Freaky London

Lize and I have been in London for close to a month and a half now. Having hit up all the touristy sites in previous incarnations, we decided we would devote our time here to the weird and wacky side of England’s capital. Highlights so far have included

- A long walk through the countryside along a canal, stopping for a pub lunch washed down with “real” ale and ending in the quaint town of Denham where the locals have their Sunday afternoon tea on top of the churchyard tombs!

- Hampton Court – Big Tudour castle next to the Thames resided in by Henry VIII and the unfortunate Anne Bolyn and Jane Seymour. It was quite hilarious to stand in Henry’s privy and imagine the giant oaf who took six wives, removed Catholicism, tortured thousands and sent more to their deaths, squatting over a hole in the floor like all the rest of us. Some say the place is haunted by the ghost of Henry’s fifth wife, Jane Seymour. I will let this photo I took of a green "orb" speak for itself.

- Gig in a church – On a whim we decided to check out a young American musician by the name of Peter Broderick who was playing in a 16^th century church in Soho. He was sublime. Everything you hope a gig will be. Achingly beautiful melodies, subtle lyrics and accomplished musicianship. BUT there was a catch. Before Peter came on stage we had to sit through fourty-five minutes of what can only be described as postmodern, self-indulgent and narcissistic wankery disguised as music. We all get it. Everything has been done before. But that doesn’t mean anyone wants to listen to atonal noise. If art needs an explanation IT IS NOT FUCKING ART! If it fails to make you feel something or change your perspective IT IS NOT FUCKING ART. It would have been far more entertaining and might have sounded better if he had played the piano with his cock instead of just fiddling with it.

- Bletchley Park – During World War II this was the Brits’ top-secret code-cracking bunker. It is the site where chaps like Alan Turing set about breaking the toughest encryption device used by the Germans, The Enigma. The story of the Enigma is fascinating and you can read about it here if you are interested. Needless to say Stinge was enraptured and Extravagance was AWOL after the first five minutes. We spent the day being lectured to and ushered around one cold empty shed after another by an elderly gent who spoke like Stephen Fry on crack, resembled a portly Prince Charles and dressed like an eccentric Oxford Professor, replete with elbow-patched tweed jacket. The most fascinating part of the whole place was the Museum of Computing. As an early pioneer in the field, my Grandfather had a hand in setting up their collection in the 90s and it was wonderful to see some of the behemoths he spent so many years of his life building. Seeing how computers have progressed from monsters that filled entire rooms and could only conduct basic mathematical calculations to the nimble microprocessors of today was truly fascinating. What boggled my mind the most was the development of computer memory technology. The oldest computer in the world was on display and it used a valve-based memory, with each valve representing a single byte of storage. By looking at the position of the luminescence in each valve you could see what value was stored there (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, +, - etc). An early magnetic disk hard-drive was also on display (see photo below) and despite being a metre in diameter it was only capable of storing 22Kb (for non-computer nerds this is equivalent to one low resolution facebook photo)! Seeing sixty years of computer technology chronologically laid out and compressedinto a few rooms really drove home how quickly this invention has infiltrated and taken over our lives. Coming home on the tube that evening, surrounded by people on their iPhones, iPads, and Kindles, I wondered how long it would be before we ceased using technology and technology began using us. Maybe it already has…?

The Bombs of Biarritz

The managing director of Ryan Air may well be the king of all stinges. His latest money-saving plan is to remove co-pilots from short-haul routes! Unfortunately one of his earlier ideas “if you can carry it to the plane you can take it on board”, has yet to come to fruition so when we found ourselves five kilos overweight at Biarritz airport we were left with no choice but to dump our tent. After failing to fit the bulky grey plastic object in the bin outside the airport entrance I was forced to leave it leaning beside it.

A matter of minutes after clearing customs a stern voice came over the intercom requesting the owner of the “suspicious grey package” to report to security. I reluctantly returned to the entrance and found myself surrounded by ten or so humourless French municipal policemen. In the twenty minutes that had passed between leaving the tent and returning to claim it someone had contacted the authorities, police had arrived, cordoned off the area with police tape, placed bomb shields around my tent bag and were on the phone to the bomb squad. I was very impressed with their efficiency. Needless to say they were unimpressed with me. Especially when I showed them my British passport. And they seemed strangely disappointed and deflated when I pushed aside the bomb shields and unveiled a grubby tent and bent pegs.

Throughout the whole process I got the feeling that most of the officers would have much preferred me to have been a Basque separatist terrorist and for the tent to have been a bomb. This reminded me of something I have noticed in others and in myself at times; a deep-seated desire for excitement of the macabre variety. The nightly news, Hollywood blockbusters, rubbernecking, crime shows and detective novels; all serve to scratch this itch. We want to hear about others’ misfortune, petty or horrific, real or imagined, because it makes us feel better about our lot in life and it eases the bludgeoning burden of boredom. And although it does make us feel better in the short run, it comes at a cost. Numbness. We can’t witness so much death, destruction, pain, suffering, animosity, betrayal, and hatred without becoming desensitised to it and normalising it. This only serves to perpetuate problems through acquiescence and copycat behaviour. But might there be another way? What if instead of delighting in others’ misfortunes we delighted in their fortunes and celebrated them as our own? What if every time something terrible happened to someone we had the courage to feel their suffering as our own with an open heart and without revelling in it as an opportunity to rise one rung higher than them on some imaginary ladder of worldly success? Compassion. It’s the new black.

Lessons learned

We are holed up in a lovely little apartment in Biarritz with only three days left of the European leg of our adventure. Having spent the last few weeks battered by one illness after another we wisely decided to stop camping and find ourselves some higher-end accommodation. As Extravagance will attest, camping is hard work. But I have to give it to her, she managed to make it through over a month of constant packing and unpacking of tents and sleeping bags, cooking meals on frying pans smaller than teacups, carrying out her ablutions in shower/toilet blocks covered in layers of sludge, pubic hair and fungus so thick you could grow veggies in it, and sleeping on a plastic mattress in 45 degree heat, surrounded by testosterone fuelled Italians giggling amidst a haze of marijuana, without whinging…much. But in doing so, Stinge and Extravagance managed to keep to a budget of 80 euros (114 aussie dollars) per day including food, fuel, accommodation, tolls, sites and booze for both! Stinge is very excited by this feat of stinginess and by Extravagance’s stoicism.

Another problem with camping in Europe is that aside from the language barrier, we appeared to be stuck in an age vacuum. There are three groups of individuals in campsites, those who move around on walking frames, those with one hand glued to their genitals and the other a can of beer, and those in nappies (some fit into both the first and last groups). We love a good chat and after a month of talking solely to each other we were flat out of conversation, so when we bumped into an old school friend of Lize’s in Valencia we talked ourselves hoarse (sorry Sal, sorry Duncan!).

We enjoyed their company so much that we agreed to meet up in San Sebastian a week later for a few luxurious days in a swanky loft apartment that had Stinge shaking in his tattered second-hand thongs. It was bliss. We all guiltily sat around watching t.v and sitting on the couch (a new found appreciation born of camping… a place to sit!), and occasionally we dragged our sorry travellers’ arses to the glorious beach. We are a bit remiss now without the company. Four people instantly makes a party and meeting up with friends from home across the world is somehow magical, though I must admit Stinge and Extravagance still seem to like each other after six weeks quite literally in each other’s pockets/sleeping bags.A few things we’ve learnt along the way:

· When people say Spain is hot, listen to them. You are not a tough Australian. You are a pussy city boy/girl and you cannot camp in 45 degrees plus humidity that could moisten the inner folds of your anus through a drysuit.

· If an offer seems too good to be true, it just isn’t true. Don’t go for bargains. You will end up with bed bugs or gastro. Play it safe and pay market value.

· Never eat in restaurants with pictures of the food (this we didn’t learn from experience, the pictures are just damn awful!).

· European speed limits are merely recommendations… feel free to flagrantly disregard them.

· Don’t eat in restaurants with English on the menu. It’s much better to point and hope.

· Bottles of wine with rubber corks are always shit, even if they are French… unfortunately the cork isn’t evident until after you’ve removed the foil.

· 80 euros/ day is more than enough to survive on but not really enough to live (Stinge says “bollocks!”)

· When travelling as a couple you become a two headed beast; two heads, one set of legs (or wheels). This becomes problematic when the heads want to go in different directions.

· Don’t take advice from 7-foot tall drug-pedalling german-croatian Porsche driving car-dealers with anger management problems about where to holiday in Croatia.

· After a month on the road, you get very tired and although you are ‘on holiday’ you can suddenly and quite stubbornly become “over it”. Account for this and find a beach, sangria and friends stat.

· A diet solely comprised of cheese and bread is good for nothing but gluten and dairy intolerance.

· When you haven’t had company for a while, remember that bowel movements and back hair are topics best left between you and partner

· Cars, TomToms, the internet and technology in general create as many problems as they solve. Stick to guide books, walking on your two feet, maps, and local recommendations.

· The Australian accented ‘Ken’ on Tomtom navigation devices is far more accurate than his butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth pommy colleague ‘Susan’ (she was completely useless).

· As Stinge’s uncle Roy says, remember the 6 P’s. Prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. Romantic attempts at travelling spontaneously and being “truly free to go where the wind takes you” result in frenzied last-minute 8-hour sessions on the internet trawling through page after page of over-priced soviet-era nightmare hostels only to end up sleeping in campsites so inhumane the Australian government wouldn’t even dream of inflicting them on its illegal immigrants.

· Australians, like Americans, should not be allowed out of their country without prior training in discretion, volume control and the language/culture of the country they are destined for. Sounds draconian and elitist I know, but it would go a long way towards improving foreign relations.

La Tomatina

La Tomatina. Equal parts terror and exhilaration mixed with 60 tonnes of over-ripe tomatoes and 20,000 Australians in yellow Fanatics t-shirts. After a sleepless night spent tossing and turning in excited expectation we rolled into the tiny village of Bunol on the fringes of Valencia and walked down the hill towards the town square. We promptly hit a wall of bodies swilling down litres of beer and sangria like it was water and deciding we could advance no further cracked open our one Euro cartons of Don Simon sangria, sauntered up a side alley off the main thoroughfare, and sat waiting for the festivities to kick into full swing. After two hours spent watching Spaniards ripping Australian womens’ already soaking shirts off and flinging them at unsuspecting spectators we started to think we had come to the wrong festival. But before long a rocket exploded in the distance, the crowd erupted with dancing, cries of “ole!”, and more spraying of beverages and the first of many body-crushing moments began as throngs of people forced their way down a narrow cobbled street towards the town square and the tomatoes.

After a further 20 minutes went by without any sign of tomatoes our early doubts began to reemerge. Finally we saw a large excavation truck inching its way through the hoards of spectators but sadly it appeared its precious cargo had already been offloaded. A further four empty trucks drove slowly past, crushing people up against the old rock walls as they passed before a truck bearing tomatoes made its way to us. Unfortunately by the time it arrived we were pushed up against a garage door with our arms so firmly pinned to our sides that we could barely throw a thing. We were hit however…many, many times by cocky Spaniards perched on the top of the truck like cowardly snipers. As the truck pulled away another rocked fired signalling the end of the throwing and the folks who had made it to the town square decided they’d had enough of the festivities and began pushing back the other way uphill.

We were in the midst of a human stampede; think Big Day Out but without the music to sweeten the blows. A few people lost their footing only to re-emerge blue in the face moments later. It was utter chaos. It is very rare that you find yourself in a situation where you are quite sure someone around you is going to die and there were a few occasions there where it could have been one of us. I am not sure if this happens every year but I think perhaps the strong Aussie dollar combined with Australian’s love of alcohol and inflicting pain on strangers created a perfect Tomatina storm and the tiny town was packed well beyond its capacity. One thing is for sure, I will never, ever forget the smell of rotten tomatoes combined with fear-tinged body odour.

After 15 minutes in Satan’s moshpit we emerged from the milieu rattled but unscathed and covered head to toe in tomatoe skins, pulp and seeds. Walking back up the hill towards Chloe we were filled with that adrenaline fuelled exhilaration that comes with surviving something so utterly insane and like hostage victims with Stockholm syndrome we found ourselves looking back lovingly on the event through cognitive dissonance coloured glasses. As the europop jangled through the streets and the revellers cleaned the remnants of the red fruit from their clothes we raised sangria filled plastic cups to the hot blue Spanish sky and thanked the gods for La Tomatina.

(Photos for this post were sourced from news.com.au as our camera was safely stowed away inside Chloe to prevent tomato damage)

Stinge

Travelling always brings out a person’s true colours… or exacerbates colours they already proudly wear. Cam and I are pretty good travelling buddies but there remains one point of contention; Stinge versus Extravagance.

I am Extravagance and Cam is Stinge, but as I am writing this, I have the unfair advantage of being able to explain myself. While I really do enjoy lovely wine and if given the choice, I would probably eat more grandly than I can afford, I am quite able to restrain this tendency for the greater good. The fact that I kicked around in one grubby pair of black cons for the 6 months prior to our departure is surely a testament to that. I already knew Stinge was frugal, valiantly choosing a slightly less materialistic and indulgent path than most, what I didn’t realise, was how far a Stinge on a budget could push this tendency.

Soon after we picked up our precious little Chloe, Stinge quickly noticed a function on the dash showing our instant and averaged fuel economy. A combination of technology and money saving! A Stinge’s delight! Forget driving on the other side of the road, on the wrong side of the car, with lunatic Italians trying to kill us; focus at all times was to be shared between the road and the fuel consumption. I was immediately frustrated, knowing such close monitoring could only end badly. We experimented with this little gadget, going up hills in 5^th, rolling down the terrifyingly twisted and narrow Amalfi road of death in neutral, balancing a 90km/ hour speed maintenance on the mad Euro motorway… And then Stinge found Cruise Control. What a discovery! No unnecessary breaking or accelerating, a Stinge’s dream! So I sat and watched as Stinge drove his space ship, flicking buttons, checking levels- current fuel consumption, litres of petrol left, average fuel consumption so far… switch cruise control on, recheck fuel consumption, drop speed a touch, cruise control on again, check fuel consumption again… If I wasn’t so caught up in the hilarious stinginess of it all, I would be marvelling at the dexterity. But Stinge really came into his own when a squeal of delight burst through his concentrated, calculating lips as the average fuel consumption dropped from 7.8 L/100Km to 7.7! Then eventually 7.7 to 7.6… etc. Each time I have been regaled with high five’s and a little happy dance. A work of Stinge genius!

But Stinge is a stubborn and determined beast, and his talents at further reducing the petrol consumption didn’t stop there. We’re both tough Aussie kids, and like the quietly aspiring hippies we secretly think we are, we generally dislike air conditioning. I rage against my poor parents every summer when the aircon flicks on at 9am. But, there is a point. Especially in a car. Driving through glorious Croatia, with the Adriatic glittering pure turquoise beneath us, and the blistering sun, shooting through the window like a shard of hot metal trying brand us, I felt it was time to test out the other ‘mod cons’ of Chloe, and busted out the aircon. I should have realised how this would grossly affect the fuel economy scheme. Stinge shot daggers across the car. The aircon was quickly disabled and the sweat silently continued to flow. Stinge’s poor back was drenched, my shoulder was turning a pretty shade of purple and Chloe’s interior was ready to fry an egg, but we doggedly drove on, along motorways, through dusty side streets and down blinding coastal roads; air conditioning off. I tried once or twice out of pure desperation to turn it on, sometimes it stayed that way, on one occasion for a full five minutes! But often as my hand hovered over the sweet ‘on’ button, it was quickly swatted away. I have to give it to him, Stinge was suffering too. One day in a fit of outrage and exasperation, I decided to take a stand. I took off my dress, and sat in the passenger seat stony faced in my bra and undies, I thought this may shock Stinge into action, we were on a motorway afterall, with perverted truck drivers and dirty Italian men in their black Audi’s flying past us eyes glued to Chloe’s interior. But to my dismay, Stinge was delighted! So away we sped, Stinge with one eye on the fuel consumption, the other on my cleavage.

I could continue to regale you with tales of bread and cheese for more meals than I’d dare tell a health professional (the cheapest and most palatable meal available in Europe, a Stinge victory!), and stories from slimy, scary campsite bathrooms, but to be fair, Stinge is not only saving himself money, he is saving my hard earned pennies too. And our budget is outrageously tight. Stinge is also very self-sacrificing, he allows me my gelati and sangria, often going without himself. Perhaps another Stinge technique, but a very generous one. He even let me have the aircon on for a full trip the other day (it was 35 degrees, we’d been battling with tents and blaring sun for too many days… and fuel in Spain is significantly cheaper).

Funnily enough, though Stinge is brilliantly intelligent, far more so than Extravagance, he isn’t great with numbers. So while he carefully plots to save, I am the one keeping the budget and numbers in my head all day… though tempting , it is a power that Extravagance doesn’t abuse… often. Plus I’ve found his weakness, red wine. Stinge and extravagance have finally found common ground.

To be continued.

I heart Gaudi

I am skipping a large section of our trip here but I feel that enough shite literature has been written about Tuscany and we don’t need to add to the pile. The light is golden, the wine is fantastic and the tomatoes are “booodifooool”…enough said. We crossed the boarder into France via a brief stopover in Cinque Terra to be welcomed by flash flooding and chaos forcing us to escape north into Provence. After three days driving through lavender and musk scented fields and gorging ourselves sick on the local speciality “chevre” and “vin rouge” we headed south and crossed the boarder into Cataluñan Espange.

Some countries, like people, just feel right and after spending so long in uptight, superstitious, guilt-ridden, closed-minded Italia, Spain felt like a breath of fresh air. Our first port of call was a craggy, ancient, white-washed fishing village on the Costa Brava called Cadaques. Home to Salvador Dali for many years, the eccentric painter’s bohemian and anarchistic streak has left an indelible mark on this town with beatniks, hippies, fringe dwellers and outcasts flocking to soak up a bit of it’s rugged charm. After two lazy days spent basking in the sun we packed up Chloe and headed south for Barcelona. It wasn’t long before we were staring up at our first Gaudi structure in awe and with cultish admiration.

Before I came to Barcelona I ashamedly knew very little about the great man or his buildings but I am now a card-carrying Gaudian. For years I have wondered why we insist on

surrounding ourselves with boring straight edges, encasing ourselves in ridged boxes and neglecting the wondrous and liberating curves and spirals of the natural world. I naively assumed it wasn’t possible to build in a manner that reflected the freedom and wisdom of nature but here in front of me where all these magnificent structures proving me wrong! Never in my life have I seen something built by man that matches the awe-inspiring beauty of nature but I must say that Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia comes very close. Walking into the cathedral I felt a spine-tingling rush of excitement as I looked up and realised that this colossal structure was designed to resemble a living, breathing rain forest built entirely from concrete, iron, glass and stone. A catholic cathedral designed as a tribute to the power, wonder and glory of nature…who’d have guessed?!

My newfound positive regard for the religious institution was, however, short-lived. Our trip to Montserrat, an ancient but still-functioning monastery set atop a limestone promontory left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Throngs of Catholics make the pilgrimage to this sacred site to touch or kiss the head of the “black Madonna”, a metal statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. Sitting in the basilica of Montserrat for a mere ten minutes we saw at least a hundred people, one after the other kiss the head of this statue. We also witnessed several people holding their hands over a bush

in the centre of a square as if willing the magical plant to heal them. Deciding it was all a bit too much for us we headed for our car via the shop to get some bread for lunch. I handed two bread rolls to the shop assistant who put them through the register and asked for 4 euros. Was the bread hand-made by the monks themselves with holy water and wheat grown on consecrated land? In any other town or city this bread would have cost 70 cents at the most. We politely walked away from the purchase and took a final look around the shop, which can best be described as a MacCatholic outlet. “I love Montserrat” t-shirts, mugs, fridge magnets, pencils and pens, framed photos of the Pope outside the monastery, DVDs and CDs of mass services at the basilica, pieces of relics, photos of relics…you name it, they sold it. I couldn’t help but think…where does God come into all of this and how can monks living only meters away from this outlet of mass consumerism ever hope to detach from the material world? I guess if some of it goes into funding the still to be completed Sagrada Familia…who cares right???

The Week in Review

We are sitting on the grass in Bled, a little town north of Lubjljana, Slovenia, relaxing after a day spent hiking through the surrounding pine tree lined hills and swimming out to a church in the middle of the clearest lake I have seen in my life. Slovenia is a mixture of Austria and the South-Island of NZ. You expect a yodelling Bilbo Baggins dressed in lederhosen to stroll out of the woods at any moment. This is the perfect place to decompress after a whirlwind tour of New York, Rome, Pompei, the Amalfi Coast, and south-west coast of Croatia. Rome was the ideal antidote to NYC. New Yorkers are uptight about everything and Romans are so relaxed they don’t even have the energy to indicate or move out of the way whilst driving at 200Km an hour down a one-way street the wrong way. My two favourite memories of Rome: 1) a picnic of mozzarella, basil, tomatoes, and bread with red wine at sunset on the Spanish steps; 2) A loud, young American bloke walking up steps near the colosseum asking his mates “Are these the steps Jesus walked on…?”.

We picked up our little silver Renault Clio which we have since dubbed “Chloe” in the outskirts of Rome and hit the open road…at 10Kms an hour down quiet side streets until I figured out how to drive on the right side of the road whilst changing gears with the WRONG hand. Interestingly I have since developed a strange habit of saying “up” when I mean “down”, “less” when I mean “more” and “hello” when I mean “goodbye” (fortunately “ciao” means both!). On the second day despite warnings and horror stories from family, friends and local Italians we hopped back in Chloe and took on the narrow winding roads that snake along the cliffs of the Amalfi coast. Lize has coined a term for such reckless abandon, ”Cambition”. This was cambition to the max and although we were unable to afford to stay in the area, the fleeting glimpes I caught out the window of pastel coloured fishing villages anchored to limestone cliffs were well worth the stress of keeping our pretty, little car dent-free. It is hard not to take Italian drivers’ apparent desire to run you of the road personally especially when they profess to love the “simple, slow, beautiful life”. A head-on collision is neither simple, slow nor beautiful! Perhaps it is the French license plate?

After failing to find anywhere to stay in Amafli, Chloe doggedly drove on, winding us through what we later called the “ghetto of Amalfi” and spat us out on a massive motorway. We suddenly realised at 8:30pm that we were in the middle of nowhere, heading nowhere, with no place to stay and no light or time to find anything. So we reigned Chloe in, dragged her kicking and screaming into a gas station, pulled out the map and eventually fled north to the safety of sleepy Pompei, the city that rests at the base of Mt Vesuvius. One thousand and nine hundred years ago this city was buried in ash and immaculately preserved by the eruption of the now dormant volcano that towers over it. The next morning as we walked through the unearthed ruins of the ancient roman settlement Lize and I were overwhelmed by the realisation that the fossilised remains of Pompei’s inhabitants on display were once walking on the same cobblestones, drinking from the same fountains, and staring up at the same hot Mediterranean sun as us.

We then set off across the middle of the country to Bari to catch an overnight ferry to Dubrovnik, Croatia. Again, miraculously, at the end of the trip Chloe emerged unscathed from the guts of the painfully narrow holding decks and we drove into Dubrovnik bleary eyed from a restless night of sleep in the open aired deck surrounded by snoring, balding Croatian women, filthy backpackers, and Panini munching Italians.

I love Croatia. I don’t want to divulge much more because I don’t want to bias those of you who have not been in any way. Come to this country and experience it for yourself. It is paradise…and it is cheap which an old scrooge like me loves even more! Some quick highlights: 1) Climbing up cliffs that border an ancient fortress and then jumping into the cool aquamarine Adriatic; 2) Dirt cheap seafood bonanza overlooking a walled city surrounded by the ocean with mountains stacked up like toblerone pieces in the background. 3) Watching drunk Croatians dance in a discotec…think Eurovision meets Borat in very tight and short lycra. Next stop: Tuscany!!!