The Naive Globetrotter

A New Life Begins

2007-05-14T22:09:00.000Z

The Marmott and I travel to Japan via Shanghai, to kick off a whole new life!

Coming soon..

The Long Goodbye

2007-05-14T22:05:00.000Z

The gang travels to China, en route to a heart-breaking separation as The Marmott and I bid farewell to our compadres on the steps of the Grand Central Train Station in Beijing.

Coming soon..

A Whole Nother Story

2007-05-14T22:01:00.001Z

Adventures in the Mongolian mountains at minus 30 degrees!

Coming soon..

Goodbye, Lenin!

2007-02-20T18:34:00.000Z

As we left Irkutsk, effectively ending the Russian lef of our trip, I was feeling pretty good. Pretty, pretty, preeetty good. I wasn't in any pain, for once, having bought a new backpack that afternoon to replace the make-shift one I'd fashioned from the rubbishy remains of my original wheelie-bag after its wheels had broken off two weeks earlier. But at a more cerebral level, I was just generally feeling really happy and content with everything.

I'd gone off on my own little mini-adventure earlier in the day in search of the aforementioned brand new backpack, and it had given me the oppurtunity to explore some less-visited areas of Irkutsk, to interact with the locals a bit more and get a better understanding of how it might have been to grow up there. I had time to think, time to take in the smells and sights of this foreign land. I was really pleased to have done it, and it did me good. Sadly, however, not everyone was in such a free-n-easy state of mind..

It all kicked off a few hours into our Trans-Mongolian journey. Everyone had enjoyed the good old 'Trans-Sib' train ride so much that I thought this would be more of the same. And I suppose it was, to start off with.. we played some cards and read a little, occasionally cracking wise and trading quips. The Pristine Marmott had broken into his Mongolian guide book and was trying to brush up on some basic language and background for what was to be our next destination.

At around 1AM, The Hugless Stone looked up from behind his book and asked if any of us knew how easy it would be for us to get ourselves invited to stay with some local Mongolians in a 'Ger', the traditional tents they live in up in the mountains. "It shouldn't be too difficult", said The Marmott. "Says here most of the youth hostels arrange if for you if you want.." The Stone thanked him for clearing it up, but The Marmott was not finished yet -- oh, no...

"It looks pretty f###ing interesting," he said, slipping into the expletive-ridden dialogue he loved to use to describe things that were really interesting. "Apparently we'll be there at the best time because it's the winter so the nomads are all just chilling out all day". "How ironic..", chimed The Stone, entirely mis-using the word 'ironic' but nonetheless getting a titter or two out of The Hippo and I. "Summer's the worst," continued The Marmott, undeterred by the interruption. "Why?", chipped The Stone with glee, "are they all just nomading around?"

He was clearly pleased with himself for such rapid-fire japery. The Hippo and I were giggling like school-girls but to The Marmott it was no laughing matter. "Are you f###ing shitting me?!" he roared down at The Stone from where he was lying up high on his bunk-bed. "What do you mean?", replied The Stone, confused, and no longer such a barrel of laughs. "What do I mean?!" snarled The Marmott, fuming, before unloading a torrent of frustration on The Stone below.

He had been "trying to spark up an interesting conversation amongst us about Mongolia", he lamented. He'd just wanted us to talk seriously about something for once, maybe get a little intellectual stimulation instead of always just joking around. "And when you're just down there making stupid jokes at my expense", he continued, "it just feels like what I'm trying to say is worthless, like what I'm saying is just something for you to f###ing take a big fat shit on!"

The Marmott was angry that day, my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli. We could see that he had a point. But for some reason, The Stone just could not apologise. Everyone could see that he hadn't meant to offend, but he had done, and he owed old Marmy an apology. But it wasn't forthcoming, he just kept on fighting his corner, trying to defend himself. "Just shut up!", screeched The Marmott, taking what had been a pretty intense argument to previously unthought of levels. "You just keep talking and talking and talking like f###ing diahorrea and you don't stop, you never stop!!"

The atmosphere was electric. You could feel the blows hitting deep. This was pent-up anger from long before anyone had mentioned "nomading around". The Stone looked like he was welling up inside and at last he choked out the beginnings of an apology. It was 2AM. The whole ordeal had lasted a full hour.

But it wasn't over yet. Oh, no. Then came the deconstruction. Now that frustrations had been vented, temperatures had cooled and pulse-rates had returned to normal levels, we all set about re-playing every second of the fight: who had said what, and in what order, and why. It was an oppurtunity for all the previously unaired grievances that we'd had to come out, and by the time 4AM rolled around and all had been said that needed to be said, everyone felt better to have said their piece and we bade each other a calm goodnight.

Yes, as we left Irkutsk, effectively ending the Russian lef of our trip, I was feeling pretty good. Pretty, pretty, preeetty good.

The next day passed fairly uneventfully, at least in comparison to what had come the night before. We had a lazy morning followed by a lazy afternoon, capped off with a lazy early evening. All the horror stories we'd heard about how difficult it was going to be to get out of Russia without having to bribe guards and so on turned out to be hogwash. The only border control people we met were friendly Mongolian folk, simple people who were simply delightful.

But that's not to say it was a total breeze, however. The troubles first started around 10PM, when we pulled in to one particular train station for the second of two big border-control stops..

The travel guide had mentioned how boring these stops can be since they can take up to four hours. So, once they'd given back our passports, we did as the Holy Book suggested that dismounted from the motherf###in' train to go buy food and explore the area a little bit. We found some road-side food stands and palmed off great wads of cash to the locals for some home-made dumplings and ready-made meals. Back on the train we tucked in, discovering that the dumplings were exquisite, simply heavenly. Since they'd only cost us the equivalent of a few pennys, I suggested we head back out for more. So, we suited up once again (because it was the coldest we'd encountered so far on the trip, roughly -20 degrees), and headed out to plunder.

The job completed, we headed back to the train sharpish, only to see it pulling away from us into the distance, into the darkness, into the night. There was a moment of 'WTF?!", then The Marmott handed me the bag of dumplings and started sprintting as fast as he could after it, waving his arms furiously and screaming at the top of his lungs. I followed after him, slowed by the fact that my arms were full of dumplings (plus I'm deliciously out of shape), but it was no use. We couldn't catch it. The train was gone.

"Okay, let's think about this for a second..", said The Hippo, trying to keep his head screwed on. The Stone had stayed on the train, so we knew our bags would be safe at least. The Hippo and I both had credit cards on us so we knew we could buy new tickets for a new train if we had to. We were calm. We were collected. It would turn out okay in the end. We just knew it.

We started walking back to the station, since we were outside and as I mentioned earlier, it was f###in' freezin'. We walked in silence. The only sounds were the clangs of the station workers as they worked on the other trains, and the music blasting out of a radio on the platform.

Just then, The Marmott spotted something. "What's that?", he asked, pointing at a light in the distance. We turned to follow his gaze, and I turned on my super-human extra-long-distance vision. "Don't get your hopes up," I said, "but that looks like our train.."

As it pulled closer, all our fears melted away. It was our train! We moved close to the edge of the platform, preparing to rush on as soon as it reached us, when a new song started to play on the station radio that caused The Hippo to stop for a moment and smile:

"Sweet dreams are made of this.."

The words floated out into that cold Mongolian night and we just had to laugh.

When we arrived in Ulaan-Baatar early the next morning, we were met by a very friendly guy from the hostel who had offered to pick us up. "You from England?", he inquired. We told him we were, and he tapped his hat proudly, showing off the England football logo he was wearing. He walked us to his mini-van where he introduced us to his driver. The guy had an unpronouncable name but he had slicked back hair and dressed like a gangster with the attitude to match, so we called him Mr. Infernal Affairs.

We got to the hostel and English Hat Guy showed us around. "Sometimes, there is a lady who sit her, she is know everything!", he told us. "I help her maybe sometimes, she not here so I gonna show you what". He led us to a room with a computer in it. "This is computer, internet is yes. It is not so fast, but it no matter, it is free!"

He did an equally bad job selling us the rest of the town, warning us endlessly that "many people are pickpockets!" and that "they are shit!". He told us how boring Ulaan-Baatar was, whilst extolling the virtues of his two favourite eateries, 'Berlin Burger' and 'Pizza Broadway'. "Do not go traditional Mongolian restaurant," he warned us after we'd asked him for directions, "you will not like".

Surprisingly, we decided to ignore his advice and headed off to explore the city and it's tradtional cuisine. But before we ate, we raced across town to a Buddhist monastary to watch a morning service. It was fascinating, and a whoe new dose of culture-shock reminding me just how far east we'd already come.

The monks were all dressed in brightly coloured robes and had close-shaven heads. Some of them were only young kids, not even in their teens, who giggled at the back and pretended to mouth the words to the various chants. In one corner was a western-looking guy who appeared to be some kind of disillusioned ex-pat. He didn't know the words either but he was wearing all the garb and seemed determined to make this his new life.

It was an amazing ceremony to watch and had me really excited for what still remained for us on this trip. But after about an hour there, my stomach was getting the better of me. I was committing the deadly sin of Hunger, and I was feeling faint as a result. So, we headed back into town, in search of some real Mongolian delicacies.

Instead, we found 'National Mongolian Fast Food', a place that looked like it's name suggests, althought tasted simply sublime. We'd each chosen our meals by pointing at the pictures and hoping for the best, but when mine came I was in no two minds about it: it was the best. It was mutton and vegetables with egg and ride and potatoes, presented to my place still spitting in the pan and mounted on an ornate wooden plate with designs painted around the edges. And in a case of definitely being able to judge a book by its cover, it tasted incredible. "This is the best meal I've ever had," I said, believing every word.

We left the restaurant and headed off to the Mongolian Natural History museum, but that's when things started to go awry..

I first started feeling a little woozy from the moment we walked in the door. In retrospect, I'm very pleased that the guard had ordered us to leave our coats and jumpers in the cloak room, because even in just a t-shirt I was sweating up a storm, truly schvitzing like a chuzzah. Every step became a struggle, and I'm afraid I can't tell you much about the museum itself because with each new room we went in, I just headed straight for the chair in the corner and sat with my head in my hands, hoping desperately that by remaining completely motionless I might somehow vanish away the fever that was taking hold of me by sheer will-power.

But it was not to be. As the afternoon wore on, I was feeling worse and worse, and after we left the museum and headed eastwards to grab a beer at the 'Gengis Club', I wondered if it would be an offence punishable by death in Mongolia for me to vomit all over the sidewalk.

When we got to the club I headed straight for the Men's Room, whilst the others went to get a table. Safely locked in the toilet, I stripped down to my undies, trying desperately to reduce my ever-climbing temperature. I considered 'doing a Borat' and splashing toilet water all over my face, but even in my altered state of mind I realised that wouldn't most likely help me get better in the long run.

Instead, I tried to vomit. I've never enjoyed the old 'two fingers down your throat' technique, surprisingly, but I tried everything else. I threw back my head and then lunged forward, doubling over until my nose was inches from the toilet bowl. I threw myself against the walls. I jumped up and down, my balls flapping from side-to-side like the pendulum of an old grandfather clock gone haywire. I shouted expletives at the top of my lungs, then wretched like I've never wretched before. But there was nothing. Nada. Zip. Diddly-squat. The vom was not forthcoming, and I was only feeling worse.

Eventually, I decided to do the unthinkable. Feeling like a professional bulimic, I put two fingers in my mouth and pressed down. Nothing. I pressed down harder, and let out a gigantic belch. I pressed harder still, and there it was! I let loose a torrent of vomit more volumnous that anything I'd ever produced in such a manner before, a think, chunky concoction riddled with half-digested pieces of mutton, the remains of "best meal I've ever had". Simultaneously I was thrown backwards, like Will Smith in 'Men in Black' after he takes his first shot with the ray-gun. But it was out, and that was all that mattered. I lay there in a crumpled heap on the floor, pondering my next move..

Re-clothed but still a little shaken, I stumbled out of the bathroom to re-join my friends in the bar. I sat down next to them just as the waitress brought over four beers. "Oh yeah, we ordered you a beer," The Marmott told me. I almost laughed.

They could see I was the worse for wear (maybe it was the little flecks of vomit on my jacket that gave it away, I don't know..), but either way they did me a solid and drank up swiftly so we could head back to the hostel. Once back in our room, I made a beeline straight for my bed and crashed out. My head was spinning a little and I sensed that there might still have been some of the evil lurking inside of me, but I was sure that if I could just get to sleep, I'd wake up safely back home in England laughing about what a horrible nightmare it'd all been. "Are you going to be okay?", The Marmott asked me. "Yeah, yeah..", I mumbled, "you guys go do whatever..."

They left me alone, and I spent the next few hours drifting in and out of consciousness like a down-and-out boxed after one too many slip ups in the ring. But as I dozed, dazed, still the evil grew inside of me and with each awakening I felt more and more it threatening to come out. Eventually it grew too much to contain, and though I was too weak to stand, I did my best to make precautions. I reached into the bag of dirty laundry that lay next to my bed, and pulled out two of my old t-shirts. I had just enough time to toss them on top of the covers before the first explosion came. Like a tidal wave, dotted with tiny little sufers in the form of chunks of meat, it poured out of me. Once! Twice! Thrice! And More! I hurled. I spewed. I vommed. I bogged it. I up-chucked and I chucked-up. Again and again I let loose, aiming always with beautiful precision for the make-shift target that lay before me in the form of my t-shirts. Again and again and again until I was truly certain that everything was out of me.

Satisfied at last, I lay back and immediately fell straight to sleep. I was only awoken when The Stone and The Hippo came in to check on me. They turned on the lights and I sat bolt upright. "How are you?", asked The Stone. "There's good news and bad news," I replied. "What's the bad news?", he asked. "That's the bad news..", I responded, pointing at the bad news. "Ah.", he said, succinctly.

"Don't worry about it," I said, "I'll clean it up". He didn't argue, but told me he just had to show The Marmott first. "Sorry..", he added, as an afterthought. "No need to apologise," I told him.

So, The Marmott came in. The good old Pristine Marmott, our resident clean-freak who abhors any less than perfect hygiene. "Don't worry about it," I said, and motioned for him to pass me a plastic bag. He did so, and in one smooth motion I rolled up both t-shirts and dumped them unceremoniously into the bag.

The initial job done, it was now time to change the mattress. An unfortunate casualty of the afternoons events, it seemed my t-shirts had not been able to protect it from getting a little drenched. However, when I stood up, it quicky became clear that even whilst I might have exorcised the beast from within me, I still wasn't fit for active service. That's where my great pals stepped in, coming to my aid. The Marmott, Hippo and Hugless Stone all did their part, helping me into a new bed and outfitting me with a new sick bag and a few bottles of water.

But if only I'd drunk them.. you see, it turns out when you throw up that much, you lose a lot of water from your body. And when you're dehydrated, it can mean only one thing.. diahorrea!

Love it. Love that shit. But I'll spare you the gory details, because (believe it or not) there's some things even I won't dare put pen to paper about. Instead, I'll just say this:

As I lay back, trying to catch a few more winks whilst still maintaining complete control of my bowels, there was only one thing running through my mind.. we were in Mongolia, and it was going to be a whole new experience.

See you next time, folks.

Ewan McGregor is an idiot.

2007-02-17T10:30:00.002Z

So. The Great Trans-Siberian Express was over. Siberia had been 'Trans'-ed, and we were the ones who had 'Trans'-ed it. We had finally arrived at our destination, a Russian city named Irkutsk, close to the Mongolian border. It's a peculiar place because most people outside of Russian circles will never have heard of it, yet it's population exceeds half a million and it's home (at least in part) to Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world, a lake with a surface area greater than most small countries and filled with one-fifth of the world's freshwater supply. A lake covered mostly by a top-layer of ice that's up to ten feet thick, on which trucks can drive and through which men can fish, albeit with great difficulty. It's a mammoth work of nature, certainly worthy of being one of the however-many 'Wonders of the World' (if it's not already considered to be so). But I'm getting ahead of myself, as I seem so easily to do. We were on the No. 10 train that had taken us Trans-Siberian. It was 4AM Moscow-time, although 9AM local time, and we had finally arrived at our destination, a Russian city named Irkutsk, close to the Mongolian border..

One of the benefits of visiting a place like this is that there are fewer tourists stopping by, so you get to enjoy perks like the hostel manager picking you up from your train at 9AM and taking you all the way to your room. Or at least, that's how the hostel had advertised it on their website. I suppose we can't complain really, but I'll admit I was a little heart-broken when the lady who met us as we clamoured off the train told us we'd have to walk to the tram station, then take a tram to the hostel. Perhaps it was selfish of me, but regular readers of this blog may recall that my wheelie-bag suitcase had broken upon our arrival in St. Petersberg, and I'd been carrying the thing on my back since then using straps that were painfully obviously made for hands, not shoulders. To put it simply, I was hurting, and the idea of walking even one more step with that monster on my back sent shivers down my rapidly-compressing spine. But whatever.

The lady who met us to take us to the hostel was a cheery woman who looked strikingly like indie film-maker Ralph Suarez. With her deft aid, we arrived at what was to be our home for the next four days, an eerily quiet place where the only other person we could see was another guy working there, who followed us around with a semi-invisible background presence. You could have slapped some dark lighting and mood music on the place and I'd have believed we'd walked into a Hitchcockian nightmare, but right then that didn't matter one iota. What mattered was the fact that it was Friday, and we'd been on a train since Monday, and this place offered hot showers, free of charge. To put it simply, I got naked faster than Paris Hilton on a hot summer night in L.A. Within minutes, I was enjoying the most refreshing shower I'd had since six months earlier, when I came back from a week of camping on safari in Kenya to stay for one night in a five-star hotel in Nairobi. I was alive again, back in the world of the living. Everything around me felt new and clean, and the pungent odor that had been inexplicably following me around for the past few days had disappeared in an equally inexplicable manner.

I stepped out of the bathroom, now washed and dried and finally in some clean clothes, and saw looking up at me from the kitchen table two smiling angelic faces. "Hey! How are you?", they cooed, almost in unison. They were two Dutch girls we'd briefly over-lapped with at the hostel in Moscow, who by strange co-incidence were taking the same trip as us, right down to the same hostels. We hadn't had much of a chance to meet them back in Moscow, since their last day there was our first, but the little that we had talked, I'd gotten the impression they were rare diamonds in the rough that is the Trans-Sib traveling community.

As my fellow traveling companions took their showers one by one, I got caught up with the two ladies. There was laughter and smiles all around, and every impression I'd had of them from Moscow was confirmed. They were something special.. interesting and funny and not at all pretentious, they were just the kind of people I'd come on this trip to meet. Of course, as The Hugless Stone would later point out, "it doesn't hurt that they're very good looking.."

That horny bastard.

So, anyway, having reunited with the Dutch girls and secured them as 'good people', we parted ways and our gang of four headed off to discover the town. Now, for the most part that meant trying to guess which guys were in the mafia, a game made either very easy or very hard (you decide) by the fact that EVERYONE'S IN THE MAFIA!

"Oooh, don't look behind you right now..", The Disgusting Hippo would mutter to me under his breath at regular intervals during our first meal out, prompting an impressed reaction from the rest of our merry band and leaving me quaking with fear and sincerely regretting my decision to sit with my back facing the rest of the restaurant.

Aside from that, the only thing that really remained to be done was to get our first taste of ice. It was no Lake Baikal, but Irkutsk did have a small river that was partially frozen over in the city centre, so we headed there post-haste. We walked out a little way, until The Disgusting Hippo discovered with alarm that ice cracks, and ice-cold water lurks dangerously closely beneath the surface. Yes, The Hippo fell through, although only on the edge of the river, and only one leg. Naturally, being the disgusting being that he is, he saw no reason to go back to the hostel (which at that point would have been a mere two minutes walk away), electing to stay in his wet clothes and soldier on, albeit now being followed by a queer squelching sound with every successive step he took. Rather off-putting.

Not as off-putting, however, as the bizarre young Russian fellow we met in the super-market later in the day. He worked there, or at least I hope he did, and seemed exceptionally proud of the fact that he spoke English. Well, fair play to him -- my Russian is certainly very limited and on any normal occasion I'd have been delighted to have such a willing and able English-speaker to help us out. It's just the way he helped. It was kind of.. weird. He was always there, just a few inches behind you. The Hugless Stone went off to get some kidney beans.. and Helpful Mike was right behind him. The Pristine Marmott crouched over to pick up a tin of chopped tomatoes from the bottom shelf.. and Helpful Mike had got there first, causing their hands to meet in what might otherwise have seemed like a cheesy moment in a bad romantic comedy. In short, he was just a little too intense for what you'd usually look for in an average super-market experience.

We can't fault him too much, I suppose, since we got all the ingredients we needed, and that evening chowed down on what I'd personally vote to be the best meal of the trip so far, cooked up primarily under the sage guidance and expertise of our resident chef, The Hugless Stone.
I should probably avoid going into too much detail about just how very tasty the meal was, however, given that it makes for slightly less than interesting reading for you folks at home who didn't exactly partake in the eating. So, we'll move on..

The next morning was to be our first day at Lake Baikal, the aforementioned natural wonder that we'd all heard so much about. We woke up bright and early and caught a tram to the bus stop, where we were suddenly hit by the realisation that bus stops have more than one bus at any one time, and we were lacking the crucial knowledge as to which bus was which. However, all was not lost -- we had all learnt to read the Russian Cyrillic alphabet on our first train ride into the country, and so pretty soon we'd figured out what was what and what went where, and we were on track once again.

We really needn't have worried one little bit, however. Before long, as we were waiting for the bus we knew was due to come, we were approached by a small, funny-looking creature with a scratchy high-pitched voice and a massive 'puffa' coat that looked primed for attacking. She was short and moved slowly, shuffling her feet, but with purpose, so that when we caught our first glimpse of her coming our way, we knew we had no choice but to engage..

"Hellowwwwww.....", she crowed, leaning in to the circle we were rapidly trying to form to keep her out. "Baikal Laaaaake???" We answered in the affirmative, and she knew she had us. "What your naaaaaames?", she asked in her bizarre sing-song manner. We told her. "Veryniiiice, veryniiiice..", she replied, smiling a little too much. "Chip?", she said, thrusting a packet of crisps in The Marmott's face obtrusively. "Niet, niet, spasiba..", he responded meekly by means of a response, and we all echoed the sentiment as she offered the snacks around our little group one by one. There was an awkward silence, and she pulled a bottle out of her massive coat and started to drink from it. Then, as if remembering some unknown rule etiquette, she stopped drinking and held the bottle up for us to see. "100% pure yogurt", she told us, beaming with pride. "Good..", I mumbled, as the awkward silence threatened to take over once again and we all tried to avoid making eye-contact with her.

"Howoldareyou?", she asked us one by one, smiling with approval as we each gave our answers and occasionally muttering, "verynice, verynice". We figured we ought to make some effort to be friendly, despite the earliness of the hour and the oddness of the character we faced. "And you?", asked The Marmott. "My howoldareyou?", she replied. "My howoldareyou is 18 years". I paused for a moment and considered whether or not to believe her. She had little baby teeth and fingers that offered no indication of disability, but just rather of someone very much younger than eighteen. But at the same time, there was something about her that made me wonder if maybe she was middle-aged, or even older. It was weird. I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"Have you brothersister?", she asked me, snapping me out of my daze. "Uhh.. yes. Yes. One brother, one sister", I replied. "And brothersister, what their howoldareyou?", she pressed. I furiously re-arranged the words in my head and hedged my bets that I'd understood her correctly. I told her their ages. "Verynice, verynice..", she replied, before proceeding around the group to ask each of us about our respective "brothersister"'s.

The bus arrived, and we piled in. Naturally, she chose to sit next to us, in order that we might carry on our riveting conversation. "Do you speak Chinese?", she asked me. I told her I did not. Undeterred, she continued around the group, until she got to The Hugless Stone, who had sneakily managed to slip in some headphones and was now listening to music. She prodded The Hippo, who was sitting next to him. "Does he speak Chinese?", she asked, pointing to The Stone. "No, he doesn't..", The Hippo replied, shaking his head. "Ask him!", she insisted. He did as he was told, pulling the headphones out of The Stone's ears to confirm with him that he did not, indeed, speak Chinese.

After what seemed like an eternity with the girl, we arrived at our destination, a small fishing village called Listvyanka which is an easy-access point to get to Lake Baikal. So easy, in fact, that by walking out of the bus station and around the corner we found ourselves immediately on the lake.

The rumours were correct. The hearsay was justified. The intelligence we'd gathered had been accurate. It was incredible. The ice was thicker than we'd imagined it could be, and almost as if on cue, we saw a large truck drive past us at high speed, dragging a crate of felled tree-trunks behind it, and causing not even the slightest damage to the ice it drove on. It was incredible. We started walking out. Cautiously at first, and then faster and more confidently as we kept on going. We walked past locals fishing through holes they'd drilled into the surface. We walked past giant rips in the top-layer where shafts of ice stood tall and proud, throwing the glorious sunlight in all directions and leaving shadows below like the marks of an incredible sundial. We walked, and we walked, and we walked, until we were miles from the shore and facing a vast expanse before us that seemed as if it could go on forever. And still we walked. We walked even when we realised that we'd seen no other human beings for hours. Only the occasional eagle would circle overhead, maybe trying to spot a break in the ice through which it might dive and catch a fish, or maybe just waiting for one of us to collapse and die so it could chow down on some decent fresh flesh. It was incredible. I felt like we were the only people left on the earth, like we'd stumbled through some unlikely portal into another universe, another planet, another time. It felt like the pinnacle of the trip had been reached, that this was 'it', whatever 'it' might be. We'd traveled so far and for so long to reach this moment, and it was worth every second. Every hardship, every ache, every penny, every argument, every fight, every everything. It had all been part of the journey to get to that one place, to that one time. And it was finally there. And it was incredible.

But eventually, we realised that maybe we'd come far enough. We'd been hearing strange noises for the past little while, that sounded like explosions beneath the surface. We'd soldiered on to start off with, but as we noticed the sun sitting high in the sky, causing the ice to get slippery as the top started to melt, we considered that those deep explosions we'd heard were probably the unwanted sounds of plates of ice tearing apart at their seams. It was probably not the safest environment we could have been in, and now that the explosions were louder and accompanied by more violent shakes that ever before, we decided to turn back.

So again, we walked. We walked, and walked, and walked. Carefully now, although with an urgency and speed that we'd lacked on our outward journey. At long last we found ourselves nearing civilisation once again. Nearing that little fishing village, with its market and mud-huts and smoked-meat barbeque's. We were safely back in the real world, having enjoyed our first experience of one of the most amazing locations on earth.

But before we climbed back onto land, The Hugless Stone had some experimenting to do. He wanted to know whether the water below the ice really went all the way down to the bottom of the lake, or if there were layers of ice with water in between.

We found one of the ridges of cracked ice where it looked like it might be possible to break through completely, to reach the water beneath. Holding a gigantic slate of ice above his head, he let out a mighty roar, before sending it crashing towards the surface in the hope of smashing through. It barely dented it, but after repeated attacks the first drop of water squeezed its way through a tiny hole in the ice and Stage One was complete.

Stage Two then began. Working with all the precision of a nano-physicist, The Stone delicately worked at the hole, transforming it from the size of pin-head to the size of a football. That done, the final stage was upon us..

The Stone took another piece of ice, this time long and thin. He inserted it into the hole he'd made for himself, and placed his hands on The Hippo's shoulders for support. He then hoisted himself up until he was standing on his weapon, and started gently moving up and down to ease it through the surface to see how far down it would go before it hit the second layer of ice he suspected lay mere feet below. Nothing seemed to be moving, and he started working it harder and harder, desperate to make this thing work. Then, all of a sudden, with a crash and a whoosh, everything happened at once. The prong slid swiftly into the hole, all the way down until it was out of sight. And The Stone, who had been perched atop it, followed swiftly after it. Indeed, had he not been holding onto The Hippo, who grabbed tightly on to him as he fell downwards, he might also have taken a mighty plunge beneath the surface, never to have been seen again. Thankfully, for all parties concerned, that didn't happen, and he survived the ordeal only slightly wet and slightly shaken.

The rest of the day was spent exploring drying pastures, on land. We bought food at the fish market, then went for a walk into the hills behind the village. The Hugless Stone clearly hadn't lost his sense of adventure, climbing not one, not two, but three tall silver birch trees along our route, but nothing came close to the heart-pumping death-defying excitement of his aforementioned 'experiment'.

At long last, it was time to head back home, although the day was far from over. We went to the bus stop to buy our tickets, and ran into none other than our two favourite Dutch angels from our hostel. They'd spent the day at an ice park nearby, which they gave us the directions for since we needed something to do the next day. We all piled onto the bus together, catching up, when we were interrupted by someone. A small little creature with a scratchy, high-pitched voice and a massive coat that looked primed for attacking. It was Yuletide Eileen, our friend from earlier.

She ran the tourist racket well, it seemed, as the Dutch girls also knew her. As we sat down, she stood up, and clapped her hands excitedly. "Welcome to the comedy cluuuub!", she giggled. "My veryniiiice! Haha, you look like Ricky Martin!".. I realised she was talking about me. "Really?", I asked, unsure exactly what the correct response to that assertion might be. "Yess!! And you!", she said, pointing to The Hugless Stone, "you Bill Clinton!! Hahaha!"

And so it continued. For two hours she talked, on and on and on, impressive for a girl with relatively few English phrases. Most of the "comedy club" involved her repeating the same "Howoldareyou, brothersister?" questions, and confirming again and again that I looked like a Latino pop idol, The Stone like that former US president, The Marmott like Harry Potter and The Hippo like Paul McCartney, surprisingly enough. What little information we did manage to get out of her revealed that she was married to an engineer, and that they'd been together for two years. However, mostly it seemed to be a fruitless task.

But that didn't mean her enthusiasm waned, not one little tiny bit. Every time The Hugless Stone tried to slip in one of his headphones, she'd hit it away with a gleeful giggle. And if anyone tried to sleep, they'd soon find themselves awoken to this little tiny girl shrieking, "No sleeping in the comedy club!" in their faces.

No, she preferred to talk, and talk, and talk. And did I mention the kissing? Oh, the kissing! How delighted she became when she successfully managed to plant a big fat slopping wet one on one of our chiseled cheeks..

Thanks, Yuletide Eileen.

At last, safe and sound back at the hostel, the Dutch girls told us it was their last night in Russian. They were heading to Mongolian at 5AM the next morning. We'd be following them shortly, but in the immediate future we prepared to say goodbye. And then we thought, 'F### that.', and we decided to get drunk. We cracked out the vodka, and spent the next seven hours doing shots and playing cards. We gambled with tiny Russian coins that were probably worth less than the metal they were made from, and had a great time doing it.

Such a great time, in fact, that the next day as we ate a late breakfast, nursing hangovers and trying to stave away the vomit that lurked below, I suggested to the gang that those Dutch gals were even more fun than our yankee friend Dennis from Moscow. The suggestion was shot down immediately by the rest of the group, who insisted I had been blinded by beauty, but I was convinced. They were something special alright.

After we'd eaten, we took a minibus back to Lake Baikal with a boring guy called Peter from our hostel. We got out a little before Listvyanka though, so that we could check out the ice park the girls had been to the day before. We got very, very lost initially, but eventually we found it and had a great time riding rubber rings down ice slides, reverting very easily to childhood and finding extreme pleasure in this most simple of activities.

Next on the agenda, we walked for an hour along the shore of the lake, around parts that weren't frozen, enjoying a very different but equally beautiful experience until we reached the village.

As we walked along the final stretch towards the area we'd gotten to know so well the day before, I spotted something untoward going on by the lake up ahead. There was a man standing there looking out at the lake before him, entirely naked. His buttocks were flapping cheerfully in the wind, and it quickly became clear that he was doing some stretches. But although that was more than enough for us to see, he clearly disagreed, as he moved quickly on to going skinny-dipping.

Now, just in case anyone still hasn't grasped this fact, we're talking about Russia. In the middle of winter. In other words.. it's cold. Really, really cold. As he soon discovered, I'll hasten to add. Even a generous estimate might suggest he was in the water for no more than about two seconds, before he scrambled out with all the furious energy of a madman.

We can't be too high and mighty though, I suppose. Only one day earlier, we'd posed for the following photo..

Chilly.

I think I'd better stop writing now. If you've made it this far, I owe you a great debt of gratitude. I've been waffling, I'm sure, but I ask you, can you blame me? I think you'll find the answer is, 'Not really'. To me, this place was what this whole trip has been about. Getting here.. it's been everything. The focus, the goal, the destination. And it was everything I expected, and more. But tonight, we head off on the train for Mongolia, and who knows what that might bring? Could it possibly top this? I hope so. In the mean time, I'll leave you with one final thought:

Ewan McGregor described Lake Baikal as the biggest disappointment of his life. Ewan McGregor is an idiot.

The Trans-Sibirski Expressway

2007-02-09T12:01:00.000Z

Well, I'm writing to you now after spending nearly five days on a train that took our gang from Moscow to Irkutsk, covering a distance larger than something really, really large and taking us way out into the Russin wild, where snow-covered lakes of ice and incredible clear blue skies battle for the heavyweight title of 'The Most Beautiful Thing I've Ever Seen'. We're in one of the most amazing places in the world, and if predictions ring true it's only going to get more beautiful tomorrow when we visit Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world, but for now that's inconsequential. We've spent five days on a train, and I've got stories to tell..

The first person we met on the train was the Portly Porter. She was a larger-than-life kind of woman with a cheery, can-do attitude, the red-tinted hair that's so popular all across Russia, and a smile for everyone any time of the night or day. She'd opened the door to our cabin on the first evening and exclaimed, "Mama-mia, Santa Lucia!" at the sight of these four young men she saw before her*.

* And who could blame her? I'm not going to lie to you here, we're handsome fellas who strike a beautiful picture**.

** When I said I wasn't going to lie to you, I lied. This woman must have been off her meds or something.

Regardless..

We'd all been really looking forward to the journey, and everyone was in high spirits from the first second. We were in a 4-bunk cabin which we had all to ourselves, although that didn't stop the adventures from coming our way. We met a whole band of crazy characters on that train, and none more delightful than 'Snorlax'.

Snorlax was an interesting creature. We first discovered him on the first night of the journey. We'd got on board at around midnight, and after meeting the Portly Porter we were all looking forward to getting our sleepy-time on. We bedded down, but quickly realised that the walls to the cabins were paper-thin. The Pristine Marmott had beaten me in a coin-toss to get first choice of the beds, but his choice turned out to be his downfall as the guy sleeping on the other side of his party-wall was none other than Snorlax, a monumental Russian man with a seedy mustache, a reeking odour and a total inability to maintain nasal silence as he slept. All night long the noises drifted through into our cabin, huge waves of sonic dysfunction that sounded inexplicably like a pig being slaughtered. To put it shortly, the guy had a problem. He snored louder and better than anyone I've ever encountered, and he showed no signs of stopping.

The next day, we had a running joke at his expense, with The Marmott delighting in replicating his noise pollution, doing an uncanny impression of the guy that had us all in hysterics. That is, until we heard a fierce knock-knocking at our door. The Hugless Stone slid it open with all the caution of a fox, and when we saw none other than Mr. Snorlax standing strong and powerful looking over us, a raging fury in his eyes and a quiet humming in his nose as he breathed deeply in and out, you could almost hear the spaghetti western music start to play. We were engaged in a battle of looks with the guy, a Mexican stand-off of epic proportions. At long last, when it seemed the silence could go unbroken no longer, the great man spoke. Slowly, and with a side-to-side rocking motion that suggested he might have been drinking continuously for a great many years, he asked us, "Vodka?"

And there it was. The tension was broken. That old Russian favourite had done it again, and pretty soon he had invited us back to his cabin where the promise of vodka was made good, and where he repeatedly fell asleep with his arm draped around The Disgusting Hippo.

He woke us up bright and early the next morning in an equally unexpected manner. He had brought us a traditional Russian breakfast of bread, cheese and boiled eggs. He spotted our vodka, and although it was only 10AM, the drinking started up again nonetheless. Despite him speaking only Russian, our conversations were riveting. He was a war veteran, travelling home from Moscow to see his family. We played cards with him, and he warned us never to gamble with gypsies. As if that wasn't weird enough, he then proceeded to show us some naked pictures of his wife, her rolls of flab eerily mirroring the rolling of my eyes with each progressing photograph.

AWKARD!

The next time we saw him was in the restaurant cart a few hours later. He was with his friend and cabin-mate, a man who wore drab shorts and sandals with socks, and had referred to himself the previous evening only as 'The Professor'. They both looked and smelt like thet had been drinking continuously since that morning, and it was an image they cultivated with skill and precision as the day wore on: at around 3PM, when Snorlax stumbled into me as he came out of the toilet, reeking of liquor and dribbling like no man I'd ever seen before; at around 7PM, when he stumbled into our cabin without saying a word, sat down next to The Marmott, draped his arm around him, spotted an untouched bottle of vodka on our table, grabbed it and lurched out; and the next morning, when he bid us farewell as we neared his stop, waving his hand to reveal sweat-patches the size of a small African nation and a beer-stained vest that would have never made it past the Chemical Weapons inspectors you find at most Trans-Atlantic airports.

He was Snorlax, and we'll remember him fondly. Especially fondly given the other characters we met aboard the train..

The next new acquaintance of note was a man we'll call Nationalist Joe. He was without a doubt the most disgusting, horrible, pathetic excuse for a human being I've ever met. He was openly and proudly racist, a terrifying misogynist, violently homophobic, brutally quick to turn against you and overall just not the kind of person I'd personally choose to keep alive on this earth if such powers and decisions were placed in my hands.

We'd first encountered him on the penultimate night on the train. The Hugless Stone had been running a mission to the restaurant cart to pick up some supplies for our gang, when he'd been stopped in one of the smoking areas between carriages. These areas aren't properly sealed from the outside so even though they're technically covered by a roof and walls, they're packed full of snow that's blown in and are always freezing cold, as you might expect really given that the temperature outside the train can often be a good dozen degrees below zero at any time of the day or night. Anyway, I don't know if it was the packet of dried noodles The Stone was carrying in his left hand or the MASSIVE BOTTLE OF VODKA HE'D JUST BOUGHT that he had in his right hand but either way, something caught Nationalist Joe's eye as The Stone tried to speed through the bitterly cold smoking areas past him.

The next thing we knew, The Stone was back in our cabin filling us in on his encounter with this guy, and telling us that we had ten minutes before we were supposed to meet him in his cabin for some drinking and all the relevant extras that such activities entail. Well, I was knackered and duly excused myself from the celebrations, but the other three fellas went along and two hours later they returned brimming with tales and soundbites from this despicable excuse for a human being.

I was smug and very pleased with my decision not to have gone along with the other guys to meet NJ, but that auro of happiness would be short-lived. The next night, our final night aboard the train, we were preparing to get to bed early in preparation for the 3AM wake-up we had coming up the next morning when we arrived. The Marmott was making moves to start re-packing his bag, and I was getting deep into my latest reading material, "State of Denial" by Bob Woodward, when there was a knock at the door.

Standing there, in a pose eerily similar to that which Snorlax had adopted upon his entrance into our lives, was a new face we hadn't seen before. He introduced himself and quickly accepted an unspoken and unissued invitation for him to sit down in our cabin. I'll spare you excessive hyperbole and unchecked volumes of description of the guy***

*** Regular readers might wish I spared you such luxuries more often, but hey -- this is my blog, I can wax lyrical about anyone and everyone as much as I choose to, so there.

but anyway, you should get a pretty good idea of him if I tell you that we quickly took to referring to him as Mr. Boring. Seriously, this guy was B-O-R-I-N-G. He and Snorlax would have no doubt made a great team -- this guy was so soporific he would have sent our snoring friend way deep into cloud-cookoo land. We did our very best to make conversation with this boring guy, but everything we tried went no-where. He was a 26-year old business man travelling to Irkustk for business. He had studied business at university in Moscow and his hobbies included business and price-comparisons. He wanted to know what cars we each drove, and how much we'd paid for them. He wanted to know how much the tortilla chips I was eating had cost me, and how much our train tickets had been. He then delighted in writing out charts and tables for us comparing the Russian and British prices for good, and then further comparing Moscow prices with those of a smaller Russian city. Did I mention he was boring?

We were desperately trying to get rid of him, making subtle hints about how late it was getting and how much packing we had to do, but given that he spoke not a word of English nor German, we were having a tough time. Then, just when I thought all hope was lost that we'd ever get him out of there, we heard another knock at the door. 'The Portly Porter!', I thought to myself, 'Maybe she's here to clean the room! That'll get him out of here..'

But we weren't so lucky. We opened the door, to reveal standing before us none other than Nationalist Joe from the night previous. "You.. drink.. now?" he asked us, in his best English. "Not tonight, we have early morning tomorrow..", The Marmott replied. This seemed to have been clear enough, as he turned and stumbled off without another word, leaving us alone with Mr. Boring, once again.

However, this too was not to last forever, as mere minutes later there was another knock at the door. We slid it open, to reveal none other than National Joe, now armed with a dozen chilled beers for us all to crack into. "You.. drink.. now!", he told us. Perhaps somewhat fearing for our lives, we did as he said.

Now, apart from the Breakfast Vodka that Snorlax had forced upon us earlier on in the journey, I'd been tee-total since that fateful night back in St. Petersberg when The Disgusting Hippo went missing. This had been a point of contension within our gang, as The Marmott and The Stone resented the fact that I'd been staying sober, especially since I've never been the biggest drinker to begin with. So I think they might have been smirking a little to see me left with no choice but to join in on the alcoholic festivities with our Nationalist friend, and forced to join in I most certainly was. When we finished our first round, the guy made as if he was going to the toilet, but came back sharpish armed with another armful of beers for us all, which he dumped on the table unceremoniously before announcing that the next two rounds were on us, and after that he'd buy some more. So, the drinking continued, and I finally became truly acquainted with the hollow shell of a man that my travel-mates had grown so fond of the previous evening..

He was a big fan of his generalisations, old Nationalist Joe. He sure loved his stereotypes and was stuck-fast in his opinions of particular races. He had been in the army, and told us that his one greatest regret in life was not having been able to kill a German, after what they'd done to his Mother Russia in the two world wars. He hated Estonians and Lithuanians with a passion, and was intent on his belief in national pride and patriotism. "You.. love English..", he told us, "..and I.. love Russia peoples". "And nobody loves the Jews?", I probed him, prompting him to smile with glee and shake my hand vigorously. "I am a man..", he said, "and if I see any man need helping.. I help. But Jew? He does not help any man.. he love only Jew.." He made a gruesome sneer, and mimed taking a knife to a Jewish throat. We all sat there, dumbfounded, as he smiled contently to himself. I couldn't help but wonder what his reaction would be were we to have told him that I'm Jewish, The Pristine Marmott is German and The Hugless Stone is half-Lithuanian, but wisely, I kept my mouth shut.

After an excrutiating four hours of more of the same, I finally convinced him that we needed to go to sleep. It seemed to have been relatively quick and painless, until it came time to shake his hand to bid him farewell. He was drunk, and seemed to feel it was an appropriate time to tell us what he really thought of us. "You.. are not my friend...", he said to The Marmott, pointing his finger agressively in his face. Over the evening, as we'd grown more and more tired of his company, we'd taken to exploiting his limited English skills by talking about him amongst ourselves using deliberately long words and fast speech to make sure he couldn't understand, and none of us had had more fun doing so than The Marmott. Now, I don't know if he'd been playing along with us and understood more than we'd imagined, or if he'd just sensed the tone of the room might be a general amusement at his expense, but either way he'd cottoned on to the fact that not all was quite right, and for a good few moments it looked like he might make good on his life-long desire to kill a German.

That tension diffused, he then moved on to The Disgusting Hippo, who he was convinced hadn't bought him any beers. "You.. owe.. me.. money..", he told him again and again, until he grew frustrated with The Hippo's steadfastly-maintained look of ignorance and dropped the issue.

Then he turned to me. I'd watched the goodbye's unfold thus far with an unsettling feeling of seeing where this was going, and really hoped it wouldn't get ugly. "You..", he said to me, wagging that same finger inapporpriately close to my face as I tried desperately to read him, to see where this was going. "You.. you are my friend. You are OK."

Sweet Jesus, halleluliah!

So, it was all okay in the end, and we can look back on the whole night with a fond nostalgia already. No-one's quite sure at what point Mr. Boring had left our little gathering, but we can only assume it was in an appropriately boring way. Perhaps most intruiging, we discovered later that he'd left us his business card and circled his telephone number in thick black ink. Presumably he'd been sufficiently stimulated by our conversations that evening and understandably wanted more in the future, although we were left wondering about the logistics of a telephone relationship given that neither party spoke the other's respective language.

The train journey was certainly educational about language across the world and how it works and why. At one point on that first evening, The Marmott had told us that he thought the Portly Porter seemed nice, having just been joking around with her. "I started wiping my boots on the step as I came into the train from having a smoke, and she laughed and told me not to worry about it and to come on in all wet and dirty", he told us. "How the hell do you know she said that?", asked The Hippo. "You don't speak Russian". "Well, I might not understand the actual words, but you can still talk to people if you want to..", The Marmott protested. And we certainly found that to be the case as we met the various different characters you've now heard so much about.

And on the second day, we were in the restaurant cart having a bite to eat when I noticed a movie playing on the TV at the end of the room. It starred rapper-turned-actor Ice Cube and was dubbed into Russian, but even though we couldn't understand a word, we followed the movie flawlessly and frankly, I was thoroughly entertained. The end credits revealed it to have been none other than "xXx2: State of the Union", the kind of movie I'd have previously pre-judged as irredeemable rubbish without a second thought, but which turned out to have been some good, no-brainer fun. I certainly plan to pick up the DVD some day and I learned a lesson I've been learning more and more in recent months, and on that's been reinforced a lot having met other travellers on this trip: people love to be pretentious, to talk about high-art or pretend to be gripped by 'worthy' books than I'm sure are entirely boring. Sometimes it's fun to watch a stupid action movie or read a stupid book. If I'm entertained or kept interested, I'm happy, and to hell with anyone who wants to pretend to be someone they're not, just to look intelligent.

There, rant over. I've got to stop writing now because my stomach's telling me it's long past time for eating, but join me next time to hear about just how great Lake Baikal turns out to be, and see what happens when we hit our first big milestone: one month on the road!

Don't Say the N-Word!

2007-02-05T15:24:00.000Z

We were in the youth hostel in Moscow at 2AM yesterday morning, hanging with a guy and girl from Kentucky and some dude from Minneapolis. We were enjoying the opportunity to talk about TV and movies and silly things like that, since most of the people you meet on travels like these either fail to scratch the surface of a conversation, or spend the entire time you share together putting up a facade of the ultimate cool.

People seem incredibly scared of being seen as naive or trivial, and many end up coming off as very pretentious as they try to convince the world around them of just how worldly and knowledgeable they are. We had previously thought that these Americans fitted much the same model (the couple from Kentucky were drama students who'd jetted off to Moscow for a week-long spree of theatre and other such indulgences on their university's dime), but on their last night in the city we'd got chatting to them and discovered they were kind of alright.

The hostel we're staying in has a big flat-screen TV in the main living area, surrounded by dozens of unmarked pirate DVDs from the local markets and underground stalls. So, as The Pristine Marmott sat perched on the edge of one sofa, trying movie after movie in the player in search of anything vaguely watchable, we all got to talking. "Hey, do you guys like Dave Chapelle?", I asked them*

* To give a bit of backstory, when we were in Berlin I'd played The Marmott and The Hugless Stone some of Dave Chapelle's stand-up comedy on my iPod. It's pretty bad, as he spends most of the time screeching "I was high!" or "I was drunk!" to unprecedently large rounds of applause from the audience, and since I can do a somewhat credible impression of the guy he became a regular laughing-stock within our merry band of travelers.

So anyway, when I asked the Americans and they told us they thought he was pretty funny, it kicked off a decent discussion. We told them why we thought he was an idiot, and they conceded that maybe he kind of was. But then I reminded The Marmott of a sketch he did that we loved, called "The N##### Family". The Marmott asked if they'd seen it, prompting Kentucky Girl to squeel like a pig on a spit-roast, "Don't say the N-word!"

We looked at each other, my Marmott friend and I, and realised that if they got squeamish at that sketch (which is satirical, not remotely racist), there was only one thing we could do. You see, on our first morning in this hostel, I'd also explored the treasure-trove of pirate DVDs and turned up an almost-watchable copy of 'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakstan', which we'd proceeded to watch. These Americans had never seen it before, so we felt it was our duty to educate them. We stuck on the movie, and pretty soon they were squirming even more than we'd expected. Two minutes in, between furious laughted and gasping for air, Kentucky Guy whispered guiltily, "I shouldn't be watching this! I have Jewish friends!"

But as the movie went on, they got into the groove. At one point, the guy from Minneapolis who was sitting next to me turned and mused, "I wonder what the f###in' Afghanis think of this movie.. you gotta think that someone snuck it into the country on the back of a f###in' mule or somethin', right?"

I smiled and nodded, unsure of the correct response.

It's funny, there's a few things that seem to have followed us all the way from England, cropping up in each different country when we least expect it. Regular readers of this blog will remember the French Foreign Legion guys we met in Paris, who told us that when they first came out of their boot-camp and went back into society, they didn't ask anyone what had happened about the execution of Saddam Hussein or even why suddenly the Crocodile Hunter guy was dead. The only thing they wanted to know was, "Dude, have you seen this new movie 'Borat'?!"

And last week, when we were with the other American guys in St Petersberg (the same guys who got us drunk and almost got The Disgusting Hippo killed), they couldn't stop talking about this Borat fella. "Did you know that in the movie when he speaks it's actually Hebrew not Kazakstani?", one of them had asked me. I feigned disbelief.

And there's other things, too..

The Disgusting Hippo is a musically gifted man. He can play a mean guitar and his singing voice is like silky perfection to the ears. One of his favourite songs is "Sweet Dreams", by The Eurythmics, a song which we've heard on the radio in every single city we've been in. In Berlin, the youth hostel offered a karaoke night in the midst of our stay, and at the top of the first page of songs available was none other than that sweet, sweet song.

Likewise, last week, we were in a cafe about an hour out of St Petersberg with Frizzly Man and her friend Blondie. They'd offered to show us some out-of-the-way parts of the area that we might not otherwise see, so we'd spent the morning at Catherine Palace, the one-time summer residence of Tsar Nicholas II. It was an interesting piece of history, although not as fun to explore as the snow-covered gardens outside where The Hugless Stone tried his hardest to break through the frozen streams and lakes by jumping up and down on weaker sections. He succeeded and became thoroughly drenched, but that's beside the point. We were in a cute little cafe with the girls, grabbing a bite to eat, when a certain song started playing on the radio. All heads turned to look at The Hippo, who went bright red. Sweet dreams are made of this.

I suppose I should fill you in on the rest of our St. Petersberg experience, although I must warn you there's not a great deal to be filled in on. After The Hippo returned from his night on the streets, we all felt we'd brushed a little too close to disaster for comfort and took things a little easier for the next few days.

Day 21, we went to the Winter Palace in the town centre (once upon a time the site of a bloody massacre), to check out the digs and sneak a peak at some of the art on display inside. On the way there, we ran into our American friends from the night before who expressed a delightfully insincere relief that The Hippo had made it back in one piece. I asked our friend Doofus why he was holding a gigantic pizza in one hand since we were in the middle of the road, and he croaked back "It'sss fer the trrraaaiiinnnn....."

The art gallery inside was nice, packing more big names than we could have possibly expected. Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso, Da Vinci, Monet.... they were all in there. Only Rembrandt lived up to expectations however, the others all provoking a slight "What's the big fuss here?" reaction from our gang, but it was a decent place. We nearly got kicked out at one point when I gave in to temptation and put my hand on the canvas of one of the massive paintings hanging in the main gallery when none of the guards were looking. It turns out they're all protected with lasers, so a piercing alarm went off instantly and suddenly we were the target of the whole gallery's collective gaze. I did my best to portray a sense of innocent confusion about the whole matter, and I can only assume I succeeded since I'm writing this here now nearly a week later having served no jail time.

The next day we went to the aforementioned Catherine Palace with the girls, the invitation being a nice enough gesture in itself, but they continued to out-do themselves as the day progressed, pulling out endless presents for us from their bags when we least expected. We felt bad, and spent a large part of Day 23 looking for something, anything we could get them as a goodbye present, to show our gratitude. They didn't drink, so Vodka was out. Frizzly Man was pretty fat so buying them clothes could only have turned out insulting them in the end. And the last thing they needed was a souvenir of Russia. Eventually we settled on a cake for them (at least we knew that fatty would like it), which we gave to them when we bid them farewell at the train station on our last night in St. Petersberg as we headed off to Moscow using tickets they'd helped us to buy.

So, we ended up in Moscow at 5AM on Friday morning. My suitcase had lost both it's wheels so I resorted to carrying it on my back with crude and mostly ineffective ingenuity. Unsurprisingly, when we finally reached the hostel (which is situation on the top floor of a building at the top of a hill) I was stinking like a good French cheese and jumped at the chance for a hot shower.

I won't recount our Moscow experience for you blow-by-blow, because for the most part our days have been spent visiting tourist-y places that don't make for interesting reporting. Red Square, The Kremlin, Lenin's Mausoleum.. all very nice in their own rights, but basically they're just places we walked to, in order to have an end point to our walking. What's been more interesting to be about Moscow was how different it feels to St Petersberg.

Everyone had told us that St. Petersberg was very European, but I personally felt the stark contrast to our European experience far more when we were there than I have here in Moscow. In St. Petersberg, there was a constant sense of a need to be checking over your shoulder, whether for criminals or the police (both seemed equally threatening). You couldn't walk down a single road without seeing a mafia car driving by, and the streets had a grimy feel. People walked in straight lines looking down at the ground, seemingly wary of getting on the wrong side of the wrong person. It was intimidating, which is why Moscow's been such a relief. We walked around the Kremlin by night on our first evening here, and I was immediately struck by how friendly everyone seemed. The streets are bigger and grander and brighter and more alive. There's a twinkle to every light and smiles on the faces of the people walking by, if you'll excuse a slight Louis Armstrong moment from me there. As we walked along the river, looking out over the city and up at the stars, it reminded me half of London and half of Montreal, where I lived for two months last year. The air smelled cleaner and the world seemed fresher and more full of hope. Maybe it was just by virtue of the fact that Moscow is a capital city, but maybe not. For whatever reason, it just had a great atmosphere.

Last night, we were invited to an 'Irish Pub' by one of the other guys in the hostel, an Englishman who's bizarrely and inexplicably taken on an almost South African accent over the past three years that he's spent traveling away from the motherland. We set off about an hour after him with the intention of meeting him there, but we got thoroughly lost and ended up walking for hours around Moscow, discovering broadways and back-alleys alike. I was really pleased to have done it, because I've often felt like our experiences on this trip so far have been limited to the tourist standards. There's nothing quite like wandering the streets of a city at night to get a true feel for what it's really like.

Philosophical musing aside, we returned back to the hostel after admitting defeat in our quest to find this pub. The Marmott and The Stone cracked open a bottle of vodka, and we invited our American roommate from Minneapolis to join us for some poker, if he wanted to. He did, and what started off as a plan to wind down for the evening turned into one of the greatest nights we've had on the whole trip. As I mentioned earlier, most people you meet on travels like these turn out to be inaccessible or not worth getting to know, but Minneapolis Dennis was not one of those types. He was a big, stocky American with a furry beard and a backwards baseball cap, but he turned out to be everything you wouldn't expect from his appearance. He was tee-total, having been told by his doctor that due to a family history of alcoholism, his first drink would be on his last day sober. He thought just as badly of his fellow Americans as the rest of the world does, and did his best to disassociate himself from them. And most importantly, he had a great sense of humour. He was cracking-wise left and right, all night long the jokes didn't stop coming. He was telling stories and doing impressions and tearing us up and knocking us down and all the while we were in hysterics. He was a sound fella, and when I realised it was 4AM and we had to be up in a few hours, it was with a real sadness that I shook his hand for the last time and told him how great it'd been to meet him.

It's our final evening in Moscow right now, and The Hugless Stone (with the able assistance of The Pristine Marmott) is cooking up a storm next door. I believe it's Chicken Paella on the menu tonight, and it's smelling great. In a few hours time, we hop on our first mega train ride: four days on the trot, which will take us all the way from Moscow to Irkutsk, a city near the Russian border with Mongolia. I'll be back with many more stories when we arrive I hope, but in the mean time stay well, dear readers. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some paella to eat..

Cheerio!

Missing, Presumed Dead.

2007-01-29T23:59:00.000Z

When I left the internet cafe after writing my last blog entry, we went out for a meal and then to what had by then become our local pub for a few drinks. There was certainly a comfortable air to our time in the German capital. It was our fourth European city in two weeks, and we were getting used to this lark. The youth hostel was cushy, the area was as far from seedy as you can get, and The Pristine Marmott spoke the language. We had it easy. When we headed back from the pub in the early hours of the morning, trudging through a solid foot of fresh white snow, we thought nothing of hanging out in front of our hostel trying to throw snowballs at a billboard of Christina Aguilera. The first one to hit her face won. When we turned around at one point to see an assault of snowballs flying towards us, we weren't scared. We had no reason to be. We were in Berlin, the friendliest city in the world. We engaged our attackers in a few intense minutes of snowballing action, and when it was all over we laughed when our assailant turned out to be a 26 year old woman also staying at our hostel. "I'm knackered..", she giggled, taking a seat next to us beneath the now snow-covered billboard. "Where are you from?"

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the first leg of our trip was easy, with a capital E and a capital ASY while we're at it. It was a laugh. It was fun and jokes. It was nowt but shits and giggles. But it was coming to an end sooner than any of us had quite realised.

I'm writing this from an internet cafe in St. Petersberg. It's Monday, January 29th 2007, Day 20. There's smoke in the air, big screen TVs and funk music blasting out of speakers all around. A snapshot of this moment wouldn't place me in Russia. I could be anywhere in the world. But the past few days getting to this moment have been some of the scariest moments of my life. It's been a roller-coaster ride of crisis, disaster and paranoia. Lives have literally hung in the balance. If someone had asked me at 5AM this morning where I thought I'd be right now, I might well have replied something along the lines of "assisting in the repatriation of my friend's mortal remains".

Get ready, ladies and germs. The story I'm about to tell you will shock you. Don't blame me if you find yourself stuck to the edge of your seat, nor if you inadvertently shit your pants. So, now that I've set the bar appropriately high for myself, let me begin..

Although this story spans only the past few days, it's roots lie far deeper. Let me take you back to a mild Saturday morning in December 2006. The location is Cambridge, England. More specifically, the STA travel agent branch where our band of merry travelers is waiting to be seen by one of the many young dudes and dudettes who sit behind flat-screen computers as middle-of-the-road indie music plays on a loop. We're there for advice about traveling to Russia. We've heard horror stories of brutal police guards and tough border controls. We're stuck because the Russian embassy require us to have proof of accommodation for every night we're planning to spend in the country before they'll issue us a visa, but we can't buy the tickets for the Trans-Siberian express train until the start of the new year, a mere week before we set off for the continent. We need a Russian visa to get a Belarusian visa, and we can't risk turning up in Russia without it sorted, because we ain't gonna get in. We've found a somewhat suspect looking website purporting to offer a "tourist invitation" in exchange for $30, which (the according to the website) would bypass the bureaucracy and get us a visa without any problems.

We tell this to the dude at STA Travel when we finally get to the front of the queue. He's barely older than us, with a decidedly cool little mini-beard and a low-key brown hoodie that gives him a comforting air of 'hakuna-matata'. "Yeah man, that sounds cool.." he tells us after a quick glance at the dodgy website in question. "I'll tell you what, let me go check with my colleague who knows a lot about Russia, just to make sure it's all kosher, y'know?" We knew. He traded a few hushed words with her in the corner as the soothing indie music continued to play. They both then came back over to us. She was a slightly pudgy-looking 30-somthing called 'Haps'. What that was short for, we had no idea. "So.. you boys are going to Russia then?", she asked us, then continued without waiting for a response, "Robbie here's been telling me your little problem.. guys, I think you might have the wrong idea about Russia. It's not as easy as you think. Do any of you speak Russian?". We mumbled something back, and she seized the opportunity to reel off a few sentences of what we can only assume was flawless Russian. Beaming with pride, she suggested she leave us with Robbie to tell us about one of the Trans-Siberian packages they offer. Like the smooth operator he looked, he whipped out a brochure.

"We do this really wicked thing called the Vodka Train!" he told us, flicking through glossy pages brimming with photos of white English louts waving bottles of Vodka. It looked like everything we were trying to avoid. "Yeah, I don't think we're going to be doing the Vodka Train", The Disgusting Hippo told him with a steely-cool defiance. Robbie looked crestfallen. There was a silence. It was awkward. No-one wanted to meet his eye. The Hugless Stone was virtually squirming to get away. With every passing second, the tension grew. No-one knew what to do. At last, The Hippo decided to take one for the team, and offered up the following disgustingly cringe-worthy addendum: "we're probably going to drink a lot of vodka though!"

Okay, so flash forward two months. We'd decided to ignore Haps' advice on the grounds that Haps isn't a real name and she was a patronising jumped-up nobody. We were in Berlin with our Russian visas and our Belarusian transit visas and our dodgy tourist invitations and everything else we needed. It was Day 18, and the start of the second leg of our traveling adventure. We were waiting at Ostbahnhof, the big train station in Berlin, for the train that would take us to a place called Orscha in Belarus, where we'd have to wangle a further ticket for the last part of the journey, to St. Petersberg itself.

The train pulled in, and we bundled aboard. We were spread over two cabins, so The Disgusting Hippo and I bid a temporary farewell to the other two as we went off towards our wagon to discover our sleeping quarters. Although there were three beds in the cabin we were the only guys in there, so we dumped our bags and sat back, taking in the moment. Against all odds, we were finally doing it. We were on our way to Russia.

There was a knock-knock at the door of the cabin. It was one of the train porters, a Russian guy in a shiny tracksuit. He asked us something in Russian, and was more than satisfied when we handed over our tickets. He gave us a thumbs-up and a wave, and moved on to the other cabins along the train.

A few minutes passed, and another smiley face popped around the door. It was another train porter, wanting to check our passports. He also spoke nothing but Russian, but we got along with him fine. He was very tall, with kind eyes. His track-suited friend returned, and through a mixture of Russian, broken German and complex hand gestures, we agreed that he would return our tickets the following morning before we left the train. All in all, we were off to a great start.

The Marmott and The Stone turned up to check in with us. They'd been having an adventure of their own, as their train porter had asked them to each smuggle some excess bottles of vodka into Belarus for her, which they happily agreed to do. They did have a third passenger in their compartment, a middle-aged woman with platinum blonde hair who spoke fluent Russian and German. She offered to fill in our Entry Forms for getting into Belarus, which were written in Cyrillic. The Marmott took them from us and went back to his cabin to give them to her. The Hugless Stone stayed in our cabin, and took the opportunity to break open his latest novel, this time the Joseph Conrad epic "Nostromo".

We all read for a while, occasionally breaking into the huge stash of oranges and chocolates we'd brought with us. I was wary that I was rushing through my current reading material, "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, and decided to take a trip to The Marmott's cabin. We had some writing we had to get done, and the train journey seemed an opportune time to take a first crack at it.

I eventually found his cabin, and opened the door to find him and his middle-aged train companion huddled over on one side of the compartment, unusually and perhaps inappropriately close. Further inspection revealed that they were looking at the photos she'd taken in Berlin on her digital camera. I joined them, and we watched the photos slide past the screen in noticeable silence, only occasionally broken when some photos of her at the zoo came up on screen and The Marmott took up his cue to point and say things like, "Ahh, ein flamingo.." or "Ahh, ein baer.."

After what seemed like an eternity, the photo show was finally over, and we got down to the task at hand. For various reasons I can't disclose what we were writing, but let's just say we got a first-draft finished which I'm very happy with, and we had a lot of fun doing it. To be even more cryptic, I'll say that you might hear more about this secret project later on in this blog when The Marmott and I find ourselves heading to Kyoto in mid-April. But that's irrelevant right now, so let's get back on track..

Job done, I headed back to my cabin, running into Giant Kind-Eyes (one of our train porters) on the way. He stopped me in my tracks. "Liverpool?", he asked. "No..", I responded, unsure where this was going. "Manchester?", he pressed. "Ahh, no..", I replied, then with a smile and an up-thrust fist I said, "Arsenal!". "Aston Villa?", he queried, perhaps mis-hearing what I'd said. "Nein, nein.. Arsenal!", I told him again. "Ahh, Arsenal, good..", then with one finger firmly pointing towards himself, he told me, "Me.. Bolton!". I smiled, unsure what response would be appropriate. I was none the wiser two somewhat awkward seconds later, so I shook his hand, saying, "Yes, Bolton!", and the exchange was over. We parted ways, and I had my first Russian friend.

We were in high-spirits back in the cabin, and were confident about the journey remaining. Moments later, my first Russian friend was back in action, and he'd brought with him a Russian girl for us to meet. She was a fellow passenger on the train, a St. Petersberg resident returning home from six months of foreign study in Berlin as part of her university course. She spoke Russian and English perfectly, and she offered to help us fill in our Entry Forms, and I was faced with the tough task of breaking the news to her that we'd already been helped by The Marmott's Russo-German ladyfriend. Not wanting to turn her away disheartened though, I chatted to her for a while and before I knew it, I had my second Russian friend..

I guess things finally started getting iffy at around 4AM the following morning. The lights flickered into action in our cabin and we were startled awake by the shouts of a Belarusian border guard. Incomprehensible, aggressive, and with an uncomfortably large gun and baton strapped to his side, it was not the ideal way to wake up. The following morning would be worse, of course, but one thing at a time.

The guard snatched our passports and Entry Forms away from us, furiously checking and stamping and muttering under his breath. "Out of cabin!", he ordered us. Despite the fact that it was well into negative degrees of temperature outside the train, I was sleeping in nothing but my ill-fitting boxer-shorts. "Out! Out! Out!", he was almost chanting now. The pressure was on. I scrambled around for my trousers, and must have looked positively Chaplin-esque as I struggled to get the right leg into the right trouser. Mission eventually completed, I stumbled out of the cabin and the guard stormed in. Baton unsheathed, he smacked the curtains and bed sheets and everything else in our humble domicile, checking for contraband or illegal immigrants I suppose. Finally he was satisfied that we were on the level and off the hook. He handed us a wad of additional forms, all in Cyrillic again, and garbled some more Russian at us as we looked on, dumbfounded. It was 4AM, and we were forced to consider that maybe Haps had been right. But if we thought that experience was difficult, we had no idea. Things were only going to get worse..

The next few hours were a mess. We were cranky from what little sleep we'd been able to snatch on the tiny train cabin bunk-beds, and any time we were close to getting back to the land of nod, the lights would flicker back on and another guard would be "all up in our faces", checking tickets or passports or visas or forms or re-stamping stamps or re-forming forms. When we finally pulled into the train station at Orscha at around midday, we breathed a collective sigh of relief that part one of our epic journey to St. Petersberg was out of the way. But our comfort was short-lived..

Having made it to Orscha, we now faced the tough task of booking beds for the train to St. Petersberg for the coming night. We headed to one of the windows, and did our best. "Chetire billyetti St. Petersberg?", The Marmott offered up to the Belarusian ticket vendor behind the glass. She was motionless. He repeated the request. She shook her head with a grave solemnity, before unloading a storm of Russian spiel on us which did nothing to clear anything up for us. "Oh, if only Haps were with us!", I thought. Then I spotted the next best thing. My second Russian friend, the girl from the train, was at the adjacent window, also buying tickets to St. Petersberg with her friend. It was our only chance. We headed into the queue behind them, and I struggled to remember her name. "Think, damnit! Think..", I chastised myself, when her friend turned round and flashed me a smile. "We can help you buy tickets if you like?", she told us.

Halleluliah!

Now, before you get any ideas, let me clarify something for a second. These two girls, friendly as they were, were.. ohh, how shall I put this? Let's say, they were always going to remain on the "friends" side of whatever lines might possibly be crossed in situations like the ones we were finding ourselves in. The first one, who I'd met the night before on the train, was big and stocky with a face like a pancake. An ugly pancake, decorated with a healthy dose of lunar-style craters. She wielded a mess of hydra-like frizzy hair which sprouted out in all directions and often seemed to have a life of its own. Just in case anyone's still struggling to get the picture, let's call her 'Frizzy The Bear'. Or 'The Frizz Monster', if you prefer. Either way, this 'Frizzly Man' was a sight to behold, such that her epitaph might one day read, "Yeah, but she had such a nice personality.."

Who knows.

So, Frizzly and pal helped us to get our tickets. We had checked the schedules from Berlin and knew there was a train leaving to St. Petersberg an hour after we arrived in Belarus, but through our friendly translators we discovered that it was almost entirely booked up, and that unless we wanted to pay 100 euros rather than under 10, we'd have to wait until the late-train, which was scheduled to leave nine hours later. Well, we're travelers on a limited budget, and when someone says you can save 90+ euros by chilling in a train station for nine hours, you take them up on that deal. We gave them the OK, and they bought our tickets. Crisis averted! But not quite..

You see, even the train we finally got tickets for was almost completely fully-booked. They'd been able to get us beds in an 'open' carriage, which meant 52 farting, snoring Russian room-mates, and by the lottery of chance it turned out that my ticket was for a different wagon, so not only was I facing a second consecutive night of cramped train bunk sleep, I was going to be completely alone away from the others, surrounded by a veritable army of bearded Russian drunks with whom I had zero common language.

We passed the nine hours in the waiting room with relative ease, occasionally stocking up on food at one of the various eateries in the station, communicating with the locals behind the counters in the international language of cold, hard cash. We laughed at the delightfully ironic public toilets in the train station which cost 350 Belarusian rubles to use and came fully equipped with a laser-activated hand-washing system, which was painfully necessary given that, upon opening the individual toilet cubicle doors, one found oneself facing what can only be described as a "hole in the floor". Toilet paper and any kind of flushing system were also clearly seen as unnecessary extras.

Eventually the train arrived at the station, and we headed out into the cold to meet it. "You will be okay?", The Frizz Monster's blonde friend asked me as I prepared to head off to my separate carriage. "No problem!" I replied, through gritted teeth. I was shitting myself*.

* Not literally, I hasten to add.

I found the wagon, and handed my ticket to the guard at the door who took it without a glance nor a word. I took my chance, and climbed aboard. The first thing I noticed in the cabin was the unbelievable stench of rotting clothes, vodka breath, half-smoked cigarettes and general B.O. The guard outside had held on to my ticket, and I was faced with the realisation that I had zero clue what number bunk bed I was supposed to be in. I glanced around and felt all eyes on me. I pretended to know what I was doing, and kept walking along the carriage until I spotted an empty bunk. I climbed into it, visions racing through my mind of being woken up a few hours later by a drunken hulk with no patience for the little squirt he'd found sleeping in his place. I had no sheets, but I stuck my bag under my head as a pillow, and kept my coat zipped up for warmth, as I tried to get to sleep, hoping I'd wake up to either discover the whole trip was some horrible nightmare, or at least that we were pulling into St. Petersberg and I was still alive.

Neither outcome was immediately forthcoming however, as I caught a glimpse of Blondie, Frizzy's Friend, coming towards me in the cabin. "Are you okay?", she asked, and my heart jumped into my mouth. I'd never been so relieved to see a friendly face. I told her what had happened, and she tracked down the guard for me and found out what number bunk I was supposed to be in. She told the other people on the bunks near me who I was and that I couldn't speak Russian, then she invited me back to her wagon to hang out until it got quieter on the train as more people made their way to bed. At that point, I was in love. Not really, of course, because even though I do have to admit that she was maybe-possibly-kinda quite pretty in a hard-to-tell kind of way, at that point I was like a little kid. I felt like I owed her my life and I was just glad to have someone to talk to.

We went back to her bunk-area, where it turned out The Frizzly Bear and The Disgusting Hippo were also still awake, engaged in some kind of discussion. We joined them, and the four of us hung out chatting, as slowly the population around us subsided into a quieter state of being and my heart-rate returned to normal.

Eventually we all decided enough was enough. It had been one crazy day, and we were all ready to get to sleep. Blondie offered to walk me back to my wagon, and I happily took her up on the offer. However, when we got there we found two guys sitting on my bed. She asked them if they could move, so I could sleep, and they told her, "No, no, it's okay, we'll be getting off at the next stop, it's only 50 minutes.."

I certainly didn't want to start a fight, and strangely neither did she, so we found two seats off to the side and chatted it up until they finally left. She bid me goodnight and I got into the groove, drifting quickly off to sleep as the train rocked it's gentle rock. As the sun rose the next morning I awoke, with my bag untouched and my liver in tact. By the time we'd pulled into the central train station in St. Petersberg, we'd yet to meet a single Russian guard. We'd made it, free and easy! But murky waters lay ahead..

It started off all innocent, like. Just a few annoyances, such as The Pristine Marmott being refused entry to the metro for no apparent reason, and the wheel on my bag breaking as we climbed up the metro stairs onto the street, resulting in The Hugless Stone having to share the burden of helping me carry my ridiculously large bag to the hostel. Indeed, even when we finally spotted the sign for the hostel on the side of the street, the entrance was nowhere to be seen and we spent a frantic few minutes on the phone to the kindly owner who directed us towards him with charm and good humour. When we finally found him and dragged our bags up the stairs to the reception, he greeted us with a friendly, "Pay whenever you like! We are not going to ask for your money or your life!" He mimed a blasting machine gun and gave out a gusty laugh.

It seemed everything was okay. It even seemed fine that evening, after we'd spent the day exploring the city which was glorious in it's clear blue skies and crisp snowy exteriors. We'd seen the river, frozen over. We'd seen the Winter Palace, where years before oppressed peasants had revolted against the Tsar and been brutally slaughtered by the army. We'd eaten our first real meal for days in a snazzy top class restaurant along Nevsky Prospect, the main broadway in the city. We were just about getting our confidence back.

That night, we met some fellow travelers at the hostel. They were Americans, nearing the end of their trip. They'd been to Lapland and Estonia and other such places, and from what we gathered they'd spent most of that time drunk. Very drunk. And this evening their plans appeared to be no different. They poured us large glasses of vodka and insisted we join them in drink after drink as we shared tales of our respective travels thus far. As the liquor flowed, we learned more and more about them.

They were three university students from Florida, supposedly on a research assignment for their final projects (although as one of them told us, "I'm supposed to be investigating sloths in Sweden for my biology class.. there aren't any sloths in Sweden!"). That guy was called Bryson, although for the sake of ease we'll call him The Big Cheese, since he was the leader of the group. He spoke German and Russian and had traveled extensively, and had both an intelligence and a confidence that the other two lacked somewhat. Then there was Squash Face, a guy who surprisingly enough had a squashy, elongated face. He introduced himself to us with the immortal words, "Don't believe these guys if they told you I brought a hooker home, I didn't know she was a hooker!".

Thanks, Squash Face.

The final hombre of the trio we'll call Doofus, because he was a f###ing doofus. I don't know if maybe his parents hit him when he was in the womb or something, but either way this guy was not all there. He spoke in an incredibly slow Floridian drawl, dragging out every syllable of every word until you could hear the seams ripping apart. When The Disgusting Hippo disgustingly asked him if he had an account on MySpace.com, he took a full minute to unleash the words, "Nehhhhh.... FaceBook's much better.. on FaceBook, you can upload more pictuuuuressss........"

Thanks, Doofus.

But back to the matter at hand. The vodka was flowing, just as The Hippo had promised Robbie the STA Travel Agent it would all those months previously back in dreary Cambridge, England. Drink after drink was poured until every bottle was dry. The Big Cheese spotted that the hour was nearing 11PM, the crucial cut-off point when the local super-market would no longer sell vodka. So, our gang of seven headed off down Nevsky Prospect, out into the St. Petersberg night, to re-stock what needed to be re-stocked. As we walked, it quickly became apparent that The Hippo and myself were more drunk than anyone else. Significantly more drunk. Turning to The Hugless Stone with a friendly smile, The Hippo told him, "If I get any more drunk, it's up to you to escort me home!" There was a collective laugh from the group. As if he could get any more drunk.

We made it to the super-market and spent a good half an hour inside, emptying the shelves of anything that looked strong enough to knock out a camel. All that bought and paid for, we headed back outside to make our way home. It was then that things really started to go awry. The Hugless Stone noticed that The Hippo was no-where to be seen. "Has anyone seen him?", he asked. No-one had. There was a moment of consideration, only broken when Doofus chipped in, slurring, "If experience serves, that guy's found himself a clllllluuuub........"

We checked and re-checked the super-market to make sure he really, truly wasn't in there, and then headed back to the hostel hoping to find him sitting cheerily on the step outside waiting for us. But when we got back, it quickly became apparent that he wasn't there either. We went up to our room.. no sign of him there. Nothing. Nada. Zip. He was gone. "We've got to go back out there.." The Marmott said, but although I agreed with the sentiment, I'd sat myself down on the spare bed in our room and the rumbling sounds coming from my wobbly stomach told me I wasn't getting up again without coating the walls in a delightful layer of vomit. "I've got to stay here", I told them, and so The Stone and The Marmott headed back out into the bitterly cold St. Petersberg night without me, to look for our missing friend.

Alone in our room, with the responsibility-pretense of "keeping him here if he does come back", the walls started to spin, in what felt like the opposite direction to my stomach. I closed my eyes to dull the sensation, and despite the fact that I was sitting upright, I quickly found myself asleep.

When I awoke next at around 3AM, the room was dark. My head was still spinning and my legs felt shaky, but I was confident I could make it to the bed. With the caution of a fox, I stood up. One leg stepped forward, followed by the other. I was doing it! I could make it! I knew it!

I glanced up. I saw The Marmott asleep in his bed. I glanced right. I saw The Stone sleeping soundly in his. I looked around. The Hippo's bed was empty. Even in my altered state of consciousness, I put two and two together. He was still missing. My heart sank. I fell over.

I struggled into bed at last and tried to get back to sleep. If only I could think straight, I was sure we could get this all sorted out. But as I lay there, even the slightest movement sent me spinning and I knew there was only one thing to do. Gripping the walls like a teenage mother of three clings to her child support benefits, I walked slowly to the bathroom. I opened the door, and flicked on the light. I stepped inside. I opened the toilet seat. I leaned forward, and started the motions. "Come on, sonny..", I thought to myself, "you can do this." I was right. I could do it. I hurled. I spewed. I vommed. I bogged it. I up-chucked and I chucked-up. Again and again I did it until I was sure every last measure of that foul alcohol was out of my body and safely heading into the Russian sewage system. I flushed the toilet and headed back to the room.

The next few hours were progressively worse. Now in a clearer state of mind, although not fully recovered, I started thinking about the situation we were in and what it meant. It was past 3AM, which meant The Hippo had been missing for over four hours. Earlier that day, I'd discussed the cold with him as we walked through the city. "What do you think happens if you're homeless in St. Petersberg?", I'd asked him. "I think you die..", he replied with mock solemnity. I thought about that, and my whole body physically shook with fear. And still my mind wandered..

I thought of a conversation the four of us had had in Berlin a week earlier. "If one of us died on this trip, would you keep going or go home?", The Marmott asked the group at large. We'd all decided we'd pack it in and go home. Now it was a week later and one of us was missing in St. Petersberg, the crime capital of Russia where the temperature at night was at best -9 degrees. And so I started thinking of home, in many ways really thinking about home in a way I hadn't done this entire trip. And it got to me. Right then, I'd have given everything I own in this world to have been able to hug my family, just for a minute. As much as I hate to say it, and truly it makes my skin crawl to admit that such thoughts ran through my mind, but right then I was thinking of the bright side. All the things I'd missed these past few weeks which would suddenly be back in my life. The people. The places. Home. And I drifted back to sleep..

The next thing I knew, it was 5AM. I was awake again, and the sickly feeling had returned. The Marmott and The Stone were suiting back up, preparing to brave the bitter cold once again to go in search of our fallen friend. I wished I could join them, but I daren't. A wise choice, I shortly discovered, as mere moments after they'd left the room I followed suit, heading directly to the toilet for another game of "What's in my Stomach?"

Eventually they returned once again as I struggled to get back to sleep, plagued by guilt and racked with fear. Yet again, they'd failed to make good on their search, and The Disgusting Hippo remained missing, presumed dead. It was a solemn moment.

Then, as the hour neared 8AM and we lay in our beds, stewing in a malaise of uncertainty and sorrow, we heard the front door bell ring. The night-porter wasn't answering it, and there was no-one at the hostel reception, so The Marmott headed downstairs, careful not to raise his hopes and yet secretly praying for one final miraculous happy ending. He reached the door, and opened it.

There, staring back at him, was our prodigal pal. Bloody, battered, but alive. We rushed to him, and at that moment all hangovers were forgotten, all back story irrelevant. He was okay, and that moment of relief saw our collective hearts lifted from the sewers to the heavens. It was almost magical. Nervous and in shock, he told us what had happened..

He didn't remember much, the drink had taken care of that. But from what he'd been able to piece together, in his drunken stupor he'd inexplicably decided his luck was up when he lost us, and gone to ground. He was woken up from his resting place at around 3AM by the man who's house he was sleeping in front of. The kindly gent had invited him inside, and offered him a bed for the night, which he'd gladly accepted. At dawn, the man had woken The Hippo. His grandmother who also lived in the house would be up soon, and he didn't want her to know they'd opened their house to a stranger from a stranger land for the night. He'd given him breakfast and 10 rubles for the metro, then sent him away with a wave and a smile. In short, he'd been nothing less than a saviour.

I'm not a religious man, but something happened that night. Call it luck, call it fate, call it the good of humanity. The Disgusting Hippo was back in our lives. Once he'd cleaned off the blood from his face (we don't know where it came from), he looked almost good as new. And as we lay back in our respective beds, trying to catch a few last winks before the new day began, there was only one thing running through my mind.. our Russian adventure was on, and there was no turning back now.

See you next time, folks.

All White in Berlin

2007-01-26T14:56:00.000Z

It's snowing outside the window of the internet cafe as I'm typing this. It's snowing a lot.

We're in Berlin, and this is a rare occasion where I'm planning to bring you sweet readers up to date, to the very second. By the time you finish reading this entry, we will be in-synch. You and I. The reason? Tomorrow, Day 18, we head for Russia. The big unknown. We'll be out of our comfortable western safety net at last, and who knows what we can expect to find? I certainly have no idea if the Russias have developed such a wacky concept as an 'internet cafe', so I'm aiming to make the most of this luxury whilst it's available to me. That, and the fact that this cafe is warm, and outside it's f###ing cold, so I'd like to stay inside here for as long as possible. So take your seats, my friends. Is everyone sitting comfortably? Let's get re-acquainted..

It's Friday today, Day 17. On Monday, we left the Hostel Elf in Prague, wondering how on earth Berlin could top such a great city. Has it? Maybe. It's hard to say. For me, I'll remember these past five days as the time The Hugless Stone came so far out of his shell it'd be nigh-on impossible to even call him a tortoise.

At the train station in Prague, I was munching down on a 'bramborak', which is a potato-pancake filled with a slab of chicken. It was far from fresh and far from appetising, a fact which I loudly made known to the world at large and undoubtedly to The Stone who was sitting next to me as I ate. Eventually, the combination of the stench and the voracious assult on my taste buds forced me to admit defeat to the Czech-speciality breakfast snack. "Does anyone want the rest of this thing?" I asked, holding it up with my fingers in a pincer, my face contorting with disgust as I saw pools of grease wobbling within it's fragile breadcrumb skin. "Yeah, I'll have it", a voice said. It was our friend The Stone. He grabbed it, and munched down his first bite. "That's horrible.." he said, with a grimace, before folding it up like a Pizza Calzone and stuffing the whole package in his mouth. Excrutiating. He finished chewing, licked his lips and stood up with his rucksack already on his back. We followed him to the platform, and before we knew it we were on the train to Berlin.

Train rides are interesting things for us on this trip. As you'll likely know if you're a regular reader of this blog, me and the gang are travelling by train all the way from London to Shanghai. At some points during our trip, we'll be on the train for up to four days at a time without getting off. So it'd be a natural assumption that we all enjoy travelling by train, and we do. The train ride from Vienna to Prague was great for me, as I watched the world speed by with music blasting in my ears. The journey from Prague to Berlin was less interesting, however. Maybe it was the cumulative result of our late-nights/early-mornings rountine in Prague, but for whatever reason I was tired like I'd rarely been tired before. So, when we got on the train, I borrowed some headphones, fired up the iPod and drifted happily into the land of nod whilst listening to Fiona Apple singing her little heart out.

I woke up nearly an hour later with the bizarre feeling that my ears were dancing. My eyes remained closed, but the sensation was un-mistakable. Twitch. Twitch. It was as if these little flaps of skin on the sides of my head had a life of their own, so forceful and definite were their rhythmic movements. Twitch. Twitch. I opened my eyes. Twitch. Twitch. As my vision gained clarity, I realised that towering over me was a grandiose figure, the very same figure responsible for my dancing ears. It was The Hugless Stone, and he was trying his hardest not to wake me as he delicately yanked the headphones I'd borrowed from him from me.

It was just as well he had woken me though, because moments later a German Polezei flanked by two Czech border guards entered the cabin demanding to see passports. Ours were all in order, no problems, but a Czech man sitting ahead of us was scrutinized with a brute force. Where was the receipt for his camera?, they wanted to know. How many cigarettes was he bringing into the country? The blonde Aussie girls sitting behind us recieved far kinder treatment, naturally. "Oh, you're sisters?", the policeman asked with a smirk. "You're very pretty, no?"

What a classy gent.

Then there was the overweight German frau sitting nearby, who snapped at The Marmott in a furious outburst when she heard him "shuffling his cards too loudly". She cheered up pretty soon, however, as she first tried to make friends with every ticket inspector who passed through the train, then eventually resorted to complimenting The Marmott on his delightful accent in the hopes of scoring a new companion with whom she could pass the time. Companionship was not forthcoming.

When we finally arrived in Berlin, tired and hungry, we were over the moon to discover the cheapest, nicest pizza place in the entire world, situated right next to our hostel. Giant pizzas of every flavour you could imagine, each for a cool 2 euros and delivered piping hot to your table within minutes. This place would become our regular eatery for the remainer of our time here, with each of us chowing down 2 pizzas each in quick succession there every evening. The place wasn't without character, either. The hopeful owner found difficulty in believing anyone wouldn't want a drink with their meal. "Trink?", he asked The Stone, who replied, "Nein, bitte". Maybe he misheard or maybe he was just really relucant to let go the sale, but either way the owner pressed the issue, asking him if he'd just asked for "Ein bier?"

Maybe a drink would have done him well, however, as (post-meal) back at the hostel we engaged in a gigantic table-football tournament which The Stone got very, very into. Little plastic men and their minature balls were flying everywhere, to a soundtrack of grunts that would make Serena Williams proud. Sadly, despite the impressive show of effort, The Stone lost the tournament.

His embarrassment was not over yet, I'd hasten to add. That evening we were in our bunk-beds when suddenly one of them started to shake furiously. The Stone had passed a mighty wind, and having let rip was suddenly, frantically struggling to get out of his sleeping bag. Task accomplished, he raced to the bathroom and slammed the door. I'll save you the horror of reading specifics about the noises that came afterwards, but let's say they weren't pleasant and they weren't pretty.

The next day, Day 14, after buying a tasty kebab from an Indian man who looked uncannily like Alan Partridge, we went to Berlin's famed 'Checkpoint Charlie', and the museam that accompanied it. It was an amazing place to visit and I found myself sucked right into the history of it all. Sadly, that doesn't take away from the fact that the museam was boring as hell. We'd gone through it separately at our own pace. The Stone and I were out first, and were of a similar opinion about it. However we were certain that The Marmott, the resident culture-vulture, would not only have enjoyed it immensely because it was a museam and he likes museams, but also would not fail to describe said enjoyment with a supporting expletive. We were therefore delighted when he came out at long last and told us in no uncertain terms that it had been "f###ing incredible".

Back at the youth hostel, The Stone was less than delighted when a group of young teenage girls gathered around our pool table and whispered about us in hushed voices, pointing and giggling. I approached him at a moment when he was looking his most awkward, and asked him if he was enjoying himself. "Can we leave yet?!" he gasped, with pleading desperation in his eyes.

He seemed much more in his element the following day, when we discovered a lake that had frozen over in the city centre. We proceeded to break up the ice and had a contest to throw chunks the furthest across the lake. When that had grown tiresome, The Stone took upon a new idea. He wangled up a huge slab of ice that most likely weighed more than me, and raised it above his head before sending it slamming down into the lake with glee. His joy quickly faded away, however, when the proverbial smoke cleared, revealing that his attack had left the ice with barely a scratch, and certainly not the gaping hole he'd been hoping for. Now he was burning with a furious passion, and slab after slab of ice was dug up and slammed into the surface of the lake until at last a tiny hole appeared through which a dribble of water seeped upwards. He was elated, although that also didn't last for long.. we went to leave only to be cornered by two police officers who'd been watching our work from the other side of the lake. However, that crisis was also averted when it turned out they simply wanted to warn us that pickpockets and teen thugs frequented the area, so we should be careful. "You can keep playing your games though!", one of them said to us as they left. Cheeky sod.

I've just realised that pretty much everything that happened in Berlin revolved around The Hugless Stone. Of course, I haven't told you every single little thing that's happened to us these past few days, just the things of note. But of those things, he seems to have been instrumental in their orchestration and enactment, the silly bugger. I promise that next time I'll have more stories about the gang as a whole though, and that said stories will be generally better than the ones in this entry. I've missed out quite a lot of things from our Berlin time, I realise, but right now I'm getting sick of this internet cafe and I want to go out and enjoy the snow. It's still falling thick and fast, and I'm warm enough right now to know that I can get a good ten minutes out there before my balls freeze off once again. So I'll love you and leave you, dear readers. Stay funky-fresh 'til next time..

Too Much Party

2007-01-25T10:28:00.000Z

"Stay away from Buenos Aires.." the man told us.

His name was Matthias, and his words were coated in a thick Argentinian accent. He spoke in a shy whisper, and he seemed pained as he offered up his forceful warning with urgency. "Don't go to Buenos Aires," he repeated. "Too much party in Buenos Aires."

We were in the self-proclaimed 'chill-out zone' of Hostel Elf in Prague. It was Day 10, and our first night in the city. We'd arrived an hour or so previously, and had been welcomed into our new home by an overly-friendly Czech fella who looked and acted uncannily like our former schoolmate Andy Brock. With a jolly enthusiasm he'd walked us down hallways gratuitously daubed in grafitti, past scrawled song lyrics and back'n'forths of unbridled wit*.

* One joker had taken it upon himself to write "Kentucky Freud Chicken.. Motherf###in' good!" on the wall to the kitchen.

Our room was definitely our best yet. Spacious, comfortable, and (just like the rest of the hostel), unquestionably 'hip'. Before he left us to unpack, Andy Brock had imparted the most important of words to us in broken English.. "Beer for sale at desk upstairs".

It was perhaps no surprise, therefore, that one hour later we did indeed find ourselves on the recieving end of Matthias' words of wisdom in regards to the Argentinian capital and it's abundance of "party", as we drank down the sweet hostel beer. However, right then we weren't in Buenos Aires, and had no immediate plans to visit said city. We were in Prague, and the night was young, so we set of to investigate..

The first thing we discovered about Prague was that it's currency is weak. This roughly translates to: more food for less cash. We indulged, wolfing down full meals at a Chinese resaurant before heading into the town centre to an upmarket Italian 'ristorante', where we imbibed sweet dark ale and munched on our second course of the evening (excessively large pizzas) followed by our first deserts of the trip (Ice-cream sundaes with fresh fruit and whipped cream). This might sound sinful, but we quickly got used to the feeling and ate like this for the rest of our time in Prague.

Sweet, sweet gluttony.

The other thing immediately obvious about Prague is it's status as an up'n'coming Amsterdam, in it's loose attitude to such delights as prostitution and erotic dance cabarets. We chose not to indulge in these particular activities, of course, but one couldn't help feeling stereotyped by the locals given the number of times we were approached by seedy promoters, who thrust fliers and business cards into our hands in the hopes of scoring some clients. The best encounter of the night came when we were cornered by one such promoter. In a lecherous Czech drawl he offered us the (interestingly vague) possibility of "girl for sex". I indicated to him that The Hugless Stone might be interested in just such a prospect, and his eyes widened. He stalked ever closer to The Stone, whispering, "500 kroenig? Girl for sex, 500 kroenig?"

The night ended after a few hours in several local bars, away from the drunken English louts and the aforementioned promoters who target them. On the bridge overlooking the river and the city as the lights sparkled like stars on the water, we came to the general realisation that even as Prague may be becoming more and more an easy destination for twats seeking cheap thrills, that doesn't take away from the fact that it's an amazing city. The historic buildings and cobbled streets.. the kind and friendly locals.. the whole package adds up to something really special. Just as lively as Paris and just as pretty as Vienna, we were in our favourite city so far.

The rest of our time in Prague felt somewhat like we were living in a 'happiness' montage from one of the cheesy Hollywood movies our Viennese friend Idiom Jim would have happily dubbed as "shit"..

We decided to take the following morning to do things on our own, taking a break from each other whilst everyone was happy and on good terms. I spent a good hour at least one the phone to my family back home, before wandering the side-streets and hidden corners of the city then ending up in the town square with a good book and an over-powering sense of calm and satisfaction. We were defining ourselves on this trip at last. The Pristine Marmott and The Disgusting Hippo had followed their respective noses for culture and headed round a museam detailing the history of the city, whilst I'd enjoyed discovering the unknown areas and The Hugless Stone had.. well, I don't know what he'd done with his morning. Maybe he'd sought out his propositioner from the previous night and taken him up on his offer, maybe he hadn't. The only thing I know is that we all met up once again for lunch, happy to see each other and with no real desire to know why The Hugless Stone was suddenly 500 kroenigs less well-off**.

** This series of less-than-subtle hints have no merit or truth behind them, I should clarify. Honestly.

That afternoon we all laughed until we cried as The Marmott read out an article from a copy of The Guardian he'd bought, all about the Big Brother scandal which had apparently seized England in our absence, after contestant Jade Goody had made racist comments about another 'housemate'.

"Goody's comments are surprising," the paper said, "given that her mother is a practising Muslim who has observed Rammadan for the past nine years". The article continued thusly..

'A mini-cab driver, white, middle-aged and Bermondsy born, has a foot in each camp. "What she has been saying is terrible," he says. "Especially as her father is a nigger." Asked to expand, he explains that her father is mixed race. "You know, half a pint of Guinness".'

Thanks, Cabbie.

We spent the evening going from bar to pub to bar to pub. Perhaps we were living into the Englishmen-abroad stereotype, but either way the pattern went exactly the same with each bar we visited. The Disgusting Hippo would force us to go in so he could use the facilities***, and after one drink The Hugless Stone would make us move on because he didn't like the way the barman was looking at him.

*** The Hippo responds, "No, I didn't need to shit, mostly I just needed to wipe my arse a lot". Truly disgusting.

We got back to the hostel in the early hours of the morning, but instead of heading straight to sleep, we decided to take advantage of the free internet access available. Mostly, this meant us all crowding around the computer whilst The Stone read out entry after entry a blog by our former collegue Chris Postle. It's totally serious and probably the funniest thing ever in the history of time.

Naturally, reading his blog got us to talking about who we'd most like the punch in the face until they bled and needed major reconstructive surgery. Eventually, after an hour of playing that game, we realised it was past 4am, and fast headed to the land of nod.

Just as well, because the next day was jam-packed and action-filled. After a cold shower in the morningtime, we made our way to the outskirts of the city to visit Franz Kafka's grave. None of us really knew much about the man, but it was a gorgeous day and a nice walk. However, by the time we'd traversed the cemetary for more than an hour looking for Dr. Franz, we were getting a little tired of his elusivity. A quick consultation of the map cleared up the confusion though, as it turns out old Franz was Jewish, and thusly buried in the special cemetary next door. We made our way inside, but The Hugless Stone was accosted by an irate security guard who impressed upon him the importance of covering his head when inside the Jewish section (the rest of us were already wearing hats). However, he had nothing suitable to hand, so was forced to borrow a yarmulka from the front desk. It was tiny and wind-speeds were high that day, so much amusement was had at The Stone's expense as he tried his best to keep this tiny headgear from flying off into the distance, and we tried out best to photograph him doing so****.

**** One day I'll update this blog with said photos and videos, when the technology to do so is more readily available to me than that of the internet cafe in which I'm currently residing.

After the cemetary, we rode the metro back into town, narrowly escaping being caught without tickets by the guards who suddenly appeared at every station we pulled in at. Naturally, such a daring escape from prosecution demaned our standard Big Lunch, which was had shortly afterwards at a restaurant dominated by a group of hungover English knobheads (the technical term, I believe..), who took an offensively great pleasure in the ever-increasing volume of their guffaws.

In search of peace and quiet, we did as any sensible people might have done; we headed to a pub to watch a football match on a huge screen. Arsenal vs. Man U., to be precise. A dirty game by any standards, Arsenal snatched a deserved victory in the final moments of the second half, much to the delight of The Pristine Marmott, who appeared anything but "pristine" by the final whistle. Drenched in sweat and with veins dangerously close to popping through his forehead, he was decidedly 'pumped'.

As we left the pub after the game, we were cornered one by one by a Liverpudlian woman who might have had one drink too many, given that it was only 5pm. "Were you 'appy with that result?!" she demanded of The Marmott and The Hippo, who both responded enthusiastically in the affirmative. But if I hoped I was getting out of there on the quiet, I was wrong. Nearly at the door, I felt a hand on my arm as she yanked me back inside. "'ey!", she shrieked at me with glee. "Your mate.. I thought 'e were gonne have a heart-attack there for a minute!"

Thanks, Cilla Black-alike.

Back at the hostel, despite plans for a quiet evening of poker, things spiralled out of control once again. The game began with torn-up map pieces as chips and an air of jokery. But we were playing in the hippest hostel in Prague, and it wasn't long before the spectators started to build up. First to pluck up the courage to ask to join in was Andy, a bike-messenger from Minnesota. He was perfectly nice, and gave us novice players some helpful tips, but DAYMN! He was boring as hell. Seriously, nothing. Nada. Zip. The guy just had nothing to say. The height of our time with him was when The Hugless Stone discovered they had a similar music taste. "What do you think of the band 'Swans'?", he asked our American amigo. "They seem alright," Andy replied, "but to be honest I haven't heard much of 'The Swans' stuff". Ever taken by his obsession with inanity, The Stone jumped on him. "I'm sorry to be pedantic," he said, not sorry at all, "but I believe there's no definite article preceeding the name 'Swans'. They're not 'The Swans', they're just 'Swans'."

Riveting.

Next into the game was a Dutch guy from the Haig ("I just live there, I'm not in the government..", he was quick to clarify). His only hobbies were "snowboarding and poker", he told us, and with that revelation whipped out a snazzy silver briefcase with the most professional poker set inside I'd ever laid eyes on. Suddenly our map pieces were a thing of the past, and we found ourselves playing amongst kings.

The first round we were playing for fun, and perinal-loser The Disgusting Hippo suddenly found himself on a winning streak. "That's a lot of fun on the table!" one guy said, referring to the winnings that Hips had just won after a particularly good hand. Our Dutch friend formed a bizarre shape with his hand. "This means 'F### you' in Israel", he said, sharing a smirk with his Israeli pal sitting next to him. "So, me and Ishmael here, when we play poker, we make this shape with our hands to the guy who's winning.. it means, we respect that you're chip leader, but f### you!"

At this point, the cringe-factor was through the roof, and I was suddenly relieved that the first game was nearly over and a money-game was scheduled next, from which I could easily remove myself.

We learnt a valuable lesson that night. Making friends in youth hostels is all good, but sometimes just because someone's a fellow traveller, doesn't change the fact that they're still an idiot. Sadly, The Hugless Stone took longer to realise that than the rest of us, as he spent the next few hours battling it out with the hardcore few still playing for cash. Inevitably, after an admittedly good fight, he lost, and walked away from the table that night a solid 100 kroenigs lighter in the pocket.

That was our last night in Prague, and by all accounts our visit to the city had been a fantastic success. The montage was over, although the aura of happiness that surrounded us showed no signs of fading. They say conflict is always neccessary for good drama, so perhaps in the interests of this blog I'll go stir up a fight or two right now to write about next time.

Join me then to see if I live up to my promise, and to hear about the rest of the adventures we find ourselves getting into.. when we take Berlin!

Disaster in Vienna!

2007-01-19T22:43:00.000Z

It was 6AM on a cold, dark Vienna morning, as I sat bolt upright in bed with alarm bells ringing in my ears. Confusion. Panic. What was going on? I turned my head and saw a half-naked man asleep next to me. "Are you sure your clock's in sync with the environment?!" I asked, with more than a little urgency.

Perhaps I should give a little background to this bizarre opening, which is only reported here thanks to secondary sources. I certainly have no recollection of it. But for the sake of gaining what little clarity there might be to be gained, let me take you back to five days previously, as our little band of travellers discovers Vienna..

It was 9AM on a bright, sunny Vienna morning. We had arrived in Vienna, fresh off the train straight into our second city of the trip. Only one of our gang spoke German (The Pristine Marmott), so three of us were left to grope at linguistic familiarity to gain any semblance of understanding. Our Marmott leader (with exquisite skill) guided us towards the right metro platform, and we zipped off into the city. From there we boarded a tram and, with all the politesse he could muster, Mr. Marmott asked the driver, "Geht dieses Strassenban nach Karlieterplatz?". Silence. The question was asked again. All eyes were focussed on our first Austrian civil servant. Perhaps he gave a short, sharp nod of his head. Perhaps it was our imaginations. What is certain is that his eyes did not budge from their straight-and-frontwards gaze and he absolutely gave no second thought to the possibility of removing the garish sunglasses that adorned said looking-balls. Ahh, yes -- this was the Austria we were expecting! We were really there..

When we got to the apartment, we discovered it was all that we had hoped for and more. Plush, lush and with not one iota of squash needed, we'd hit the jackpot. Bags dumped and turds likewise, The Pristine Marmott and The Disgusting Hippo took the metro back to the train station to advance-book our next train which would take us from Vienna to Prague the following Friday, whilst The Hugless Stone and myself made several trips to the supermarket to buy the neccessary supplies we needed to cook ourselves the meal of a lifetime. Mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, pasta and a suspect "mixed meat" were unceremoniously dumped on the counter of the 'Billa' store, where we were served by a delightful Viennese man in his mid-twenties with a mullet who periodically supped from a sneaky beer he had hidden behind the counter.

Two hours later and the first home-cooked meal of the trip was ready. The gang of four sat down to tuck in. All agreed it was an impressive feat, but there were notes, none more forcibly intoned than by The Disgusting Hippo, who told us in no uncertain terms that "it was too salty and there wasn't enough but without all the flaws it was a solid seven out of ten". Now that's a kind of logic I can get behind.

We spent the afternoon exploring Vienna at it's most beautiful, before traversing the Leopold Museam, home to the world's largest collection of Egon Schiele art. Engrossing and fascinating, no doubt, but for the sake of this blog probably very boring for me to write about and you to write about*.

* "But Sam!" you might be saying, "nothing in this blog is worth you writing about nor us reading about!", to which I'd have to reply, "Fair enough. No argument here.."

The only amusement was found when we saw a special exhibition about a painter who created half a dozen different versions of a painting called 'Dance of the Dead' over his career. Of his fourth attempt he was quoted as having said, "..in the meantime, I have painted 'Dance of the Dead' again.."

Maybe it's just me, but I found the possibility of imagining the unedited quote to be endlessly hilarious: "Dear Diary.. today I dropped the kids off from school.. I drove Wendy to get her hair cut.. I made a soup and did a little gardening.. in the meantime, I have painted 'Dance of the Dead' again.."

Okay, as I said, maybe it's just me.

In the evening we once again took to the streets to discover the city by night. We were invited in to a seedy looking Italian take-away by the friendly owner who looked like he was running the business purely as a money-laundering front for a drug operation, but the sign in the window offered 32 apple-sour shots for a cool 20 euros so we had no choice but to go with the flow. 32 shots later and we stumbled out, happy as a gang of proverbial "Larry"'s. Somewhat lacking confidence in our ability to walk long distances at this point, we took the pubs as they came. First, a dingy looking smoke-arena called 'Bar Casablanca' which took a perhaps slightly unhealthy fascination with old Bogey in that classic flick. Next, it was 'Kenny's Irish Pub', which tried to look sophisticated by lining its walls with endless shelves of books**.

** Closer inspection revealed such classics as Michael Moore's "Adventures in a TV Nation", David Beckham's autobiography and an original William Shatner-penned 'Star Trek' novel. Needless to say, The Hugless Stone was in heaven after discovering the latter.

After a few drinks and a few hours we were ready to head home, upbeat at having scored an invitation to a rave the following night from one of the bartenders. The high spirits continued as we made our way to the metro station, and still as we split into pairs to race to our desired platform (The Hippo and The Stone taking the lift, The Marmott and I taking the escalator). As they waited on the floor below for their great glass beast and we rose towards the ceiling out of view, The Hugless Stone gave me a wave and, with a sordid pleasure, whispered, "See you in hell, bitchessss......."

From there, the evening turned sour. Apple sour.

The Marmott and I (as expected) reached the top in mere seconds, and waited with more than enough smug attitude for our tardy companions to catch up with us. We waited, we waited, and we waited. Eventually, one of us realised they weren't coming. I volunteered to stay put in case they did show up (thus pre-emptively avoiding a hilarious upstairs/downstairs Marx Brothers style confusion), whilst The Marmott trundled off around the station at high pace, searching every nook and cranny for our dearly departed friends.

Forty-five minutes later and the worry was starting to set in. With gravitas worthy of Morgan Freeman, I turned to The Marmott and told him, "Two smart guys like that don't get lost, they don't hide, they don't play pranks like that.. something's happened". In my mind, the Ennio Morricone music had already kicked in long ago. I was just about ready for my close-up. "Look, maybe they're fine and they're waiting for us back at the apartment and one day we'll all laugh about this, but right now we're separated in a city where they don't speak the language, they might be hanging upside-down on fish-hooks in a dingy basement, preparing to gasp their lasts, all the while praying we've taken the mayor hostage and threatened wild horses unless he mobilises the army to track them down!"

Okay, I may not have said it exactly like that, but you get the point. We tracked down the metro police agents and reported them missing, and after checking the security cameras to make certain they were no longer in the station, we headed home. Ten minutes later and we were walking towards our road, uncertain of what to expect, hoping to see two familiar faces sitting smiling on the doorstep awaiting us, since we had the key. With every step we took bringing us closer to that moment, every detail of our surroudings seemed of utmost importance.. the abandoned shopping cart in the middle of the road.. the flapping canape of the local butchers.. the flickering light throwing shadows onto two suspect figures in a phone box.. two suspect figures who looked suspiciously like none other than our missing compadres!

Ahh, sweet relief. Reunited at last, we traded stories and laughed many a merry laugh. But the evening wasn't over yet..

Back in the apartment, I put on my serious hat once again and raised the prospect of our distinct lack of contingency plan for unplanned separations. I wasn't angry or critical, but I did feel that perhaps our partners in travel should have put a bit more effort in their search for us than they had. In the words of The Disgusting Hippo, "we just thought you weren't coming so we thought 'Sod it' and just took the metro back to the apartment". Understandable, forgiveable, reasonable. But we were in Vienna, the safest city in the world, and we'd got lucky. We were heading east to dangerous lands.. Siberia.. Mongolia.. China.. I wasn't satisfied, and pressed the point. The Hugless Stone did not apprieciate this. As we bellowed back and forth at each other, dancing a verbal game of sticks and stones, he screamed, "I'm sure your argument is very reasonable, but I'm NOT going to give in! I DON'T apprieciate being criticised and I DON'T like your tone!"

Doors were slammed, with nary a kind "G'night..", as Day 6 came to an unhappy close.

The next morning I awoke still burning with a furious anger. The Hugless Stone came into my room. 'An apology?', I thought to myself. But it was not forthcoming. Instead, he wanted me to return the belt I'd borrowed from him at the start of the trip, as he was now switching to the other pair of jeans he'd brought with him. The belt was returned, and the rage bubbled on.

The day was low-key, as I made strong efforts to keep interaction with The Stone to a minumum and eye-contact to an absolute zero. I deal my punishments harshly but with total enforcement. These sanctions were only to be removed when a full and sincere apology had been recieved. We wandered Vienna as a foursome for much of the day, including a visit to a cemetary where we said hello to the bones of Beethoven, Mozart and Strauss, not to mention a man with the amusing moniker of 'Dr. Alferd Schreinwreiter'.

Eventually, when we were back at the apartment and The Stone and I set about our task of cooking the evening's meal, he offered up a really nice apology, and all was forgiven. We talked calmly about each other's positions on the issue and both parties considered it a happy resolution. Twenty minutes later we officially "broke bread" so to speak, as the whole group tucked into Version 2.0 of our fantastic pasta bolognese.

The night really kicked off wildstyle when we headed into Vienna once more, to the same Irish pub from the previous night. We'd originally planned to simply rendezvous with the guys there who were taking us to their so-called "crazy rave", but when we arrived it soon became clear that only one of them was there, and that his brother would only be coming a matter of hours later. No problem there, as we clicked straight away with 'George', the younger of the brothers. We talked about movies, drinking, and other such things. On the subject of music, he happily told us, "For me, when I go out? It's only drum'n'bass." This was going to be an interesting party.

As the night wore on, we got to know our new friend and the rest of the wacky characters in his world a little better. His other brother also worked in the bar. "Take your seats, gentlemen", he told us, then asked, "what's your pleasure?". We quickly dubbed him 'Idiom Jim'. "There's so much pressure in the mainstream to avoid being controversial..", he told us in a comical Viennese drawl. "That's why 90 percent of Hollywood movies are shit."

Thanks, Idiom Jim.

Eventually their tardy brother turned up to take us to the rave, so we headed off. A solid six feet with huge, flowing dreadlocks, the guy bore an impressive figure. Admittedly he was nothing short of disgusting to the eye, but he sure knew his Viennese history. As we walked past building after building he happily whipped out a story, a fact, some vague trivia. "You see that one building there?" he asked us, with a point. "That belonged to the Austrian king. He loved his black valet so much that when the man died, he had him stuffed so he could still look upon him as he pleased."

Thanks, Dreadlock Joe.

We finally arrived at the "rave", after discussing everything British from Kiera Knightley and Victoria Beckham (with a kiss of his fingers, George demonstrated his undying affection for the aforementioned ladies) to James Blunt***.

*** Dreadlock Joe was dismayed to find out that James Blunt is not Irish. "But he sounds Irish, no?", he asked us. "No, he sounds like an idiot..", The Pristine Marmott replied. "Oh.", Dreadlocks said, and with an audible defiance continued, "I actually kind of like him, and I don't know why."

AWKWARD!

So, in the end, it turned out the rave was not so much a rave, as a drum'n'bass club with heart-pounding beats and high-octane dance flava. The Marmott, The Hippo and myself got into the spirit of the thing, soaking up the atmosphere and generally living it large, whilst The Hugless Stone sat decidedly stony-faced in the corner. "Hey", George said to him at one point, "I am sensing you are not a person who is easily satisfied in your life, yes?"

However, after we'd left the club and began making our way home, The Hugless Stone was far from the crowbar in the spokes of our journey that George might have expected. We'd been walking for close to an hour, during which time we'd had a running race that resulted in The Disgusting Hippo straining a muscle in his groin. When we realised that we'd passed the same spot several times, and with The Hippo in discernible pain, we were forced to admit we were lost. The Hippo lost it, laying into The Marmott (who had been leading the way). I interjected, suggesting that perhaps we should have taken an alternate road at one point, and was rewarded with a full-force verbal assult from The Marmott. "Maybe you should be leading us then!", the tirade began, quickly descending into an unloading of every minute twitch of anger he'd bottled up towards me over the previous 7 days. "Frankly, you don't do anything! You need too much sleep, you're lazy, you don't help out, you're a leech! You have no worth on this trip, and frankly you're argument yesterday was ridiculous! Of course nothing had happened to them, we're not going to get robbed, it just will not happen!" he continued, blasting me with everything he had an a whole barrel more. "You're naive if you think that," I responded, "and I won't feel safe travelling with you until you get your head in the same space as mine about this". Quick as a flash, he fired back.. "Well then maybe you need to re-think whether you should stay with us at all in future.

Thanks, Marmott.

The next morning I awoke still burning with a furious anger. It was Day 8, and we'd planned to take a day-trip to Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia), leaving as early as we could in the morning in order to fully enjoy the city which had been recommended to us by The Hugless Stone's mother as a "post-communist industrial sprawl". Inspiring. I rolled over in bed and saw The Pristine Marmott still asleep next to me. I got the hell away, heading for the shower.

The day went as badly as could be imagined. I maintained the same cold freeze-out towards The Marmott that I had towards The Stone only one day earlier. Bratislava fulfilled expectations.. it was dirt-cheap and shit-boring. Still fixed in our tourist ways and at the enforcement of The Marmott, we paid a visit to the world's least attractive castle. Even the other three guys who didn't share my down-in-the-dumps spirits concluded that the place was a dump, and we headed back to Vienna by mid-afternoon in order to save the evening.

On the train ride back I blasted my iPod loud and considered my situation. Now, I know I promised not to talk about thoughts and feelings and especially not my deepest emotions in this blog, but I will say I sorely considered if this was the right trip for me to be taking. Company, location, duration.. nothing was off-limits. I was seriously thinking about junking the whole trip and coming home early, but decided to give it a few more days.

At long last, after insincere apologies and check-ups all day, The Marmott finally cornered me alone back at the apartment and said a real sorry. This time I felt it was real, and we were alright again.

Now, thank god that gay-ass wimpy shit is out of the way. This blog can finally get back on track. The night began for real, as all four of us sat down to an epic game of Texas Hold'Em poker, playing with peanuts for chips. "Hungry?" The Hugless Stone asked the table at large. "You want to eat, you eat your money". Four hours later The Marmott emerged victorious, although you might say we were all winners, having been witness to The Disgusting Hippo drinking a pint of beer through his t-shirt. Ahh, sweet semi-permeable goodness..

From then onwards, our time in Vienna was a non-stop laugh-fest. A trip to the local internet cafe the next morning saw me accosted by the two African guys who ran the place, who asked me in no uncertain terms to help them fix their printer. I obliged, but was somewhat hampered by the unheard of quantity of trans-sexual pornography all over the screen. "Oh, err, whoops.." said one of the guys over my shoulder, "what is that doing there?"

Thanks, crazy internet dudes.

We took a trip to Vienna's famous 'Big Wheel', featured in the Orson Welles film "The Third Man". The Hugless Stone, our resident nerd, insisted I film him re-enacting said movie's pinnacle scene at the base of the iconic construction. Finally, in preparation for our impending early morning dash to the train station the following day, we headed back to the apartment for food and poker. Both were incredible, and entirely rewarding. This time having played for "real money", by the end of the game I'd made off with a cool 18 cents profit.

It was 6AM, cold and dark the following Vienna morning, as I sat bolt upright in bed with alarm bells ringing in my ears. Confusion. Panic. What was going on? I turned my head and saw a half-naked man asleep next to me. "Are you sure your clock's in sync with the environment?!", I asked, with more than a little urgency.

"Sam, go back to sleep..", The Pristine Marmott told me, for he was my night-time companion. "I'll have the first shower".

Yes, Day 10 rolled around with all the expected madness that ought to come with our leaving Vienna to journey to Prague, although we made it to the train station with ultimate time to spare and I got to experience first hand just how annoying having an old-lady porter in a public toilet can be. I've done this stuff for 18 years, ma'am. No offence, but I know how to open a stall door and I can certainly take my own toilet paper. I'm all for job-creation schemes, but at a certain point and place, intrusion just becomes downright inappropriate and the world of the WC is definitely one such place.

Oh, but as regular readers will know, I could discuss the woes of public toilets until the cows come home. This blog has been far too long as it is, and I should definitely leave myself something to write about next time. All in all, Vienna gets two thumbs up, and as we headed for the train I caught myself thinking it might turn out to be the best city of the whole trip. All that would change when we got to Prague, but to read about our adventures in said Czech capital, you'll have to stay tuned..

Cheerio, readers!

Kiss My Grave!

2007-01-18T11:36:00.000Z

Hello, sweet readers. I left a proverbial cliffhanger at the tail of my last entry, and in the interests of whetting your apetites even further, I'll tell you that since that first "MAJOR CATASTROPHE!", we have have a second MAJOR CATASTROPHE! But I'll get to all that in good time. First of all, I'll pick up where I left off, as our merry band leaves Paris and heads for sunny Vienna..

It was morning in Paris, and a mild one at that. This humble narrator was stalking Parisian streets looking for fruit and nuts with his companions. It was Day 5, and the realisation had set in that perhaps simply alternating between greasy Chinese take-aways one night and greasy Turkish take-aways the next did not fully constitute a balanced diet. We wandered from canape to canape, examining the fresh fruit on offer for Cost/kg, aesthetic appeal and softness to the touch. Having stocked up on a fair selection, we made our way to a nearby cemetary in the interests of making a pseudo-pilgrimage to 'The Doors'-frontman Jim Morrison's grave. His final resting place was attributed almost as many rumours as the circumstances surrouding his mysterious death. We'd heard tales that the (initially unmarked) tomb had been the #1 tourist destination in all of Paris, the site of sordid mass-orgies by night and that it had been set upon by rabid cults of 'Doors' fanatics with supernatural urges, who hoped to dig up his mortal remains and bring him back to life through obscure and bizarre rituals. However, before we embarked on our own journey to visit old Jim, I had more urgent business to take care of. Scatalogical business.

The public toilets in Paris are interesting, in that they are modern in appearance (stylish metal exteriors with electronic doors which open at the touch of a button) and high-tech (with a self-flushing/cleaning/purifying system that could be straight out of Battlestar Galactica), and yet they are, and I believe this is the official scientific term, 'f###king disgusting'*.

*Apologies to my sister, who told me when I last spoke to her that I needed to clean up my language if I wanted to garner any literary acclaim with this travelogue. I, of course, deferred that even with the squeaky-clean vocabulary of a Jerry Seinfeld, literary acclaim would still remain at best a pipe-dream.

Back to the scatology.. the most noticable thing about these facilities is the distinct lack of toilet seats. It was therefore an interesting situation I found myself in when (perhaps because of my excitement at our impending encounter with Mr. Morrison) I realised I was on an unavoidable course to a 'Number Two'. I pushed the button and with a swanky "Fsshhzzt!" the doors slid open and I entered this Parisian WC. I'll spare you the gory details (many of you are probably wishing I'd started that policy a good few paragraphs ago, but I suggest that those people are reading the wrong blog). Let's just say that of all my 18+ years on this earth, what transpired in that public toilet would rank right up there in the list of 'Things I'd Really Like To Forget', along with the first time I saw a dead body (in Mumbai, India), and the entirety of 'Scary Movie 2'.

Now where was I? Oh yes, Jim Morrison's grave..

We arrived at the cemetary, fruit in hand. I was also loaded up with half a baguette and a big hunk of Port Salut cheese. At this point we were fairly well practised at cemetary ettiquette, so we made our way to The Big Board, which for the laymen reading is a list of all the famous folk buried in the grounds. Jimmy M was there, of course, but we were also happily surprised to discover that the Pere Lachaise cemetary also hosts the corpses of Moliere, Chopin and Oscar Wilde. We cross-referenced their assigned grave-numbers with the cemetary map, and planned out our route.**

**It was in writing this paragraph that I realised the extent to which our newfound hobby is morbid and bizarre.

Chopin and Moliere looked rather as expected. Tasteful design, some flowers, some letters of adoration: the usual. Even Jim Morrison's was fairly unsurprising, save for the condom delightfully strewn atop his stone. The real shock'n'horror came when we reached Oscar Wilde's grave. I'm not sure why, perhaps he'd carelessly uttered the line "Kiss my grave!" at some point during his time on this earth, but for some reason his headstone was covered from top to bottom with lipstick kisses, with the occasional "I love you, Oscar!" scrawled betwixt the lipstick adoration. At the foot of the grave was a placard reading, "Please respect this gravestone. Do not grafitti."

After the cemetary (and having wolfed down our fruity delights), we made our way directly to a greasy Turkish kebab shop for undisclosed meat and soggy chips. I needed something to wash the food down, and approached Senor Kebab behind the counter for some tap water. A young guy, perhaps a little too eager to please, zipped down below the counter and whipped out a chilled bottle with four glasses in under six seconds. God forbid, the English tourists should be kept waiting for their free tap water!

Next, we were on our way to the train station, leaving Paris for good. The Hugless Stone entertained the group with an in-depth analasis of 'Star Trek' and a fascinating explanation of why he liked a show whose cumulative episodes and movies would take more than a year to watch, even going solidly, back-to-back. Nerd alert!

The train to Vienna was yet another learning experience. We had a six-bunk cabin the size of a Parisian public toilet, whose bunks folded away to create seats. The Hugless Stone was chosen to attempt the folding, given his super-human strength and nimble co-ordination***.

***For readers unaquainted with The Stone in 'real life', I should perhaps clarify that he lacks a skill for deft, subtle movements. It's perhaps unsurprising that he's an incredible rugby player.

Once the cabin had been sorted we realised three things: (1) the seats were not comfortable, (2) the seats were NOT comfortable and (3) we four kings had two additional passengers joining our cabin in only a few stops time, and it made sense to have the bunks nicely arranged with bags shelved away in order to welcome them. The Hugless Stone thusly set about undoing his good work from moments earlier, until eventually all was ship-shape and ready for nightfall. We climbed into our bunks and exchanged a mellow banter for a while, before I found myself drifting happily into the land of nod.

I awoke a few hours later to see one of our two cabin-mates had arrived. A middle-aged and somewhat overweight French lady, she was sleeping with a calming snore on the opposite bunk below. Relishing my superb vantage point, I reached for my bag to unleash my camera so as to capture the sight for future nostalgic posterity. However, when I reached inside said bag, I discovered the perhaps it was not the smartest move on my part to leave an open carton of Pineapple Juice in the same rucksack as my camera, iPod, and indeed the very same handwritten diary which forms the basis of this blog (or at least acts as a memory jog for my more senile moments). Incredibly, the Gods seem to be smiling upon this blog and it's protagonist, as neither diary nor electronic aparatus were damaged in the slightest. Rucksack emptied and crisis averted, I went back to sleep and awoke in Vienna, as a slightly attractive and very franticly disorganised hostess thrust a dry hunk of bread and a bland cup of cocoa in my face. We were there at last!

Well, readers, I know I promised "MAJOR CATASTROPHES!", but right now my time in the internet cafe has run out and I must defer. But join me next time for all the aformentioned, plus a drum'n'bass rave, a Taxidermy-preserved slave, and an epic poker tournament that separated the mice from the men! All this and more, coming soon..

Paris

2007-01-16T10:58:00.000Z

We've now left Paris and, being the lazy so-and-so that I am, I've yet to write about so many things. It was the first city on our travels, and in many ways it felt more like a holiday than a travelling experience. We did a lot of touristy things, which I suppose I should expand upon..

The Eiffel Tower: It's easy to understand the fascination with this thing. It's f###in' huge. The first night we went there (Day 2 of the trip) it was incredibly stormy, and there were no lifts going up to the very top because it was so dangerous. Still, we were satisfied just having visited the base and gazed up at the oddly beautiful structural monstrosity..

We went back again on Day 4, again at night, and this time discovered a queue the size of something really, really big awaiting us. It took two hours to make it to the front and get our tickets, but they flew by. The Hugless Stone found neverending amusement in The Disgusting Hippo's nom-du-moment, and took great delight in adapting it to anything and everything he could. Suddenly, Bono from U2 became 'The Disgusting Bono'. One half of the classic television pairing "Steptoe and Son" became 'The Disgusting Steptoe'. Our former college footballer Tom Jarvis because 'The Disgusting Jarvo', and each new instance was followed by guffaws of laughter from The Hugless one. Eventually we did reach the front of the queue and it was time to ride the great glass elevator to the skies.

Let me be open, honest and candid for a moment now: this thing was f###ing scary as hell. When we'd got to the level of the first floor, I was still just about okay. But by the time the lift made it to the second floor, my knees were weak and I was ready to vom. At that point, naturally, we got out of the lift.. and got into a new lift. A smaller, more rickety lift. To take us up to the third floor, the highest man-made point in all of Paris. If I was scared before, this new lift took me to new heights of unparelleled fear. At long last we got to the top. Naturally, given the immense fear that had taken hold of me, I made the understandable decision to skip the covered sight-seeing part of the top of the tower.. so I headed straight for the wobbly metal staircase which led up even higher, to the open-air section. At this point, the height was no longer the most scary thing. You see, the wind and rain and general stormy weather that had recieved a 'Too Dangerous' classification two days prior had returned, and now as well as dealing with my own personal fear, we had to battle the elements to even keep two feet on the shaky floor. That said, it was an incredible sight to behold, and enjoyed the hell out of every shit-my-pants second of it..

The Louvre: This was a rather different beast. You see, where the Eiffel Tower was 'thrilling' and 'exhilarating' and 'high-octane entertainment to the max.', The Louvre could by the same token be described as 'shit-boring', or perhaps a 'snooze-fest'. The Pristine Marmott, our resident culture-vulture, ate up every second of the pretentious art/history dichotomy, and in his own words, "would have spent another four hours there" if he hadn't been so hungry. The Disgusting Hippo and myself were less impressed by much of the collection, however, and I personally made the best of the situation by taking photographs of the very worst exhibits in the museam for my own art collection, which I may well title "Why The Hell Is This Piece Of Shit in The Louvre?"

Here is the prize photo in my collection..

I was also over-joyed to discover an uncanny miniture statue replication of one of our merry band of travellers. Here, for your amusement/education, is a photo of The Disgusting Hippo with his Louvre namesake..

L'Arc de Triomphe: Much like The Louvre, the Arc is very boring. It has a few saving graces, however, for instance (1) it's free, (2) it's a very nice walk to get there and it's outside, and finally (3) it's free. It's also somewhat picturesque, I suppose..

Overall, certainly not a regrettable tourist attraction but perhaps we could have ventured into less well-travelled parts of the city instead.

Sacre Coeur: I'd visited the old 'Sacred Heart' only a few weeks previously on a short-and-sweet Christmas holiday to Paris, but this time we decided to take a whole day to do it. I mentioned this in passing in my last 'blog' (Sweet Jesus, I do hate that word..), but for the sake of anality, I'll write about it again. Sacre Coeur is in an area called Montmarte, which was one of my favourite areas of the city that we visited. It's really chilled out and relaxing, and it just happened to be glorious sunshine that day. We ate lunch in a lovely graveyard, which was also coincidentally the final resting place of Henri Clouzot and Francois Truffaut (or at least their bones). After that we climbed up the hill to visit the church, taking care to avoid the Senegalese braid-merchants who seem to claimed the bottom of the hill as proper jurisdiction to take hostage the hapless tourists frequenting SC. The Hugless Stone was especially paranoid about getting caught by one of these dudes, although The Marmott and myself took a different view, enjoying seeing how many ridiculous answers we could get away with to their incessant shouts of, "Hey you, my man, hakuna-matata! Where you from?". It seems 'the United Arab Emeritz' prompted the greatest disbelief, whilst simply replying 'Senegal' never failed to get a chuckle and occasionally an affectionate (and undoubtedly hip) handshake.

Sacre Coeur itself was beautiful, and we got a stunning view of the city at large as glorious sunshine turned to an early, dusty dusk..

We went back down to Montmartre to eat and stroll around some before, before heading up the hill again at night to check out the church in darkness and enjoy the view.

After that, we headed back to the hotel for what we thought would be a quiet, early night. But then we met two army guys with whisky and stories to tell and, well.. you know the rest.

Join me next time to hear about a 13 hour train ride to Vienna, incredible cookery, 32 apple-sour shots and our first MAJOR CATASTROPHE!

I want to join the army.

2007-01-14T10:10:00.000Z

Or wanted to, at least. For a few brief moments, on Friday night (that's Day 3, for the lazys out there). You see, we'd had a fairly low-key day strolling around a graveyard looking for Francois Truffaut and Henri Clouzout's graves. The highlight of the day might have been discovering a Mozarella/Tomato/Basil paninni for only €3. We'd climed up Sacre Coeur twice (once in glorious sunshine, once at nightfall) and when we got back to the hostel we were just about ready to hit the sack. We decided to take some cards and books into the social area until it reached a less embarrasingly early bedtime, and I set to reading the book I currently have on the go, "Bush at War" by Bob Woodward.

We'd been there for about half an hour when to guys at the table next to us offered us a bottle of whisky. Well, of course, there's only one answer when someone asks you "Want some whisky?", so we did the moral thing and duly accepted. In retrospect, from this point onwards we were theirs for the taking. As the drink flowed, the stories flowed thicker. One was Japanese-born, from California, named Oyama (but we could call him Mo, he told us.. no-one called him Mo). His friend was from Venezuela, and they'd spent the last six months being trained for combat by the French Foreign Legion. They told us about their boot camps and life on "the farm". They told us about the beatings from power-hungry corporals. They told us about poorly-supervised new recruits mis-firing grenades and nearly blowing up the whole command troupe. They told us everything, in minute detail, and as we moved from the hotel to one bar to another to another, we got more and more sucked in. If they'd had contracts right there with them, there's a good chance I'd now be typing this blog from an army training camp. We finished the evening buying chips from a greasy kebab shop run by a Tunisian immigrant who took great delight in acting out a less-than-deep immitation/analysis of the Bush/Bin Laden conflict, much to our amusement.

The next morning we awoke with hangovers for the hall of fame and an ironic sense of amusement at how easily we'd been swayed. Back in our right minds, we were tourists once more, and headed off for a day of tourist-y behaviour: The Louvre (boring), L'Arc de Triomphe (alright), then up the Eiffel Tower (scary as shit).

More details on all of that (plus photos and a Paris summary) next time..

It begins!

2007-01-12T09:21:00.000Z

Well, Japanese be damned, we made it here without a hitch. It's currently Day 3, and I'm writing this from an Internet Cafe in Paris. In fact, right now I just encountered my first annoyance of a trip that's so far been both rosy and dandy. That annoyance is the bizarre arrangement of the letters on French keyboards. I had to deal with this from time to time in Montreal last year, but I'd forgotten just how annoying it is. But that's also good news, since the intelligent readers out there will have inferred that thus far we've had no slip-ups, no whoopsie-daisys and certainly no uh-ohs. In fact, so far we've been easy riding like Nicholson in his prime, although that's not to say it's been boring. Far from it. But before I dive strait into the anecdotes, let me introduce you to the whole gang. Names have been changed to protect the innocent..

The Hugless Stone: The Stone is a curious creature. He's a sucker for comfort and on our travels down to London to catch the Eurostar he was quick to assure us that, if it was socially acceptable, he would drape himself in silk. In the past, he's been caught looking for affection in all manner of unusual places; indeed, when asked if he'd ever tried to put his tortoise's head in his mouth, he responded definitively that it's reflexes are such that it simply wouldn't be possible. It was perhaps particularly revealing that when it came to saying goodbye to his parents (the very same parents who spawned him, raised him and whom he will not see for the next 5+ months) he said only, "Goodbye". Tears were not forthcoming. A handshake, it would appear, seemed inappropriate. The mere thought of a hug was the furthest thing from his mind. When on the Eurostar considering the enormity of our trip, it was without emotion that he deftly intoned, "My dog will probably be dead before I'm home". He is 'The Hugless Stone', and he is the first of our ignoble gang.

The Disgusting Hippo: Hips is the #2 man of the hour. I've known him for the shortest time out of all our weary band, but he's shaping up to be quite a character. He left behind his girlfriend of 13 months, and unlike The Stone, he wasn't afraid to shed some tears*.

* The Hippo says, "Oi, I didn't shed some tears."

He's arguably the most disgusting of the gang, on so many levels. He chose not to bring any soap or shampoo (hygenically disgusting). He refuses to eat anything more varied than supermarket bread, cheese and ham (culinarily disgusting) on the grounds that even butter would be a luxury and far too expensive (financially disgusting), despite his unequivocal position as 'richest traveller' with a personal fortune of £8,000. On our first night in Paris he lost the coin-toss and was awarded the disgusting, flea-ridden, ratty matress to sleep on. He chose to do so whilst still wearing his jeans, and belt. Entirely disgusting.

Having said all that, The Disgusting Hippo may well be the most normal and well-adjusted of the whole group, and I'm proud (although slighty disgusted) to call him my friend.

The Pristine Marmott: Although technically I've known The Hugless Stone since the age of 9, I would count The Marmott as my oldest friend in the gang on the grounds that he's been my bestest bud for roughly the last five or six years. At this point there's not much about him that will surprise me, so I'm enjoying (with an ironic sense of detatchment) watching him trying to live with The Hippo and The Stone, given his short patience, his obsession for cleanliness, his paranoid insistence on forward-planning, and his inability to admit defeat in an argument. In fact, these qualities have lead to many of the best moments of the trip so far.

On Day 1 he was incensed by The Hugless Stone's decision to air his sweaty feet (fresh out of a day of travelling in thermal socks) in the communal sleeping area. Naturally, The Disgusting Hippo had no objections when, moments later, The Stone trampled over his previously mentioned disgusting mattress with those same bare, unwashed feet.

Day 2 brought with it our first big argument, when The Stone happened to mention his plans to pop his blister in our shared toilet. As might be expected, this sent The Pristine Marmott into a rage (with yours truly firmly planted in his camp, I hasten to add). The Disgusting Hippo saw no problems with The Hugless one's plans, which only fuelled his (clearly incorrect) belief in his plans. The argument was finally resolved when The Hugless Stone offered as a personal favour to me to pop it in the other people's toilet next door when no-one else was around. To this moment he still maintains that his original intent was neither unhygenic nor gross.

This morning (or as it should probably be called for the sake of retrospective readers, "Day 3") brought another, this time as The Disgusting Hippo aruged on environmental grounds that flushing the toilet after each useage was a waste of energy and water. This time The Marmott called in a personal favour, which The Hippo was forced to give when The Stone chimed in, "Sorry, I really apprieciate you sticking up for me over the blister popping, but in this case you just don't realise how bad your own piss actually smells".

Characters were really tested late last night when we were walking back to the hostel from the metro station. I was at the end of the line (we walk in crocodile fashion from time-too-time for nostalgia purposes) and whilst the others chose to ignore a flamboyantly gay homeless drunk who accosted us, I decided I was in the mood for an adventure and engaged him in a discussion. The others crept back to me and, perhaps sensing kinship, the man told me how beautiful he thought The Hippo and The Stone were. He wished them both a "Bon soir!" with a hug and a kiss, and when he saw I'd whipped out my camera to capture the deep irony of the moment, he insisted on taking lots of photos with each of us. The Pristine Marmott let slip that his camera could take videos, and soon the man began serenading him with what was undeniably both an arousing and exciting rendition of the Sinatra classic, "Strangers in the Night". Eventually it was time for a sad "Au revoir..", which Mr. Pasqèt Fabrice (as that was the man's name) decided was an oppurtune moment to once again kiss us gently on the cheeks. Fare readers, I don't mind telling you, he tried his hardest to go for the lip-kiss with The Hippo and The Stone, and failing in that, succeeded in licking their faces with glee. Stubbly, stubbly goodness..

My time in this Internet Cafe is running out, and I haven't had time to tell you about our adventures jumping barriers at metro stations (things never go according to plan when we do that), nor about the cackling telephone lady at the Cambodian restaurant we went to. I suppose I'll just leave you now with a disgusting quote from the opening line of The Disgusting Hippo's disgusting diary:

"..................It begins!"

Saying Goodbye

2007-01-09T10:39:00.000Z

...is the most horrible thing in the world.

Welcome to my travelogue. My name is Sam, and I'm on my gap year. Last year I lived in Canada for two months working on a film set as a lowly production assistant, which was hands-down the best time of my life. I've been back in England for a little over two months, and now I'm heading off again, this time to Japan. Over land. Yes, that's right readers*

*I'll be addressing you as "readers" even though quite clearly none exist yet and the chance for you ever being a collective large enough to merit a plural is slimmer than Nichole Ritchie

I'm travelling by train across Europe, making stops in Paris, Vienna, Prague and Berlin, and then heading to Russia (St. Petersburg and Moscow, to be precise) at which point I'll take the Trans-Siberian Express to Irkustk (in deepest darkest coldest Siberia) then to Ulaan Batur (the capital of Mongolia) then to Beijing. My Chinese adventure will take me to Shanghai where I'll eventually catch a ferry to Osaka then go on to Tokyo then back to Osaka where I'll be living for six months. Exiting? Yes. Exhaustive? Probably. Ex-communicable? I certainly don't know what that means and if you do, I don't think I want you as a reader. Yes, in fact let's make that the first rule of this blog. If you're cleverer than me, just naff off right now. I worked long and hard to make sure I was rejected by Oxford University, specifically so I wouldn't have to deal with Alec Smarty-Pants and Johnny Clever-Cloggs on a daily basis.

With my dislike for intelligence now firmly out in the open, let me fill you in on how I stand as goes my preparations thus far..

It turns out, when you travel, you need what's called a "visa" to enter different countries. Now, I know some people might be thinking "Duh.." at this point, but quite clearly those people are no longer reading, clever twats that they are. You see, I'm supposed to be leaving the country tomorrow, but the Japanese Embassy still have my passport and seem to be showing no immediate inclination to giving it back. Apparently they're huge fans of bureaucracy (or as I like to say, "They're bureau-crazy!"**)

**I don't really like to say that. But my mind does work in bizarre ways and if you're thinking of becoming a reader of this blog, I must warn you that all manner of ban puns and word-play may be forthcoming. And I can't stress enough that these will not be amusing, clever or ironic. At best you could interpret them as ironically bad, but to be honest the more likely answer is that the author of this blog has no awareness or concept of self-censorship and will literally type whatever his perennially vacant brain tells him to. He also enjoys writing in the third person from time to time. This is likewise inexcusable.

So, in summary, my travels are not off to the greatest start. In that they may not be starting at all just yet. At worst though I'll be leaving on Friday, three days delayed, so even for the MTV-generation, ADD-kids reading, hopefully your attention span will not be severely tested. If "Lost" can keep an audience over a two-months-plus Christmas break, hopefully I can string you guys (again, an optimistic plural here) along for an extra few days.

One final thing before I sign off: those looking for emotional insight from this blog will likely not find it. I have real friends I'll write to if I want to get things off my chest. I'm naturally emotionally secretive and frequently use sarcasm and self-deprecation to avoid talking about anything real. But that's good news for you guys, because -- let's face it -- reading about some dude's emotional journey who you've never met is for gays and fags***, like myself****.

***sarcasm
****self-deprecation

Well, alehoop! I'll be leaving you now. Join me next time when I may or may not introduce you to one or more of the three wacky characters I'll be travelling with.

Cheerio,

Sam