Home is home but it's not home

Paris was a pretty full on time. I definitely needed another recovery period, especially considering I'll be heading back to work very soon. I had been thinking about where to go next for quite a while and the obvious choice was to head to Belgium, which is en route to Amsterdam where I fly out from. Something in me didn't feel excited about this idea. It wasn't Belgium, because I've wanted to go there for a long time, so I have no idea what it was. Just a feeling, I guess. On Saturday night in Paris, I met a French girl named Clémence. I was in bed about to go to bed on Sunday night when I thought I'd try my luck and ask her for a recommendation. The brief was somewhere quiet, small, with beautiful views, not so touristy, and French people who don't speak much English. She suggested Étretat, which I had never heard of before. I didn't look it up beforehand on purpose except for its location, and trusted her description. That's how I ended up coming he...

I was going to check out of my single room (too expensive). The hotel owner asked where I was from and I told him. Then came the question,  "OK cool. Where are you REALLY from?" I told him Korea and it turned out he needed a reference from a Korean person so someone he knew could get admitted into a Korean University. He showed me the e-mail, and if it's the case, this University needs to get their shit together because that's a bullshit rule. Maybe I should've helped him, but I felt I hadn't been helped much on my stay, so I told a fib and told him I didn't have a Korean passport and that I couldn't read/write Korean. I feel bad on hindsight. James and Locher were at the Victoria & Albert Museum so I met up with them. It's great when people are so consistent. Locher hasn't changed a bit. James took me around to Camden Markets, which was littered with cool little markets. But not just produce and little bitsy markets, they were like ops...

I opened my eyes. The sun was streaming through the blinds so I figured it must've been fairly late in the day. What had awoken me? I let my eyes rest again but they split open when I heard it. A faint noise, coming from beyond the walls, directly to my left - perhaps about 2 metres away from me. The voice of a lady with an English accent exclaiming for John repeatedly. I could not go back to sleep. I was paralysed in my spot and didn't dare make a noise, but managed to fiddle about to grab my ear plugs, and put on some sweet Bob Dylan. I walked over 2 kilometres in search for a Korean restaurant. Here's an advice: don't get on an express train that skips stations, if you wanted to get off at one of those stations it skips. I was 45 minutes late in meeting Peter for dinner. It all worked out in the end. I couldn't get in contact with him, but I heard these two girls talking (clearly with a New Zealand accent) and so I approached them and asked to borrow their ph...

I thought I was going to miss my flight. I was prepared to just buy another for later on. There was no way I could get out to the taxi I had already ordered, and then make it to the airport without any major catastrophes. Thank goodness Marvin was on hand to give me an inspirational team talk about how I could  do it and to stop talking nonsense. He was right. But I hated the world. The sushi I ordered had unripe avocado. The line I opted to choose to go through customs in appeared to go slowest. Then the plane was delayed 1 hour 30 minutes  - WITH US ALREADY ON BOARD. It was excruciating. I went to the bathroom to take off as many layers as possible because I was severely overheating and perspiring intensely. Then this English guy was next to me and he kept talking to me. I actually think he was really nice and am quite interested in his story on hindsight. But at the time, I hated that he wanted to talk to me. I wanted to not find me interesting. I wanted him to stop t...

The following is sort of a short story. The contents may, or may not be true. ------------- It's a Wednesday night. Roll call: Marvin, Venus, Matie, Dane, Sned, Gosh, Chile, Tacos and myself. "Get the fuck out of here!" says no one. We're all thinking it but we're too scared to say anything in front of the bouncer who's sharpening his knife by the door. We power walked away from the place and snow started falling from above. It was beautiful. We stumbled upon the club that was supposed to be the 'best' in Hungary - 'Instant.' Had we read the fine print, we might've found that the place is not very rocking at 9.50pm. We decided the best course of action was to consume more fluids, and with that came games that asked participants to answer embarrassing and revealing questions about themselves. The questions covered interesting topics such as experimentation, risk taking, defecation, and tacos. The rest of the night is a bit of a b...

Budapest is beautiful. The day was spent exploring the delightful city and being enthralled by the grandiose buildings and shivering in freezing cold. We tried a walking tour for a while but it wasn't that great and plus the cold got too much for us weak folk so we ventured off on our own. I was excited to see a lot more of this city. I was unaware that would be the last of Budapest I would see in the daylight.

I was coaxed into taking the train to Budapest by the delightfully liberal German friends. Carbon footprints and whatnot. I'm glad I did it, really. I got to see part of the countryside I wouldn't have otherwise. The train went south through Germany and went through Slovakia, Czech Republic and took me to my destination Budapest, Hungary. I stepped off the train and there was an instant change in mood that was so different to Berlin or Amsterdam. There were people waiting by the currency converters offering me better deals to exchange my Euros with them. I warded them off but I could not fend off the taxi scammers 20 minutes into my Budapest experience. I had no grasp of Hungarian currency and was not quick enough on my feet to do some quick conversions. I was also unprepared with not knowing where exactly my hostel was in relation to where I'd get off the train. I had planned to do all of this on the train, but I was surprised to find there would be no internet connect...

The Free University has a library that is called the Brain. It is called that because it is built in the shape of one. It was one of those buildings that are so cool that it makes you want to study in it. Valeria also helped me get a Uni lunch with her Mensa card. It meant lots of pasta and a bowl of salad for around 1.50€. Crazy! It was subsidised meals for Berlin students. NZ/Aus could learn a lot from that. From there, we went to this theatre production where my brain was blown. It was no ordinary theatre - it was contemporary art and incredibly interactive. Everyone got an iPad and set of headphones. You went into the theatre, which had been set up into about 10 different rooms or locations but that are all joined, like a big house. This was called the 'Situation Room.' The iPad is so that you become the character that you hear and can see on the iPad. The iPad becomes your eye and you act out everything yourself from that same perspective that you see on the scree...

Höhenschenhousen is an old prison camp that the Soviets set up during the days of East Germany to incarcerate and interrogate citizens who were plotting, or were under suspicion of scheming political crimes. I actually made a real noob mistake and went there thinking it was an old concentration camp, but that did not turn out to be true.nit was still really interesting nonetheless. The Stasi were a crazy, clever and calculated organisation, who didn't do anything by accident. I met up with Ned and his friend, Josh, for dinner. We went into this place and the lady came up to us and said, "no, no, no, no, we are closed. We are closed!" We were incredibly confused because if you looked around you could see people still getting drinks and people also just digging into their hot food. It was also before  8pm  so I don't think she meant the kitchen. She must've sensed our bewilderment because then she explained, "no, no, closed for two days." That cleared...

Checkpoint Charlie used to be one of the checkpoints between East and West Berlin. They now have a museum there and that was quite informative for someone like me, not so well-versed in history. It was a shame though how tacky the place was. They've left a small piece of the building, but they employ two models to stand by the checkpoint as American soldiers and people can take photos with them. After the Sandeman's walking tour (good, but nothing compared to Edinburgh's) I found this exhibition about North Korean detention camps. It was one of the most challenging things I've seen. A lot of the information wasn't new to me, but it was the personal stories that were told and documented that made it pretty difficult to hold a straight face throughout. It was an art exhibition by former detainees at the camps and the artwork wasn't accurate, real-life depictions, but cartoons that brilliantly captured and supported the absolute horror of the place. Dinner...

The whole day was spent in transit from Edinburgh -> Heathrow -> Berlin. I was pretty proud of the way I filled in my time with an array of activities. I think Amsterdam really set too high a standard for me in terms of ease of train access from airport to city. Naively, I thought it would be the case everywhere else too, at least the other main cities. Navigating Berlin upon arrival was very difficult with all the unfamiliar names, and also with me not knowing about the different types of trains they've got (s-Bahn, u-Bahn). It was also very very difficult to find any source of wifi. This made meeting up with Valeria incredibly difficult. I was 30 minutes late to our meeting spot with no way of contacting her. I asked about 10 people if they could tether their 3G to me, but they either couldn't speak English or used subscription wifi services that could not be used as a hotspot. It was getting pretty damn freezing so I found this dingy Internet cafe, in which the ow...

I felt quite good this morning. It was definitely an occasion where the evening out-weighted the cons of the morning after. Success! It was a miserable day weather-wise. I didn't take in much info from the castle tour mainly because I was too busy thinking about the wind. We had dinner at a restaurant and we were joined by a new kiwi couple. The guy's nickname was Dags, which I found funny. But not as funny as his real name Richard Little (lololol I'm such a dick). Anyhow, he was a really cool dude. It reminded me of what it is about New Zealanders that people seem to like. He was very laid back, underplayed in his gestures, laughed a lot and generally very humble in his mannerisms.

This is another short story. The contents may, or may not, be true. ---------- Beers are flowing, spirits are high, people are smiling and the small lounge on the 6th floor of an apartment in the heart of Edinburgh is engulfed in happiness. Jacques is explaining the rules of drinking games to newcomers to the group, Jimmy is snapping away at what I know will be spectacular photos and videos, Pierre's drowning the table and cards with his beer, Eli's doing what he does best and getting along with every member present, the Aussie girls Tess and Demi are putting on their best Pukana voices. Our brains are suitably contaminated with alcohol when Jim puts on our old band Soulmon's song, 'Gypski.' All of a sudden we're all on our feet screaming at the top of our lungs, teleported to the Dog's Bollix circa 2009 - "be mine, I cannot draw the line, you're always on my mind..." Then to be inclusive of the non Kiwis, we put on Lion King and go ...

Edinburgh reminds me of home quite a bit. I thought it'd be a place just for New Years, and other than that I'd wanna get out of there pretty quickly. I was very wrong. It's such a cool place. Not as big as I thought it would be, steeped in history and tradition. Green hills, just like home, but with old buildings from hundreds and hundreds of years ago everywhere. It was a bit like walking through Devonport constantly, but with even older buildings and chains of pubs, each with their own historic story. It was fun reminiscing about old times with old mates. It's nice to think each time we meet up now on a trip is going to be an opportunity to continue those stories and add new chapters. The thing that was most pleasing was how different groups of people came together. Some of them were people I'd probably not hang out with in a different circumstance, but the commonality of being travellers from thousands of kilometres away was enough bring us all together. It w...