TravelStream™ news feed for member pauly on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/pauly en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:09:15 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1250939192/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1250939192/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1250939192/tpod.html Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:09:15 -0400 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands

Hello again everyone! As usual I’ll begin with an apology for the tardiness of this instalment in the increasingly inadequate and infrequent blog-like chronicle of our mediocre travel exploits, though I’m inclined to add that the apology is more habitual than sincere… ;) As I write this, I am sitting at a table outside the lovely Nijdam house in southern Holland where we’ve spent the last couple of days enjoying some lovely dutch sunshine and hospitality. It’s raining at the moment,  but the weather has been amazing for the last two days making a wonderful contrast with the English weather we’ve endured for the last five or so months in Liverpool. Oh, the weather in Liverpool had it’s nice days, to be sure, but I think I hated these even more than the grey rainy ones as it simply meant that we would get slaughtered at work (the Pumphouse Hotel, on the Albert Dock is regrettably (from a staff perspective) possessed of possibly the best beer garden in the city and when the sun comes out, so does 90% of the city. And they all want serving at the same time…). So anyway, we’re in Holland at the moment but before I get to how we got here, I suppose I should mention our experience in Spain, running away from several hundred kilos of highly motivated, highly cranky, agile and surprisingly fast beef…We left Liverpool in the early afternoon of 09 July on a National Express coach which, true to form and sadly also true to schedule, took all day to get us down to London arriving around midnight with a change at Milton Keynes. With our flight leaving early the next morning, we’d decided there was no point in doing anything much, nor trying to visit any of our mates in London, so we jumped on the express coach out to the airport where we thought we might be able to sneak in a bit of cheeky kip time before our flight to Bilbao in the morning. Only one thing that was kind of funny happened at the airport and while it’s not really in the best of taste, I’ve never let that stop me before, so now’s not really the time to start is it? It happened at about 0400h, while I was answering one of natures calls in the airport toilets. Halfway through my crap, this powerful voice booms out, “What are you doing in there?!”. It was so unexpected that suddenly I wasn’t halfway though my crap anymore, I was pretty much finished. Before getting a response, the voice once again boomed out, “You’re up to no good in there, aren’t you mate?!” Not sure if I was being addressed or not, I was attempting to think of a suitable response (something in between, “what’s it to you?” and, “why don’t you fuck off?”) when I was saved the trouble by the bloke in the next cubicle mumbling something. Whatever it was that was mumbled didn’t appear to impress the voice, which then said, “No, no. You were playing with yourself. We’ll have none of that, mate. Out you pop!” . On hearing this I had an instant sense of guilt closely followed by some intense relief, because I had been so bloody bored that I was considering doing what my neighbour was in trouble for. Just exactly how in the hell they knew what he was up to was a little disconcerting anyways… Cameras? A complaint from someone? If that was it, how the hell did they know? I didn’t hear anything, and I was right next door to the fellow. And if someone noticed by looking in the cubicle, well surely that’d make them as much of a wanker as the wanker, right? Perhaps not in quite so literal a sense though. Whatever the answer was, I was too scared of the authorities to do anything other than wipe my arse and get the hell outta there. No doubt more information than many of you needed, but, well… tough.In due course we got on the flight and bumped into some other Aussies, who were of course, headed the same place we were, the running of the bulls, also known as, “el encierro” or “la fiesta del San Fermin”. After a bit of discussion, it devolved that we had some mutual acquaintances in London and that these gents had organized the hire of a vehicle from the same place we had, in Bilbao.  These guys we with the Fanatics tour, an option we’d considered before opting to do it ourselves, a bit more off the cuff. One thing they did have that we didn’t though, was directions to Pamplona and to the fanatics campsite outside of town, which they happily copied for us after I managed to provide some assistance in Spanish at the car hire desk. Not having any accommodation of our own, we’d simply planned on sleeping in the car, but now, knowing where the fanatics would be, we thought we’d chance our hand by popping in to say hello and see if any of the staff we knew were there. Offer assistance in putting up tents or taking them down or interpreting Spanish, but sadly (and not in the least bit surprisingly) they had all bases firmly covered and didn’t need any help from us, so there went our hope of scamming some accommodation and it was back to the car for us.Before we got to that point of course, we first had to navigate our way from Bilbao to Pamplona which after a few false starts proved not to be too difficult. Having some time to kill though (we’d arrived quite early in the morning) we decided to head north to the city of San Sebastian, which one of doug’s work mates had said was quite lovely. While en route though, we received something of a distress call from the other lads we’d met on the plane. They’d been busted speeding by the police, who were demanding payment of the fine on the spot, the lads though, hadn’t pulled any euros out yet and couldn’t pay them. The Spanish cops were clearly determined to live up to their reputation of being dodgy buggers. We didn’t actually have any euros on us either at this point, figuring that we’d pull some out from an ATM when we got  to a town. Trying to help the other guys though, we pulled in to about 3 different service stations, trying to get out some money to pay the Spanish cops. None of these had an ATM though and time was a wasting. Finally, we managed to pull into a small town and get some money out, not long after which, we got a phone call from the guys who said that the Spanish cops were tired of waiting and were taking them in convoy to the next town to get cash out. The whole episode stinks like a 3 day cat as far as I’m concerned. Who ever heard of having to pay a fine on the spot… in cash? At any rate, we continued heading on towards San Sebastien, which really was a beautiful spot. Lovely beaches, clear sunny skies and loads and loads of women wearing half a bikini. Excuse me for being a typical guy, but I thought that was great. After spending a pleasant afternoon in San Sebastien, it was time to head for our eventual destination, Pamplona. We got there with out too much trouble and after the already mentioned foray into the Fanatics campsite, we picked a spot just down the road, by a creek as a potential place to spend the night. Before settling in for the night, we decided to head into the town itself to check things out, like the parking situation. If we could scam a good park in the city, it would save us a lot of trouble, no need for drink driving or massively long walks. Sadly, such was not to be the case. It did give us a bit of an idea of just how insane this festival is though. During the 8 days of the Festival of Saint Fermin, where the bulls are run at 8am every morning, the population of Pamplona swells from 200 000 to around 1000 000, according to one website anyways. Being there, it wasn’t hard to believe it. People absolutely everywhere, most of them wearing the traditional white shirt and keks with a red neckerchief and sash at the waist. Inside the city it was just pandemonium. Music all over the place and people walking around drinking and in general having what looked to be a great time. We couldn’t wait to get amongst it. News had also reached us that someone died that day, during the encierro, which was sobering news as we were planning on running the following morning. Not having found anywhere substantially nearer to town, we headed back to our spot by the creek to sleep the night. Evidently a good number of other people also had the same idea and it was a fairly noisy night, till about 0200 anyways.Up early the next morning, we managed to snag one of the taxis that was returning the late night revellers to the campsite on the way back into town to take us back the other way. Getting in to town showed that despite the early hour, the revellers from the previous night, maybe even a few nights before that, were still going strong. Some people, it seems, drink the entire night through to get enough dutch courage to run with the bulls. Or perhaps to kill enough brain cells to make it look like a good idea anyway. Feeling fresh and at least partially rested, we followed our cab drivers directions and located the corralled off streets that make up the encierro. From a little bit of prior research we were already aware that it’s impossible to run the entire course in front of the bulls, it’s only 850m but the bulls are simply too fast. All the runners have to choose a section of the run and do the best they can not to get gored or trampled on by other runners. Having found the course, we then set about figuring our which part we wanted to run in. The crowds around at this time were incredible. Early risers out to see the run, tourists from all over the place, people out to do the run themselves, press photographers and news media vans everywhere. Disorganised chaos. While trying to shove our way through the crowds to find a place to run we were aware that time was starting to run out. In the end, we just had to shove our way up to a barrier and try and climb through, all illusions about any sense of organisation pervading the event pretty much shattered. Police were escorting anyone they thought was a little too drunk to participate out of the barricaded streets, though this was at best a token effort. Too many drunks and not enough police. Inside the blocked off route, it was still enormously crowded but full of people in very high spirits, lots of pushing and good natured shoving, which I suppose was just the nervous energy of so many people thinking the same thing, “I hope I don’t get a bulls horn shoved violently up my arse by half a ton of angry beef”  or something along those lines anyway…Just before 8am, a rocket goes up to signify that the bulls are ready to go and at this point, the course empties out significantly. By around 50%, or so it seemed. Either a lot of people lose their nerve before the bulls are let out, or never intend to run anyway and just enjoy getting amongst some good pushing and shoving. Not long after this, a second rocket is released, to signify that the bulls have entered the course. At this stage, everyone is looking in the direction that the bulls will come from, bouncing on their toes and trying to see past the throngs of other runners. The first warning you get though, is when all the people in front of you turn around and start fleeing for their lives, in a reasonably literal sense. There is something about panic. It is remarkably contagious. When a huge number of white faced people start running in your direction, panic written all over their expressions, the compulsion to run is almost overwhelming. So run we did, the first time though the bulls weren’t actually in sight and it petered out fairly quickly. When the next mass panic began we were determined not to turn tail and flee until at least having seen the bulls. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. When everyone starts running and you’re trying to wait, you’re a bit of a liability. This doesn’t actually become evident to you until you see the bulls yourself, see how enormous they are and how ridiculously fast they’re moving and then turn tail to run yourself. At this point, while you’re trying to accelerate from 0 to flat out in a time that would make Usain Bolt jealous, you realise how annoying all those people who are standing there waiting to see the bulls are. More than that, they’re a bloody liability. As you’re pushing the land speed record to new heights, you are also trying to divide your attention in equal measure to dodging the slower people in front you, the idiots who are still waiting to see the bulls (amongst whom you numbered scant seconds ago) and the bulls which are approaching your hindquarters at frightening speed. Somewhere amidst all this chaos, things are quite likely to go wrong, and they frequently do. Doug and I lost sight of each other fairly quickly, each of us concentrating fairly strongly on not tripping over, not hitting other people, going as quickly as possible and not catching a bulls horn in the arse.As nearly as I can recall, my thoughts while running were something like: Fuck me, they’re bigger than I thought - and faster! Sprinting, looking over shoulder, then in front, then behind again, dodging people, checking where bulls were, checking in front then behind, holy shit they’re close! Check in front, hurdle someone who fell over, poor bugger check in front again. Start checking behind, get massive shunt, fucken hell!,  flash of large brown object, hooves, propelled violently into pile of about 8 or 9 people. Trying to extricate self, more people pile on, what a mess.It took a couple of minutes for everyone to get off each other from the pile up, after which I sprinted off towards the end of the bull run to see if I could catch up. Fat chance (pun intended). Following the course to its conclusion, you wind up in the stadium which is absolutely packed to the rafters. I had thought that things were pretty much at an end and set about trying to find dougie, no easy task when, like the other 500 or so people (and myself) on the floor of the arena, he’s wearing white shirt, trousers and a red neckerchief. While wandering around the stadium I was kind of surprised by a sudden roar from the crowd then seeing everyone down inside the stadium scatter in different directions. When they’d all parted, I saw one of the bulls, now rested, full of energy and looking decidedly cranky had been let back out. When they get let out into the stadium, there is no set course for them to follow but there sure are a lot of people around for them to vent their rage and frustration on.  They run around like crazy at first and you can see people getting tossed about all over the place. Eventually they tire a little and people start getting braver, darting in to touch the bull, or for those brave/silly enough, to try and jump over the bull. We saw a few people try it, but no one managed it very convincingly. Running in to smack it on the arse was enough for me. As well as trying to get it’s attention and then get the hell out of the way, I suppose. When the bull tires enough and stops hurting people, they bring out one of the older and bigger steers which are a bit calmer and they use these to herd the younger, angry bull back into the pen.Around this time, Dougie cottoned on to something that had escaped my attention with the first bull. A lot of people were gathered in front of a gate in the wall of the stadium, chanting, “eh Toro, eh!” (hey Bull!). After a little while, they all huddled together, down on their knees and continued chanting. Taunting the next bull to be released into the arena. The gate then opens and the maddened bull charges down a narrow chute and leaps over the huddled people, into the arena and starts its own glorious chaos. I still hadn’t found dougie at this time and didn’t know that he’d already gotten on board and was there, in front of the gate for the second bull. All I remember thinking was, that’s fucken stupid. I gotta try it”. So after dodging the second bull’s maddened antics around the arena, I made sure I was over at the gate to join in for when number three was released and this, of course, is where I found dougie. He’d been in on it since the second bull. It was quite an experience, I have to admit. Staring down the narrow corral, to see a tremendously angry bull staring back at you. Then tensing yourself not to dive out of the way as it charges towards you. Trying to hold its gaze until you duck, involuntarily as it sails scant inches above your head, into the arena to begin wreaking its own version of havoc upon the hapless crowd. Well, they’re not really hapless, but it sounded good, y’know?So anyways. Running with the bulls was amazingly good fun, especially the chaos at the end, dodging the bulls in the arena and letting them jump over you. Great stuff, and all this before 9am! So after such a glorious start to the day, what else is there to do but get on the lash? Not having a better answer, this is precisely what we did. We managed to pace ourseves quite well, actually, lasting until about 2 or 3 am I think, at which time we decided to walk back to our car, about 6 or 7 kilometres out of town, which we fervently hoped was still there and not towed away for violating some parking laws about which we didn‘t know. Thankfully, after a very long walk home, including a mad 1.8 km sprint through a “vehicles only - pedestrians strictly prohibited” tunnel, we managed to make it back to the car, mercifully unmoved by traffic authorities. We had been planning on running again the following morning, but due to the late night and some of the alcohol, we elected to sleep in instead.We spent most of the next day exploring the coast between San Sebastian and Bermeo, finding some absolutely fantastic spots along the way. We also picked up the most gorgeous hitchhiker I’ve ever seen. An absolutely stunning young Spanish girl who wanted a lift to the next village, and as doug never tires of telling people, she had to move my jocks off the back seat to sit down. (well, we’d been living in the car for 5 days, of course there were clothes everywhere. It was just unfortunate that my jocks were right there).So anyways, the rest of the trip was actually pretty dull. We spent our last night in the car again, parked on the side of the road along to coast to Bermeo, got up in the morning took the car back, jumped on the plane and slept all the way back to the UK. Got on another National Express bus and spent about ten hours still trying to sleep and then, well, we were back in Liverpool. Oh, and in typical form, it was pissing down rain when we got back, just to really rub our noses in the fact that we were back in England…Going back to work was about as much fun as you’d imagine, after having spent a few glorious days in sunny Spain, but it was tempered by the fact that we had a bit of a timeframe in mind, sort of a countdown to our next departure, which made things easier. (This is in no way meant to be disrespectful or snotty to the people I worked with in the Pumphouse!! What a top bunch of people, I loved em all, and the place itself was definitely a good one to work in, it was just the customers that ruin it all, and I suppose, my all consuming hatred for hospitality work in general. Apparently I’d been observed to say on a number of occasions that I’d rather shovel shit with a toothpick than get another job serving drinks. While graphic, it does kind of convey my feelings in general towards serving customers. Particularly when they come up and say, “I want…”).So… moving right along. The 3 or 4 weeks work that followed fairly flew by and it wasn’t long at all till it was time to pack in the work and get ready to hit the bricks again. We deliberately finished work a little early to allow ourselves some time to do a few touristy bits and bobs that we’d not been able to take time out for while we were both working. Towards the end of our stay in Liverpool I had been doing 6 days per week and about 50 to 60 hours work, while Doug, since he started his job in construction had been doing 7 days a week and around 80 hrs which combined to leave us with little time and even less inclination to go and take photos of the city. There were also lots of sad goodbyes to be said, and all my friends from the Pumphouse threw me and Doug a spectacular going away party and gave us far, far too much… You guys (if you’re reading this) are absolutely amazing. While I might not have liked the work too much, you all made it worth coming in. Thank you all heaps!When all was said and done, we managed to wipe away the tears and jump on our flight to Amsterdam, on my birthday, no less ;). After arriving in Amsterdam, our first course of action was naturally to go and find a coffee shop and buy some weed. (come on! We were in Amsterdam!!!! It was my birthday. It had to be done!). We bought a gram of Laughing Buddha grass that was supposed to get you much higher, rather than just catatonically stoned. Not having any bits of the usual ganja paraphernalia, we had to borrow some from the coffee shop, The Rokery. They kindly supplied us with a grinder, some matches and papers. Just in case we failed at rolling joints, we decided to ask for the use of one of the dusty old bhongs on the top shelf, which they happily complied with, though there were a few raised eyebrows. The reason for the raised eyebrows was to become painfully obvious to us a few short minutes later… We ground up the grass, loaded up the bhong with what we thought was a fairly conservative amount and blazed up. Dougie went first and had a bit of a coughing fit, not a good sign for me, as he’s smoked a lot more than I have. Gasping, he handed the bhong over, shaking his head. I finished off what was left from the first cone (not much) then packed another and had a go. After I finished coughing I realised that the size of the cones we’d packed either wasn’t all that conservative, or this stuff was a lot more powerful than we’d anticipated. For about the next three hours, there was absolutely no fucking way we were getting off that couch in the coffee shop. Talk about twisted. One hit from the big bhong and we were completely cactus. We must have looked like the biggest bloody lightweights in the whole of Amsterdam. The high itself kept changing, switching from fits of the giggles to just wondering what the hell was going on, to just wishing it would end and we could straighten out. We managed to set off a fit of giggles by asking ourselves repeatedly, “what the hell made us think we could waltz into a coffee shop in the middle of Amsterdam, buy a gram of laughing Buddha and smoke it from a bhong like a couple of old pros?”. At the time, this was about the funniest thing either of us had ever heard, though it does seem to have lost a little of its potency now.When we finally felt capable (just barely capable) of getting off the couch and leaving the coffee shop, we managed to get our stuff together (we still had all our bags and everything with us) and stumble off in the vague (very vague) direction of Amsterdam Centraal train station, where we were due to board a train to Eindhoven to go and visit Marjon Nijdam, a lovely Dutch girl who had worked at the Whalley Arms last year and invited us to visit her, if ever we wound up in Holland. Us winding up in Holland was pretty much a certainty, sooner or later, so we had arranged a bit of a visit a few days in advance and had a reasonable idea of how to get there, though through the haze of the Laughing Buddha, the idea was seeming a little less reasonable. Somehow though, we did manage it, despite the best efforts of the train service to confuse us (not a difficult task) and the unscheduled delays they threw into the mix just outside of Utrecht. Eventually we did make it to Eindhoven and even found where the buses left from which was to be the next part of our journey to Boekel and the Nijdam family. We found the right bus, but managed to miss it at the last moment. We’d earlier been unable to find anywhere to purchase tickets for the bus and figured that you must have to buy them from the driver. As we were approaching the bus though, we noticed somewhere back inside the station that sold tickets, frantically running inside we managed to grab tickets, then dart outside only to find that the bus had departed. Very kindly though, Marjon and her mum, Elly jumped in the car and drove 30 or 40 min down to pick us up. We had  a lovely dinner with them that night and the next day, which was gloriously sunny, we all rode pushbikes down to Hemelrijk which is like a big lake with a beach and a few rides and diving boards and pontoons and stuff. It was just a great day out in the sun and swimming and trying to do all manner of silly flips and things off the springboards. The next day we spent just lazing about and enjoying ourselves with a brief foray into the neighbours pool to cool down on what was apparently the hottest day of the summer so far. I am ashamed to admit that so accustomed have we become to the northern hemisphere climate in the UK that even though it only got to 32, it felt really, really hot.The next day we didn’t get up to much, just relaxing again and packing all our stuff, ready to hit the bricks and head back to Amsterdam for a big weekend. The whole Nijdam family were amazingly hospitable and we had a fantastic time staying with them, so a huge big thank you to Pieter, Elly, Ruud and Marjon for everything, thanks guys!Getting back in to the Dam, we headed straight for the hostel and checked in, then left again in the company of a couple of Italian guys whom I’d translated for while they checked in. Kind of funny that, an Australian guy, translating from Italian to English and back again in a Dutch hostel to a Chinese girl behind the counter. Wonders never cease. Anyway, the Italian guys, Tiziano and Marco were keen to find a coffee shop and get stoned, plus they wanted to buy us a couple of beers fo helping them out at the check in. Given our previous encounter with weed in the Dam, we were a lot less keen, but went along anyway to keep them company. After a while we parted ways with the Italian lads and headed back the Amsterdam Centraal to join one of the guided tours through the red light dirstrict of town. We hadn’t even realised our hostel was in the red light district! We walked right past it on the tour. After the tour, we stayed on in a pub for a few drinks with some of the people from the tour, a couple of american guys, Nick and Josh (both from California) Dan (another Aussie) and Olga?/Helga? A gorgeous young girl from Belarus whom Dougie spent last night with. And that pretty much brings us up to date, I’m sitting here now at the downstairs bar of our hostel, typing away furiously so I can finish this, upload it and then get the hell out there amongst it! Woohoo!!! This is AmsterDAYUM!!! That’s it, I’m off. More on the blog later! :D
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1242862560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1242862560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1242862560/tpod.html Wed, 20 May 2009 19:38:20 -0400 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Liverpool, England, United Kingdom

Okie dokie folks, here begins yet another woefully overdue instalment in this blog, the chronicle of our mediocre travels and exploits...The last blog covered our time in Bulgaria and mentioned that we had visited some friends (Anto and Marissa) in Ireland, so that seems like as appropriate a point as any from which to resume our disjointed narrative, so here goes J. ...Actually, before we arrived in Ireland, we flew into Luton from sofia. I don't really remember anything about that flight and neither does Doug, he assures me. But the very fact that we did actually arrive in Luton suggests that we somehow made it on board. We had checked in to our favourite hostel in sofia, the Art Hostel, y'know the one with the groovy cellar bar and as our flight was leaving at 6.30am the next day or somewhere thereabouts, we needed to be at the airport by about 0430 hours. After checking in, we decided to leave our bags in the room and nip down to the cellar bar for a few final Wymehckos (it was a Saturday night, after all...) and then, off to bed. It almost goes without saying that we never actually made it to bed that night. At about 4am our mate who sort of runs the hostel and who had been keeping pace with us all night, drink for drink, called us a cab and that's about all I remember till we touched down in Luton. Considering we did actually make it, I suppose things can't have gone too badly, can they? I guess we'll find out next time we go through, or try to go through sofia airport. We had two nights to kill before our flight over to Dublin and Dougie was going to stay in Luton at Kelly's (one of our friends from Whalley who had moved back to her parents house, handily located just down the road from the airport) while I hopped a national express bus up to Cambridge to visit Sharone. After a very brief visit, I was on a bus again the next morning and met up with Doug at Kelly's, where we were to spend the next night. That day though, we had business to attend to in London (claiming our refunds from the Korean Air office for cashing in our return tickets to Aus) so we jumped on a train and had a day in the capital. We didn't do much, but we did purchase something we'd been after for a while. A travel guitar. It's basically a normal guitar with a much smaller sound box. The neck and the fret board are all full size. Anyways, we had wanted one of these type of guitars for a while because, like laptops, most airlines let you carry on musical instruments for free and they don't count as extra luggage, provided they're not too large . When we got back to Kelly's that night the sofa was already taken as one of Kelly's brothers was also staying at home, so I managed to make myself quite comfortable on the carpet. I forget where Dougie slept. Kelly and her family were wonderfully hospitable and we spent some very pleasant time there with them just before we headed off to Dublin.In fact, the very nearness of Kelly's house to the airport actually made us a bit blasé about how long before our flight we'd need to leave for the airport and when Kelly's dad sauntered downstairs in the morning and asked what time our flight was, his reaction gave us a bit of a start. "Fucken 'ell! Grab your stuff and get it in the car, I'll get youse down there right now!". Ok, I guess going to Ireland is still an international flight and the proprieties need to be observed, like getting to the airport early enough. As it was, I'm pretty sure we were just about the last people to get through the check in before they closed the counter, and then we had all the other security checks and other stuff to go through. At one point, I had both our small day bags, which we usually take as carry on luggage [because on all the budget carriers, you only get one piece of luggage to check in free] and Dougie was carrying the new guitar, about ten strides in front of me having already gone through the metal detector. The guard there bailed me up because I had two bags, of course, and you're only permitted one. Thoughtlessly, I then committed an airport cardinal sin and said, "yeah, but this one's not mine mate, I'm just carrying it for me mate". As soon as the words were out of my mouth I could have kicked myself. These days, the last thing you want to tell airport security is that you're carrying luggage that isn't your own. I could see this bloke and his security mates all starting to get macho and envisage themselves taking down a would be terrorist. (There really are times and places when a beard and long hair don't do you any bloody favours). Thankfully though, these guys were a little brighter than their Hollywood counterparts tend to be and a quick explanation, backed up by Dougie seemed to suffice. Then there was the issue that we still had three bits of luggage between two of us. "Yeah, but this one's a bloody musical instrument mate, they don't have to be checked in and they're ok for carry on. Come on mate, it's in the bloody luggage policy of the airline! (I had no idea if this was true or not, but it sounded good). "Fuck we're gunna miss this friggin flight if we have to fuck about with all this shit!". Well, that seemed to do the trick and we were on our way again. Who says swearing won't help, eh?  We weren't late enough that we actually had to sprint for the plane or anything, but we definitely had a bit of a hustle on, especially being in an unfamiliar airport. I remember looking at our boarding passes and thinking, "oh, gate one! At least that'll be nice and close and we won't have too far to go" Yeah, right! Unfortunately, whatever misguided genius was employed to design Luton airport decided to number the gates from the outside in, rather than the more usual inside out, meaning that gate 1 was about as far away as it was possible to be, while still being in the same airport.  All the corridors we were going through appeared completely deserted. Well, except for the attractive and slightly confused looking American girls some way in front of us. It seemed increasingly evident that they were looking for the same flight as us. Not wanting to be the last people on the plane and thereby having to struggle to find a seat and any space in the overhead lockers, as well as deal with all the angry looks from other passengers, we resolved to overtake them. This decision led to a bit of an unofficial race to the gate which I am happy to report, we totally won. It must have looked quite comical to anyone watching though. All of us striding along as quickly as we could, without actually running or looking at the others and trying to look as though we weren't trying. The conclusion of the race was kind of funny anyways, we all came around a right angle bend in the corridor and almost ran into a veritable sea of bored looking people in green t-shirts [it was st pat's day, after all]. We had arrived at the waiting lounge for our flight. All that hurry and worry and the bloody flight hadn't even boarded yet. We wound up having about another ½ hour to wait before we could get on the plane, time we put to good use chatting with the American girls we had just beaten to the waiting lounge. As a gesture of reconciliation, we rather graciously allowed them to board before us. It was the race that mattered anyways.So, anyways, we did actually make it to Dublin on St Pats day, which was one of the things we'd wanted to do last year, but had managed to mess up. In this case, the second time was a charm, which was just as well, really. I wouldn't relish the prospect of another year of this bloody dismal weather, just so we could get that one ticked off the list. Sheesh. Getting to Dublin airport though, was only half the battle, so to speak. We had a phone number for one of the great blokes we met on our trip through turkey for ANZAC day last year, Anto Doyle, who had kindly offered to let us crash at his place in Dublin for a little while. Anto had quite impressed me on the ANZAC trip through turkey by being just about the only bloke I've ever met who knows almost all the words to, "The Band Played Waltzing Matlida". After some mucking about with international area codes and other annoying but necessary details, we managed to get in touch with Anto and found out which bus we'd need to catch to get into the middle of town where we'd meet up with him, his lovely girlfriend, Marissa and a few of their other mates for some serious Dublin style paddy's day action, i.e. the copious consumption of enormous quantities of Guinness... Finding the right bus though, wasn't quite the same as finding the middle of town. Where we were supposed to meet Anto was by what he described as, "a dirty great big fuck off pointy thing, bang in the middle of town. Like, 200m high or something. You can't miss it." It sounded simple enough, but of course, this was St Pat's Day. The parade was on and the bus routes that would ordinarily go through the middle of town had been diverted. All it really meant though was that we had a slightly longer walk. It wasn't really too difficult to find, Anto's description being pretty much on the money.  That spire thing was enormously tall. Apparently it was supposed to be erected in time for the turning of the millennium, but ran over time... by about 4 years or so. The biggest difficulty came from trying to walk through the teeming crowds of people who were, well, everywhere... Eventually, we met up with Anto (and Coyle and Gazza and Dunfy) and despite the fact that we still had all our luggage, it became clear that the first order of business was going to be pints. Several in fact. Well, clearly our arms didn't need to be twisted far in that direction. We soon worked out that we were lucky to have gotten directions to the middle of town and to have been met there by Anto, as he had been considering playing a joke on us that had worked on a few of his other mates. A few people, apparently, when attempting to catch up with Anto in Dublin have been told to head to the George, one of the city's most famous gay venues, and to ask the barman, "can I come in the back entrance please? I'm meeting a few friends". What I found most amusing about this, is that it actually worked on anyone. Anyways, after a few warm up pints of Guinness, just to get in to the St Patrick's Day spirirt, we headed back to Anto and Marissa's digs in Ranelagh, to drop our luggage off and get suitably fired up for a big night out in Dublin, on St Pat's Day, no less.Back at their place we were also introduced to "Buckfast" which wasn't a person, but a type of alcoholic drink. Disappointingly, Buckfast isn't actually a typical Irish drink but an English one. Despite having been in England for about 12 months, neither doug nor I had come across it, and let's face it, we were pretty familiar with a lot of English drinks. Anyways, Buckfast was a type of tonic wine (whatever the hell that means) from Kent or Cornwall or somewhere in England and inevitably people really do say, "Buckfast, it gets you fucked fast". In Dublin, which is a damnably expensive place to be, Buckfast is considered cheap alcohol, at about 10€ (probably about $22 AUS) for a 700ml bottle, but it certainly beats 6.80€ (around $12AUS, or thereabouts) for a pint. So after an afternoon of getting much more personally acquainted with some bottles of buck fast (which did indeed get us fucked fast) everyone was pretty much ready to go and hit the town, which we promptly did. As far as I recall, and I'm certainly not sure that my recollections should be trusted, the first place we went to was called, The Barge. Or something like that. It was near a canal. Or something watery. Anyway, it seemed a fun place. After a little while there, we waded through the seething crowds of reeling drunks and people who weren't yet drunk, but were trying hard to get there soon, till we made our way to another establishment, the name of which still (and probably permanently) escapes me. To be honest, we were probably doing a fair bit of reeling ourselves. We stayed at the next venue for a fair while, drinking and being jostled so much in its crowded environs that to the untrained eye it probably appeared as though we were dancing. That may have actually been the case for some of the others, but being possessed of all the natural rhythm of a partially decayed tree stump, I'm going to steadfastly maintain that I was not dancing, and any evidence to the contrary was simply a result of the constant jostling of other pub patrons in the overcrowded place. Anyways, at some point during the night, Doug got a case of the wanders and disappeared off to god only knows where. When the time came to leave the pub as pretty much everyone was beginning to feel a little worse for wear, a dedicated search of the street and the few nearest pubs failed to uncover any sign of our itinerant mate.At this stage of our travels, we were also down to one mobile between the two of us as Dougie had lost the other one somewhere on one of the unpisted black runs at Pamporovo. Fortunately, or rather, unfortunately as it turns out, Doug had our last remaining phone at this time. Having failed to find him anywhere, I managed to dig the phone number out of my wallet and Anto gave Doug a ring. Of course, being in an unfamiliar city that we'd only just arrived in, Dougie couldn't really explain where he was, and according to Anto, it sounded as though he may not have known anyway. As patiently as he could, Anto explained that he would text the address of the house to doug's mobile and that Doug should just grab a cab back to there, we could pay for it when it got there, no probs. As soon as he got off the phone, Anto sent the address information to Doug and we assumed that he would be back at the house in short order as there were any number of cabs about. For reasons that are still unclear, this absolutely failed to happen and it wasn't until the early hours of the morning, around 0500 or 0600H, that Dougie arrived back at the house and the saga of his night began to unfold. Let's face it, the details are still a bit sketchy but Doug's best recollection goes like this: "I fucked off to that other pub down the road and then ran out of money, so I decided to go home, and then, for some reason, I wound up at the chippy with enough Chinese food to feed a medium sized army, which I also don't remember paying for. Halfway through my first meal, I was confronted by a couple of coppers, who asked me some basic questions. They went inside after having a talk to me, at which point I decided to ditch the food and fuck off. Then I got lost in the back streets for a while, where I ran into these 2 officers who looked really familiar. It wasn't till I got really close that I recognised them from the events at the chippy and after a much more thorough interview this time which wasn't made any easier by the fact that I had no ID and couldn't prove my identity plus the fact that they were local foot patrol cops and didn't recognise the address I had given them, and consequently thought I was bulshitting them. Somehow I still managed to convince them that I wasn't lying and didn't deserve to be locked up for inebriation which was the fate they had planned for me. After convincing them of this, I was still back at square one, lost, in what I believed to be the right suburb, but with no idea how to find the right house. Eventually, after walking around in enough circles I managed to find an internet café which, thank fuck, was 24hrs, run by a polish bloke with some seriously limited English. From there, I got onto google maps, put in the address I wanted, got the address of the net café, printed a map and the rest was just like joining the fucken dots. Bingo, not lost anymore. On the way to the house, I ran into the same two bloody cops, this time though, armed with a marked map and a clear destination I managed to get away without the extended questioning. Not long after that, I was tapping on the front window of the for fucken ages, trying to wake up Paul the prick, who was comfortably asleep on the bloody sofa while I shivered outside."Below is the version of events that I created in the absence of some of the blanks Doug filled in above: (the bit about the No. 2 really did happen. He just left that out of his version)As far as I understand it, Doug had become a little bored in the establishment we were in and had decided to go for one of his usual drunken meanderings and somewhere along the way got a little lost, or perhaps just a little sidetracked. Maybe it was a pretty face or perhaps just a particularly inviting looking pub, whatever the case Dougie wound up, somewhere else and got in a few more drinks. Why texting the address to him failed to work we may never know, but the most likely reason is that somewhere along the line, the phone got lost. It certainly wasn't with him when Doug lobbed in the morning. Apparently when he finally decided it was time to head home and realised that he no longer had the phone, Doug did the logical thing and tried to retrace his steps back towards the house, which was in Ranelagh. While it may be the logical thing to do, it's certainly not an easy thing to do, especially after a bottle or three of Buckfast, plus all the other St Pat's Day bevvies we'd had. Some of the rest of the details are even more sketchy, but there was mention of one of natures calls (no. 2) needing to be answered in between two parked cars which may (or may not) have precipitated the attention Dougie later received from the Guarda (the cops). Allegedly, the police started giving Doug some grief for not knowing where he was going, because they wanted him off the street or something along those lines. Having lost the phone at some point, Doug was unable to give the address and could only tell them that is was in Ranelagh. This didn't seem to wholly satisfy the police but they did let him carry on, after a warning of some description. At some point, Doug actually did make it to Ranelagh but was then unable to figure out which street and which number the house was, which was near enough to being back at square one. With a flash of inspiration though, Doug realised that if he could get access to the internet, he could go back through his or my old emails and find the address that way. There was still, of course, the difficulty of finding an all night internet café, on St Pat's Day/night at 2, 3 or possibly 4am. In due course though, he did manage it, including another encounter with the same police he'd met earlier. I think though, that this exchange took place after Doug found the internet café and had printed out the address and directions to Anto's, meaning he was much more able to dish out a bit of cheek to the cops who'd been wankers to him earlier. Good on him too. In his place, I'd've been stuffed, I don't even know if it would've occurred to me to find a net café and to check the old emails. Mind you Dougie was one cold, tired and knackered looking fella when he finally did show up back at Anto's... The things we do, eh?After the madness and mayhem of "An Actual St Pat's Day In Dublin" (was beginning to wonder if we'd ever get that one ticked off!" we took a couple of days off to recover. We went for a few strolls with Marissa around Dublin and checked out the city centre and Trinity College, got a photo next to statue of the Tart on a Cart (Molly Malone), meandered down Temple Bar and basically had a good old lazy time of it. One of our more notable outings was with Anto when we went for a pint of the Best Guinness In Dublin at a pub that could only be described as "seriously out of the way". Stepping through the front door, was like looking back 100 or a 150 years, the only thing that gave it away was the cut of the clothes on the clients and the bartender. Anto had heard about this place from a taxi driver, so it had to be true, right? And everyone in the UK (ok, well not everyone obviously, but a lot of people...) says that the Irish keep all the best Guinness for themselves and only export the worst stuff. All of this put together, we decided, was certainly sufficient reason to go and investigate. After a somewhat circuitous trip there by GPS, we arrived. There was no mistaking it, this pub was the kind of place they had in mind when they coin trite cliché's like, "the real deal" or, "the genuine article". I'm really annoyed that we forgot to take the camera along, but then, it wasn't the sort of place you'd feel comfortable taking photos anyway. In fact, I can't even remember the name of the place, Anto will probably remember, or maybe Dougie will. Anyway, we duly went in to sample the Guinness and disappointingly, I have to admit that I couldn't taste any difference. I will be the first to admit though, that I am far from being a connoisseur of, well, anything. Ask any of a number of ex girlfriends who've tried (in vain) to teach me to appreciate good coffee. I still can't tell the difference (much to their dismay) between a super dooper double backflip mocha thingamy whatsit 'cino and a good ole cup of international roast, instant coffee. White with two thanks. Anyway, Guinness always tastes good to me, especially after the fourth or fifth pint, I find. Still, it was a good afternoon out. For a couple of days, the weather was lovely and sunny, which seems to be a bit of a rarity in this hemisphere. If there's one thing I'll definitely come home with from this trip, it's an appreciation of good old Aussie weather. I can actually remember thinking to myself at the start of the trip, "I'm not going to do the typical thing and bitch about how crap the weather is over here either". Clearly, I had no bloody idea what I was talking about, but that's certainly nothing new. The good weather in Dublin managed to last exactly as long as it took for us to book ourselves on to a day tour out to Malahide castle and the coastline north of Dublin. On that day, it came over grey and cloudy and things did not bode well for the tour. Luckily though (and completely out of character) it fined up and we had a good time of it. Malahide castle was quite interesting and was filled nearly to the brim with tons of paintings (almost all portraits) from the national gallery. The tour guide was very informative and told us loads about the history of the castle, or at least I think she did. To be completely honest, while I'm sure I was listening attentively at the time, pretty much everything I learned there has gone in one ear and straight out the other, with out the least chance of running into anything in between. In that sense, it bears a more than healthy resemblance to my university degree. What the hell was semiotics all about anyway? Anyone? Didn't think so. As I am fond of saying, "I had a hell of a lot more respect for people with Degree's before I got one". At any rate, it was a great day out and demonstrated why Ireland is justifiably known as, The Emerald Isle. It's really green.We also had a day out with Anto and Marissa and went to a place called Bray (?) which was on the coast and quite scenic. We climbed up the headland there and very unusually for Dougie and I, we were actually wearing suitable footwear. We've climbed a few mountains during our travels, and for the most part, we've done it in double pluggers. This time though, Anto and Marissa carried the flag for the cause I've just invented, "Climbing Things You Really Shouldn't, In Inappropriate Footwear". I'm not sure that it'll take off, but I am sure that there'll be other additions to it. In this instance, Anto and Marissa had come out wearing the slippers they normally get about the house in, unaware that the casual stroll along the well used path was going to be hijacked into an unscheduled stomp up to the top of the bluff. It was quite  a lot of fun actually, though there were a few bits that nearly gave Marissa heart attacks. The view from the top was pretty good, though it was ridiculously windy.That was pretty much the end of our time in Dublin, for which we cannot thank Anto and Marissa and their housemates enough, as they were kind enough to let us stay with them for the duration of our stay. Thanks guys, we had a fantastic time in Dublin, and you're all more than welcome to come and visit us in Liverpool anytime you want. You may want to check that we're still here though, before coming, lol.At Anto's suggestion, we put off going to Liverpool for a couple of days and decided to head up north to Belfast, a place which had never really been in our travel plans, but we thought, hell, why not? As it turned out, we were very glad that we went anyway. By comparison to Dublin, everything seemed amazingly cheap, which was good for us, as we had gone past the point where we were scraping the bottom of the metaphorical barrel of our funds, and were pretty much trying to dig up the floorboards. We only spent two nights in Belfast, which gave us enough time to do a Black Cab tour of the city, which was very interesting, as it took us to lots of places in the city where (in)famous or important events during the years of the troubles had taken place. We saw the Belfast equivalent of the Berlin wall, Bombay street and the murals which commemorate those who've died. Our taxi driver guide was very impressive with the depth of his knowledge, but also with his professionalism. He absolutely wouldn't give the slightest clue as to which side his allegiance belonged and we had been reliably informed that a very high percentage of the taxi drivers who do these tours were paramilitaries on one or the other side of the troubles. All that being said, he gave a very fair and impartial history of the troubles and was happy to answer my many questions, a lot of which would've demonstrated just how ignorant I was of the finer points of Northern Irelands troubled past. As Dougie has just reminded me, we also had an amazingly attractive guest on that tour, a Swedish girl named Sophia who was staying in our hostel in Belfast. Dougie: She was fucking bewdifull.On our second day in Belfast, we once again took Anto's advice and booked ourselves onto a day trip to see the giants causeway, which I'd heard about years and years ago, and had even seen on tv, but had completely forgotten was in northern Ireland. The giants causeway is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It's a type of rock formation which is almost unique in the world, the only other place that rock formations like it are found is allegedly over the water in Scotland. There are thousands and thousands of these strange hexagonal pillars of rock that form what looks exactly like a causeway (of very large proportions) which just heads out into the sea, straight towards Scotland. Apparently the Irish had a legend of a Giant fellow called Finn McCool (I'm really not sure if I have that name right) who had basically had enough of the Scots, so he took his broadsword and cut off the northern end of Ireland to be rid of them. But he still wanted to visit, or some such, and so built the causeway, so he could walk over and pop in for a bit of tea from time to time. Any historian or person who is actually interested in this sort of thing would probably go into fits over such a shallow, inadequate and probably just plain wrong summation of events, but this has never purported to be a historically accurate or informative text. It's my blog and it's for entertainment as much as anything else, so any historians can fuck off. Scuse the French. The Giants Causeway was spectacular though and I'd highly recommend the day tip out to see it to anyone. I would hope that you get better weather than we did though, it drizzled almost all day. There was also plenty of great scenery and stunning coastline to see along the way too. The day trip also takes you to this place where they maintain an old rope bridge that goes over to an old island used by fishermen many moons ago. The bus stops and you can get out and cross the bridge if you dare, over the 96ft drop to the crashing waves and rocks below. I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed when I saw the bridge. I'm not sure what I expected when I imagined the bridge, but the sturdy, modern looking thing with planks along the bottom to walk on didn't really fit the bill. I guess I was thinking more of something out of Indiana Jones, that looked old and decrepit and ready to drop into the sea at any moment. This one just looked dull, so much so, that while crossing it, despite the wind, I declined to even take my hands out of my pockets, much to the horror of some of the old ladies who were having a bit of trouble with it. And to the horror, I suppose, of some younger people who were behaving like old ladies and having some trouble crossing it. To say I was mildly disappointed would be, well, mildly understating the case. One young fellow though, took advantage of his mother's terror to shake the bridge about while she was on it. Her shrieks of, "Daniel, you fucking little prick! I am going to kill you when I get off this fucking thing!!" gave everyone a bit of a chuckle, though it does seem a bit nasty now.So, moving right along... that pretty much sums up the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Ireland trips. After that little day trip finished, we had the night in Belfast and then caught the ferry over to Liverpool, where we met up with our mate Al. We spent a couple of weeks getting used to the place, during which Al took us to the Grand National which was tons of fun and then the job hunting began. I got extremely lucky and scored an interview from the first place I dropped in a resume, a flash and fancy pub called, "The Pumphouse" down on the Albert Dock. The next day I went in for the interview and got the job. Doug has been more or less fully employed helping out with the renovations on Al's house where we'd been staying, free of rent (courtesy of Doug's labour). All things considered, I think I got the good deal, by being employed.So, at the moment, we are still here in Liverpool, attempting to save as much money as we can so we can knock a few more things off our to do list. This year, we'd really like to fit in a trip to Amsterdam, and a bit of time in Spain if possible. The other things on our collective agenda are trying to get visas and Working Holiday Permits sorted out for Canada, so that we can head off over there near the end of the year to try and work a ski season. Geoff's brother Rob pretty much convinced us that we'd get more skiing in going for a holiday, rather than to work the season but unfortunately, looking at our finances (or more accurately, lack thereof) it doesn't even seem remotely possible at the moment. Well, I think that pretty much brings us up to date. That's what we've been up to, and where we're at now, so let me just say a big thanks to all of those who've helped us along the way. You know who you are guys, and we all appreciate it!And also, a HHHUUUUUGGGEEEEEEE big happy birthday to my Dad who turns 59 on the 21st of May. Hope you have a great day Dad, lots of love from me.And a big G'day to my sis, Robz!!! Take care of Dad and give him a big hug from me, will ya? ;)And G'day to my Nan!!! (If you're reading this Nan, sorry about all the swearing, I'll have to ask Robz to print you out a censored version).And of course, big G'day's and Hellos to everyone else back home and to our mates round the world. Can't have anyone feeling left out can we?Bye everyone! Will write more, eventually. Well, will probably write more, at some stage. Y'know, sooner or later. When something interesting happens or something.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1237290120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1237290120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1237290120/tpod.html Wed, 20 May 2009 12:18:59 -0400 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Chepelare, Smolyan, Bulgaria

G'day once again to all and sundry!&nbsp;Been a while, hasn't it? Well, despite all of my good intentions regarding more frequent and substantially shorter blogs, I must again admit failure. This, I am sure, will not come as a surprise to those of you who know me well, or indeed, at all. I seem to be constantly setting low expectations and then failing utterly to achieve them, but hey, shit happens - y'know?To begin, I suppose we need to wrap up and summarise the Bulgarian experience... not an easy job, considering just how much fun we had, the antics we got up to, how long we were there and of course, the bits I may not remember (which are always exceedingly difficult to include in any coherent narrative). We shall proceed, however, with style and aplomb (or at least as near to style and aplomb as I may jokingly presume to come) and begin with the hotel Belona. The hotel Belona, where we stayed and worked for the duration of our stay is fairly small and family run. Nasser owns the hotel with his partner Vesi, and Vesi's mother and her auntie (Babba Milena &amp; Lelo) operate the kitchen. Babba Milena is a veteran kindergarten teacher who still teaches at the local kindergarten and then comes in to the hotel in the evenings to make some of the most extraordinarily tasty dishes I've come across. Lelo also has her own range of kitchen specialities and loved getting us to sample whatever tasty treat was being produced any and almost every time we were transited through the kitchen. The lovely and hardworking Vesi takes care of all the customers, from check in to check out, including doing all the waitress work in the restaurant. Vesi's father and her uncle (the formidable Esen and irrepressibly cheerful Kaleko Aleko) take care of all the routine maintenance and any other miscellaneous tasks that need doing around the hotel.&nbsp;Actually, I can't help but think that Esen and Kaleko would get on very well (aside from the language barrier) with my dad, Chris. Having grown up while Bulgaria was still very much under communist rule, they've had a lifetime of experience at making do with what's available. So many things were unable to be purchased under communism that they're become very proficient at simply making whatever they need. Between the two of them, it's difficult to conceive of any task too difficult. One of the more impressive examples of their handiwork (see pictures) is an enormous 40 or so inch mounted saw used for chopping up firewood. The only bits they didn't construct themselves are the electric motor and the saw blade. They also help out in the kitchen when necessary. Also on the staff are Kalinka, the cleaning lady who's always smiling and ready with a cheery hello (or zdrasty in the local parlance), Lucky, a long time friend of Nas' who runs the upstairs bar and is quite an accomplished speaker of Bulgarian himself and of course, the lovely Nona, who runs the upstairs bar (with an iron fist and an impish smile) on the weekends. It really is a family establishment, particularly in the sense that even those people who work there who aren't literally family, are made to&nbsp;feel like a part of the family anyway. Well, at least that's how it felt to us anyway - it was like being adopted temporarily!By far the major part of their guests seem to be return customers and it isn't difficult to see why. Almost all of the guests would eat in the hotel restaurant or "mexana" every night of their stay and when the place was busy (which was frequently) it had more of a carnival atmosphere than the somewhat subdued ambience normally associated with a restaurant. There was a large open fireplace with a couple of spits on which they would frequently cook five or six whole chickens, a lamb or a whole pig. People seemed to love ordering food from here and watching it get taken straight from the spit, on to a plate and on to their table. Tasty stuff, and I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in a western restaurant.In fact, all the food was, simply put, amazing. Not only amazing, but also delivered in prodigious quantities! Patutniks and Banitzas and Sur Mees and Kacharma and stews and soups and casseroles, and Nas' curries... You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to look at our photos and see how much weight we've both put on. To be fair though, this is not all due to the good food at Belona. The infamous, "Heathrow injection" doubtless played its part, as did the idleness and inactivity brought on by large periods of inclement (read: CRAP) northern hemisphere weather, particularly during our extended stays in Lancashire. Anyways, returning to Belona... you know that life is treating you pretty well when the only thing you can complain about is that you're being fed too much.To earn our keep at the hotel, Doug and I chopped and carried firewood to keep the three open fireplaces burning which, though a cunning artifice of Nas' own devising, also heat the hotel. There is a bewildering array of copper piping, overflow tanks, pressure gauges, thermostats and automatic pumps behind the scenes at hotel Belona which all combine to heat the hotel quite nicely. So when the Ukraine cut off all the gas going to Bulgaria, hotel Belona was lovely and comfortable while some of the others wound up, "a bet chully" as the kiwi's might say. We also served drinks in the restaurant bar, the upstairs bar and washed all the dishes and glasses from the restaurant and both bars, so we weren't completely idle. Once our morning chores were done (bringing in enough firewood for the 3 fireplaces for the next 12 to 24 hrs, making sure the bars were stocked and all the cutlery for the restaurant was dried and rolled up nicely in napkins) we pretty much had the days to ourselves till about 3.30 / 4pm. Needless to say, when there was enough snow about, we were straight off, up to the slopes.&nbsp;Overall, the snow season was pretty rubbish, there were only a few good dumps of snow and there was a bit of time in between 'em. I sometimes suspect though, that Doug and I are in danger of becoming snow snobs. It depends on what you want out of your snow, I suppose. Doug and I seem to have progressed with our snowboarding to the point where it's a bit dull, just going down the pisted slopes... The real fun and excitement is off through the trees, in the powder, looking for the drop-offs and the powder fields and the natural jumps! For that sort of stuff though, you need a fairly decent covering of snow. As Mike is fond of saying, "the powder hides a multitude of sins". Meaning that while it doesn't take too much snow to make it all look white and pretty, it needs more to make it rideable without killing yourself, or breaking an ankle or a wrist or something along those lines. You can never really be sure what's under the powder and if its not what you think, it might hurt. A lot. We did get a few quite good dumps of snow though, and altogether got about 8 to 10 fantastic days of off piste riding out of a pretty rough season. On the flip side though, if all you want out of the snow is to be able to ride from the top lift to the bottom lift on decent snow without too many icy patches, it wasn't really too bad a season. Horses for courses I suppose.Just reading back over this blog so far... it's not very funny, is it? Well, at this junction, I think it's about time we introduce... Pavelski. Obviously, there are a number of people who'll be reading this who already know Pav (is this hopeless optimism? Does anyone really read it?) but equally so, there are many who won't. Pav is the partner of my good mate Geoff's sister, "Schmal", and I suppose you could say that he is one of the reasons the Marshes came to Bulgaria. Aside from being a very motivated business man and a very nice bloke, he is also an exceptionally funny fucker. We met Pav at dinner at the hotel one night and agreed to head up the slopes to hit the snow the next day. Pav was nice enough to give us a lift to the slopes in his pride and joy, a brand new VW caravelle which he uses for his airport transfer business, "Ski Transfers Bulgaria" (www.skitransfersbulgaria.com). We soon became good mates and hit the slopes a number of times in the weeks to come. Pav hails from the Czech republic and his English is pretty damn good, but you don't really appreciate just how good his grasp is until you get to hear him hurl abuse at idiotic Bulgarian drivers on the way up to the slopes, or at any learner skiier or boarder who might be unfortunate enough to be on the black slopes as we would pass overhead on the lift... "oh fucking look at this prick! Hey, you! What the fuck are you doing on the black slope, huh? You're ruining all the fucking powder! Go back to the fucking learner slope!" All this was of course, to the accompaniment of Doug and I pissing ourselves laughing and thinking to ourselves, "we're going to get along fine with this guy". Lift rides up to the top of the mountain were almost as enjoyable as riding down to the bottom, with the three of us pissing ourselves laughing over any number of things, from the antics of the ridiculously persistent bell sellers who plague the restaurant and shop areas of pamporovo to our hopelessly tuneless renditions of Kevin Bloody Wilson songs belted out to the befuddlement of the other skiers and boarders. Actually, the bell sellers were frequent sources of merriment and anyone who has ever been to pamporovo will no doubt understand why the idea of a t-shirt proclaiming, "I skied Pamporovo and didn't buy one fucking bell!" is so funny. Well, we thought it was anyways.Australia day, unsurprisingly, isn't really a big deal in Bulgaria. Or at least it wasn't, 'til doug and I got through with it. In fact, Australia Day kind of snuck up on us. We had been planning to have a few quiet drinks after work in the hotel and imagine what all the lads back home were up to, find out which song came in at number one in the hottest one hundred etc, but the night before Australia Day turned out to be a fairly busy night in the restaurant and we had pretty much forgotten about it until nearly midnight. The realization that Australia Day was scant minutes away spurred us into a frenzy of activity and we organised to head up to Pamporovo (about the nearest place with any English speaking nightlife) with Alan and Gillian, a couple from Liverpool that we met at the hotel who were also keen for a night out. (Alan and Gill will also feature again in the blogs to follow, but more of that later.) Anyway, we hit the town in grand style, ushering in the 26th in typical Australian style - by getting blotto. There had been a good snowfall that night as well and there was simply no way we were going to miss the next day on the slopes, despite the awful hangovers that we were busily earning at the time. Morning came and a glorious one it was too. Fresh powder snow everywhere, not too cold, the sun was shining, it was honestly about the best day we had on the slopes in the two or so months that we were there. We found a disused lift line that was very steep and narrow, and best of all, was completely untouched! Boarding down it in the fresh powder was, simply put, fucking brilliant. Australia Day 2009 goes down in the books as an absolute, dead set ball-tearer.Around about the early part of February, we were lucky enough to have a couple of visitors, Sharone and Katie, who came for a short stay with the stated intention of learning to snowboard. Doug and I had both accompanied Nas to the airport on separate occasions and between us, we reckoned we could manage to navigate our way back to the hotel from the airport without too much difficulty. This being so, we accompanied him to the airport for his flight to the UK to visit his sister on the same day that Sharone and Katie were arriving, so that we could pick them up and bring them to the hotel. The only hitch in this cunning plan was that due to the time disparity between Nas' departure and the girls' arrival, we would have about 13 hours to kill. This was also right in the middle of the time when the freak snowstorms were playing havoc with most British airports and it wound up being more like 15 or 16 hours that needed killing. There's absolutely sod all to do at Sofia airport, so we spent the time roaming around central Sofia. At one stage we decided to go and see a movie, but of course, all the film titles were in Cyrillic and <i>despite the fact that we had actually managed to get a reasonable grasp on this strange mutation of the alphabet, it still took us about half an hour to work out what films were what, by which time we had also decided that we weren't really that keen to see a movie anyway. After rambling about the city some more we headed off to the hostel we stayed at last time we were in Sofia, the Art Hostel, which has just about the grooviest cellar bar I've ever seen, to kill a few more hours. We sank a few beers and then managed to catch the last bus back out to the airport where we waited and tried to sleep in the car while the outside temperature sank to minus something or other. Eventually, the girls arrived and they did it bearing gifts! A huge bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila and the largest Chupa Chop I've ever seen (which later turned out to be just a plastic shell containing a number of normal sized Chupa Chops, but it's the thought that counts, right?).&nbsp;After the mammoth drive back up the mountains to the hotel, most of which the girls slept through, despite mine and doug's determinedly atrocious singing, we arrived back at the hotel and everyone settled in to get a bit of sleep. In the afternoon, we phoned the Snowboard Shack and got the girls booked in to hire some gear and get a professional lesson.&nbsp;Our departure for the snow slopes the next morning was slightly delayed when I carelessly pulled out a lump of firewood from the huge stack outside the hotel and was then chased down the street by about two and half tons of gravitationally motivated timber that I then had to restack. The lessons were going well and Sharone and Katie both seemed to being doing well, motivating themselves by not wanting the other to be any better than they were, until the fateful moment when Sharone caught a back edge and landed savagely, half on her back and half on her bottom. The moment was caught on video on Sharone's digital camera, including the cry of distress immediately after the impact and it was later decided that it was almost certainly my fault. She had been doing fine, wonderfully well in fact, until I decided to video some of her progress, which is clearly what caused it to go all pear shaped. Anyways, despite all the encouraging and cajoling and mild reproach, one or two more efforts at snowboarding were all that Sharone could be enticed to attempt and those were clearly quite painful for her. The next day we spent on ski's, as Katie hadn't tried it before (neither had I) and Sharone rated her chances of falling on her bum as substantially less, having had some skiing experience some years before. We mucked about at the very bottom of the mountain on the ski's while Sharone endeavoured to give us some basic tips on control and technique.&nbsp;In typical form though, I was apparently determined to run before I had learned to crawl and consequently was sliding about all over the place in what could only be called an absurd parody of skiing. Eventually we decided that walking up hill was no fun at all and we got some lift passes and headed up to the top of Pamporovo to make use of the nursery slopes which had a button lift at the bottom. I soon started to make some progress and get a bit more control on the ski's and managed to severely annoy Sharone by constantly interrupting her attempts to teach Katie the basics of skiing with my own interpretation of how it all worked and what to do etc. I know I annoyed her because she told me so. In fact, there was pretty much no doubt in my mind at all that she was annoyed once she was done. At the time I had thought I was being helpful, but this was clearly a misconception of the highest order.&nbsp;At any rate, the afternoon was ticking away and we were very slowly making progress down the quite long nursery slope towards the button lift, constantly encouraging Katie that despite her protestations to the contrary, she <i>could do it and that in fact she <i>was doing it. As it turned out, there was to be quite a lot of this sort of thing before the day was out... When we were almost at the bottom of the slope, we saw a terrible sight. The lift operators, coming back up the lift, waving us off and saying, "ne roboti, finish" (no work / not working / finished). What the fuck? This wasn't supposed to happen. A quick check of the time revealed that it was only 1615h, the lifts were supposed to operate 'til 1630h! <i>Fucking Bulgarain lifties! This meant that we had to walk all the way back up the nursery slope that we had just come painfully slowly down, in ski boots (which aren't exactly wonderful for walking in... skiing yes, walking - no) before they shut down the lifts other lifts at 1630h. I had a pretty good idea how this was going to work out. Needless to say, we didn't make it to the top in time, Sharone was still pretty sore from her snowboarding tumble the day before and even had I been on my own, I still would have had to push myself pretty hard to make it back up in time. Eventually though, we did make it to the top and of course, the lifts were no longer operating. This meant there were only two ways off the mountain. Ski down or walk down. First day on skis or not, there was no way in hell I was going to walk down that bloody mountain. Katie though, had not been enjoying the skiing experience and was, I think it fair to say, utterly petrified of the prospect of having to ski down the mountain. With much coaxing and cajoling, Sharone and I (over the course of several hours and countless encouragements, platitudes and appeals to reason ("there simply isn't any other way off the mountain, Katie") we did finally manage to get down - just before a very concerned Vesi called out the mountain rescue to come and find us. By the time we were very nearly at the bottom of the mountain, our encouragements had devolved to a repetitive litany that hadn't really changed from the top.Katie: I can't do this! I just can't! I really <i>really can't!Me: (<i>soothingly / encouragingly) Yes you can Katie! You're doing really well. You've made it so far already, you're doing great!Katie: No! I can't do it, I really can't. I can't. I just can't do this!Me: (<i>not quite so soothingly) Katie, you've been saying that for about two hours now. Clearly, you <i>can do it, you <i>are doing it! You have already done 95% of the mountain for heaven's sake! Come <i>on! We're nearly there, you have done <i>fantastically well! Don't give up <i>now!Katie: (<i>skis another 5m) I can't! I just <i>can't. I can't <i>do this... - oh... Are we finished now? Are we there? We are? Oh wow, I did it.Katie is a lovely girl, but on that day I really think she could have tried the patience of a saint. And I am certainly not a saint. (<i>Sorry Katie! All jokes aside though, you really did do amazingly well. From the top of the mountain to the bottom, on your first day on skis, without a single stack (and there were some pretty daunting bits) is a considerable achievement. Be proud. :) )On the next day on the slopes, Sharone and I decided to ski again while Doug took Katie for some more snowboarding lessons, seeing as how the skiing had proved so traumatic for her. As it turned out though, the lessons probably proved to be more traumatic for Doug, who (like myself) also lacks the patience of a saint. In due course, Sharone and Katie headed back to the UK after having what we sincerely hope was a good time in Bulgaria.Some of the other visitors to the hotel were Nas' brother in law, Khalil and a few of Nas' mates, Asif and Asad. Khalil, Asif and Asad are all practicing mslims and as such, don't drink alcohol. It was quite interesting, even a little amusing watching Nas' have to curb his drinking out of respect for his brother in law and his mates. While they may not drink, Khalil at least, certainly isn't averse to a bit of this strange sort of chewing tobacco that contains a lot of wild and wacky herbs and is also apparently mildly narcotic. According to Nas, it's also a natural and very potent type of Viagra. Then again, according to Nas, a lot of things are kinds of Viagra... Anyways, Doug was persuaded to try some of this stuff, which you apparently stick in your gob and leave there, meaning you have to spit disgusting looking reddish juice that resembles coagulated blood out of your mouth at regular intervals. After putting up with this for about two hours and feeling a little strange, Doug came to the conclusion that he really had to get this stuff out of his mouth, so, not wanting to offend (and also not having anywhere convenient to spit it out) he decided to swallow it. I'm sure he would agree, this one was going down in the books as, "a bad call". There was quite a bit of green-facedness and some serious retching from Dougie after this. I refused to try any of it after having witnessed Doug's reaction and also on the grounds that if it really is some sort of natural Viagra, I get enough unwanted erections as it is, without needing one that you can't get rid of for eight or so bloody hours.Geoff and Bec also managed to put in an appearance, bringing with them the dance floor destroying, Corey and it was great to see them again after a whole 12 months. Actually, just about the entire Marsh clan, as well as some &nbsp;managed to put in an appearance at one time or another. Rob and Jackie were also there, Schmal made it as well and Mike's brother in law Steve came over for a visit and between all of us, we managed to put a fair sort of a dint in Nas' supplies of Wymehcko (pronounced Shumensko, believe it or not. Crazy arse cyrillic!). Steve's son, Geoff's cousin James also put in an appearance which is noteworthy mostly because of the havoc he managed to wreak in an amazingly short amount of time.James is a nice enough guy, but can't handle his alcohol, or at least, couldn't on this occaision. On Corey's (Geoff's good friend and old housemate) last night in Bulgaria, he came around to the hotel with Geoff and young James in tow to have a few drinks and then head up to Pamporovo where the nightlife is better for a bit of a last night fiesta. No problem, Doug and I arranged to come along. Everyone had a few drinks here and I didn't even realize that James was only 16, he seemed (emphasis on seemed) to handle his drinks fine.&nbsp;&nbsp;In due course, we headed off to pamps and went into an Irish pub called Dak's' where James quickly went from, 'fine' to, 'total pain in the arse'. There were about 5 or 6 lovely young Irish ladies in there whom we were enjoying talking to, though James had developed an irrepressible case of wandering hands. After several warnings and being shoved away by the girls, he still couldn't seem to control himself and eventually succeeded in annoying them so much that they left the pub. Bereft of any other females clientele on whom he could lavish his attention, &nbsp;James then directed his version of affection to the female barstaff. The first that I had seen of any of this was when two scared looking bargirls yelped (quite literally) for the manager. James had actually pursued them behind the bar itself. Corey and I quickly came around the bar to get control of him, but by this stage the girls had already hit their panic button to bring the local police running. James didn't want to leave the bar, nor his prospective loves (in the form of the now frightened witless bargirls) and Corey and I basically had to wrestle him out of there.&nbsp;&nbsp;Once we got him outside, he appeared to have calmed down and we spoke to the manager and managed to pursuade him to call off the police, who had thankfully not yet arrived. Meanwhile, James was spouting some gibberish about people we'd never heard off and in general, being an arse. Eventually, we decided that the best course of action would be to call a cab, and Geoff (who was the only person not in favour of knocking him out) would take him home so that the rest of us could stay out. Once the cab arrived, we had a hell of a time trying to persuade James to get in, and Doug, Corey and I continued to vote for just knocking him out and putting him in the boot. Seemed like the simplest way. Geoff though, prevailed upon us not to do it and we left him in one piece. Once the cab had started moving though, James made a determined attempt to jump out, so, reluctantly, I volunteered to jump in with Geoff to help restrain him.&nbsp;The trip back from Pamps was quite interesting. James was off on his own little planet by now, where he was the only good guy and everyone else was a bastard. He spent quite some time whispering in my ear about how he was going to get me fired and do me over and all sorts of other nasty things. I listened to it all quite bemused and then told him he was about as intimidating as a kitten with a water pistol, so why didn't he do himself a favour and shut the fuck up, &nbsp;which actually did shut him up for all of about a minute.&nbsp;&nbsp;Once we got back to Cheps though, and paid off the cab driver (extra, because james blew his noe into his hands and then wiped it on the back of the drivers seat, and also spat twice) the antics began again. James didn't want to leave the cab. He just wanted to go home. We were all c*nts. Everyone had betrayed you danny (whoever the hell danny is or was). Talk about one paranoid, delusional and very very drunk little boy. I still didn't know he was 16 at this stage. Anyways, Geoff couldn't get him out of the cab so I stuck my head in to have a go. This wasn't the greatest idea in the world, as the first thing I met was a fist coming the other way (hence my busted lip).&nbsp;&nbsp;At this point my patience pretty much evaporated. It wasn't even like it was a violent explosion of rage or anything... I just shrugged and thought, "Right. Strike three, fucker. Get him out here Geoff, I'll knock him right out, we can carry him upstairs put him in bed (in the recovery position so he doesn't choke) and then the rest of us can get on with our lives. I am done wasting time with this knob." Once again though, Geoff demonstrated his familial love and asked me not to kill him.&nbsp;Me: I'm not going to kill him though Geoff, just hit him.Geoff: Yes, Paul, but I'm not convinced that it won't kill him if you do hit him.&nbsp;Me: Oh alright then, i'll leave him alone. Spoilsport.<i>(Okay okay, that's probably not exactly how the conversation went, but you have to leave some room for comic licence, right?)&nbsp;So, when he finally did emerge from the cab, the antics continued, including his breaking one of the windows in the hotel and waking up Mike and Tich before we got him upstairs and into bed. &nbsp;Probably the most amusing part of it all was when, after having run off down the street, James decided to run back up the street with all the speed he could muster, directly at Geoff. For those of you who know Geoff and James, I'm sure you can visualise exactly what happened next. For those of you who don't know either of them, allow me to explain: Geoff is around 6ft tall and is not exactly what you would call a small lad. He also has a lot of years of playing rugby under his belt. James is also quite tall, but built like a feather duster. In the state he was in when he attempted to run into Geoff, a strong fart could probably have knocked him over. Just before James ran into him, I saw Geoff sigh, adjust his feet and drop his shoulder. When James collided with him, the result was something akin to a tennis ball bouncing off a brick wall. I nearly pissed myself laughing. (Sorry James.) Anyways, in the end he pretty much passed out on the stairs and was much more controllable when he came to a little later.&nbsp;A few days later, when we ran into James and the rest of the Marsh's up on the slopes, James offered some red-faced apologies and good relations were restored. Actually, James isn't a bad lad at all and the incident was quickly forgotten about. It was too funny to be left out of here though. Speaking of things that shouldn't be left out, there was also another incident which involved me getting hit in the head which should be included, I suppose. As mentioned earlier, one of our priority chores around the hotel was bringing in the firewood and managing the enormous stacks of it which lined one side of the hotel. There was an enormous pile of split logs that were in roughly 4ft lengths that needed to be cut into 3 pieces of a much more manageable size and then restacked along the wall. The task involved Nas, Esen, Doug and I, and took the best part of a whole day. Esen was operating the home made table saw (the one with no safety guards and the massive saw blade mentioned earlier) and Nas, me and Doug made up a human chain at about 5m intervals to pass the wood down and stack it in its new location. We were working fairly quickly, and in the chain the throws were coming in fairly fast when Nasser became a little over enthusiastic and threw the next his lump of wood before i had turned around ready to catch it. Consequently, the foot long lump of hardwood, thrown from about 5m away hit me in the head, just behind the ear (lucky for me there's nothing in my noggin worth damaging). It wasn't the first time either, five minutes earlier I had turned around and caught one right in the bread basket. My reaction was fairly typical and, I think, completely justifiable. I exploded, "Fucking hell Nas! D'you fucken look before you throw these fucken things or what mate?!" &nbsp;Naturally, he claims this was not his fault and that I had slowed down or hesitated when I was supposed to catch it. In reality, he had bloody well thrown it before I had even had a chance to turn back around after throwing the previous one to doug. How could I have hesitated when the bloody thing had to travel 5m through the air to hit me in the back of the head before I had turned around? It had to have left his hands while I was still in the act of passing the previous one to Doug! I suppose it's almost lucky. If I'd turned around a tad earlier it would've hit me in the face. Possibly damaging my brain would be scant loss to society, but damaging my looks? Good grief, Europe may never have recovered...There were plenty of other things that happened in Bulgaria that probably warrant a mention, but this blog has gone straight through the point where it could justifiably be called 'absurdly long' and passed out the other side into 'purely ridiculous'. If you've read it all thus far, allow me to commend you on your thoroughness and persistence, but be of good cheer, the end is in sight. Actually, the end is pretty&nbsp;much now. Suffice to say that while in Bulgaria, we had an absolutely amazing time and we owe a great many thanks to lots of people for making our stay as fantastic as it was. To Nas, Vesi, Nasco, Esen, Kaleko, Babba Milena, Lelo, Lucky, Kalinka, Vesco and Nona, thank you all very very much, you guys took us in and made us feel like a part of the family and we hope to visit Bulgaria again sometime. Maybe one summer, just for something different.And a big g'day to all the other people we met in Bulgaria who were just cool people and great to hang out with when we had the opportunity: all the Marshes and friends (Mike, Tich, Boags, Becks, Rob, Jackie, Schmal, Pavelski, Steve, James) and to the liverpuddlians we met too: Alan and Gillian and Steve and Cathy.Hope all is well back home with everyone! Stay tuned for the next instalment, which should cover St pat's day in Dublin where we visited Anto and Marissa and our foray into northen Ireland, visiting Belfast and various other locales!&nbsp;Later!P.S. pictures should be coming soon (most of them are on face book anyways) but I can't upload them from here, internet is too bloody dodgy and keeps dropping out.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1232379600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1232379600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1232379600/tpod.html Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:32:59 -0500 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Chepelare, Smolyan, Bulgaria

Okie dokie folks, the last blog ended with the last night of our Hogmanay trip and this one will pick up from roughly the same spot and bring us through to about now (which won't, of course, be your "now" as you read it, but my "now" as I type it, so nyer nyer nyer. Yes, I know. I'm a child).&nbsp;Needless to say, the morning after our third big night in Scotland was pretty terrible, a condition not improved by the prospect of 8 or so hours on a national express coach to get back to Manchester, followed by a walk to the train station (after figuring out where it was) and then another hour and two changes to get back to Whalley. Put together, it makes for a pretty long day and it's probably not even 300 miles as the crow flies between Whalley and Edinburgh, sheesh.&nbsp;Once we got back to Whalley though, there was still no relent. It was upstairs for a shower and change, then back downstairs to get on the piss again for the Whalley Arms staff (late) Xmas party. (Tough life, isn't it?). The boss had put on a tab for us, which we took to about £160 (roughly $350 AUS) in very short order. If memory serves, it wasn't just short order, but also, "raucous, obnoxious, loud and out of control" order. But things were only to get worse from there (or better, depending on your perspective..). We took a mini bus over to Rawtenstall to continue the party at the boss's other, recently purchased venue, a nightclub called, "The Rhythm Station". It was a free bar for us here as well and&nbsp;I shudder to think what the bill would have been.&nbsp;It was on the way there that everyone was given a drinking name, which was supposed to be adhered to all night. Most of them were fairly unrepeatable, but for the sake of embarrassing those involved, I'll repeat em anyway. Guy Cornwell (the boss) became "Gay Fuckwell", Yvonne became, "I can't actually remember" John Bridge became, "Fire Crotch", Ben Farmer became, "Dover", Jane became, "Jugs", John Feeney became, "Fanny Fart", Hayley Price became, "dirty ruggers", "Ben Cradock became, "C*nt Face", Michal Price became, "Scrote" and for some reason, Doug got stuck with the name, "Aussie Butt-Plugg" while I was given, "Aussie Cock Ring". Butt Plugg and Cock Ring I can understand, but Aussie? Where the hell did that come from..?&nbsp; Anyways, failure to use anyone's nickname resulted in penalties swiftly and vigorously applied. Not that we needed to get any more pished, we were all pretty much leathered before we even left the Whalley Arms. While at the Rhythm station we all got steadily more pissed and even more out of control. There was one instance where one of the night club's bouncers&nbsp; threatened to throw one of our number out if we didn't modify our behaviour, only to be told quite pleasantly, "I don't fucken think so, Chief. I'm here with the owner". It's amazing what you can get away with after reading, "How to Make Friends and Influence People". Or should that be, "without having read...".&nbsp;Anyway, we all got very very drunk and had a great night. I somehow contrived to fall off my seat on nearly every corner on the way back to the Whalley Arms, much to hayley's amusement while she attempted to capture the moment on camera. Once back at the pub, everyone was having far too much fun to go to bed, except for Dougie, who rather uncharacteristically disappeared early. I guess Hogmanay took it out of him a bit. Or maybe he's just a skirt :P. The rest of us spoke shit and wrestled (for whatever bloody reason) until the wee hours of the morning.&nbsp;A few short days after all of this, we went out for a bit of a going away do, with some good friends to a posh pub down in Barrow, called the Eagle. Naturally, it has been nicknamed the spread eagle. Somehow this still manages to qualify as a nick name, even though it's longer than the original. Very nice place though and we all enjoyed a good meal. While there, we also ran into some other friends who decided to join us back at the pub for a few going away drinks. None of this had really been planned, but then, the best nights usually are the most spontaneous ones, aren't they? The short version of events is that we all wound up back at the Arms and proceeded to drink and dance (and in Dougie's case, "snog and fondle") the night away. We were having so much fun in fact, that it came as something of a surprise to see the clock at 0355H and realise that our lift to the airport (thanks to the bloody good bloke, John Bridge) would be arriving in 5 minutes. Lucky for us, we'd done almost all of our packing earlier in the day. We'd been planning to double check that we'd not left anything important out after the dinner at the Spready, but as things turned out, it never happened, so hell knows what's been left up there. A franticly short while later, John tuned up to take us to the airport, which meant that Dougie had to reluctantly (and to my mind, quite amusingly) disengage himself from who / what he was doing and get in the car. &nbsp;Just before going to the afore mentioned dinner at the spready, Guy had given us our final pays and some holiday pay earned earlier and as a result we had rather a large amount of cash on us and no opportunity to get to a bank. Not wanting to take this amount of cash into Bulgaria, we decided to divest ourselves of&nbsp; £600 and get John to stick it in his bank account, then transfer it to us later on. Aren't we trusting fellows? Lucky for us, John is a top notch, trustworthy bloke of unquestionable integrity.&nbsp;In due course, we arrived at the airport and then the fun really started. Despite the information (or rather, Lack Thereof) on our E-tickets, we had somehow contrived to get ourselves delivered o the wrong terminal and had to walk over to the other one, taking some minutes. Have I mentioned that we were rolling drunk during all of this? Probably didn't need to, but for those a bit slow on the uptake - we were. Finally arriving at the right terminal, it wasn't too hard to find the right check in. Once there though, we also found that our combined luggage was about 7 kilos overweight. When extra baggage cost £8 pound per kilo, we decided that in technical terms this was, "not good". We buggered off to an empty check in desk to see what we could get rid of. Toiletries were the first to go, followed closely by an extra pair of shoes. After that it got a bit tricky, there was a towel, a couple of pillows we filched from Korean Air many moons ago, a book or two and miscellaneous other stuff piled in a heap until we had managed to pare our luggage down to 19.1 kg and 19.5kg. We proudly marched back up to the check in lady and heaved our bags back on to the scales, only to find that the scales read 22.5kg and 21.9kg, respectively. What the hell kind of bullshit was this? It's fucken rigged! It's a bloody scam! All this and more, we said, severely unimpressed. When were these scales last calibrated, Dougie wanted to know. We were quite prepared to make a stink about this, well, a bigger one than we were already making anyway and as I mentioned earlier, we were still quite pissed. After explaining that we had just bloody well chucked out an acre of shit to get our bags back down under weight and had checked em on a pair of scales not five yards from that check in desk, the woman took us aside, checked us through on a different check in and found that, gee golly gosh! They really were under weight. There were a stack of people on that flight who were paying hand over fist for over weight bags too. What a scam! More like Cheeky Jet than EasyJet. After having made us ditch all the extra weight (well, after having told us we'd have to pay for it which is the next best thing to telling us to ditch it), the woman&nbsp; then looked at our pile of stuff and said we could put it back in! At least we still have the stuff, but why all the fuck around if she was going to let us through with it anyway?!&nbsp;After the trauma of the check in, the flight was pretty standard, aside from the encroaching hanngover which was beginning to land about the time we were. There were a couple of&nbsp; "go arounds" due to crappy weather before we landed on the icy and foggy tarmac at Sofia and the only reason the pilot didn't get a standing ovation once we were back on the ground was that he still had the seatbelt light on. As for myself though, and presumably Dougie, I couldn't have given a toss if we'd crash landed or just normal landed. In fact, crash landing may have been preferable - sort of a "get out of hangover free" card. Well, perhaps not exactly "free", given that a crash landing may have ended with everyone's death. Right, moving right along...&nbsp;Making it from Sofia to Chepelare was nowhere near as interesting this time around as it was the first time. We knew to avoid the dodgy taxi drivers, we knew which counter to go to and what to expect to pay for the tickets when we got to the central bus station and we even knew what the bus station looked like in Chepelare, so the last hour was the bus ride wasn't stressful at all, like the first time around. Even our bus driver was bloody boring. The first time we took a bus up to Chepelare, the driver was simultaneously managing to drive the bus, smoke a cigarette, talk on his mobile phone, drink a bottle of what we assume was water, but may well have been rakia and overtake cars on the outside, around blind corners on icy roads going up a mountain range. Admittedly, that's a lot to live up to, but this guy didn't even seem to try. He just sat up the front and drove the bus in a professional sort of a way. Like I said, "dull".&nbsp;Once we made it to Cheps, we set out to find our new home, Hotel Belona. Amazingly, our sense of direction led us just about straight to it, where we got an extremely warm welcome from Nasser and Vesela. I cannot say enough about how generous they have been to us. We eat with the family every night and the food is amazing, it's very difficult not to overeat here. So difficult that I'm not even sure we've managed it yet. If anyone brings a set of scales anywhere near me I may just brain them with 'em. We earn our keep here at the hotel by helping out however we can. Usually this involves bringing in the firewood for each of the three fires in the hotel, washing up all the dishes, clearing snow (when there is any), wrapping up the knives and forks in napkins, serving in the upstairs bar, helping out in the restaurant bar, taking drinks orders or meals out to the customers etc. Everyone in the family though (it's a family hotel) is so efficient and good at what they do that we feel quite superfluous and kind of jump at any opportunity to do something that makes us feel like we're being useful! Everyone is extremely friendly and like I said earlier, so very very generous.&nbsp;We hit the slopes for the first time a couple of days ago at Mechi Chal, the local slope in Chepelare. The conditions haven't been ideal here as of yet and some more snow will drastically improve matters. As things stand, it's all ride-able from the mid-station down to the bottom and the fancy new lift makes getting up there a lot quicker, but it's extremely icy. Even the piste is like solid bloody ice, and once the cord has been scraped off it's very slippery. That being said, we still had a ball. Even with all the stacks and ouchies, it was great to be back on the snowboards after almost 12months. We were a bit worried we might have forgotten how! Needlessly so, as it turns out. Check out the photo of Dougie's arse if you want to see just how often and how hard he fell on it ;). I fell over too, of course, just not so much on my arse. There's a bruise on my knee, but it's nowhere near as funny as Dougal's ringbit. The next day, Sunday just gone, we went a bit further up the road to the big ski resort, Pamporovo. The snow conditions here were much better. Like Chepelare, they also have snow cannons here, but unlike Cheps, they actually seem prepared to use them somewhat. Pamporovo is a fair bit higher than Cheps and the snow and piste conditions from the top to the mid station were pretty good and we had a really good day of boarding. Probably the best part was heading down the run that leads off to Stoikite. It had been pisted, but was still closed, but we decided to go down anyways and check it out. No-one else had been down at this stage and it was fantastic to put some lines on the fresh cord. The only bad bit was that the snow didn't go all the way down and got pretty ratty and icy in the last bit, so we all had to unstrap and walk out the last 500m or so. Luckily for us, the newly constructed lift from Stoikite was operating and we were able to get back up the top no worries. &nbsp;Well, that pretty much brings everything up to date... hope I haven't bored you all too much! Life is good and we're liking it pretty well here in Cheps, so best wishes to everyone back home and all around the place, stay cool and if anything worth mentioning happens, I'll try and put up another (shorter) blog. We'll also try and keep some more regular photo updates happening, but I wouldn't hold my breath or anything ;)&nbsp;Bye all!&nbsp;Paul and Doug.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1203346380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1203346380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1203346380/tpod.html Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:51:00 -0500 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Whalley, Lancashire, United Kingdom

.... Ok, I suppose the best place to begin is where I left off last time. Amazingly enough, we did manage to get up in time to say our goodbyes to Mike, Tich, Bec and Boags and still catch the bus to Sofia, the gritty capital of post communist Bulgaria. Thankfully, the bus trip back down from the Rhodopi mountains was no where near as harrowing as the trip up had been. It still had it's moments, but they came spaced&nbsp;at intervals of more than ten minutes, making our driver only approximately half as psychotic as the one who drove us up into the mountains a few weeks earlier.Once we got off the bus in Sofia it was about a ten&nbsp;minute&nbsp;taxi ride to the "Art Hostel" backpackers place where we had booked a couple of bunks for the night. Upon arrival though, we found that they didn't know anything about our booking, but were happy to put us up for the night anyways. (I think doug is probably sending off some manner of complaint about that and the loss of our booking fee as we speak, or rather, as I type.) The backpackers hostel was about three or four stories high, cold, and pretty haphazardly decorated. There was a great little bar (and&nbsp;I mean <i>little) down in the cellar and a few other backpackers hanging around. To Doug's way of thinking, it was dingy and terrible. I thought it was great and had heaps of character. It was pretty much exactly the type of establishment&nbsp;I had envisaged us staying in when we set off travelling.&nbsp;After a few beers and the discovery that we were sharing our dorm with an attractive young German girl, Barina (beep beep 'n beep beep yeah!) Doug started to come around to my point of view.The next day entailed fighting off a rotten sodding hangover, negotiating a taxi ride to Sofia international airport, terminal II (which I have to say is a much nicer terminal than the one we entered the country through) and jumping on a British Airways flight to Heathrow. Amazingly (and completely contrary to expectations) this was all achieved without much difficulty. Once we had arrived back in jolly old England though, the wheels well off (in the strictly metaphorical and not literal 'British Airways' sense). It wasn't anything major, but because of fog earlier in the day all of the scheduled landings and terminal bookings at Heathrow had been thrown into chaos and we were landed at the wrong terminal where we had to wait about and hour and a half on the plane before they managed to get a bus to come and take us to the right terminal. The wait didn't worry us very much, because we had arrived at about 1700H and our bus north didn't leave until 2359H that night. What was a little annoying though, was having to spend that hour and a half on a plane filled in equal parts with whinging poms, and Bulgarians who couldn't understand enough English to know what the delay was about. Fun stuff!The bus trip north to Burnley (in Lancashire) was pretty uneventful, and we both spent the time trying (quite unsuccessfully) to sleep and rid ourselves of travel weariness and jet lag (also unsuccessfully). We arrived in Burnley at about 0600H in the morning, and rather than call the number we had been given for Guy (a friend of Mike and Tich's who owns a pub (amongst some other business interests) and who had agreed to give us some work) we decided to grab some breakfast and wait until a slightly less ungodly hour to announce our arrival. Before we could even finish ordering our brekky though, we had been spotted by Guy, who came up introduced himself and paid for our breakfast! Whattaguy, Guy.&nbsp;[I'll apologise at this point, if the narrative seems a little disjointed. Everything above this paragraph was written a couple of days ago, as was quite a bit below it. Unfortunately though, the computer gods saw fit to screw with the computer I was working with such that everything below the paragraph above was lost. After my customary explosion of poorly contained incandescent rage when such things occur, I decided to cool off and complete the blog later, i.e. today. So, anyways...]&nbsp;After brekky, Guy drove us up to Whalley (yeah yeah, I know, "Where's Whalley?!"), a small English village which is quite likely to be our home for a few months, while we try and save up enough money to get us through the next couple of parts of our trip. The pub that Guy owns is the Whalley Arms, and we're staying in a couple of rooms above it. Whalley is a pretty simple little village and word spread fairly quickly that there were a couple of Aussies in town. Our first afternoon serving behind the bar gave us some idea of what it must feel like to be an exhibit in a display case. It was also a sharp lesson on the undeniable fact that, while we might all speak English, there are a whole load of differences.&nbsp;Working behind a bar is probably a pretty similar experience all over the world and I didn't figure we'd have too much difficulty getting the hang of it, but half the time over here you just can't tell whether or not you've understood what someone wants because either; a) their accent is unintelligible b) you think you might have heard them right, but you've never heard of that drink before c) you've no fucking idea what they are talking about, or even if they're actually ordering a drink... So anyways, the bar work has been an experience.&nbsp;Unfortunately, Guy can't really offer us enough hours for full time employment, so we're roughly in the process of looking around for some more part time employment, or maybe a full time job for one of us, and the other can work full time at the pub.&nbsp;We've been getting out and about a little bit recently, checking out what little there is to see around Whalley, as you can probably see from the photos. Today, we're off to Blackburn, just cos we can, to catch a flick and sink a few beers.&nbsp;Anyways, I guess that pretty much brings things up to date, so a big G'day to everyone back home from me 'n Doug and we hope you enjoy the photos! Don't be shy about leaving a comment on any of the blogs or photos either guys!&nbsp;cheers&nbsp;
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1231861080/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1231861080/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1231861080/tpod.html Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:50:50 -0500 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Hello once again to all and sundry, this time from Bulgaria (yes, again)! Hope everyone back home had a fantastic xmas / new year and I reckon that if you had even half as much fun as Doug and I did, you were doing bloody well. One of my new years resolutions (as of about 20 seconds ago) is that I'm going to stop apologising in the first line of these blogs for the lack of, or infrequency of the updates. I get 'em up when I get the chance and if there isn't one for a bit it's because whatever we're doing is probably bloody boring. Bearing in mind my tendency to take 500 words more than is strictly necessary to tell even a simple story, I'm sure these blogs are boring enough without a narration of day to day life in the same spot... ;) Besides which, I'm not even sure if any more than about 4 people are reading 'em!&nbsp;If I remember rightly (and there's every possibility that I don't) the last instalment in this rambling, infrequently updated chronicle of our travels and misadventures was posted from Rome, the gist of which was that Doug was back in whalley and I was soon to join him... ring any bells, or am I completely off track? Well, I made it back to Whalley without too much difficulty where I caught up with Doug and resumed my old post, (mis)managing the Whalley Arms. At this stage, Doug was working on some construction sites for Guy and we both got stuck into the campaign to top up our savings before scarpering off to some snow for the winter season. Our initial plan had been to keep backpacking until we found work in a winter resort somewhere, hopefully in northern Italy. unfortunately, we didn't have enough money to make it through till then, hence the return to Whalley. Settling back into life at the pub after a fantastic lark and bit of a jaunt around Europe wasn't all that easy and I have to admit that the weather seemed especially shite after sunny southern Italy, but hey, you get that on the big jobs... ;)&nbsp;Life at the Whalley Arms, though seldom dull, was often repetitive, but this time around, we were at the business end of the year and the place was a lot busier than usual with all four of the biggest days of the year arriving in December; pickwick night, mad Friday, Christmas eve and new years eve. Pickwick night is peculiar to the village of Whalley and involves all of the businesses in town staying open late, dressing up in Victorian era clothing, closing off the main street through town and walking about saying things like, "gee, isn't this nice?". Oh, yes... and&nbsp; an absolute shite load of people descend on the village from all the surrounding areas as well to add their own "gee's" and "golly gosh's" and it's an epic night for all of the pubs. We made the decision not to have our staff dress up in the Whalley Arms as our boss, Guy, was the major sponsor for Pickwick Night a year or two back, gave them a considerable amount of money and got absolutely sod all in return despite assurances of publicity etc. We also had the car park closed off and a mini carnival in there, with rides and Dagwood dogs and fairy floss and other carnie type stuff... imagine the Ipswich show kind of condensed down to about one football field's worth and you've probably got a bit of an idea. This apparently upset the Pickwick Committee. They arrived in short order with the Fun Police (council types and local coppers) in tow, to try and shut it down. Sadly (for them!) the paperwork and safety certificates of the fairground operator were all in order and they had to bugger off and try and spoil someone else's night J. Also sadly (for me this time) I was horribly, horribly, bloody ill at this time, had been for a number of days and couldn't have given a stuff about any of it if someone had put a gun to my head... Good night for the pub though.&nbsp;"Mad Friday" is apparently the last Friday of December before Christmas. We had heard loads about this being one of the all time busiest days of the year and planned the staff roster accordingly. By about 7pm, it was looking like being a complete fizzer, not even as busy as a normal Friday, let alone a "mad" one. We were cracking jokes about renaming it, "slightly miffed, but not really mad" Friday. We let Hayley and Becci go home with promises that they'd be back later on and available to help, just in case Friday really did get the shits and decide to become properly mad. Inevitably, it was about thirty minutes after they had gone (during which time John F. had phoned in to say that he would be late in to work) that Friday got cranky and the screaming masses descended on the bar, at this stage manned only by me and Dougie. This was perhaps the first time that I think I could appropriately use one of my favourite expressions and say that we really were, "as busy as a pair of one armed hookers in a hand job parlour at half price hour". Not very tasteful, but certainly descriptive. Anyways, another good night for the pub.&nbsp;Upon reconsideration, I don't really remember anything spectacularly interesting happening on Christmas Eve. I think it was just another busy night for the pub, how boring is that? Christmas Day, however, was reasonably fun (aside from the 2 hours of cleaning up the detritus of a busy night... y'know, the usual. Broken glass, puddles of spew, spilt drinks (why can't any one who drinks Sambucca keep it in the fucken shot glass in between buying the drink and drinking it?!) empty bottles, lipstick, torn up beer coasters, semi destroyed Christmas decorations... Oh yeah, and THEN there's the girls toilets. I don't think I'll ever tolerate being told that girls are cleaner and tidier than boys again. Not after ten or eleven months of cleaning the Whalley Arms. I mean, we've cleaned out shit filled boxers, pint glasses filled with spew, and pee all over the floor from the gents on occasion... but the girls toilets, even on quieter nights, are consistently more filthy and treated with less respect than the lads, no argument. Feel free to put that in your pipe and smoke it, ladies ;)&nbsp;Excuse the rant, where was I? Oh yes, Christmas Day. Once we had the cleaning out of the way, Doug and I settled down to a deliberately lazy day in the front room of the pub (which wasn't going to open until 7pm) and in full view of any passers by. We got a nice fire going in the wood burner, exchanged our lumps of coal (mine and Doug's xmas presents to each other) and settled back to watch crappy xmas television and drink our scotch (£6 from ASDA!) and dry ginger ale. The DeLacy Arms was open from 12-3pm and was packed to the rafters with people, a goodly proportion of whom passed by our window, saw Doug and I taking our ease and wanted in. Unfortunately for them (and much to our amusement) public houses in the UK aren't allow to open between 3pm and 7pm on Christmas Day. I could kiss whoever passed that law. As we sat there, watching their disappointed, disgruntled or sometimes just plain irate faces amble away after realising that we weren't going to let them in, I couldn't help but to keep thinking of that line from the kid's movie, Madagascar. "Just smile and wave boys.... Smile and wave...". &nbsp;(At 7pm, we did open the pub and had a pretty good time, wishing the locals and regulars a merry Christmas and having a few more scotches.)&nbsp;With Xmas out of the way, that pretty much just leaves New Year's, and while I'm sure it was a big night for the pub, it can't have been as big as the 3 day bender that Doug and I had up in Edinburgh for Hogmanay (the Scottish new year festival). We booked in with the fanatics tour mob again, yep, the same ones we did the epic, liver destroying, Budapest to Salzburg to Munich (Oktoberfest!) to Prague tour with and once again, they didn't disappoint. We stayed at the Edinburgh Central Travelodge (which lived up to its name, by being Central, a Travelodge and in Edinburgh) and the madness began. First order of business was to sort out a feed, (after a mammoth 10hr bus ride, with two changes of coach) and contrary to popular belief, not all take away / fish and chip shops in Scotland actually sell deep fried mars bars, which we had heard of but wouldn't really believe in until we had seen one. &nbsp;Fortunately for our waistlines, which have already suffered enough, the place we found didn't do them, but they did do quite a respectable burger and chips which put a decent lining in our stomachs for the abuse they were about to cop. Basically, most of the fanatics mob, about two hundred or so of us went to the pub and had a great time singing dancing drinking talking foosballing and making friends. We even met a few locals, one of whom kind of scared us with his dogged and earnest insistence (almost supplication?) that we should move to Edinburgh. At once. Visions of life with only one kidney kept coming to me unbidden while we spoke with him. Er, anyways...&nbsp;The next morning, I was horribly hungover and to my way of thinking, incapable of movement from my sofa bed, unless it was to stagger to the toilet. Food? Hell no, I wanted sleep. Dougie though, being the trooper that he is and the veteran of many a bender felt able to carry the torch and head off down to the day's chosen venue, which was the central Edinburgh Walkabout. For anyone who doesn't know, Walkabouts are a franchise chain of Australian themed pubs that can be found in most cities in the UK. I don't quite understand the logic of going travelling to the other side of the world and then going to an Australian themed pub, but sometimes ya just gotta go with the flow. &nbsp;Anyway, Doug made it to the pub in time for the countdowns to NYE in NZ and back home, apparently there were about 7 countdowns to different places as NYE marched around the world, while I continued a semi-comatose existence on planet Fahkt. Some hours later, just as I was beginning to feel considerably better, Doug was booking his own ticket to planet Fahkt, though he may not have known it at the time. Eventually, I caught up with him, still down at the Walkabout, where we had a few more snakebites, and then decided that a bit of grub would do us both some serious good. A double angus burger (each) later, we had come to the conclusion that if dougie was to be around to welcome the new year in in our current neck of the woods, a bit of kip time was in order, so back to the hotel we went. &nbsp;Once we got there, Dougie had well and truly arrived on the afore mentioned planet Fahkt and straight to bed he went. The torch had been passed. Feeling more human than I had for at least a couple of hours, I decided to explore the hotel bar, where I ran into and started drinking with some Kiwi and Aussie lads who were a barrel of laughs, and good blokes all. After an hour or so, during which time I had been nicknamed, "the Colonel" (everyone had nicknames), it was decided by these lads that I needed to meet Herman. As it turns out, Herman was what I'd all ways thought of as a terry-turbo. The old funnel connected to some large diameter rubber pipe that you fill up with beer and then drink in about a second and a half. Ah, gravity assisted beer sculling... Herman was quite sophisticated though, and had had a valve fixed at the bottom. (yes, I think there's a photo of me and Herman on face book). &nbsp;Several Hermans and a few hours later, everyone was getting pretty happy and we were nearly ready to get the night started. I went and fetched Dougie from his slumber and we took off for the Princes St, street party. The scale of this party is truly difficult to comprehend. Think music festival, but bigger. It's not so much a "street" as "several city blocks" party. Four or five big music stages, drinks points, security and police bloody everywhere, and absolutely choc-a-bloc with people. Somewhere along the way (who needs specifics anyways?) we had run into a random group of aussies with whom we decided to hang about and drink. Before actually arriving at the street party, we thought, "Queuing up for hours to get a drink? Be buggered!". So we bought two one litre cartons of fruit juice and a one litre bottle of vodka from an of licence and by the time we got there all we had were two cartons of&nbsp; liquid that we were prepared to allege were "fruit juice". No prizes for guessing what happened to the vodka ;)&nbsp;Once inside the street party it was pretty much impossible to find anyone else, so we continued to hang around with our new found friends and got down to some serious partying. This may have included lots of&nbsp; "fruit juice", conga lining, and general hilarity that was so much fun it came as something of a surprise when everyone around us started counting. The countdown had managed to catch us completely by surprise. I think we joined in somewhere around "four" but after having missed the first 6 numbers we more than made up for it with the gusto with which we chanted the last three. The new year had arrived, welcomed in glorious style by thousands and thousands of cheering, hugging, kissing, and drinking Scots, Kiwi's, Aussies and many more besides. At one stage, this big bloke who was hugging everyone in sight wrapped me up in a bear hug that went on somewhat longer than I thought was strictly necessary. So much longer, in fact, that I felt it necessary to disengage from his grasp and tell him, "You know I'm a boy, right? Yeah, yeah, long hair and all that, but I've got a fucken beard, mate." And that was about as close to getting (un)lucky as I came in Scotland. &nbsp;We partied and conga lined on for a few more hours after that and then when it became obvious that the incredible cold was sapping the strength and determination of even the most determined party-animals (I.e. "us") we decided to head back to the Travelodge and continue the party there, where it would at least be warm. Sadly though, the party didn't survive the journey back and by the time we arrived, all we had left in us was a few hours of talking shite before everyone crashed out.&nbsp;The next day, first of the New Year managed to begin in a depressingly similar manner to the last day of the last year, with me being horribly hungover. You'd think some things would change, wouldn't you? Doug managed to head out to the pub once again and I joined him a bit later on, but the effort was beginning to tell and party spirit was not strong with me, as Yoda might have said (had he been present and not a fictional character). Basically we just got pissed again with lots of other Aussies and Kiwis. Where the hell all the Scots were, I really don't know. We only met a few, maybe they avoid us like the plague around that time of year. Who knows?&nbsp;At any rate, that pretty much wraps it up for this blog. I've got another instalment to write now, to cover the return to the Arms, the Arms Staff Party and our impromptu farewell do, once again, at the Arms. With any luck, it shouldn't take too long to write it and get it on the net, but don't hold your collective breath guys (if anyone's actually reading this)... this is Bulgaria and the internet is frequently dodgy, so it might be a coupla days, mebbe a bit more, before it materializes. And also... A BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY NANNY!!! MISS YA NAN, XOXOXOXOX!!!!!! &nbsp;&nbsp;Hope everyone else back home is well and hasn't been too bored. Merry New Year and Happy Xmas and all that bollocks to the lot of you ;) &nbsp;Cheers from Paul and Doug!!!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1223727360/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1223727360/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1223727360/tpod.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:14:20 -0400 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Praia A Mare, Calabria, Italy

photos coming soon... i hope
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1223295300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1223295300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1223295300/tpod.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:56:49 -0400 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Forio, Campania, Italy

few more photos from forio. Beautiful place.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1223122320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1223122320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1223122320/tpod.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:44:50 -0400 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Naples, Campania, Italy

photos! actually, im not sure if i hav any photos of naples, i know there were some from the football match, but i may have to track someone down to find em....
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1222863060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1222863060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pauly/europe08/1222863060/tpod.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:43:01 -0400 Eurotrip '08. Giggity giggity.

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Rome, Lazio, Italy

few photos from rome, once again for anyone not on facebook that gets this blog... is there actually any one in this category??? am i wasting my time doing this? Oh well... schmidt happens.
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