happy new year

Cheers! Wishing you all a festive New Year's Eve and a good start to 2007.

p.s. Happy 75th birthday to the Coathanger

Lanark Mansions

New House; Great Flatmates
After a long stint sharing with Deev and her housemates, the long search for a new 'home' has ended!

My new address for sending welcome correspondence and presents is... available on request (I just had a momentary thought that posting my address on the WWW might not be best)! I'm still in the Bush; Shepherd's Bush that is 2 corners around from Deev and behind an illustrious Walkabout.

Time to introduce the gang (above) - to the right of me, Nick (studying Spanish with Deev and introduced me to the house, seems to know and is freinds with everyone, works at PWC), Holly (wine afficionado and inspirational gym fiend) and Danielle (amazingly can fall asleep anywhere, could be something to do with work hours of a lawyer).

These guys are awesome and very excited to have them as friends and live with them too. they're all English and I love the way the Ashes is panning out so far!

My room (rather small, me on the double bed, dresser and wardrobe to the right and behind the door. I'm packing the suitcase for my visit home to Oz)
Us at the pub down the road with Jon, ex-housemate that passed the baton on to me.

Wedding Day

Kristy and Shane's Wedding

2 December 2006

Congratulations Mr and Mrs McGregor! Wedding's are lovely, but all the more lovely when it's 2 people who are so well-suited and as my housemate coined so aptly, "together being greater than the sum of 2 parts." Plus, not only was this wedding beautiful, moving, white and have good food.. as all weddings should be... this was fun with no disasters or mini-dramas on the side; much to the credit of Ty and Shane's good organisation and easy going attitude!

Had a great time, very glad to have been a part of it. And thank goodness the dress fit ;-) The Ceremony

The Bridesmaids - Rach and I

My Family

Cutting of the cake

budapest, hungary

6-9 October 2006
I loved Budapest. It was a hidden gem. The first East European city I've visited and it has a tangibly different feel than the west.
A little bit dirtier, less sparkly and a bit dated, like it's playing catching up - but so full of character.

I took a long weekend to met up with Beth my friend from home whose doing a 4 month back-packing adventure. We stayed in this very friendly hostel, with the most helpful staff.

They are locals and pointed out all the underground places (sometimes only denoted by a sticker on the door) to go out at night, that you'd never find in a travel guide and even cooked us pancakes for dessert on the first night.

The ornate building in the picture above is the very ornate Parliament building on the bank of the Danuabe River. Basically the east side, old-part of the city is Buda and Pest is on the west and below is what's known as the chain bridge (pictured below with the moon so low it's sitting inbetween the buildings on the far side), one of the many bridges that links the 2 sides.

Known as the jacuzzi capital of Europe, with many thermal spas we couldn't pass an afternoon in a better way. We sampled the indoor baths that looked very Roman with the collonades, the sauna (remember Eastern Europe haven't embraced the boardshort look yet; the speedo is king) and wallowing in the outdoor pool whatching the afternoon sun slide away in water that's body temperature warm (37-38 degrees). Lovely! It's such a local past time you get a refund on your admission price if you leave within 4 hours of arriving.

Apart from doing other customary things like eating goulash, we got our hair cut as a Beth's hairdresser back in Oz was from Budapest and said there were many very qualified, but poorly paid hairdressers - hence is more to Sydney. It was certainly cheaper than London!

Speaking of money, I've very proud of my budgeting having only 74 florints (AUD $0.50) left at the end of my trip. It's the non-Euro challenge of how much money to pull out of the ATM, trying to the balance between not having wads left over and not having to incur bank fees for multiple transactions.

Although, having said that if I did have a few thousand florints left over... it wouldn't have been a problem as I could easily be tempted to return.

6 months on

Hello my dears,

I’m feeling a little out of touch and just wanted to send a hello and let you know what’s been happening.

I’m certainly enjoying being over here – the novelty hasn’t worn off and it still feels like an adventure of sorts. At this point in time I’m still working on a 2 year plan of working in London, which means I’ll have to start thinking of apply for a different visa and the associated hassle and rigamarole of government red-tape.

Davina is still sharing her room with me whilst I look for a place (i.e. room) of my own. Yes it’s been 6 months since I left home! In my defense, the plan was always to stay together until Deev got back from her summer travels and we both benefit from half price rent. She’s been very patient thought and letting me find the right place rather then setting a fixed date for me to move out. It’s such a painful, frustrating process looking for a place which fits all or most of the criteria of location, price and housemates. I can’t wait to find something and settle in.

I’ve been travelling a little – when I first arrived I saw a bit of Spain (south coast, Benidorm to be more exact), Switzerland (Geneva and Zurich) and Austria (Salzburg), and Ireland (the south) and since then have visited Copenhagen for 4 days (not what I expected; good, but you don’t need more than 2 or 3 days there) and Budapest (was fantastic! There’s a sense of discovery about it. The history of the Nazis coming in and then after that the Soviet occupation of the land that ended about 2 decades ago). There are all these cool, grungy ‘underground’ bars, which the hostel pointed us in the right direction of. There’s no signage, just a sticker on the door or a guy sitting out the front. Great architecture and the thermal spas! It’s supposedly the Jacuzzi capital of the world. The locals spend hours there, so much so that you get a discount if you stay for less than 4 hours!). And closer to ‘home’ I spent a weekend visting Matt in Leeds, north of England. My next London escape is to Amsterdam for a long weekend at the end of this month.

It’s been nice making friends and having old friends come for a visit.

The days are getting noticeable shorter week by week and I’m rather scared about the cold to follow. According to BBC weather in the space of 5 days (yesterday to Sunday) London loses 15 minutes of daylight! That’s an incredible rate that we’re losing sunshine (or more correctly grey sky).

Still working for a marketing agency in SW london. And look to be here until the end of the year at least and re-evaluate in the new year.

Only 6 weeks until I’m back home and very much looking forward to catching up with you (all of you!)

coming home

Quick update to let you know that I'll be back home on the 14 November for 3 weeks until the 13th December for Kristy and Shane's wedding!! Yay!!

salzburg, austria

"Brown-paper packeages tied up with string... Schnitzel and strudel; these are a few of my favourite things..." add in a beer and Maria would have summed up Austria in a song.




This is Deev and I on the quintessential Salzburg Sounds of Music tour, in front of the glass gazebo famous for 'I am 16 going on 17' song.






The Festung Hohensalzburg is the fortress that sits above the city and was built in 1077...

Great views from the top

And Brad got to play with dolls (marrionette puppet actually)! There was a mini museum in the fort on the art of being the pupetteers and marionette puppets.

Deev in the rain, by a lake... okay so I can't remember where we are exactly. This was on part of the tour outside the city, in the town where the real Mozart's mother grew up... perhaps?!?















The very lovely Mirabell gardens (where in the movie the Von Trapp kids skip through singing Do re me) with the Fort in the background.

All in all, a thumbs up for Salzburg.

my borrowed room

To reassure those that are wondering if London and living out of home means I'll be a different person when I come home... don't worry some things don't change! In my defense we had a moth fumigator come round on Saturday and we had to bag all of our clothes. So that's effectively Deev's and my clothes that your looking at. I've tidied up after taking these pics, as after putting it off for Sunday and Monday it was getting out of control and trying to find clothes for work was a bit of pot-luck.

fruitstock

Christina and I had impromtually seen a play at Shakespeare's Globe, Under the Black Sun, the night before. It was about Long John Silver and the story was a fictitious telling of his life leading up to losing his leg. Twas a bit strange but entertaining, with some nudity and lots of singing, but the real attraction is the venue. We had standing tickets so it was nice and cheap, although a little tiresome by the end or 3 hours (including an interval), especially in heels.

London comes alive on a sunny summer day. And yesterday was a beautiful Saturday!
Chris and I met up again and went to Borough Markets near London Bridge. We were on a mission to put togehter a yummy picnic to take to Fruitstock. I was very excited just looking at the yummy food. Plus, I recalled watching a Jamie Oliver episode last year in my living room at home where he goes shopping in Borough Markets to collect ingredients for his cooking session. There's the usual mixture of stalls of 'raw ingredients' like butchers, fruit and veggie shops but also ready to eat foods, like a chorizo burger/wrap, venison burgers, lots of delicious-looking patisserie cakes, bread and cheese... so much choice for a hungry stomach!!

With our bags filled, we headed to Regent's Park for Fruitstock. Organised by Innocent drinks (exactly like our Nudie drinks at home - even the bottles look the same but with a different colour lid), it is a free music festival. With the weather being so nice I think everyone had the same idea and it was packed. It was a great afternoon just chilling in the sun listening to live music and people-watching.

• the first 3 are at Fruitstock with half of London
  
• Borough Markets and one of the fruit stalls
  
• Next is a photo of a pub next to the markets that was used in the Harry Potter films as the outside of the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley.
• And the last one located just 2 shops down from the pub; was my florist. What a daggy thing to take a picuture of, but it had to be done... don't roll your eyes; you've all done it!
  

time warp

This has become a retrospective blog, but I have good intentions to change that! well I'm no longer travelling and haven't been for 2 months now, so it's about time I wrote in the present tense. (I will come back and fill in the gaps of Austria and Ireland).

After arriving back in London after a fantastic holiday with Deev and Brad, the reality of living in London started to set in. Converting Australian dollars into pounds was scary at the best of times and when I started dwelling on the uncertainty of how long it was going to take me to find a job, I could convince myself that an hour's walk home was by far a better choice than the 80p fare for the bus. I admit I even went to ask at the Pizza Express (gourmet pizza chain restaurant) around the corner if they were looking for waitstaff... they weren't!

But as it happens, I found work and started a week after arriving back in London. Funnily enough I met with the agency on the Wednesday morning and before I had arrived home I had a contract job. No interview. Start 2 days later on a Friday; the only reason they didn't ask me to start the earlier on the Thursday was that my boss had meetings planned for most of the day.

And so begins my marketing agency career. It's a great office; hard-working but relaxed, casual atmosphere in terms of dress code ( I can wear jeans and flip flops if I want, which is fantastic because my one suit wouldnt' really cut a business wardrobe) and as a case point there was a beach ball being tossed around the office on my first day. I'd say just under 50% are aussies working there with a handful of kiwis too. This is because they have a high proportion of freelance and contractors (like myself). The work is very different from what I was doing at home. It's taken a while to get into the swing of it, I enjoy it most of the time but do find it stressful. The nature of the work means you're in the meat in the sandwich between the client and the creatives, or as i like to put it, I'm the piggy in the middle running after the ball as it goes back and forth.

The last couple of weeks London experienced a heat wave with temperatures in the mid to high 30's. They're not used to those sort of temperatures and tubes were delayed and unbearably stuffy, bitchumen was literally melting and in the case of our office building we overheated and blew a fuse. So of course, being English, everyone goes down to the pub to wait until it's sorted! However this week we've had a cold snap and I've already heard too many people say "well that was the summer!" But I'm optimistic we'll have another bout of good sun before the Autumn.

Apart from work, there's been plenty of good distractions. Christina Eriksson from CBTB at home, who came over a couple weeks after me has been a great friend and it's been nice hanging out with her shopping on High St Kensington, picnicing on top of Hampstead Heath and making bread with the bread maker at her place. I also got to see the lovely Susan, also from church at home, who was on holiday/business over here. Albeit a brief meeting, it was lovely to see her (thank you for the vegemite!). Other highlights are:

• Deev and I went to Wimbeldon, sat on the hill and watched the big screen, watched a match where they manually changed the scoreboards AND saw the Woodies.
  
• Visited Brighton for the day with Matt and Deev. Tested out the pebble beach, which hurts a lot on bare feet. We didn't swim but as far as I can tell from wading, the water is decidely cold and brown with the odd patch of scum. It was a fun day just wandering.
  
• £12.50 tickets to see the production of the Blue Man Group. It's hard to describe what they do but essentially 3 guys painted in blue who do skits. We were in the poncho section (read potentially in paint splattering distance.)
• Tori came to stay and together with Deev we enjoyed the city skyline from Primrose Hill, Camden markets, club called The Church (worthy of a whole blog entry for those of you that have been or heard about it, but this will suffice for now), Johnny Depp in Pirates 2 and Primark undie shopping.

Don't give up on checking the blog! It was worth the wait, wasn't it?! :)

chocolate coated

Zurich, Switzerland
Switzerland has four official languages (German, French, Italian and Romansch)

By this stage, after travelling from Spain through Geneva and arriving in Zurich all in the space of 30hours, all the while trying to greet, thank you and apologise for walking into people in Spanish, then French and German respectively - I was horribly muddled and would blurt out “Gracias” rather than “merci” and “bonjour” instead of “Guten Tag”. If I’d stuck with English like Brad I would have made more sense to the locals. More often than not they speak English as a second language; not Spanglish or Frerman!

As criteria for every picture perfect Swiss town, Zurich has a lovely lake and river running through it. The cold front that was moving across Western Europe had well and truly caught up with us, bringing with it rain and resulting in wet shoes and enjoyment from the small mercies of packing extra socks and thermals. As such, we had planned to hire free bicycles to cycle to the Lindt factory, but opted for the train.



The Swiss consume approximately 86,899 tonnes of chocolate products was consumed in Switzerland in 2005. Ranking it first among the consumer countries, Switzerland has an average per capita consumption of 11.6kg, compared to Australia with an average of 4.4kg per person.

Even walking around the perimeter of the factory, you could smell sweet chocolate in the air. I could almost have done introductions: You factory; me Charlie. Unfortunately, with no golden ticket (the exhibition was closed for renovation and they no longer do tours) we were given a complimentary box of chocolates and directed to the shop. I was disappointed there were no samples, but it was cheap and we bulk-bought. Surprisingly, after 5 weeks Deev and I have only polished off one block out of our 15 or so (2.5kg; equivalent of 28% of our average yearly consumption).

After conquering another church spire and admiring the view, exploring streets of funky shops, adding to our souvenir collections and have a tea break, our time in Zurich came to an end like so many travel stories… at the train station.

j'habiterais ici

Geneva, Switzerland
belongs not so much to Switzerland as to the whole world. More than 40% of residents are non-Swiss, and this city of bankers, diplomats and transients has a seriously wordly 'flavour' [Lonely Planet]

I instantly liked Geneva. Although it's strongly European and the people speak french, it's certainly true about it being an International stage. Typically Swiss, everything is orderly and efficient, in that the trains run on time, they repeat the PA announcements in French, English and German and people are polite yet perfunctory. The city is very clean and the crisp weather made everything feel that much fresher which was a nice change (not better; just different!) from the slippery sunscreen feeling of warm weather singlet-wearing Benidorm.

We got our bearings on the first night wandering down to the lake (aptly named Lake Geneva) complete with Swans and in true-backpacker style feasted on kebabs for dinner. The next morning we hit the sights. The top of Cathedrale St-Pierre affords brilliant views including snow-capped mountains and it's picture perfect in every direction. In the photo above you can see the giant fountain, Jet d'Eau in the background which shoots water up at 200km/h; 140m up into the air. At any one time there is 7 tonnes of water in the air!

Unfortunately it was a fly-through visit this time so we didn't tick off other tourist destinations but made sure to soak up the atmosphere of the lakeside and shopping strip, including taking in the sights and smells of the many chocolate shops and having a leisurely coffee.

Phew! this update has been a long time coming and it's getting much more retrospective than I had wanted but bear with me and I'll fill you in on the rest of June.
Happy new financial year.
Write me!

donde esta espana?

22-29 May 2006
Benidorm, Spain
Right near Alicante on Spain's south coast, Costa Blanca, I found the English home away from home. A hub for the Northern Englishman to soak in the sun and laze on the sand without missing out on dinners of baked beans on toast at one of the many streets lined with pubs called dubious un-spanish names like The Yorkshire and Ye Olde English pub (or something in that vain!)

Though I can't deny Deev, Brad and I were there for the same thing - the sun, not the baked beans! We were lucky enough to have a lovely apartment organised by Deev's parents to stay in for the 7 days which was a 5 min stroll to the beach.

The week flew by doing nothing more than hanging out on deck chairs on the beach and by the pool, reading, shopping at the local markets, adding to our limited Spanish vocabularly (I can now say onion thanks to a helpful waiter), dancing at the clubs in Via de Mallorca and listening to Spanish radio - Europa FM, which is truly a decade behind. Anyone remember Frente?

We had a great time and enjoyed the spanish delights of paella and sangria but have vowed to come back to see the real Spain in Barcelona and Madrid.

Flying out on Monday 29th May from Alicante Airport; our next stop Switzerland.