Life is like a hand of cards - sometimes you get dealt a killer hand and you win, sometimes you get dealt a shit hand and you lose, sometimes you get dealt something and you don't get to win or lose.

Lost a lot of money in Monaco today. There was a message there I'm sure. I lost a lost of marignal hands and when I actually hit on the hand, the dealer was hiding in his little hole (played Caribbean stud). To top it off I lost my wallet at a toll booth on the way home... The only wise thing now is to release stress and the Roman toga party and 1euro booze is doing just the trick

Life is like a deck of cards - the Joker turns up more times than you think.


P.S.
Fellow men, Communists, women

Be good to your Momma

Left Venice two days ago rather regretfully I must say. Such a fantastic city and a tourist's paradise. Drove through Italy today and tonight ended up in Nice. Very nice scenery and packed with people. Hopefully will have time to see Monto Carlo (and punt??) before heading back to Southern Italy.

Even the Grannies drive fast here in Europe. At 150km I'm still getting overtaken by balding men and Grannies in Volkswagons.

David & other Italian sights

In Florence today. Spent 2.5hrs of my life on the a 30°C sidewalk queing to see the famous Micheanglo's statue David. Some guy tried to cut the line towards the end and XYZ inspired incited the whole line into riot level aggression at this tragic little French man in his little red shirt (felt sorry for his kid though) with which ended his ambitions. The indignation, the injustice! I think the truth was everyone was just bored and pissed off we'd lost so much of our life sitting on pidgeon shit and getting slow baked in the sun.

Yesterday we saw the 'field of miracles' (aka. the Leaning Tower of Pisa and everything surrounding it) and paid €15 and waited 2hrs to climb it for 20mins... It leaned, and there were good views but that was about it. There was much more fun to be had seeing what photos one could take with the tower (coming to the photo section soon - The Monster of Pisa)

I was impressed by the Vatican city, the Pantheon and Rome in general. But so far it seems Italy is filled with high entrance fees and wait times for otherwise mediocre (but 'must do') sights. Another thing the pizza here is DEFINATELY NOT AS GOOD as Lygon St pizza or even Dominos for that matter.


P.S.
A word of advice. If you want to see David buy a postcard or if that isn't enough, see the plaster of paris version instead.

The Pickpocket

A few days ago in Rome some gypsie looking guys tried to pick pocket me. I think one guy tried as I was getting onto the bus (I only felt a nudge) but failed. A little later I noticed later the same guy stand close to me on the bus with a couple of his buddies closing off most of the view and try again. This time I actually saw a hand touch the move downwards under a jumper he was carrying almost as if he was trying to scratch his leg. I was wearing a baggy pair of shorts and saw his hand actually move a little into the pocket but the wallet was too far down and I was staring hard at him. Unfortunately at that moment we got to a stop and they quickly got off as I started abusing them.

Goes to show:

1) Being short and wearing baggy pants isn't so bad
2) Being bald is not only cool on the head and saves on haircuts it also helps scare off the gypsies
3) Italians don't only go down in soccer, they do it on buses and on the streets too

Trip Highlights - my surviving All Stars.

I´ve been lazy. My aim of keeping a blog and journal of my travels in Europe had fallen by the wayside early in the trip approximately 120 empty beer bottles ago and neither memory nor will is enough to resurrect it. My last entry in my journal was a summary of my travels in Morocco about a month ago and well... this is only my second blog entry. So I´ve decided now to compile a Trip Highlights - my surviving All Stars. For ease they will be chronological order and in point form. Here goes.



Early Berlin (April 18th to April 25th)

• Arrive in Berlin after 36hrs flying drunk on beer and spirits (don´t take United Airlines - their idea of air hostesses is 60yr old men who think they´re women and 60ton women who are too Woman. This begs the question why the weight restrictions on these planes?? Just fire a couple of the big ones)
• Ran around the Pergammon museum seven times
• First taste of Fine German dining - the curry wurst + beer combo
• Oooh aaaah at the Berliner Dome, my first encounter with European churches
• Realize beer is cheaper than bottled water... give up drinking water
• Lose my first camera

Amsterdam (April 25th to April 28th?)

• First afternoon enjoyed the ´modern´ Amsterdam men´s toilet (the Tree v2.0) - a sheet of metal wrapped around a pole a couple of times. Later ate a weak space muffin (0.2g) at Bulldogs Coffee Shop whilst watching the lady next door prepare to Open Shop (at night). XYZ encourages me to eat more cake
• See The Amsterdam Sex Museum and look at depraved historical Jap art, the predecessors to Hentai - old men only, no monsters
• Visit a really cool tulip farm and ride XYZ around on a two seater bike. See first sight of windmills and visit Leiden, a fantastic traditional Holland town with the best tasting waffles I´ve had this trip
• Go on a ´Grand Holland sights´tour. XYZ doesn´t like the tour so we skip the afternoon half and argue with the tour office to refund us our money
• The tour office gives up and gives us canal cruise and Van Gogh museum tickets. We celebrate by visiting Greenhouse Effect Coffee Shop. I convince XYZ to try the cake and we each order a slice, me banana and her chocolate (1g a piece). Head to docks and jump on first canal cruise. Halfway through the cruise shit gets out of hand. XYZ goes numb and I start laughing at cog jokes, really freaking out the couple sitting across from us. We sit for another hour on the boat but the effects of cake last until the next morning
• Give up drugs and go back to beer

Still more to come next time

Europe Trip

Europe... seat of the Western Civilization and a steaming brewpot of cultures and people. I began my travels in Europe mid April, 2007 with the view of seeing as much of it as I could within 3 months. So far I've travelled through a fair part of central Europe - Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Czech Republic and a few interesting places in the South - Morocco, Portugal, Spain. In the next couple of days I will be moving from the Czech Republic to Vienna in Austria and onto Budapest in Hungary. There is the slight chance that I will be visiting Switzerland after that, though given the tight schedule - flight from Stuttgart, Germany to Rome, Italy on June 19th, this may not be possible. From Italy onwards I intend to fly to Cypress and travel via the islands to the Greece peninsular. By the time I finish there it will be late July and there will be a flight waiting for me to Shanghai, China from Frankfurt, Germany and then finally back into Australia where a job and Life awaits.

Travelling is a step out of reality.

I found that going through so may places at such a quick speed is like flicking through the National Geographic and seeing only the browns and the greens that is Africa - you get the feeling but not the full substance. As a speed traveller you're only ever there to see a few notable landmarks, ohhh and ahhh at a couple of cultural relics and talk to other English travellers - usually Canadians. If you're lucky you'll be able to sit at a cafe and absorb some of the atmosphere. If you're unlucky you'll be hit smack in the face by some local filth thrown at you in a foreign language by a socially maladjusted individual. A lot of the time an encounter like that is enough to colour your entire experience and memory of that place and for some people is enough to develop into a prejudice not only against that individual, but against his whole family and all his countrymen. That's why its always good to stow away pride in your backpack and keep handy a phrase book of common local abuse to dish out with a cheery grin and a 'fuck off, don't spoil my day' attitude. Fortunately most locals are friendly towards travellers and I've never stopped being grateful and surprised at the lengths they'll go to help out a lost alien like myself.

I sometimes wonder what life is like for people in the places I visit. The beggar on the street, the harried business man, the persistent market vendor, the jolly drunk. Not only their lifestyle but also the internal makeup of these people. One of the questions that I always ask myself is: are we really all that different? From what I've observed thus far I don't think we are. I suspect that at the base level we're all pretty similar, driven by the same sort of love, hate, ambition, etc forces. I think the perceiveable differences mainly lie in society´s preachings on outward appearances which determine embarrassment levels. Underneath that at the mid level things like education, religion affects the tolerance of for new ideas/culture and morality, etc and this gets thrown together into some sort of belief system. But at the surface level I think it´s just about what looks right to the rest of the people.

The world and its people without the dressing is a salad. All we taste is the sauce.