Add a new word to my vocab

A leisurely weekend in Edinburgh

There were seven of us for breakfast at mine on Saturday morning, including Dominik's girlfriend, over from Germany for three weeks. Clemens, Carol, Axier and I caught a bus and spent Saturday afternoon browsing in "retail park" for clothes. Axier and Clemens came away with new jackets. Clemens declared it would henceforth be potato dinner month.

Come Sunday, Axier is now sporting a new home-fashioned 'do that has been affectionately called "Punky". Why not? It has also come to our attention that he has quite a red beard, and "Barba-roja" is rolling quite nicely off the tongue.

Ariane, Clemens, Carol, Axier, Kale and I headed to the youth hall where Clemens and Axier volunteer, attached to a church in one of the less privileged areas of Edinburgh. The hall is the perfect hangout place, as imagined when you were a kid in the eighties.

Axier and Clemens recently passed their rock climbing instructor certificates. We had GREAT fun on the indoor rock climbing wall.

                   

The kids have great facilities.

We then tortured the karaoke on the games system for a while - something I spent three months in Japan training for.

For dinner we heated ourselves some pizzas and cherry pie from the supermarket next door, then settled in on the beanbags to watch "Basic Instinct". What a shocker, piece of plastic movie :D

I also watched "Top Gun" with some other friends recently, and I have to say, revisiting 80s and 90s blockbusters is a great shared experience.

Ariane's 20th

We had a great night out at a bar in Leith called Port O' Leith. We came across it a couple of weeks back, and it was Ariane's choice for her twentieth. It has seafaring decor, extremely eclectic retro music, and an unusual grab-bag of patrons, from two-tone-haired girls dancing on the bar to a late middle-aged man reading a newspaper in the corner. The bouncer is a grey-haired, contented looking woman who it turns out is also the owner. Being in the bar feels like you might be living in a movie.

Axier and I spent Saturday morning buying gifts for a goodie bag to present on behalf of all the international group. I think the present pictured below, an angry mannequin, was a gift from Mary, a nightclub friend of Ariane's who we only met for the first time that night.

It turned out to be a good test run for a twenty-first birthday. We all mixed our drinks horribly. For Edinburgh, the drinks are cheap.

Kale and I won the bright-eyed approval of the owner by doing a frenzied jig to a particularly jig-worthy song. She complimented us heartily after closing time, as we made our way out to more dancing in Leith Walk dens of iniquity.

Axier, Carmen and Joaquim stayed over at mine. Most of the group, in rather diminished spirits, met over my kitchen table for late cooked breakfast on the day of Ariane's actual birthday, Sunday. Ariane had difficulty stomaching the morning, but was determined that she couldn't spend her birthday in bed.

Seventies Carpet Party

I threw a little do, in honour of the pending demise of my carpet, which is a survivor from the 70s refit of Goldbergs Department Store, Tollcross. The owner of all four of the apartments in our stair was a renovator and refitter, and gifted this flat with daily department store joy for the past few decades. In the 80s, Goldbergs had come to look like this:

The carpet is not only going because of its horrendous purple and red patterning, like a sea with blotches of bright vomit swirled with a "G". Also contributing are the dog sized hole, an entirely separated middle join, and the trapdoor-like cut0ut sections that can be lifted up and put back down if you so please. I've therefore negotiated its demise with my landlady, to take place over the next couple of weeks.

The premise of the party was thus to dress either 70s, or carpet. A couple of the guys did both, with open necked shirts - door prizes (booby prizes?) for them. The dress code wasn't strictly enforced, but it helps set an atmosphere, right? Some 70s funk streaming radio from the internet set the rest of the mood, along with a potent Midori Illusion punch bowl.

A local charity shop contributed a horrendous purple and red shirt in dazzling test-pattern, to match the carpet. It was wrong, and is now gifted on.

The dependable international crew got the party started.

Every good theme party needs a posing section:
Luke and Ariane...

Axier, in his "new" Armani white trousers and paisley shirt and tie...

The smoking Angel with stamina, Dawn...

Luke (keeping the posing section alive, shock!) ...

Then, the slap and tickle section. Highlight was Michelle, finding Clemens' tickley nurples.

People also drank, and talked, as you might expect, but these aren't such photographically noteworthy activities. There was a spurt of Year 9 ballroom dancing, and some sharing of Baileys, and new acquaintances struck between folks who hadn't previously met.

Carmen arrived with her three visitors from Spain, Nuria, Irene and Esti,

And Kat, one of the two Waterpoint leaders at Beltane 2008, graciously popped in after a day's work.

Nicci arrived with entourage Bernie and Erin in a blaze of hazy glory and activity,

but faded and spent the majority of her evening catching up on overdue shut-eye.

All in all, a damn fine party. I'm getting to like this party business.

Views from my flat

Edinburgh put on a nice rainbow on Saturday:

the view from my window.

Prague - crappest weekend away EVER

Well, my much-anticipated trip to Prague turned out to be one my crappest weekends ever. Do excuse this, my most self-indulgently whingey post ever.

Dot point summary:

• My Friday night plane trip to Prague was delayed by an hour, and I was sat amidst a dozen or so drunk, ugly, post-teen Scottish guys on a cheap beer weekend, who constantly shouted repeated, short, buffoonish songs and harrassed the air hostesses.
• Eventually, I saved my sanity by moving. The Czech girl I sat next to further up the plane warned me about the extreme prevalence of pick-pocketing and petty theft in Prague, including them snatching money from your wallet if you open it.
• Eduardo, my travel companion from Madrid, had been pick-pocketed by the time I arrived, and the buses and metro had finished for the night.
• Eduardo was destroyed by a very recent broken heart, though did a good job of holding his head up.
• The room we'd hired was very central, right near one of the more famous Prague monuments in old town, Charles Bridge. So central, in fact, that it was over the tram line on the main street. The vibrations of trams went where earplugs couldn't help. It was also the main thoroughfare for the UK tourists expressing their alcoholism on their path to bed.
• To my surprise, I spent all of Saturday nauseous in bed, vomiting into a rubbish bin, and feverish. I was nauseous for the rest of the holiday, and only once did I consume something other than white boiled rice, crackers or tonic water. Eduardo had nursemaiding duties all day. It's the third time out of three that he's travelled to see me or travelled with me that I've been really sick.
• The one thing I consumed that wasn't listed above was a set meal in a pub, one of the worst meals I've ever eaten. See below for an image and a litany of complaints.
• Sunday afternoon, I felt well enough to venture out. It turns out, on my third day there, Prague is a very beautiful city. We went up the Old Town Hall tower for great views, popped into a little modern art gallery, and visited the church where the Infant Jesus of Prague is kept, a birthday promise for Auntie Bill's 96th birthday. It was a very saddening, I felt a long way away from them. We then walked to the Strakov Monastery, which was 15 minutes from closing. We then went and ate aforementioned worst-ever meal.
• Worn out, I rested for a few hours and waited for the nausea to reside, before catching a taxi to a club I'd intended to go to with Eduardo on Saturday night. It was the standard club, though I was entertained by people shameless dancing facing themselves in the full length mirror. A third of a beer and a lot of cigarette smoke later, I felt nauseous again, and we headed home reasonably early. Both ways we had to confirm taxi fares beforehand, as the taxi drivers like to treat the tourists to triple or more the correct fares.
• Monday was spent exploring Prague's beautiful Jewish quarter, with a ticket to all the old synagogues. I'd have to say that Prague is the most beautiful city I've been to. Edinburgh has a lot of stately, old-world architecture, but Prague is more recent, colourful and accessibly aesthetic. We saw how yet another city's Jewish population was persecuted through time and then massacred. The interior of one of the synagogues was stunning, and a collection of torah pointers was novel and beautiful.
• We packed our bags before heading for the metro to go to the museum. The transit police were plundering the tourists, and we were fined 42 pounds for not having valid tickets. That was pretty awful, especially because Eduardo was doing the talking, and wasn't realising that they were threatening to escort us to the police station for an exciting 420 pound fine if we didn't dish out cash on the spot. The museum, when we arrived, was just closing. On the way back, I left a trilingual note warning of ticket inspectors below stuck to the ticket validators with chewing gum, my civil action giving me some small satisfaction.
• When we reached our room, Eduardo talked about how destroyed his heart was, and we caught a taxi to the airport.
• In the airport, I realised I didn't know where my credit card was, even after ransacking every pocket. I thought the transit police may have stolen it when I was emptying out my pockets looking for tickets. (When I arrived in Glasgow, I found it in a coin purse, not in my pockets or wallet.)
• Two babies across the aisle screamed deafeningly nearly the entire way home from Prague to Glasgow. I was sat next to a Very Important Person who was too good for the rules of the normal people on the plane, who drank seven little bottles of wine and then decided to befriend me, telling me about the importance of his work for a global firm, his penthouse for two months that he was hanging about in Glasgow, how he hadn't slept since Thursday, his girlfriends around the world, and the rates they charged. I spent a good portion of the flight home crying into the plane window, feeling very sorry for myself. About three hours and two bus trips after touchdown at Glasgow, I was back home in Edinburgh.

If the nausea, vomiting and heartbreakingly heartbroken companion weren't enough to really set a scene for a basically awful weekend, the rest of the details sure rounded things out. All in all, one of my worst weekends ever, in a really beautiful city.

Some illustrations for you.

First, the flat.

Bara Basikova may be Czech Cindy Lauper. I don't when she did her thing. The poster below adorned the entrance hall. Also featured in the flat was a calendar featuring her cigarette sponsorship.


The Tardis shower in the middle of the "room with own bathroom".


The traffic queues behind the tram to drive under our room. Footpath of the Drunks, to left.


The shtoonk-bouquet of this collection of a hundred spices greeted my stomach every time I came back to the flat.


The view from the Old Town Hall.


Some eastern European fashion brightens up your day.


The Infant Jesus of Prague has an ornate shrine.


The worst-ever meal - slices of sponge-loaf, pork-something dumpling in cheap brown sauce, nastily pickled cabbage, brown lettuce, and a yuk slice of citrus fruit. And the desert we'd been hoping would clean our palate was vaguely off cream with another yuk slice of citrus fruit.


Cathedral in Prague castle, by night - very beautiful.


The almost surreal beauty of streets in the old Jewish quarter.


Me in my free skull cap at the Old-New Synagogue.


The elaborate glittering interior of the Spanish Synagogue.


The VIP at my side was struggling to cope with ceaselessly SCREECHING babies behind him across the aisle, as much as I was.


My weekend in the Prague, The End.

Warming party

Marika, Sharon and I

had a party on Saturday.

My mob ended up in my room in the crush - it's nice to have a room so big it can fit a lounge room.


Jem's Christmas package mascot, the blow-up fish (still waiting to be christened) got plenty of love.



Someone created modern art in our toilet.


My room wasn't too worse for wear the morning after.

But the kitchen - as someone once said, what a rude awakening, the house looked like a break-in :D



The party's highlight, the unclaimed falsies we discovered in the linen cupboard, were rather dejected that their time in the spotlight was over.

Nice done, now Marseille and its surrounds

Nice was just lovely. There was a superb cheese taster plate, with other-worldly Camembert, and a superb stinky soft cheese called Reblochon. Please start looking for it in Melbourne for me, and if you don't find it, get the demand started!

My day in St Paul de Vence and Vence was a bit of a disaster. I saw a couple of superb galleries though, the Maeght Foundation had stunning architecture and a great collection including some Miro that I'd seen a couple of years back in Barcelona. Another free one nearby showcased the drawings for concept mega-art - covering rivers with cloth, making monoliths in Saudi Arabia from oil barrels. But the Chagall-designed chapel in Vence was hugely under restoration, and the Matisse chapel was closed. Poo. Then there were too few remaining buses to make it worthwhile going back to St Paul de Vence, shame.

St Tropez had a lovely beach, with a bathing platform moored out in the water and lots of 40 year old boobs.

I've started learning Spanish with an audio CD during my travels, it's going great guns.

Met a crazy-cool woman in a bar in Nice, likely in her 40s, who I drank Champagne with, but I think I was accused of being a gigolo when I was walking with her in the street to a (great!) nightclub nearby - she grabbed my hand and rushed us off, saying she didn't like the people who'd spoken to us.

Been in Marseille a couple of days now. Went to Aix-en-Provence (after a morning spent doing washing, glamour) and hung out with a lovely local there who showed me around the town. Will definitely have to try that again. Spent yesterday in Marseille with three Japanese room-mates, up hill to the spectacular view and church Notre Dame, and gormandised with cakes and almond croissants.

Just off now to Avignon now with the one remaining Japanese guy, Yuuki.

Nice

Hi folks! Brief update.

I spent a month in Edinburgh enjoying the festival, spent a fortune on shows and expensive festival drinks. I met some fun folks, though more toward the end of the month - there was a fair bit of wandering around with two or three hours to kill between shows and not much to do, which dampened my sense of festivity at times. After the Festival finished, the place calmed down a bit, and I happened into some nice circles of friends, which it turned out all interlaced with each other. I hung out at Yasmin and Mat's, Kelly's, Martin's and Axier's, and hung out with Anna, Anna, Helen and Nicci.

I spent four nights in Glasgow at a hostel. Contrary to its international reputation as a gritty industrial city, it's full of beautiful buildings and was lovely. It was interesting to walk around and attempt to pick if people were actually speaking English. The accent has an "I'm throttling myself" element to it. Glasgow hosted two international industry fairs at the end of the 1800s, so the museum was in an extremely glamorous building. The art nouveau design from Mackintosh and friends from the early 1900s was a highlight, and great to see that women's design contributions were well represented. Martin came over from Edinburgh and joined me for the last couple of nights in Glasgow, and we had a blast.

I flew from Edinburgh to Nice on Saturday, and Nice is everything you'd want in a holiday. The hostel is a megahostel, not conveniently located, but otherwise fantastic. They picked me up from the Nice airport, for example, and I didn't even have to speak French to request it. In Nice, the Matisse gallery was a wonderful showcase of his work, and very inspiring. So is the icecream store in the old town - I had two bowls so far, one "old lady" flavoured (orange blossom, lavender, rose) and one novelty flavoured (almond, cactus, Corona beer). I've travelled from my Nice base to Eze Village, Monte Carlo in Monaco, Antibes beach, and am off today to Vence and St Paul de Vence, most visited village in France and home to many Impressionist artists.

I'm planning to head to Marseille in the next couple of days, to explore and then use as a base for Avignon, Aix-en-Provence, and whatever else may come.

Hugs to all!
Luke

Fringe reviewing

Guess who's landed a gig reviewing Edinburgh Fringe Festival events, thanks to a chance meeting? My pal Yasmin advised it's due to good karma, because we travelled out of our way to buy free range eggs.

All the shows you can eat, free! My reviews will be appearing at www.hairline.org.uk.

To Edinburgh! - 31 July to Aug 1

Annie scooped me up out of my predictable last minute rushing around and took me in to the airport, and I had a pop-in visit there from Cheng - not something I've benefitted from in the past! Year-away farewells are hard :(

Cattle class from Melbourne to Hong Kong wasn't fun - surly service and dreadful "food". I was sitting with a 20 year old Scottish boy Chase, and a pouty, grown-up 17 year old northern Italian girl Renata. I took a couple of Annie's over-the-counter sleeping pills and a swig of scotch and drifted off into squishy delirium. Renata hopped off the plane and was sorely disappointed to find that Hong Kong wouldn't accept Australian dollars for the coffee she was determined to get. I took her in as a guest to the Qantas Club lounge for her coffee.

Hong Kong from the air looked remarkable. I only thought to take this picture too late, when most of the best images had flown by. After take-off, the grouped clusters of identical tall buildings around the bay looked like silicon memory chips stuffed into the ground, nothing like buildings I've seen before.


To my delight, at check-in, I found that I'd been upgraded to Business Class for the 13 hour leg from Hong Kong to Heathrow. YES! I had a 50% wider reclining cocoon seat with the electronic works,

noise-cancelling ear-covering headphones, an extensive and delicious wine and spirits list, lip balm and moisturisers in a designer case, would you like some pyjamas sir, will you have the steak or the snapper, can I make you a toasted roast beef and caramelised onion panini...

I arrived at Heathrow feeling much less beaten up than I'd anticipated.

But how DOES your body make that STINK in the air, which infests your clothes so abominably? The first time I travelled to London two years ago, I had thought the English woman next to me was the source of the odour until I got off the plane, and had been cursing her the entire trip.

I treated myself to a guilt-free marathon shower at Heathrow's British Airways lounge. Kevin from Deloitte would LOVE that lounge. I accumulated some fancy biscuits to keep me company on my travels.

The BA plane from Heathrow to Edinburgh was delayed, and I had almost 5 hours to kill from arrival at Heathrow to departure. Yet another meal on the plane - after all this endless eating and only some secretive yoga stretching at each airport stopover for exercise, I sure had my share of the famous Heathrow Injection by the time I'd reached Edinburgh. There were framed pictures of cities hung on the front walls of the plane cabin on the BA flight, and announcements sounded like they spoken in fast forward. My luggage arrived in Edinburgh, yay! Sheesh, ALL the luggage - I had to acknowledge a woman I overheard commenting on it to her partner! :P

The convenient three pound bus from Edinburgh airport to the city centre took me past riches of old buildings, domestic, scholarly and religious. When people had been telling me Edinburgh was beautiful, I had the wrong scale of beauty in my imagination. It's stunning. I was saying, "Wooow!" out loud as we drove. I was glad I had the pamphlet of the bus stops, as, yep, I couldn't quite make out what the driver was saying when he announced them.

I got the WARMEST welcome from Yas and her bright and cheery fiance Mat on my arrival. They talked about the excitement of the pending Edinburgh festival season and how they'd be introducing me to all their mates. I might have a guitar teacher in Yas' best friend Alex.

They made gnocchi, and we cracked open the Whyte and Mackay Glasgow 13 year old scotch. What a fabulous way to start a stint in a new home town.


And this is the shared backyard allotments (vocab?) as seen out their loungeroom window. You don't see this out of windows in flats in Melbourne.


Well, I'm off to see things, after a sound first night's sleep - walkabouts in Edinburgh, some random meetings hopefully. Time to get acquainted with my new town!

Love to all back home.