...

Nike, however, kept going with German, and got quite good at it.

Nike and I also happened to live within about 10 houses from each other, and used to travel home together quite regularly. Because we lived in The Land that Public Transport Forgot, this used to be quite an odyssey (more Greek!), involving buses and walking past a chicken farm. Walking past a chicken farm on a daily basis is the kind of thing that cements a relationship, I feel.

Nike I were good friends, and it’s a shame that we lost touch after high school. However, thanks to the wonderful word/evil-civil-liberty-sucking-vortex of Facebook, we’ve recently been back in touch. Nike has had a very romantic post-high school life, and is now married to a Lovely German Boy, and living in Munich. They were my amazingly generous and accommodating hosts in Germany.

Honestly, I wish more of you would go away and live in faraway places. Visiting people makes for the best times. First with Joe in SP, and now with Nike and Lovely German Boy in Munich. I love seeing a city as someone’s home, rather than as a checklist of tourist attractions that you have to tick off.

Which is not to say that we didn’t hit some tourist attractions. Nike and Lovely German Boy, and, blessedly, their car, took me to see:

*Neuschwanstein. This amazing fairytale castle was an absolute folly built by a crazy king that helped bankrupt the government. Or at least history has labelled him crazy. From my point of view: Primal desire to build + belief that bigger is better + totally unrealistic budgetary expectations = Average visitor to New Homeworld, Kellyville.

*This gorgeous white church kind of between Neuschwanstein and Munich proper. It had this wall of letters and photos and cards and drawings from people who had visited the Church, and subsequently had benefited from a miracle of some description. I spent the entire time wishing we could get customers to write user testimonials like that.

* A monastery with a beer hall attached. The beer hall was fantastic and fascinating. You’re allowed to bring your own food in, and regulars can even store their own beer glasses and tea towels in a locker there. Why, I'm not sure, but it was just cool anyway.

Without Lovely German Boy’s influence, Nike and I had a rather hilariously unsuccessful day of touristing around the Munich inner city. We attempted the following:
*To visit the Pinakotheks. Two closed for the day. One was open, but it was too late to enter by the time we got there.
*To visit a Kandinsky exhibition – Closed for the day.
*To visit a Disney exhibition – Had closed forever 2 days before.
*To have a drink in Munich’s “Australian” pub, as it was Australia Day – THE PUB WAS CLOSED. THE TOKEN "AUSSIE" PUB. ON AUSTRALIA DAY.

Plus, we were bad and ate ice cream sundaes for lunch. And it was a totally great day - Nike and I are both chatters, and she very kindly accommodated my desire to go into any store selling chocolate, clothes or books.

The other nice thing about staying in someone's home (especially Nike and Lovely German Boy's gorgeous flat) is the food. When traveling, I tend to survive on yoghurt, tomatoes and bananas when I'm feeling virtuous, and cake, hot chips and ice cream when I'm not (ie, 99% of the time).

Nike and Lovely German Boy decided to feed me traditional Bavarian cuisine. I ate white sausage and pretzels and cold meats and cheeses and mustard with everything and that was just breakfast. It was like being back in those German Food Days.

I was, I have to confess, a bit heartbroken to learn that most Munich-ites (Munchen-kins?) don't really eat like this anymore. I kind of had hopes of Germany being the last hold-out against the whole Stepford Supermarket thing that's taken over Europe, where everywhere you go you can buy Danone Yoghurt, Haribo Gummy Bears and Lays Crisps.

Or perhaps its just that I seem to find myself buying Danone Yoghurt, Haribo Gummy Bears and Lays Crisps wherever I go. And, come to think of it, I really appreciate being able to get a decent Pad Thai everywhere I go. And watching the Simpsons. And drinking Coke Zero.

So, on second thoughts, as you were, globalisation.

A Bookworm in Budapest

2009-02-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

Oh my golly the Bratislava entry was obscenely long. Which is ironic, since I have been applying for web content coordinator roles all week with sentences like, “I understand the importance of using as few words as possible when writing for the web”. Which is a really badly constructed sentence, come to think, and probably why I didn’t get asked for an interview.

In any case, the Budapest entry is going to be a model of well-written web content. Maybe. OK, it’s totally not going to be, but I needed to acknowledge that this blog’s been fairly impenetrable lately. Sorry!

Budapest has long been my I-have-absolutely-no-idea-European-history-geography answer in Trivial Pursuit (I know, most people prefer Helsinki). So I was quite excited to actually learn some stuff about it. Which is why I spent most of my time in Budapest talking to Australians and reading novels. Doh, etc.

First up, Budapest is not at all Eastern Bloc-esque. Unlike Bratislava, it doesn’t have a whiff of the Soviet about it. It’s far more imperial – like a Vienna or Buenos Aires or Paris.

Secondly, because Hungarian is so linguistically obscure, I thought the whole place would feel far more foreign than the rest of Europe. Nope. It’s all castles and gelato and H&M. And turkish baths, I’ll concede.

Thirdly, Budapest is very cool, like (once again) Paris or Buenos Aires is cool. Locals are not impressed or excited by tourists, even tourists from Koala!Country. They are all very well dressed, and have some awesome local designers and really cool stores. You need them more than they need you.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t like Budapest, and wouldn’t go back in a second. It was unspeakably pretty, and, I suspect, extremely liveable. Plus, me and the girlies from my dorm (all Australian. Oops) went to this fab bar one night, in a (I think) falling down office block, and if the tourists can find an awesome bar with actual, like, atmosphere, then goodness knows the awesome-ness of the places that the locals are drinking in.

Because I’m a total geek, the thing I remember most fondly about Budapest is actually Red Bus Books. I really relish the reading opportunities that travel creates. In fact, the efficiency of European rail travel kind of annoys me sometimes, because you don’t get those six hours delays that happen in other parts of the world (Air Canada should totally change its slogan to "We give you enough time to read The Complete Dickens!"). Still, by the time I got to Budapest, I’d already devoured everything I’d brought over with me, as well as a few things I’d gained in crappy one shelf hostel book swaps.

Actually, I’ll pause here and give two quick book recommendations:

A Household Guide to Dying – I bought this because I knew it was set in Sydney, and I’m always interested to see how other people describe my hometown (and whilst I’m digressing, IMO the two best “Sydney” books I’ve read are Playing Beattie Bow and Looking for Alibrandi. Both ostensibly kids (well, young adult) books, but I’ve always loved how familiar LFA’s Sydney is – she works at the Parramatta Road Maccas, for goodness sake – and PBB is The Rocks for me, really). However, it brought to mind a much more specific home than the Bridge and Opera House. It reminded me of my Steel Magnolias/Beaches obsessed family.

My mum and my sister will both absolutely adore this book. My sister, especially. In fact, if there was ever a book written for my sister, this is it. Melodrama and autopsies. But not too melodramatic. Nobody declares "It is my name, and I shall never have another!".

Bit of a Blur – Alex James from Blur’s autobiography. As hedonistic as you’d expect, but also kind and mature and reasoned and neither guilt-ridden nor judgemental. He’s either a genuinely lovely person, or an excellent fiction writer who has created this fabulous persona. Maybe both.

Anyhoo, back to Red Bus Books. It’s a second hand English language bookstore where travellers and expats drop off and pick up books. It has the biggest and most reasonably priced collection of English books I saw in continental Europe, and I left with as many goodies as I could possibly fit in my already over-stuffed bags (The Line of Beauty, which is AMAZING, and even better than the BBC mini-series, and, erm, two of the Gossip Girl novels, which I don’t find nearly as compelling as the TV series, actually. Not enough Chuck.)

What I liked most was seeing the books that people choose to take on holiday with them. There’s A LOT of repetition on those shelves. There’s an entire Harry Potter section, for instance. More Da Vinci Codes than you can point an albino monk at (I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, and still I know about the albino monk. Sigh). 9 St 12 lbs of Bridget Jones. And a much larger than expected self-help section, which made me laugh, because it’s so something I (and Bridget, for that matter) would do – decide that this holiday is going to be a major turning point, where I read up and get ready to return home thinner/more assertive/less single/a better cook. Then get to the holiday destination and decide I’d rather eat cake and go to awesome bars set in falling down office blocks instead.

Bratislava, Slovakia: Giggle City

2009-02-09T11:36:00.000-08:00

Bratislava is a funny place. Both funny-strange and funny-haha.

Funny-Strange
According to the Lonely Planet/Rough Guide, “You meet all kinds of people when you stay in hostels.”

This, of course, is a lie. You meet the same kind of people over and over again in hostels. Young, middle class people. You can probably further divide that group into “young middle class people who want to experience every different kind of alcohol available in Europe (AKA Australians and the occasional token Irish)” and “young middle class people who really earnestly want to experience every different kind of culture available in Europe (AKA Canadians and the occasional token Yank)”, but really, it’s a fairly homogenous group.

Except for Bratislava. I felt horrendous when I arrived in Bratislava. I still had the sinus headache of doom. Getting a bus from Vienna to Bratislava (60 km. World’s closest capital cities, for the trivia devotees) was harder than it should have been. Then I couldn’t find a working ATM, and had to walk from the bus station to the hostel because I had no Slovakian currency, then when I got to the hostel I found out that since January 1 2009 Slovakia’s currency has actually been the Euro, of which, of course, I had heaps (well, enough for the tram fare between the bus station and hostel).

So checking into the hostel, I asked for a place in a smaller dorm, making a guess that it would probably be empty, since most people opt for the cheaper, larger dorms. And I was right, and I had one glorious night where I coughed and sneezed and generally recovered to my heart’s content.

And the next day, I got out and had a look at Bratislava, and felt much better and more cheerful. Plus, I bought a massive packet of paracetamol for 40 Euro cents, and of there’s one thing that makes me happy, its cheap drugs.

I arrived back at the hostel about 10pm. And I had a room mate. She was a middle aged woman, and was unpacking her things on the bunk opposite mine. I walked in and said hello. She kind of grunted in return. No problems, I thought, and went about plugging my phone in to recharge, and generally getting ready to shower.

After about 15 minutes of silence, she spoke.

“They tell me you are Australian.” Indiscriminate European accent. Big on piercing, unsettling eye contact.

“Yep! Although, actually, I’ve been staying in England…” My enthusiasm for relating my life story and recent adventures was quickly dampened by her withering look.

“Australia. That is where the English sent their thieves and murderers, is it not?”

“Um… some of them, I guess.”

Really long silence.

“I do not want to have to call the police. But I will, if you make me.”

“Um….” I am genuinely confused at this point.

More silence. Unsettling eye contact.

Finally, I get it.

“Um, I’m not going to steal from you, if that’s what you mean. Is that what you mean?”

“Of course that is what I mean. Do not act dumb.”

I kind of tried to laugh at that, thinking it was some kind of elaborate joke. Yeah, it wasn’t.

First she tried to accuse me of stealing her coat hanger when she went to have a shower. Then she found her coat hanger, and for some really illogical reason, that made her trust me enough to talk at me for 2 long hours. During this monologue, she claimed the following:

*To be Slovakian (actually, she claimed to be Czechoslovakian, and I wasn’t about to argue the Velvet Divorce)
*To be Finnish
*To be Swedish
*To be a high stakes gambler
*To be a casino attendant
*To be a forensic psychologist
*To be a child psychologist
*To be a narcotics officer
*To be unemployed
*To have just moved to Bratislava
*To be very high up in the Bratislava police force
*To not trusting any police force anywhere in the world, as they have all been infiltrated by the mafia
*To be on a book tour promoting her work in child psychology
*That it was impossible that neither of my parents were English (“but you are white!”)
*That the English had caused World War 2
*That no Australians had fought in World War 2
*That there is a conspiracy of extremely wealthy people who run the world
*That the reason they run the world was because no one is made to study philosophy any more (actually, to be far, she could have been any number of opinion writers at that point)

She also kept asking me the time, saying her watch had been STOLEN (meaningful eye contact). I kept checking my phone to tell her the time. Then she unplugged my phone from the room’s only socket, saying I had been using it long enough. I tried to make the best of the situation, and asked why she didn’t use her phone to keep track of the time. She exploded at me, asking what sort of idiot thought phones displayed the time.

It was at this point that I made the decision to sleep with my keys in my hand.

In hindsight, I really should have asked to move rooms, but I was kind of… enthralled? And then it got kind of sad, when she mentioned that she had a son, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with her (I mean, who knows if its true, but it was still sad), and when she showed me a draft of the book she was “promoting”, which was an A4 display book with about 5 pages of pictures of sad looking children printed off the internet. And at that point I would have felt guilty for fleeing, so, I erm, stayed.

Funny Ha-Ha
Because of the exciting mix of delusion and paranoia in my dorm, I made an effort to spend as much time out on the streets, experiencing Bratislava, as humanly possible. And what Bratislava offered was a little bit less development then most European cities (not sold on kerbs and gutters, for instance), but a much better sense of humor (ARE YOU READING THIS, SWITZERLAND???).

For example, it has the most random statues I’ve ever seen. And the ugliest bridge. And the locals will point out the ugly bridge, and say, “isn’t it the ugliest bridge you’ve ever seen?” and not be embarrassed or apologetic but kind of impressed by the hideousness. And I went and saw an exhibition of suggestions for improving Bratislava, and someone had taken massive photos of important landmarks in Bratislava, and just Photoshop-ed in Bret and Jemiane from Flight of the Conchords, and it was strangely BRILLIANT.

Bratislava is also home to the Slovakian National Gallery, which is a bit if a non-event, as far as the art goes. But the curators obviously realize this, and instead just try to make you laugh. So, in the “Slovakian Gothic Art” hall they had all these religious paintings and panels that had been removed from Gothic-era churches, and then had a series of black canvases with little skulls. And you think, well, it looks like it was painted by a Cure fan as part of their Year 10 Visual Arts project, but it certainly is Gothic, and I’ve no doubt its from Slovakia, so, um, yeah, why shouldn’t it be in the Slovakian Gothic Art hall?

And then in the Baroque hall, there was a massive canvas showing St Peter at Heaven’s Gate, with cherubs and clouds bustling around, and next to it, someone had installed an indoor climbing wall, and labelled it “Stairway to Heaven”. And, once again, all I could think was BRILLIANT.

Basically, I think Bratislava may have always suffered from not being Vienna, and not being Prague. And I think that it does what many have decided to do when they’ve suddenly realized they’re not the most beautiful or most intelligent of the group – to be the funny, or quirky instead.
So, basically: Bratislava = Central Europe’s Jan Brady.

Vienna. Very Nice.

2009-02-05T14:09:00.000-08:00

Well. The desire to blog escaped me yet again, and I left you all stranded about 4 cities back. That kind of neglectful behaviour is precisely why I plan to never have children.

So, from Zurich, I headed to Vienna.

The coffee in Vienna is excellent. And that, really, is enough to make me love a city, especially after living in the United “We’re really more about tea, here. We’re not totally convinced that coffee isn’t still foreign muck” Kingdom.

I am so renaming this blog Foreign Muck.

Anyway.

Vienna is a grown-up place. Stuff has happened in Vienna. I wandered through the most picturesque flea market on a Saturday morning, and everything that the stalls were selling impressed me, just because of the age and… Europeanosity. There were gas masks that people must have needed during… some war (my European history remains as sharp as ever). There were boxes of black and white photos and postcards and cutlery and crockery and it seemed like it should all be in a museum rather than propped up on rickety table with badly behaved children running around.

Then I went to an actual museum, the fabulous MAK for applied and contemporary art, and it had even better stuff than the flea market. I’m about to give it roughly the highest compliment I can give a museum: it reminded me a lot of one of my favourite places on Earth, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It wasn’t quite that fabulous (didn’t do fashion), but man, I spent hours there. In fact, I stayed till closing time, which meant I didn’t get a chance to go to the Belvedere and see Klimt’s The Kiss (Mum, that's the painting that's repeated all over the furniture in the back bedroom of the Horizon display home. That's how I knew it was classy).

What really hooked me at the MAK was a temporary exhibition on the restoration of artwork and objects stolen by the Nazis to Jewish victims of the Holocaust and their heirs.

Much of the art had been acquired by the state-sponsored museums and galleries. I’m using the verb “acquired” very ambiguously; certainly, the Nazis knew exactly what they were doing, and meticulously catalogued everything they stole. After the war, however, its totally plausible to imagine curators and, in some cases, the public, growing to love the pieces without realizing their origins.

As well as examples of the art, the exhibit included video interviews with the people to whom the pieces had been returned. So many years after the end of the war in Europe, many if the recipients were two generations away from the Holocaust, and they spoke about how the return of these objects had restored their grandparents’ status to people who loved particular, specific and beautiful things, not just people who survived (or didn’t survive) the Holocaust.

So, of course, I stood in the middle of this ornate museum, in a carefully curated exhibition, surrounded by beautifully pulled together Austrians, crying my eyes out, wiping my snotty nose on my coat cuffs. And no, for those of those of you who have asked, I haven’t attracted a boyfriend on my European vacation. You’re shocked, I know.

But all the ideas suggested by that exhibition – about what we owe the past, and how objects and buildings and clothes shape our identities and relationships – are a perfect fit for Vienna, which seems kind of weighed down by this beautiful old town and everything that’s occurred in it.

Vienna had such an impression on me that I even…wait for it…enjoyed the opera. Those of you who have watched me sleep through an entire season of operas in Sydney will express some disbelief.

I really want to enjoy the opera. It seems like something a smart person would like, and I really aspire to being a smart person (almost as much as I aspire to be the sort of person who gets “too stressed out to eat”). But I find it repetitive and strangely disjointed and struggle to suspend my disbelief at some casting choices. And despite what Richard Gere says in Pretty Woman, I haven’t learnt to appreciate it either (that’s not actually the worst lie that Pretty Woman tells its audience, obviously. The whole “being a prostitute is a really good way to snag a billionaire” is probably quite a bit worse).

But I lined up for over an hour to get a standing rooms ticket to Boris Godunov at the Vienna State Opera House, mostly because at 4 Euros, the ticket was cheaper than paying for the official tour of the Opera House. And I loved it. It might have been that it was in Russian, so I could actually understand one word out of every 50 without looking at the surtitles. It might have been because the subject matter was very Macbeth Goes to Russia, and I have a soft spot for Macbeth. It might have been the absolutely splitting sinus headache I had (a result of being outside in temperatures hovering around the -5 mark for several weeks), so I had real empathy for every character and their pain.

So that was Vienna. Coffee pain museum history pretty opera coffee.

Switzerland: So I am not quite a Swiss Miss...

2009-01-20T11:58:00.000-08:00

I really try to keep the following quote at the forefront of my mind whenever possible:

...she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring...

No prizes for guessing which of my favourite songs that line also inspired.

Which makes me feel more than a little bit guilty about writing this post. On the bright side, if anyone is sick of the posts when I am all happy-happy-joy-joy-this-is the-most-awesome-place-ever, than this is the update for you.

I was in Switzerland mostly because the trip to Val d`Isere included a free transfer to Geneva Airport. And since I have always found free to be a compelling answer as any to the question why, I just kind of went with it.

So, on to Switzerland. Yeah. Your pulse is racing, I know.

Geneva
Geneva is a major diplomatic and NGO centre. Very important place. An International Canberra, if you will.

In addition to the UN, Red Cross, WHO and other really important...associations... Geneva is crowded with amazing furniture and interior decorating stores. Which should have been my first clue.

Now, I love a good homeware store as much as the next person (Hi Lana!), but I also have a theory about places with too many of these kind of establishments. I think its a pretty reliable indicator that the people who live in that place are more interested in making their private homes fabulous than making their public spaces exciting and vibrant and in any way, shape or form... fun. Which is awesome for them, and I really hope the people of Geneva are rocking out with the SingStar in their living rooms as we speak, but does not make for a great place to visit.

To be fair, I was there on a Sunday and Monday, which are never my most sparkling and witty days, but at least I will make an effort and wear interesting shoes or matching underwear or something, but no such effort from Geneva. On the Sunday, the only thing open was Starbucks. On the Monday, the only things open were Starbucks and the UN.

And the I was so psyched for the UN. I was totally going to see someone famous wandering the halls of power, and they were going to hear me ask the guide a really insightful and non-judgemental question, and I was going to be hired to, like, bring about an end to worldwide bad-stuff, and they were totally going to replace the Talking Dog outside the QVB with me and for generations to come Sydneysiders would meet at the Talking Penny before going out to dinner in the CBD, before realising that there isn`t actually anywhere both nice and affordable in the CBD to eat, and getting a bus to Newtown or Surry Hills or Potts Point or whatever.

I had a dream, man. And instead I went on an hour long tour of meeting halls. Really nice meeting halls, but meeting halls nonetheless.

Bern
The other thing about Switzerland? Really bloody expensive, so it drove me to new levels of backpacker stinginess. I was only in Bern for a few hours because it was about 20 Euros cheaper to buy a train ticket from Geneva to Bern, then a train ticket from Bern to Zurich, rather than buy a ticket straight from Geneva to Zurich.

And Bern, to be fair, was lovely. Very pretty. Lots of bridges. And a river, which explains the bridges.

I think its hard to get disappointed with a place when you`re only there for two hours.

Zurich
Zurich sounds really interesting, doesn`t it? Like, every single Zoe and Zach I know is interesting. And the zoo is interesting. As are zebras.

And Zurich did contain the most gorgeous church I have ever visited (and I`ve toured both Italy and South America, so I have been to some churches, girlfriend). The Fraumünster is really lovely. Massive yet intimate and very feminine. Plus, the Marc Chagall stained glass windows are just amazing and so different and generally awesome.

Aside from that, I got pretty bloody bored in Zurich. Plus, I was suffering from acute paranoia, because one of the girls in my dorm was studying to be a dentist. Our sink was actually in the bedroom part of the dorm, which meant that everyone could see and hear you brushing your teeth, and every time I brushed my teeth I felt as if I was being judged against a very professional criteria to which I could never possibly measure up. Very stressful situation, let me tell you.

It all got to me on the last day. I was wandering around a university campus when I saw a sign advertising some free museums. Great, I thought. Free heating and captions to tell me what to think. I am so there!

One of the museums was being advertised with a man wearing one of those pointy beak-like mask things that doctors used to wear during the Black Death (I think), and its name was prefixed with `Medi` (the rest was in German, which, despite 3 years of German in High School, I do not speak or understand at all. Cheers, NSW education system!). Terrific, I thought. A medieval museum! Maybe there will be knights! Courtly love! Right up my alley!

Erm, so it turned out to be a Medical History Museum. I only caught on to this after viewing the `Obstetrics Instruments Through the Ages` exhibit. After which I needed a whisky. Sitting down. With my legs firmly crossed.

So, to sum up: I would never say don`t go to Switzerland. I would, however, happily say don`t go to Switzerland without a very good book.

Val d'Isere - Because there's a little bit of Eurotrash in everyone.

2009-01-18T05:04:00.000-08:00

OK, first up, anything I write about Val d'Isere is going to be tempered by this news story. I almost fell of my chair when I read the story, because I always felt so completely safe in Val d'Isere - once I was off the slopes, the only thing I really feared was my credit card bill after running out of Euros and deciding it was cool to put a round on my MasterCard. I am a very blessed girl who was lucky enough to be travelling with people who always made sure I got home safely every night, basically.

So, three days into 2009 I escaped Oxford under the cover of darkness for a week of skiing in Val d'Isere, a lovely, very posh ski resort in the French Alps.

I'd had the trip planned for ages - before I left Sydney, even. I went with a really old friend from the 'Wood (OK, I'll begrudgingly admit that no one has ever referred to Castlewood Estate - the part of Castle Hill I grew up in - as the 'Wood, but they totally should!), Sam, and her fiancee, who happens to be British, and his brother and a friend of theirs.

My time in Val d'Isere was a time of learning. For instance, I learnt the following:

*I'm a dreadful, no good, very bad skier - this all centres around my fear of going downhill. Its a slightly restrictive fear, I'll admit, but also a totally rational one. Nobody ever hurt themselves climbing up a hill, did they (rhetorical, no comments about Everest mountaineers, thank you very much)?

This all makes for a very slow skier who somehow manages to hunch over (so it hurts less when I fall forward) and lean back (so it hurts less when I fall backwards) concurrently. Imagine Quasimodo refracted through Picasso's cubist period, and you're getting there.

Luckily I have a lifetime's experience of being absolutely terrible at sports (netball, jazz ballet, touch football, squash, kickboxing, er, handwriting), so I was quite content to be really bad at skiing.

Although they did always ask me to be the anchor of the tug-of-war team in primary school. Which really involves:

A) Being heavy
B) Standing still
C) Resisiting momentum

Its a sport designed for me, really.

* 10 shots of Jaegermeister for 15 Euros might seem like an excellent investment now, but probably won't seem as sensible tomorrow morning when you're on the ski life at 9am.

* I could really happily live on French bread and cheese - OMG, the food. The food. THE FOOD! We were staying at a UCPA Lodge (somewhere between a hostel and a school camp venue, except, like, clean), and all meals are included. I was wary of this before we arrived (remembering scullery duties at Year 5 camp after casserole and strawberry mousse... oh, the horror) but I should have trusuted the French. Because the French rock the kitchen kazbah.

Every lunch and dinner there'd be a red meat and chicken/fish option, plus a salad bar and soup and potato dish and a self serve ice cream bar with waffle cones...

And the cheese and the bread. Oh, the cheese and the bread. Breakfast lunch and dinner there was a never-ending table of crusty baguettes and massive circles of different cheeses (blues, bries, 'berts...). And every was great, and fresh, and plentiful...

Does anyone know why we just don't all eat French bread all the time? Since it is so obviously superior to any other kind of bread on earth?

Basically - I'll give the French a pass on the supposed arrogance, since, well, they are better than us. Arrogant away, Frenchies... just keep baking.

* Every nationality on Earth can speak a second language, except those who speak English as their first language - and its embarassing. In Val d'Isere, the ski instructor, the bar staff, even the dish washer at the hotel all spoke perfect English (in addition to their native French). It just makes me feel so dumb and isolationist.

I saw the new Woody Allen movie, Vicky Christina Barcelona (and, oh man, some of the lines about white middle class girls going backpacking and trying to discover what their cultural contribution should be cut very close to the bone... very Stuff White People Like) the other day.

One of the characters, a poet, refuses to learn to speak any language other than Spanish because he is afriad that it will contaminate his relationship with the toold of his work.

Ah, I thought. Maybe that's why native English speakers rarely learn a second language.

Then I reemebered that we're the same liguistic group to give the world such charming phrases such as "wife basher" for a sleeveless t-shirt, and I decided that in fact it could just be pure laziness.

Anyway, I'm now mucking about Europe for a few weeks before trying to tackle the terrible no good UK job market. Wish me luck!

Oxford for Dummies (also known as "professionals")

2009-01-10T12:12:00.000-08:00

So this whole thing, you see, happened, where I had a full time job in Oxford that involved me staring at a computer screen typing all day. It made staring at a computer and typing all night seem fairly unappealling. So this blog got a teensy bit abandoned. Oops.

But now my contract has finished, and I've left Oxford (for the time being, at least). Which means I finally feel ready to update here about my first three months in the UK (yes, it really has been that long).

Oxford was fantastic. Social. Busy. Tipsy. The highlights package includes:

* Attending guest dinners in the dining halls of two different colleges (not sure what a college is, or how it relates to the University proper? Me neither! The wiki page is pretty good on the topic).

The locations were pure Harry Potter. The conduct and dress code begins all Oscar Wilde: Collected Works (ooh! We're all terribly sophisticated and knowing and well-dressed! Let us flirt and display our wit and eat rabbit). The conduct and dress code slowly devolves into Oscar Wilde: The Actual Life, meaning there's lots of debauchery and intrigue and behaviour that risks imprisonment. Good times, basically.

* Cheesy Christmas clubbing until the lights were turned back on at closing time. I told Shelley that my Christmas wish was to dance to Wham's Last Christmas as many times as possible. Wish granted.

* Working at an office located about 10 miles out of Oxford in a genuine English village. I walked down a country lane to work every morning, and I used to pretend that I was a Bennet sister walking to Meryton to hear the latest news about the officers of the regiment. Because I'm that cool, obviously. Incidentally, I read Mansfield Park again recently (50 pence at Oxfam). Was Fanny Price always so dull and annoying? And does anyone else wish that Austen had written the novel about Mary Crawford instead?

* Christmas in London and New Year in Coventry. Being away from the people you love over the festive season sucks. What doesn't suck, though, is how the isolation makes you seek out other people stranded on the same cold island. People are better and more interesting and generous than Miranda Devine or Ray Hadley or Today Tonight would have you believe.

Also, Christmas Night in London turned into Boxing Day sales at Selfridges, which turned into a fabulous jacket that Santa bought me for Christmas. Thanks Mummy and Daddy!

* Working weekends at Marks & Spencer. When I quit my last job in a shop, I was all Scarlett O'Hara in the vegetable patch at Tara, swearing that, "With God as my Witness, I'll never work retail again".

But then a greedy desire to earn as many pounds as possible hit, so I applied for a job at M&S, which is a bit of an institution in the UK. And I loved (almost) every second of it. I know its a cliche, but British people really are very polite, and many seem to have a slightly insane amount of respect for M&S and its employees. As such, I was subjected to none of the fun abuse and condescension I've experienced working retail in the past (yes, I'm looking at you, customers of Castle Towers).

Things I didn't love:
* Being the only housemate who felt compelled to clean the (shared) bathroom. House was fine, and housemates were... lovely in most cases and tolerable in others, but, dude, seriously, our shower shouldn't look like a petri dish growing anti-biotics.

And to the members of my family who are amused at the thought of me cleaning, I will send home the pants I ruined with bleach as proof. So there.

* The gym. I really miss C2K. I really miss RPM.I really miss instructors who don't say things at the end of a Body Attack class like, "now I want everyone to point to someone who really inspired them with their efforts tonight". Needless to say, I. Did. Not. Point. I did almost throw up, though.

I was surprised at the dire gym state, though, because the streets of Oxford are riddled with joggers and runners 24 hours a day, no matter what the temperature. I guess its just a town of driven and successful people, and they apply the same ethics to each aspect of their lives. Or maybe they just like to parade around in lycra tights. I know that's why I run.

* Working seven days a week. Felt great for the first month, then I just started to fantasise about sleeping in incessantly. Between Christmas and New Year I spent on average 12 hours a day in bed, just catching up on sleep. Woohoo, the wild life of a twenty something living it up on a working holiday.

I'm travelling again now, which means I will be updating the blog again regularly. At least, that's the plan. We'll see.

South America Photo Post 2 - Pretty Places & Wonderlands

2008-10-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

In order to be granted a UK Working Holiday Visa, in addition to paying an exorbitant “processing fee” (why are processed foods so cheap yet processed paperwork is so much?), you also have to supply biometric data. This isn’t quite as Gattica as it sounds. Firstly, in this instance, your biometric data is just fingerprints and a photo. Secondly, neither Jude Law nor Ethan Hawke are involved in any way shape or form.

You know, Ethan Hawke is one of those movie stars who I always think I’m in love with, and then I see him in a movie and he’s just really greasy and intense and I just want him to back off and shower. Very much an Intense!Boy!In!Drama!Class!Vibe.

Anyway, in Sydney, you have to go to the UK Consulate just behind Customs House to have your data acquired. I went the day after my birthday, and even though that’s the dead of winter, the weather was glorious – crisp and blue, with sun but no burning.

Because the 610 City bus from Castle Hill is a free spirit who refuses to run to anything as conventional as a timetable, I was over an hour early, and took the opportunity to walk along the Quay and around the Opera House. Just like the song, the Manly ferry was making its way to Circular Quay, and it was also EXACTLY like that Bold and the Beautiful special where Ridge and Brooke and Rick and Phoebe came to Sydney only for Brooke to go running back to LA (and Nick) after Ridge (Brooke’s fiancée and Nick’s half brother) punched Rick (Brooke’s son) out when he caught him kissing Phoebe (Ridge’s daughter, who was 16 at the time). Considering Ridge once kissed Bridget (Brooke’s daughter, Rick’s sister and someone who at various times had been considered both Ridge’s half-sister and HIS DAUGHTER!!!), some of us thought that was a tad hypocritical, but I digress…

The Harbour is so beautiful, and its mine. A picture perfect postcard space where I've dressed up as a convict, danced through too many cruises, drunk too much wine... When I had to catch the bus over the Bridge into uni nearly everyday, I used to love that moment when everybody – even the most jaded of commuters, even on the 5.30am bus – would put down their magazines or textbooks or Harry Potter or whatever and turn to look out over the water. You just can’t get complacent about my city’s beautiful centrepiece. To paraphrase and misinterpret New Order, every time I think of it or see it or smell it, I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue.

So, leaving my hometown go look at other beautiful spaces felt a bit redundant, especially with it showing off like it was that gorgeous July morning. I felt a little like silly Scarlett O’Hara, running after Ashley Wilkes (yuck) when she had Rhett Butler (sha-zam!) in love with her.

But I guess I do have a cheating heart, because I fell head over heels with another Harbour City within my first week in South America. Valparaiso, Chile, was like the Missoni scarf city - all colours crammed together in ways that conservatives like me would never predict or imagine. The picture below is from this neighbourhood that was covered in murals - paint-splattered footpaths included.

From adultery to perfectly pure bridal white (covering a hot and fiery volcano, which is probably what most grooms want the bridal veil to be concealing, come to think of it) in Pucon. A lot of people seemed to see this one on Facebook, and a few commented on how happy I look. I was happy. I'm not complex enough to be in the midst of all that dumb, useless beauty and not feel happy.

Funnily enough, as I'm posting this, White Wedding by Billy Idol just came up on iTunes. Golly I love a well-suited soundtrack.

I was drunkenly stumbling home through Oxford the other day, and someone pointed out the pub where C.S. Lewis and Tolkein used to drink together (one day, my beloved girlies, people will pass Bar Broadway or Kuletos and speak of us in the same hushed tones...or step over our age and alcohol-ridden bodies as we beg to be allowed in for just one more round of two-for-one cocktails. It'll be either fame or shame, of this I'm convinced). Anyway, I liked finding out that they knew each other, because it makes it apt that I can't decide whether the landscapes along my trek to Macchu Piccu are more Narnia or Middle Earth.

I threw a most unattractive tantrum just after taking the photo of the rail line - I'd taken great pride in being the fastest "non-professional" on the trek (we grade-junkies will find ways to rank ourselves relative to our peers even in the Peruvian countryside), and the guide had said that I should be able to finish the trek, and walk into Aguas Calientes, in about 3 hours. 3 hours and 5 minutes later I was still walking, an accident of timing I chose to interpret as a PERSONAL FAILURE, and demanded the guide to tell me why I SUCKED SO MUCH.

Poor thing. He totally wasn't getting paid enough to deal with post-Bridget-Jones-control-freak-spinsters, especially those in the throes of Diet Coke withdrawl.

Anyway, it was quite appropriate that I was acting like a beast, because I looked, frankly, like shit, as evidenced below.

Before anyone (ie, my big brother) feels the need to point it out, yes, I know the horse is more attractive than me. I look very...Germanically well-fed, don't I? Or maybe like a Maths teacher at an Athletics Carnival?

I'm not a huge fan of asking the locals to pose for photos, but I became obsessed with the fabulous clothes worn in Lake Titicaca... I tried everywhere (well, 3 shops) to buy a heavy velvet bell skirt like the lady is wearing here with no luck. And what did I see today but Net-A-Porter announce that Peruvian Peasant Couture is in?

I'm alternating between feeling smug that I was right, and bitter that I don't get to drape myself in my right-ness.

No photos of the Iguazu Falls; not because I didn't take any (oh, don't you worry, I did), but because none of my photos get anywhere near to communicating the awesome. You really need sound to get it. Actually, what you really need is a plane ticket to Iguazu Falls.

So finally (because I took two photos in Argentina, and one is of the street where I was staying so I had a chance in hell of recognizing it later that night - the secret to being a recurring drunken floozy is forward planning), I'll leave you with Rio, which, in this single photo, somehow manages to be a metropolis, a slum, an oasis and a church. All whilst being belted by a torrential downpour.

But I've always believed in the gospel according to Kate Bush, and as she tells us (in a tale repeated by Utah Saints), "Every time it rains...I just know that something good is gonna happen".

South America Photo Post 1 - Jesus, Mary and Joe

2008-10-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

I'd like to be an arty photographer type. I really would. I've tried, several times in fact, each effort accessorized by a slightly more expensive camera, but I have eventually come to accept that I am not one of life's photo takers. I think it all relates to the fact that my camera is usually carried around in one of my fabulous yet difficult to open/close/find handbags, and, frankly, I can't be arsed.

As such, I took less than 100 photos in South America, and none of them are very good. And yet, in the grand tradition of holiday photos everywhere, I'm still going to inflict some on you.

No Kim, I Said a Statue of Baby Jesus!
I love a giant Jesus (or another Member of The Family) looking down over a city. I love them from far away, when I’m walking through the city, and it feels as if Their eyes are on me, like a kind of biblical Jiminy Cricket.

And then up close, They’re so massive and visually arresting, but the feeling of being watched disappears, and They go back to being big, beautiful hunks of white stone.

Basically, I'll always open the camera case for a giant Jesus. Here a selection of my favourites.

Mary was my homegirl in Santiago de Chile. Although I'm glad its Stone Mary, and not fleshy and rapidly-dividing-celly humans that live so close to all the phone antennas.

Arica Jesus was a bit different to all the others, in that he didn't face the town - he looked out over the ocean instead. The locals seemed to feel the snub, and when I climbed up to sit with Him a while, I had Him all to myself. In other words (and yes, I'm going there) He was My Own Personal Jesus.

Cuzco Jesus (that's Him in the middle) faraway.....

...so close!

And finally, the Messiah of Jesus Statues...Rio.

I'll end this post with a photo of another great European import into South America, Joe, and his lovely team (and me, because... I can?).

This photo was taken in a churrascaria, where the waiters constantly bring around different cuts of freshly cooked meat and carve it straight onto your plate. And what plates they are... cow print, you'll notice, in case you suddenly forget you're in the Beef Palace and feel an urge to order some tofu.

More photos and a "Where is She Now?" post coming soon!

Week 5: When My Baby Smiles at Me I Go to...Oxford

2008-09-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't suspended my campaign (bit of political humour there for you..GEDDIT??!!!) to bore you all useless with my burblings. This entry is probably a bit baguer than usual, though...I'm at the point now where I can't believe I was ever actually in South America, so quickly does a new environment feel like forever to me. I'm easy like Sunday morning when it comes to new locales.

Since my last post, I've spent several days in Rio de Janiero and Buenos Aires. On Monday, I flew into London, then caught the coach straight down to Oxford, where I've been staying with my friend Shelley, who is genius enough to be completing her PHD here.

Things I've Loved
The Terrible Weather in Rio - I ended up having about two and a half days in Rio, which is notorious for its beauty and hot climate. I waxed things in anticipation of beachy days, people. WAXED.

Of course, the weather was absolute crap. Rainy, foggy, cloudy and even a little bit stormy. The beach was deserted. No renting beach chairs, no fresh fruit or cocktail vendors wandering between sunbathers, just a charlatan offering crappy umbrellas to the drenched tourists for $US30 a pop.

What this meant, however, is that I was forced to look at the rest of Rio. And I've some to the highly sophisticated decision that if Rio was a celebrity couple, it'd be Posh & Becks...everything looks perfect and a bit bland, almost, until it opens its mouth and you hear just how rough it really is.

Rio contains REALLY POSH beach towns like Copacabana and Impanema (my hostel in Impanema charges about $US500 a week for a dorm bed during Carnivale... and its nice, but its still a hostel. I mean, you wouldn't risk showering without your thongs on), the notorious favela slum areas and a massive, interesting and important City Centre. And you couldn't even say its divided into these different areas...they all mix into each other and its confusing but fascinating. Its the only place where people recognized that my handbag was Dior (yes, I am cheerfully stupid enough to take Dior backpacking), and also the only place I really felt intimidated by thieves and muggers and stuff.

Also (and I'm a native Sydneysider, so I like to think I know about cities built in spunky locations...) Rio was quite easily the most naturally beautiful place I visited in South America (and yep, I'm including Iguazu in that calculation). It all culminates in the Sugarloaf (and yes, I rode the cable car, and its was just like a James Bond movie!), from where I stared across at Christ the Redeemer, and saw Him (should I use a capital when referring to a statue of Jesus? Can someone more up on theologic grammar help a lapsed Anglican out?) emerging from the fog. It was pretty amazing, all told.

Buenos Aires - Yeah, everyone raves about BA (sorry, it'll be Jo'burg next, I know ), but, bloody hell, it is fabulous. Like Europe, only fun.

If Rio is where Nature made things beautiful, then BA is where Humanity has done some of its best work. I gave up on taking photos of the beautiful buildings because I don't have enough space on my memory card to do the architecture justice. There's grand palace-like structures, but also gorgeous, small-scale neighbourhoods with tree-lined avenues and a bar on every corner.

I kind of feel like a fraud writing about BA. I didn't even start to get a handle on the place. It's too complex and too closed off (only place in South America where no one approaches you to get in their cab... if you want to get into their cab, then you will ask politely and maybe, just maybe, they'll take you where you want to go...all terribly Parisian). I do know that I want to try and get a handle on it though, and am determined to go back with better (OK, some) Spanish in the next 12 months.

Being Employed - I start work in the British office of my old Sydney work on Monday. Feels very good to be contributing to the global economy again... just when it all slides into the toilet. I swear it wasn't my fault.

Things I Haven't Loved
Foreign Queens - I had the chance to see drag shows (you can take the hag out of Sydney...) in Rio and Buenos Aires on consecutive nights, and they just don't live up to Sydney standards. I had high hopes for Rio, too, with the whole Carnivale influence, but, nope. Just some dude dressed in a white cap and midriff top miming along to what I suspect was a Whitney Houston album track. Very Pre-Priscilla

Leaving a Club at 3.30am, Arriving Back at the Hostel At 4am, Catching a Taxi to the Airport for an International Flight at 4.30am, and Getting on the Place at 7am, all Whilst Drunk - Yeah, won't be doing that again. Arrived in BA and was, um, not in the right mood for appreciating its beauty, I think we can safely say.

And I'm going to leave this entry here, because I don't have it in me to sum up South America right now, but don't dare leave the blog un-updated another day. I'm in a position now where I can start uploading photos and stuff, so I'll do a summing up entry in the next few days.

Although trying to a summing up entry on South America is a bit like going to an RSL Smorgasboard and putting roast beef, spring rolls, coleslaw and eggplant parmigiana on the same plate, and thinking you have international cuisine covered.

Mmmm, coleslaw.

Interlude - Well, Hello, Old Friend

2008-09-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

Just arrived in Buenos Aires, and I am staying in a fancy schmancy hotel that a much loved family member is paying for. Among the hotel´s many fine features is A MAC as the guest computer. Wanna know how excited I was to be using my platform of choice?

THIS EXCITED!!!

By golly, I am quite the geek, aren´t I?

Week 4: Quality Time with Papa Giuseppe

2008-09-16T07:42:00.000-07:00

Sorry, big gaps between posts, I know, but I've been a busy little tourist-y bee.

Since I last left you all panting for my next utterance, I've left Cordoba and coached it north to the Argentinean side of Iguazu Falls, then bussed it across the border to the Brazilian side of the Falls, then coached it up to Sao Paulo, where Joe, who used to feed me lots of Tim Tams in exchange for very little work at ADI Sydney, is now running ADI Brasil, and agreed to have me as his houseguest.

Things I've Loved
My Nephew Toby Coming Through His Surgery OK - Yep, Tobes (minus his tonsils) is already back to living the Freudian dream, trying to figure out how to climb back into his mother's womb and submitting to bullying by his not-quite-one-year-old brother.

Family members, does anyone think that Tobes looks just like Mum in this photo?

Iguazu Falls - You know, I never really got National Geographic or Animal Planet (or McLeod's Daughters, for that matter, but that's another rant for another time...) or nature, generally, but I totally got these waterfalls. They're just so big and powerful and uncontrollable and this is beginning to sound a little bit like bad erotic fiction, but you get my drift.

Crossing from Argentina into Brasil in a 50c Public Bus - It still blows my little island-nation-bred mind that people can live across the road from each other AND YET THEY LIVE IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, pay different tax rates, vote in different elections, and in this case, speak different languages.

Its as if Kellyville was a different country to Castle Hill. Which, hey, might be something worth looking into, especially if we can make sure they realise its an EXILE situation...

Joe - What follows is a list of unbelievably nice things Joe did for me during the three days I stayed with him:

Picked me up from the bus station (usually, I am greeted only by the stench of drying urnine).

Gave up his bed for me, and slept on the couch for three nights.

Fed me. Constantly. The highlights included two different "pay by the kilo" restaurants (like Sizzler, except they weigh your plate once you've filled it... a bit like a Weight Watcher's Meeting in reverse) and a ChurraSomethingRia, where waiters bring around big slabs of meat and you point out the bits you want them to cut off. The meat, not the waiters.

Watered me. Constantly.

Took me around and showed me his new town, Sao Paulo, which is lovely and MASSIVE and has an amazing museum and park and both awesome and hideous ugly buildings and very cool shops and is serious yet fun and yeah. I liked it.

Introduced me to ADI Brasil, who are all lovely and welcoming and helpful and amazingly patient with this little non-Portuguese speaker. Jason, in particular, saved me about $40 by finding out the right bus to get me to the hostel from the bus station.

Made it possible for me to speak to my sister and my Nerise, both of whom I miss mightily.

Made me fresh fruit salad two mornings in a row. Mum, basically, you're on notice.

It was just so lovely to see him, the being treated like a princess was an unexpected bonus.

Melissa Shoes - Joe left me alone for half an hour, and I somehow managed to buy two pairs. A love of shoes can surmount any language barrier.

Things I Haven't Loved
The Bus Between Iguazu Falls and Sao Paulo - Frequented by black market smugglers from Paraguay, apparently, so they make you unpack all your hand luggage before getting on the bus.

This, I could cope with (what do I have to hide past a sack of dirty underwear and an unhealthy obsession with chewing gum?), but, in the absence of onboard entertainment, my seat mate decided to listen to Bon Jovi's Always over and over and over again through her mobile phone. Without using headphones. She started about 10 hours into the 16 hour trip. Then someone behind her started to sing along, but couldn't actually speak English, so was just kind of emitting a close approximation to the actual syllables. Which may not be so removed from Jon Bon Jovi's actual vocal stylings, but. Still.

Can you see the crazy deranged look on my face when I got off the bus? CAN YOU???

The Date - Today's Tuesday, and I leave Buenos Aires for Heathrow on Sunday morning.

Five weeks on my own, on a continent where I don't speak the language, sounded like such a long time before I actually got here. And now (and you can hear Bon Jovi warming up in the background, can't you?) I can only wish for more time. Or more, accurately, more money to buy more time. Those of you pointing out that I could make this happen by buying fewer shoes will be roundly ignored, mmkay?

Anyhoo, I'm now the Girl in Impanema, where I'm staying until Thursday morning, when I catch a plane down to Buenos Aires. No more planning or comparing bus routes or prices or anything left to do.

Except, like, get a job. Hmmm.

Week 3.5 - Eating the Floor in Argentina

2008-09-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

Well. Interesting times. I´m over half way through my South American adventure, and I think I hit a bit of a wall this week... a little bit exhausted and sick of my own company (seriously, 90% of my thoughts are about shoes. Exactly how did I get so superficial? I blame the parents!). Plus, I had one total disaster, which I´ll detail below.

At the same time, though, it was a fantastic week for seeing how quickly my mood and the situation can improve by just walking around a corner. Over the past few days, I´ve visited the islands of Lake Titicaca, then travelled from Peru to Cordoba, Argentina. Geographically, they´re fairly close, but they´re VERY different places: Lake Titicaca and its surrounds are obsessed with recreating (and marketing) the way indigenous groups have lived in the area since before Christ, whilst Cordoba is, ahem, the cultural capital of South America in a very European, modern sense of the word.

Overall, I think I had a much better week than Morris Iemma.

Things I Have Loved
The Plazas of South American Cities and Towns - OK, be prepared to be shocked. Outside of Sydney, people actually leave their houses on the weekends. And not just to go to the shops. They gather in classically beautiful plazas near their houses and picnic and watch performances and even protest.

Walking back to my hostel this evening, I kept coming upon gatherings of people in the central spaces. It was just...heartwarming. People were chatting and drinking coffee and watching their kids play and just hanging out. Its not like the weather was great (very similar to Sydney right now). I got the feeling it could have been a Sunday evening in the dead of Winter and just as many groups would have been out and about.

In one case, there were heaps of people gathered around watching a free acrobatic show. It had none of that urgent Sydney Festival, "don´t look away...you might miss some CULTURE" vibe to it. What I was probably most impressed with was the fact that nobody was drinking, or if they were, they weren´t wandering the streets looking for a convenient rubbish bin to undigest the 2 bottles of sav blanc they´d polished off in an hour and a half into.

Erm, not that I´ve ever done anything like that.

Cordoba - OK, I think a title like, "cultural capital of South America" is as ridiculously wanky as the next person, but I can kind of see how they got it. They have FANTASTIC museums (saw an amazing Picasso exhibition FOR FREE yesterday) and have done the most amazing job of blending colonial and contemporary architecture. Its not a really photogenic city, but it has a confidence and a style that´s quite enthralling.

Che Guevera - Yes, 3 weeks in Cuba, or as I like to call it, Che!Land, did not quench my thirst for all things hunky-revolutionary. Today I went to a town called Alta Grazia, about 35 kms from Cordoba, where Che lived for a few years growing up.

After getting hopelessly lost for about an hour (would have bought a map, except I don´t know the Spanish for the following words: Could. I. Please. Buy. A. Map. Of. The. Town.) I finally stumbled upon the Museo de Che, which has been curated in a house his family lived in for approximately three years (a leeeedle bit of a tenuous link, I would have thought, but anyhoo...).

They had this hilarious statue out the front of LittleBoy!Che sitting on the front porch railing. Even better, inside, there were pictures of Fidel Castro visiting the museum, and somehow, someone had talked him into sitting next to the sculpture with his arm around LittleBoy!Che.

I mean, it was Fidel Castro, one of the world´s most feared and enigmatic political leaders, hamming it up for the cameras with the world´s least poignant Che!Reproduction.

Of course, the ridiculous is always tempered with the sublime, and they also had massive blow up potraits of Che, and, oh my, I´m still struck by how unbelievably good looking and charismatic he was. They also had photos of him with both his wives, and these poor women, both fascinating, revolutionary thinkers in their own right, they just both look so nervous, like they spent every hour of every day looking over their shoulders at the hoards of people who wanted and got a piece of their husband.

The moral of the story, then, is to only marry ugly people.

Things I Haven´t Loved
Lake Titicaca - Eh, it was OK. It was... a lake. With boats. And islanders who live as they have for thousands of years. Except, presumedly, there was less, like, electricity and tourism and fewer Chinese restaurants and American Express Accepted signs in 1000AD.

Richard Gere in I´m Not There - I was at a bit of a loose end after the museums closed and before the restaurants opened on Friday night, and saw that one of the little arthouse cinemas was showing this (in Engliah, with Spanish subtitles). It´s not a great movie, but it is really interesting to look at. Plus, the cinema reminded me a lot of the Roxy in Parramatta, before it turned into R&B!Mega!Nite!Club! (sponsored by Jaegermeister).

But, really, how does Richard Gere have a film career? I mean, he seems like a lovely person in that credit card ad with the birds being released, and I´ve seen Pretty Woman as many times as the next woman, but he really. Cannot. Act.

My Big Disaster - After the movie, I decided to eat at Argentina´s largest all-you-can-eat restaurant, simply because I´m just not strong enough to walk away from a tagline like Argentina´s Largest All-You-Can-Eat Restaurant. It was... exactly what you´d expect, really. Like Sizzler with more people speaking Spanish (and no cheese bread).

I hadn´t eaten all day, so I absolutely pigged out. There was potato bake and eggplant parmagiana and caramel tart and lemon meringue pie and chocolate mousse and white chocolate mousse and chocolate and white chocolate mousse swirled together in my custom tribute to Cadbury´s fine Marble chocolate bars and pastries and fried fish (went back to savoury after desserts) and I was just a pig at the trough, basically.

I also hadn´t slept the night before, having been in airport hell (see below), and had drunk maybe one Coke Zero and a glass of water.

Anyway, I got up to leave, and immediately felt light-headed. I was fiddling with my bag and wallet, so when I stumbled, my hands got caught in the straps, and I couldn´t use them to break my fall.

I hit the tiled floor chin first. I heard a crack, and tasted blood, and my first though was, "Oh no! I´m going to be a new addition to The Big Book of British Smiles!"

The entire restaurant went deathly silent (and, remember, this is a MASSIVE restaurant... capacity of maybe 700 people, and it was full), and the every waitperson in the place came rushing over. When I opened my mouth to speak, firstly, I remembered that I don´t speak Spanish, and secondly, blood came pouring out.

The goods news is that I didn´t lose or chip any of my teeth (defintely heard a crack though, which worries me... is there such thing as Delayed Onset Tooth Breakage?). I did, however, put my teeth through my bottom lip, with is now very Jolie-like in its swelling.

More than anything, I humilated and upset myself. Luckily, there was a Peace Corps group at a nearby table who spoke both English and Spanish and get me in a taxi back to the hostel.

The upside is that I´m now very popular at the hostel, as people from every land on Earth (well, Germany and the UK) ask me to pull down my bottom lip so they can see the holes. Which you´d think would be at least kind of sexy, but, yeah, no.

Air Travel - Rather than blame the above incident on my own inability to listen and respond to my body, I´m choosing to blame it on the RIDICULOUS air travel I was subjected to the night before. Over 20 hours and four different flights to travel around 1500 kms.

Specific things I hate about air travel include: customs; the smell of reheated food in a confined space; having to squeeze my toothpaste, moisturiser and lip balm into a tiny clear plastic bag; airport taxes; transfers; waiting for baggage (like waiting for exam results) and last, but certainly not least, OTHER PASSENGERS. Just as a hint, Australian man making me shirk from my own nationality: shouting, "Speak English" at the prerecorded safety message is unlikely to provide you with the desired reult, mmmkay?

Tomorrow, I begin my ascent towards Joe in Sao Paulo, with a 22 hour bus ride to Iguazu Falls on the Argentina/Brasil/Paraguay boarder. By golly, I hope there´s bingo.

Week 3 (kind of) -Trekking and Macchu Pichu

2008-09-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

Oooh, we´ve hit tourist country now. Peru is crawling with them; Lonely Planet clutched in hand, ethnic scarf artistically tied around neck, expression of permanent frustration plastered across face.

As a side note, it always puzzles me when people ask if I mind traveling alone. I mean, do they look at the couples who are obviously traveling together? One of them (usually, I regret to say, the female half) is always mid- or post-tantrum, and the other half is always desperately trying to make amends for a real or perceived slight, suggesting, "sitting down for a cool drink or something to eat.." It´s like The Amazing Race: The Live Extravaganza!.

I´ve spent the last five days or so on this trek. Basically, we drove for one day to a first town of ancient Inka ruins, then walked for three days to a second town of ancient nInka ruins, which we visited on the fifth day. The general theme was, "Inka", with a strong secondary theme of, "outdoor toilet".

Things I Loved:
The Shower At The End - A strange place to begin, I know, but, oh my, it was awesome. There was hot water and dissolving dirt and Pantene and happiness.

Walking Along Railway Tracks - We followed the train line into Aguas Caliente, the town closest to Machu Picchu (absolute hole, for those wondering). It was such a cinematic landscape, and such a cinematic activity. I spent the whole time humming Stand By Me to myself.

The Horsepeople - We had three horses and a token mule that carried around our food and tents. The horses were accompanied by two handlers.

Firsty, the lady horseperson was the boss (South America has still got some serious patriachy going on), and secondly, her name was Lucretia. Like something out of a romance novel. Hers was the only support team member name I could remember, embarassingly enough.

Thirdly, our horsepeople, and rural Peruvians in general, are fit. We´d start walking at least an hour before them, and within the second hour, they´d be overtaking us, not a puff to be heard, offering to carry our teensy tiny backpacks for us, as they lead a stubborn horse (or token mule) up and down mountains by a rope.

The trail is actually still used by local farmers to travel from village to village (and, more importantly, market to market). At one point, a lady passed us with a child about Toby´s side tied across her back, leading a mule packed full of produce. I will never feel sorry for any yummy mummy struggling to get her pram out off the back of her 4 wheel drive in the Castle Towers carpark ever again (not that I ever did feel sorry for that particular part of the species, but you get my point).

I´ve been feeling pretty smug about my own level of fitness since the City 2 Surf. No more. I am not fit to wear the same brand of heart rate monitor as these people. Respekt.

Thing I Didn´t Love
The Worts Covering the Assistant Cook´s Hands As He Served My Food - Mmmm, Herpes. Yummy!

And yes, there was a cook, and the food was faultless. Two courses at every meal and we were woken each morning with hot Milo thrust through the door of our tents. It was like having a group of young male Peruvian mummies.

The Whole Toilet Situation - There comes a point in every girl´s life where she must decide if she´s willing to let another human being carry her...business... around in a plastic bag.

I´m most ashamed of what my decision was. Let´s never speak of it again.

Machu Picchu
I spent yesterday at Machu Picchu. It was... big. And old. Full of ruins. Dusty. Hot.

I´m very glad I went. Its not the sort of place you´d ever regret visiting, but I know I didn´t get as much out of it as other people do. It just feels so removed from people and events and actual stuff. I tried to walk around and imagine what it would have been like to live in that place when there were roofs and bustling Inkas and gold statuettes and pottery everywhere, but I just can´t get into it.

What I did love was watching the tourists. Oh, how I love tourists (and yes, I include myself in that patronising affection).

Machu Picchu seems to attract an international parade of Type A personalities. The kind of people who like to make a list and meet objectives. The Machu Picchu objective list would seem to be:
A. Be first in line to see ruins.
B. If not first in line to see ruins, then constantly walk to the front of the line, firstly to ascertain who these people who beat them to the front of the line were and assess their weaknesses for future lines (and there will be many Machu Picchu lines) and secondly to see if they can,"sort out what the hold-up is". Even when there is no hold-up. Especially if they don´t speak Spanish.
C. Wear clothes that tell you they´ve visited other Essential Global Destinations. Essential Global Destinations include Antartica, the Great Barrier Reef and Giza.
D. Take photos of Important Machu Picchu Vistas.
E. Ensure no other tourists can be seen in these Important Machu Picchu Vista Photos, so it will appear to friends and families back home that the Peruvian authorities decided to open the ancient ruins for a private visit. Shout (often in German), pout and scowl at other tourists until this objective is achieved.
F. Pay US$5 for a bottle of water.
G. Complain loudly about paying US$5 for a bottle of water, even though every guidebook on Earth says, "Bring your own water to Machu Picchu to avoid paying US$5 for a bottle of water", and you have one of these guidebooks clutched in your hand, and several more probably stuffed into your The North Face/TimberLand backpack.

How I Became Notorious at Machu Picchu
Being a bit of a Type A personality myself, I knew I wanted to climb the big mountain adjacent to the ruins. Its about an hour up a windy, dusty staircase, and the closer you get to the top, the more ridiculously perilous the whole thing gets; at one point I was scrambling through a tiny cave tunnel, pushing the backpack of the nice British doctor in front of me, and trusting that the man behind me was pushing my backpack through, whilst not staring at my only legging clad bum (shut up, I´d been in the jungle for four days, I´m allowed a fug every now and then).

Problem was, I´d completely wrecked my sneakers on the last day of trekking (an incident involving my terrible sense of balance and horse poo), and the only other pair of shoes I had with me were my thongs.

I asked our Trekking Guide, Marco, if I could climb the mountain in thongs. He said no. Always anxious to upset the Peruvian patriachy, I decided I was going to climb the mountain in thongs.

And, I kind of did it. I got to the peak, saw the view (AMAZING) and made my way down (with the help of the nice British Doctor, who luckily suffered from vertigo, so was as slow as I was), and covered my feet and leggings and shirt and ethnic scarf in dirt. I was quite a sight at the end.

I didn´t realise how much of a sight till that night, however, when we were on the backpacker (translation: scum) train to Cusco. I was chatting to the young Spanish volunteer seated next to me (Thank you, oh kind and generous Peru Rail seating assignment system), when he suddenly looked at my feet, looked at my face, and gasped, "You're that girl! The girl who climbed the mountain in sandals! I took a photo of your feet!".

He then proceeded to take out his digital camera, and show me that he had indeed taken a photo of my feet at the summit, without me realizing. I would have felt quite flattered if he wouldn´t have followed up with, "My girlfriend and me, we couldn't believe anyone would be that stupid!".

Anyhoo, I´m now in Puno, and will be visiting Lake Titicaca tomorrow. And tomorrow night, I WILL ANSWER EMAILS AND RESPONDS TO COMMENTS. Yes, yes I will. Sorry!

Week Two - Food is Good. Cheap Food is Better

2008-08-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

Fair warning - I´m a little bit drunk as I write this post. There was this whole thing with th nice waiter at the restaurant where I just ate where I couldn´t quite seem to express that I just wanted one glass of sangria, not a whole litre. But, um, a litre I got, and what sort of backpacker would I be if I let alcohol go to waste?

Things I Have Loved
The Miracle Healing Powers of the Hot Springs - I spent less than three hours lounging around what I suspect was less a natural hot spring and more an inground pool with really effective heating, and that ugly looking thing on my foot caused by the City 2 Surf has completely disappeared!

Those of you who didn´t see of hear about the ugly looking thing on my foot can completely ignore the proceeding paragraph.

Train Trip! - I have a leftover weakness for trains after my intern stint at Railway Digest. Shut up, it could be worst ¡ I could have a leftover weakness leftover from my intern stint at Violent Bondage Digest, for instance. No judgement on those of you into violent bondage, of course.

Anyhoo, as part of the most dramatic overland crossing ever (Bus from Pucon to Santiago, plane from Santiago to Arica, train from Arica to Tacna, bus from Tacna to Arequipa, bus from Arequipa to Cuzco), I got to catch a train across the Chile¡Peru border. And it was awesome. Firstly, it cost $2. Secondly, it wasn´t so much a train as a single carriage tram. There´s one line of tracks that runs through the desert landscape between the two countries, and this is the only vehicle allowed to run on it. Just too cool (yes, inside of me there´s a trainspotter just screaming to get out). Thirdly, everyone on the train was just so...jolly. Like something out of a Carry On movie.

The train has been rolling along at a stately, ooh, 40 kms an hour for about 45 minutes, when there´s a sudden bang and halt. Turns out the train had hit a sign post by the side of the tracks. This poses a series of questions. Namely, how does a train that travels the same track four times a day, six days a week suddenly hit a fixed signpost? Did someone move the signpost as part of an international edition of Candid Camera? Is it a secret signal from the Peruvians to the Cileans? Or vice versa?

Anyway, the signpost was moved so we could continue. For some reason, it was determined that we should take the signpost with us, so it was dragged into carriage, and positioned under a group of knitting nanas´ feet. Which makes me wonder if perhaps they moved the signpost as part of a complex attempt to gain a footrest?

Amazing, Cheap Food - Arica, in northern Chile, was a bit of a hole, to be fair. I think if I was a surfer, I´d feel differently, but, I´m, er, not a surfer, so I don´t feel differently.

I had a day there waiting for the awesome train, so went for a wander around the market. Somehow, I got roped into sitting down in a cafe in the middle of the food market. There was no menu, just a series of questions from the waitress, to which I answered ¨Si¨with as much enthusiasm as possible.

I ended up eating one of the best pieces of fish I´d ever had. And bear in mind, my pa was a fisherman, my nana an awesome cook, and my brother manages a seafood restaurant, so I´ve had GREAT fish before. Plus, it was proceeded by a gorgeous vegetable soup, and accompanied by a bread basket and vegies, salad and rice.

It cost $3.

I´m kind of turning away from my frustration at not being able to speak Spanish, and embracing the benefits of not speaking Spanish. Its the Big Brother principle - if you just sit there nodding and grinning and not saying anything vaguely interesting or controversial, then people cannot hate you. This is why stupid people always win Big Brother.

Thing I Have Not Loved
The Smell of Urine in this Internet Cafe - Seriously, even drunkeness cannot remove this stench.

Ruins and Other Archaeological Treasures - Oh, look, its something else old and in a state of disrepair! How interesting!

Not feeling much of Cuzco for this reason, but am feeling the baroque churches and religious art, and I am all about the bright and shiny, which is basically what baroque is. Shh, any art history theory majors who stumble upon this blog,

OK, that´s it until I return from my exciting trekking adventures to Maccu Pichu. For the world´s biggest collection of ruins. Oh, goody.

Interlude: Bingo & the Bus, or Peruvian Coach Travel

2008-08-25T17:12:00.000-07:00

So I was going to be all playing hard to get-like, and only update once a week, but I just had to share this list.

Ways in Which the Peruvian Bus System is Extraordinary
1. They Play Bingo. And it gets rowdy. And a bit...ultra-competitive.
2. They Play Movies. This would not be extraordinary in itself, except they play English language movies dubbed into Spanish and then subtitled in English. Except when they play the subtitles for the director´s commentary rather than the actual movie dialogue...took me a good five minutes to catch on to that one, and School of Rock was suddenly a very different movie.
3. They Make You FeelGuilty For Being a Native English Speaker. By playing PS I Love You. You thought it was intolerable at the cinema or in the privacy of your own home? You try watching it with a bus full of Peruvians glaring at you like you´re responsible for the piece of sentimental, annoying crap.
4. They Have Toilets That Cannot Be Unlocked From the Inside. Perhaps not extraordinary, more...hysterical. Me, that is, once I was let out by the symapthetic hostess and laughed at by a group of 15 year old girls.

Week One: Chile

2008-08-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, a blog. Yes, I am that self-obsessed, OK? Go through and count the number of times I use "I" or "me" in this post. Who said textual analysis couldn´t be quantitative?

I´m one week out of Sydney, and instead of curled up with my pretty, temperamental little girl (ie, my Powerbook)I´m sitting in an internet cafe/touring agency/coffee shop in Pucon in the Chilean Lakes District. Using a Windows machine (shudder). In the grand tradition of traveller´s establishments worldwide, they´re playing Bob Marley.

I purposely gave myself a bit of a gentle introduction to South America with Chile. Other than thinking myself unlikely to be murdered here, I hadn´t given it much thought. As such, its come as a bit of a surpise to have TOTALLY FALLEN IN LOVE with the place. There was a moment yesterday, half-way up a snow covered volcano, when I was seriously considering applying for a work permit and spending the rest of my life leading people towards lava, the outline of my singlasses permenantly burnt into my face.

Things I Have Loved
Climbing the Villarrica Volcano - Pure bliss. Yesterday, the volcano was covered in snow that looked almost like marzipan on a wedding cake, and the sky was the most blue blue I´ve ever seen. We didn´t get to the top (the wind, omg, the wind) but for the first time in my goal-and-objective-driven life, I really meant it when I said it was all about the journey.

I spent most of the climb looking at the heels of the guide´s boot (you have to step in their footsteps because the snow is so deep), but everytime I looked up, I´d be staring either at the awesome volano against the sky, or down at the Lakes District.

I, erm, kind of only came to the Lakes District because Lizzie tours the (English, obviously, Jane Austen heroines not being the kind to stuff their muslin frocks into a backpack and jump a ship to South America)Lakes District in P&P, and it turns out really well for her. I´m so glad I followed my stupid irrational desire. That view down over the blue lakes and the green forests and across to another, more active volcano was the most stunning thing I´ve ever seen. Like the top of a chocolate box, only real. And low-kilojoule.

My Volcano Guide, Viktor - You haven´t lived until you´ve heard young-Chilean-mountain-climbing-hotness say, "Penelop´e". Or, "Penelop´e, you have an excellent level of fitness". Or, "Penelop´e, when you return to Chile, we will climb many mountains together".

Oh, Viktor, you complete me.

Chilean Men, Generally - The three days I was in Santiago, it would have sat between 10 and 15 degrees - very similar to a Sydney winter.

However, Chilean businessmen don´t let a little thing like a temperate climate stop them from showing off an OUTSTANDING winter wardobe. Leaving work, they all seem to slip a beautiful cashmere overcoat on top of their suit, and then swing a gorgeously complementary scarf around their necks. It´s like living in The Satorialist´s World.

Valaparaiso - This awesome, small city about 120 kms out of Santiago. I went there a day, and its the most perfect mix of Newcastle, Newtown and Havana that you could imagine.

Plus, I learnt an important travel lesson: never point to the dreadlocked hippy at the next table, and express through liberal use of hand gestures and, "Si, si, si" that you´ll have what she´s having. It will end... artichoke-juicily.

Cultural misunderstandings - Sitting on a park bench in Santiago, Lonely Planet open on my knee, a sweet security guard called Nick comes over to offer his assistance, and practise his English. We´re talking generally about where I´m from, where I´m going, and I tell him I plan to work in the UK.

NICK: Ah, London, you have very narrow streets and a lot of fuck there.
PEN: Excuse me???!!!
NICK: You know streets... not big.
PEN: Um, but about the fuck...
NICK: (points to the sky) You know, a lot of fuck. Like Jack the Ripper!
PEN: Oh, fog.

I like how I knew he meant fog by the Jack the Ripper reference, when fuck was probably more apt for a prostitute serial killer.

Things I Have Not Loved
Not Speaking Spanish - Obviously, my own stupid arrogant fault. I have come to rely on the kindness of middle-aged men, who first tell me I´m a naughtly girl for not learning Spanish before coming to South America, and then go out of their way (there have been some very interesting drawings, and fabulous charades work) to help me.

Chilean Hot Water Puzzles - Funny thing about Chile... everywhere has hot water. They just want to make sure that you work really hard to get it. Like, in my Santiago hotel, I was convinced that I didn´t have hot water, and was ready to go and ball my jet-lagged eyes out to the recption desk. turns out you just have to wait three and a half minutes in this particular establishment for the hot water to heat up.

Arriving in my Pucon hotel after a 10 hour bus trip, I thought I was so smart, and settled in to wait out the hot water, 10 minutes later, there was still nothing.

Turns out in this place, the hot water tap is the one marked "C" for caliente, rather than cold. I´d actually thought of that, but still hadn´t beeen able to get anything really hot out of the showerhead.

Once again, reception had to come up and reveal the second part of the puzzle... to get water above lukewarm, you have to turn the tap as far as it will go. Which increases both the colume and temperature of the water. Of course. Why didn´t I think of that?

Having an Overfull Backpack - No shopping for me. I already look like a pregnany Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle as I wander the bus stations and airports. There was this t-Shirt in Valpo that I SOOOOO wanted, but I cannot fit a single additional thing in my bag.

The t-shirt was fabulous... it was in the men´s department of an upmarket department store, and said, "Jhon, Paul, George & Ringo". I can´t figure out if its just a proof-reading error (so glad its not my proof-reading error), or a clever statement about fighting the ubiquity of western culture. Either way, loves it!