tot ziens, europa

last week was a week of goodbyes. it was emotional, in a nostalgic, walking through the autumn leaves, taking stock of life kind of way. i felt moved, but not devastated (fortunately).

tuesday before last i left holland. i had my farewell there on the sunday night which was fairly small but very undignified, as indeed was most of the fortnight beforehand, which i spent in delft (in between rotterdam and the hague), having bailed from the cursed break-in flat in amsterdam. i stayed in student accommodation, with students, drinking cheaply at student societies, working on an annual report and in my free time listening to illegally downloaded music and watching seasons 1,2 & 3 of arrested development as well as most of the episodes of south park ever made (courtesy of said students). it was a strange contrast of day and night, stranger than i can actually describe, but it was a nice way to finish things off. it was just starting to get cold there and i cried when the plane took off cause i knew it was going to be the last time i would be there for a long time.

i spent the rest of the week in carlton with joey and si and darcy and kai, my family. darcy, my niece, is now four months and she had grown heaps in the six weeks since i'd last seen her. she is so lovely and joey is so happy and kai is still a sweetheart and simon is mental but definitely my favourite brother in law (no 1 of 1). i went to kai's harvest festival at school and i had a lovely ladies lunch but i mainly just spent heaps of time chatting with joey and si and sitting around in their kitchen. they are moving soon so it'll be the last time i do so in that house, which i helped them move into almost ten years ago now.

i went and drank vodka again with bri and joyce next door, i baked some cookies and went to see old joe cuthbert (who had a stroke in July but is almost fully recovered), i went and drank with the friday crew at the pub. my mate dave told me i was a flutterby and needed to focus on what i wanted and then go for it. i have been thinking about it intermittently since and although i didnt understand what he was saying at the time (it was closing time), i do a bit more now.

i was sad to leave carlton too and got a bit cranky when i had to do so, partly because i had to try and fit six months of living into the same tiny backpack i brought over with me, but mainly because i was sad. autumn was even more spectacular there.

saturday i caught the train up to macclesfield and met up with steve. he is so lovely. he cooked me a delicious dinner and then we went out in macc, which was a bit crap. my expectations were met, but in a good way. sunday i met up with mish and we all just mooched around, it had been a big week. monday we attempted to go to leeds, but stopped for coffee in manchester and then decided to stick around town. im glad we did, cause i had a lovely day with the two of them. life is not a race. i went for a swim somewhere among that and realised it had been a long time.

i am looking forward to coming home for summer.

7.30am weds mish and steve dropped me off an manchester airport, which was too early for extreme sadness, but sad, in a seven am kind of way. in case i forgot to say it, thank you both for all your kindnesses. i love ya and im gonna miss you heaps.

which almost brings us up to speed - if you include the extreme opposite of speed of a two and a half hour flight to germany, a ten hour flight to vancouver, a two hour wait then a two hour flight to calgary, a two and a half hour wait then an hour flight to saskatoon.

so now im in canada, and let me tell you 23 hours is nothing between friends. im not feeling any jet lag, which is probably due to the hours i was keeping in delft. is is wonderful to see nanny and matt and jacinta is adorable.

will take some photos and put them up soon. see you very soon if you live in sydney. bye bye for a little while to everybody who has fed, housed and caroused with me since june in europa. thanks.

xxo

pics:oktoberfest

oktoberfest: the third happiest place on earth


my where's wally adventure continues


the general fracas


our kid, with his german beer drinking hat on.


he's blurry, but he's german jubey

some kids doing the tango. these guys were professionals

and another dancing to the beat of his own drum

beer cam

goodbye, old friends, we'll miss you

...just like starting over (la-la-la-la)

Aloha,

So... there have been quite a few interesting developments of late. I believe i last left you in budapest, a city which i really loved. we left the day before the riots started. apparently the hungarians found out that their government had been lying to them and took it to the streets. imagine.

budapest was absolutely beautiful in an old and crappy, former communist kind of way. i travelled there with this aussie guy called jesse, who i met in vienna and is 19, so i referred to him as kid until he started calling me mum, after which i didnt think it was funny anymore. we hired bikes on one of the days and rode up to the castle district on the buda side of town (budapest is divided into buda, and pest) having stayed in pest. another day we spent wandering around pest itself, and another we spent out at the baths, of which there are many. the ones we went to had two long massive rooms with about 12 different mineral spas in them of varying sizes and temperatures, and a whole bunch of steam rooms, even one with blocks of ice you could go and rub on yourself and them jump back into the heat again. then they had your regular pools and jacuzzis and a whirlpool, which was also very fun. i left three hours later feeling refreshed but very, very, very watery. and a bit dazed.

that night, after very nearly missing the bus we travelled to munich for oktoberfest, the biggest beeer drinking festival in the world with something like six million visitors over the two weeks it runs for. we arrived in munich at 6am right next to the allianz stadium (and not much else), this huge spherical dome that looked like a massive golfball (or perhaps it was a football-inspired look they were going for). the entire structure flashed from white neon, to red, to blue. i had just woken from only about two hours sleep and it was very trippy. we caught a train to central station and then found accomm no problem a few hours later, in a massive megabeast of a hostel that had the advantage of being 10 minutes walk away from the site. check in, sadly, was 3pm so we hit town and staggered around stinky and sleepy until they finally let us in, slept, and then at 6pm, we hit oktoberfest.

there are about seven massive beer tents at oktoberfest. the HB tent, we had been warned, would be full of drunk australians and kiwis, who were apparently the worst behaved every year. it sounded promising but we decided to go mix with some germanics beforehand and see if we could make some friends.

no problems there.

the beers are one litre each. the first night i bought two, but drank many more as the people you meet think it friendly to top up your drink with their while they're prost-ing (cheers-ing) you. it IS friendly, but oh, my. we started in the lowenbrau tent, which is my favourite beer, hung with some off-duty cops and then made our way to the augustina tent, which is brewed in munich and apparently the best beer at the festival (everyone tells you something different though). we preferred the lowenbrau, but the augustina was a happening tent. the trick is getting a table... you only get served from a table and you never have to wait long once you're there, but the halls, all of them, were absolutely crammed. and this was a tuesday. anyway, we didnt have too much trouble and again, made more friends. we ate massive novelty sized pretzels and cheese to wash down the beer. jesse did some snuff. i didnt.

i had reservations before going to oktoberfest that it would just be one boozy, blurry mess, and nothing that special. i dont know why. maybe i was afraid. maybe its because i cant drink that much beer. maybe it was the war. i dont know.

all i know is i was wrong, wrong, wrong. we met so many nice people, and i can honestly say i have not had such a good time drinking since i was in dublin last. everyone was standing on their tables singing, people were doing the tango, there was toasting, great bands... i really loved it. 'country road, take me home' was the most popular song and we must have heard it about eight times. robbie williams 'angel' was probably the second favourite, dont ask me why. (oh yes, that's right, you can really shout the chorus).

day 2 was much the same. we ended up in the HB tent last, and it was everything they said it would be: clothes flying in the air, vomit on the floor, etc. i wont lie. but it wasnt mine.

at 10.40pm on day 2, i caught an overnight train back to amsterdam, straight from oktoberfest. i drank until 4am in between carriages with a bunch of strangers from munich, LA, wisconsin (he was annoying), baghdad, the czech republic and some other guy who kept falling asleep. i arrived in amsterdam a little after 9am and called my flatmate, jane, who had sent me a text asking me to get in touch urgently.

i called her. our flat was broken into two days prior. my laptop was stolen. i hadnt backed anything up. i've lost the digital copies of everything i've ever written. my CV. my photos. my recorded interviews. my music. letters. emails. BACK UP YOUR COMPUTERS, now, people. it sucks.

anyway, that was last week. i cried for a few days and now i feel okay. there's something very cathartic about having to start all over again. and that's the line i'm currently running with. it's working.

im now in delft which is about an hour south of amsterdam (in between the hague and rotterdam) staying in a university dorm and working on an annual report for back home. its a strange contrast of days and nights, but i like it. they've got these massive computer servers with access to every piece of music, TV and film known to man and its good cause its been raining a bit. it smells autumny outside and its getting cold but still nice and fresh.

im here for another week and a half and then im back to england for ten days, then on to canadia. getting very excited about seeing nanny, matt and jacinta! sad to leave holland but it's time, i feel. my work here is almost done.