Thomas Friberg's Travel Diary

Paris for the n'th time

2013-09-28T18:24:00.000+08:00

We got a brilliant night time bus tour as we rolled in to Paris and to the hostel. While I'd booked ahead, I got stuck with having to swap back and forth between hostels. I started at the prescribed one, being the same St Christopher's I went to with Madde back when I had my first visit from London. I joined a roommate from the Netherlands down in the bar for a quiet night with mediocre Parisian De Mory beer. We accepted the hospitality of a rather drunken Frenchman in the bar who shouted a round of yager-bombs before heading up to bed. Hostel charm.

I wasn't going to be denied one more time at the opera house so I went to Opera Garnier first thing in the morning, getting my booking for the tour. There was some time to wait so I strolled down to the Tulleries Gardens to read under a tree for a while. On the way back, I joined some Eminem groupies as they waited for the notorious rapper to emerge from the exclusive hotel. I only stayed long enough to get a glimpse of his swaggering entourage but it was fun to know what the hype was all about.

The interior of the Opera Garnier was absolutely stunning, with all of the glitz and glamour that the art had assumed at the Napoleonic time when it was built. The staircases were built for flowing dresses and the building was set up for a structured procession of proceedings from room to room as the drawn out social event of the opera went on.

When we walked in to the main interval hall, I was absolutely dazzled. A room to rival the hall of mirrors in Versailles for sure. I didn't know so much about how it was done back then but I found out how the social convention was for women and men and how different it was to how we go now. Women stayed in the boxes and the men went out to conduct their business, following strict conventions in courtship and presentations when arriving at the house. In the main auditorium, at least they had the fantastic fresco by Cézanne, bringing colour, life and modernity in to an otherwise regimented space.

I took the afternoon nice and slow with a meandering walk to the Grand Palais, then going over the road to the Petit Palais where there was an all sorts museum with artefacts and art from all over the ages of France. While walking through the Petite Palais, I couldn't help but stop and wait a while. I sat there and absorbed the low rumble from the nearby Cafe where despite the amplification and echo of the tall vaulted veranda, the lush green courtyard lapped up the sound, transforming it in to something all the more soothing. The sky was dull with occasional patches of blue jumping at the eye but all was really made better by the long green banana leaves and a smatter of yellowing leaf reminding me that summer was indeed coming to an end.

That night I went out to the Eiffel tower to start a bike tour by night that I'd booked through Busabout. Strangely, by the time I got there, the groups were being divided up but when we went to show them our receipts, it appeared that our bookings hadn't been properly recorded and there wasn't space for all of us. The group of girls wanted to stick together so they left the spot for me, leaving quite disgruntled with the company and Busabout for giving them the false assurance that they had their spot saved.

I helped lead the bike convoy full of terrified riders over the hostile Paris roads as they were familiarized with the commands from the tour guide for single file, mob formation and bunching up. The tour had much less talking and information than I expected and for someone like me who would happily take to the roads at night anyway, it wasn't much of a novelty. We stopped for some good but terribly expensive gelato for a good 20 minutes and I started to doubt the quality of the tour but when we stopped by the ferry terminal on the side of the Seine, I was happy that we would get to see some sights from the water as well. The highlight was cracking open a good number of bottles of red over the course of the voyage, finding a funny

I had moved to a new hostel for the 2nd of 3 nights having not managed to get the middle night at my original hostel. I stuck with the St Christopher's brand and tried out their new hostel near Gare du Nord, a good 25 minute walk from the original. I made a new friend over breakfast we agreed on heading straight out to Musée d'Orsay to check out my favourite brand of art, French Impressionist. Sam was a casino cocktail waitress and body builder/sculptor from Alberta and it was interesting to hear about her rather different way of life. We got on well and after a good couple of hours of walking through the gallery, we both sat down to relax over lunch in the gallery. Having seen one of the waiters pass by with a decadent mille feuille, we decided to order and share one before heading back out to the gallery. There wasn't all that much time left in the day when we left the gallery and I had to head off to change hostel once again to be ready for the early pick up the next morning.

I rushed out of the hostel with some juice and a left over baguette that I still had packed from breakfast. I was on the run to the Bastille where I hoped to catch the performance of Lucia di Lammermoor they had that night. I was told that if you got to the ticket office 60 minutes before the show started, you could often get discount tickets but I was only there 45 minutes before after a long check in ordeal at the hostel. The line moved smoothly but by the time I got towards the front, number 4 in line, the tickets ran dry… Bitterly disappointed, I talked to the scalpers and looked out for any people who were trying to sell any leftover tickets from partners who hadn't been able to come. The options were thinning and I went back to a couple of scalpers but wasn't happy with their price, trying to haggle down by playing the student card and since I knew the market well enough but he knew too well that there were still enough people around to price me out of the market. There was one more guy with a ticket but even with the show having just started with the lock out in place, his deal was just a little too good to be true and having no way to check that his A4 print out ticket was genuine, I think I dodged a bullet by saying no.

I was rather desperate having come so close that I stayed outside the opera, waiting for the unlikely possibility that someone would be waiting around for their +1 to arrive or cancel, allowing me to step in and buy the otherwise un-used ticket. My luck was running thin and as it came to 20 minutes in to the first act, still outside, I asked a couple of open looking people as they left the house what they thought I could do, suggesting that I may be able to buy a ticket from someone if they left the opera having not liked the first half but they didn't give me too much encouragement as the line-up was star studded that night.

40 minutes in to the first half and I was almost ready to go home when I greeted and struck up conversation with a man as he left the main doors. As it turned out, he was the director of the French National Opera Young Artist's program. I asked him about the program and learned about it spanning all of the main opera houses in Paris and not just the Bastille or Garnier and just how many were currently on the program. He was very sympathetic to my plight that night and thought I should be able to see the opera so he took me inside to the ticket desk where he spoke quickly in French to the ladies before writing something on a small square of letterhead paper which would soon act as my VIP ticket. He told me to take the lift up to the 3rd floor where I could wait for the break in acts when an usher could show me in. I greeted the usher as I wondered towards the nearby late-comer's video screen but when I explained the situation, he just winked and lead me to the heavy auditorium doors. He showed me inside and pointed out that I could take up a position on the stairs of this upper balcony.

The second half of the act was in full swing and I could see everything through the thin balustrade in front of me. The Chorus was seated in a stark semi circle on stalls set 4 metres above the action below as long ramps broke up the stage and moved around between scenes. The singers were top notch and while the soprano was very different to the Emma Mathews version of Lucia I was involved with in Perth, it had a different sound that still made a lot of sense of the crazy character. I spent the interval exploring some more of that modern house. It was completed in 1990 with an obvious mission to make sight and sound accessible to every seat in the house. It wasn't the traditional horse shoe shape at all and with a capacity of close to 2700 it was obviously a house for some pretty big voices.

Having been told at the close of the first half by a couple of lovely old opera ladies (who I think were staff from somewhere else in the house) that I'd have to find a better place off the stairs to sit. I told them about by little white ticket and exclaimed that I could go and get a much better seat than where I had been before. I went down to the dress circle and the usher then told me that I could take any seat I wanted that wasn't currently used. I felt very privileged, especially considering the alternative of still being on the road side either attempting to get in in vain or having given up.

The opera closed with a fantastically supportive rupture of applause, making it a real night to remember and leaving me with the lesson that a friendly face and a polite tone can take you a long way when coupled with hopeful persistence.

I took the train back to the bar strip to catch up with Samantha for the evening session back at ye ol' faithful, O'Sullivans. It was still early so we took a couple of pints and then sat down, watching two classic Italian boys eye off people around the room. We had a lively chat about the transparency of it all but as the night wore on, we made guesses on who they would hook up with that night. It was that sort of place in a way. After a good dance and general wind up of the night, we caught a taxi back to her hostel (the people who lurk around Gare du Nord are bad news) then I carried on back home to mine.

Yet another early morning bus ride out but before, I took the time to enjoy the fruit I'd stocked up on before. Some banana slices to compliment my nutella baguettes in the morning was all I needed to brave the long ride to Bern.

Wine country

2013-09-24T17:53:00.000+08:00

I didn't really know what to expect from Bordeaux and I think one part of me thought would be a town that was really just defined by the vineyards surrounding it. To an extent, that was correct but there was a lot I was to find out about the city in the two short days I had there.

Lesson 1: There are no hostels. Apart from a dodgy place pretty far away from the cultural centre of the town, there were no hostels. This was a provincial sort of place and my last minute approach to booking wasn't really the best in this case. What they did have were lots of little economy hotels. The bus stop hotel didn't have any cheap single rooms left so with a hint to check down the road, I hung around at the reception door until the host decided to turn up. I was in luck with a little double bedded room for me to indulge in after a good number of sleepless nights in Spain.

Lesson 2: Nothing is open on Sundays. I went out to explore as the sun made its way to the horizon but quickly realized that there was something I was missing about this place. What day was it? It only seemed relevant when I found that most shops and even restaurants would be closed that night. I settled for a pizza joint, taking the steaming box back up to my room for an early night in, in the first private room I had had in a long time.

Lesson 3: There really isn't too much in the town of Bordeaux and while the town is quite interesting historically, there aren't too many good places to witness it.

Lesson 4: The town is full of students and while it's certainly a walkable place, a bike is a pretty good idea since it's quite long and narrow.

The following morning, I found my camera was showing the final stages of a slow death with the screen degrading to a final darkness and the lens just failing to extend when turning on. It was time for a quick run through the local fnac (the only thing open on a Sunday coincidentally), finding myself a little shockproof camera that seemed a little more suited to my new phone-less lifestyle. I had gotten in to the habit of replacing my phone maps with pictures taken of paper maps and tourist information boards at tourist bureau's. It worked out pretty well from place to place. Whoever needed a phone anyhow.

I joined a winery tour in the afternoon which just seemed to be the thing that you do in Bordeaux. After a bus trip out through the burbs and out to country, we arrived at our first Chateaux called Chateaux Segonzac, learning about some of the quirks of marketing wine out of Bourg or Cote de Bordeaux and getting that name on the label of your bottles. One of the things I liked about the first tour was that it took us through the industrial parts where all of the hoppers and separators were, showing the big concrete vats where the skins and juice would be mixed to bring the red colour to the wine. I didn't know that the early process of wine making depended so much on re-mixing the skins through the wine vats before the product gets strained, barrelled and cellared. I now knew that apart from the type of grape, the major distinction between a white, rose and red is the difference between no hours and a weeks' worth of skin mixing.

We were shown around the bottling areas and shown the big racks of aging bottles. Not big compared to the monster Torres winery I saw out of Barcelona but it was fun to get closer to the action. I got to know a couple of German exchange students living in Bordeaux on the bus between that and the next destination being the very cosy Chateaux Falfas, enclosed by high walls and a well over-grown garden. Perfumed roses took our noses before we delved in to the dark cellar for a dimly lit wine tasting.

The girls invited me to a little pub quiz night that evening but they were off to freshen up and meet some friends for dinner so I set out to find this killer crepe place I'd heard about. I sat down by myself to a little table at a place called Crepe d'Angel and tried out my ordering and not long after, my first savoury crepe ever was on the plate. I am a now a convert to the crepe but I still couldn't leave without a chocolate sweet crepe. I took a light jog down the road with my desert in hand, knowing that without a mobile, coming late could spell the end of my evening. At the agreed time I sat outside the tourist bureau. 15 minutes past the time and my impression of German timing was down the chute but without anything to replace the wait in the meantime, I persisted and just as well because, 30 minutes the girls emerged, all apologetic with stories from dinner.

We roamed the streets, deciding how to eat an oozing crepe elegantly, eventually finding the bar. House wine was cheap and good as what seemed like whole Erasmus exchange crowd flowed in to the little bar. The quiz questions dissipated into the noise as the night drew on. The three of us took in the sights on the river bank, including a mirror-like water bed, reflecting the glowing Haussian architecture as if it was inverted and floating in the air. I enjoyed a good sleep in the next morning, making the most of my big room before catching the bus out to Paris via Tours before Lunch.

Towards Basque country: San Sebastian

2013-09-22T17:44:00.000+08:00

Some friends were on the bus that morning out of Madrid, asking about my unlikely date but like me, they were hardly surprised that it had fell through. On the way to San Sebastian we were made aware of all of the little differences that separated the middle of Spain to 'Basque country'. The fact that they had a completely unique language, on land with a financially separated administration from the french and Spanish authorities that have jurisdiction over the small provinces. In Madrid, they had tapas, in San Sebastian they would have pintxos instead of tapa (the main difference being the toothpick stabbed through the bread, deriving the name), zurito instead of cerveza and kalimotxo for the half half mix of win and beer you would often find at bars.

Back in Madrid, Katie had told me about this place she was staying in San Sebastian so having not booked anything until the bus ride over, I thought I would give it a shot. Katie and I got off the bus together, heading to Rodger's hostel, well away from the Busabout options (which had really gotten some horror story reviews). Katie's sense of direction was simply rubbish though, taking wrong turns almost as soon as we got off the bus. I ended up having to take the helm, going in to a couple of shops with our tiny map, pointing and using a couple of words in Spanish before realising that they really did just speak Basque in many places. We finally found the place, stealthily hidden behind an apartment building door with a little name tag on the doorbell directory. We were in the old town while the rest of the Busabouters were in the mass market hostel a good deal north of us. After asking Katie where she had taken me to, she explained that most of the hostels in the old town took this format, composing of 4-6 rooms on a single floor of a building. I could only end up getting the first couple of nights in the place but there was always a good chance of spaces emerging as people changed plans and left their bonds in the hands of the owners.

We went out to find some dinner and joined up with some of the busabout group who had taken the recommendation of the guide. The food looked incredible and the format was somewhat different to what I had experienced elsewhere in Spain. Tbe pre-prepared pintxos occupied the bar counters, ready for individual selection and purchase. At 3EUR per piece with some going for more, it was not a place for a big evening meal. Katie and I retreated to a bar we had seen on the way with a Thursday night special on pintxos. Back at bar, we stocked up on tasty morsels and the beer to wash them down with. There was just enough space for some desert quality art food at the first place before we headed out to find some night life.

I followed the crowd over the river and we ended up at a crowded strip full of life. Bowing to a bus load of pressure, I gave busking a shot. I hoped that there were no Italians to boo as I started reeling off standards from the baritone repertoire. Coins started dropping in to a borrowed hat from people on the bus but soon I got the attention of some locals, not knowing what to thing about this random guy singing at the top of his lungs in the middle of the square, surrounded by a rowdy bunch of Aussies. The change ended up going to some communal drinks. I figured out why this place was so popular when I passed my mountains of coin shrapnel over the counter to a sighing tender in exchange for 6 beers. A smaller group of us wandered around for the next hour trying to find some place to kick on, finding ourselves eating birthday cake under lite rain. Finally, we ended up at this packed little one roomed place called be bop bar. I ended up saying hi to a bunch of local architecture students who I hung around for most of the night. Some drinks later and with tired feet from dancing, I made off with on of them, re-joining her cajoling friends an hour or so after to say farewell.

Katie and I traded stories of love and conquest from the last night over a late, absorbent breakfast. There was one thing I could think about doing that day to bring back consciousness and that was to go for a swim. San Sebastian is known as a prime location for surfers and it didn't disappoint. Cold and refreshing with some great waves to catch.

That was about all we could manage that night before the evening began once more. In that small 40 person hostel, the kitchen was small and homely and Marco would cook up a brilliant paella every second night. Drinking games too and it was just a stone's throw to Ezpala. Courtney and I met and had a very energetic night on the dance floor of that dark underground bar.

Another second hung over morning and I caught up with Katie for a familiar breakfast before heading up to the tall Jesus statue that watched over the old town from the peak of the adjacent hill. We found it best to walk off the spirits, urging each other to take more steps up the hill face. We were rewarded with panoramic views over both sides of San Sebastian, the beaches and the island sitting in the western bay. On talking about the last night, we decided to catch up with Courtney and her friend by the beach bearing street side candy but mobilelessness struck again and we just missed them.

The hostel opening I was hoping for didn't end up opening up, leaving me to move around the corner to an even smaller hostel composing of 4 quad bed bedrooms and an even smaller kitchen. Rodger's hostel seemed like the surfer's choice with paraphernalia scattered over the walls but to me, it was just a bed for that night. I already had my people over at my old hostel.

It was a weekend night and hunting for affordable food in such a food capital became very difficult. Delectable pintxos adorned the bar tops of every bar we saw and having missed lunch, we were up for a big meal. San Sebastian is such a wonderful destination for food with each bite being a pleasure and the sight of the next taste to come being even greater. On the down side, it is not a cheap place. With drinks being a good deal more expensive than your average over Spain and the preferred pintxos style being on a per portion basis, it is somewhere I would definitely come back to on a more adult budget. This being said, we settled for the franchise fixed prices of McDonalds.

Stocking up on a bottle each of 4EUR vodka (not intending at first to finish them...), it was back to the old hostel where Marco had another night in store for us all. We ended up at a nice little place which had a bit of a festival, open air concept, based on tokens. Either way, once the Macca's lining broke down, Katie and I were pretty out of it, finding ourselves preferring not to stand up for some time. We both met again the next morning at 7am while trudging in land to the bus pick up point. We had both unused tokens in various pockets and concluded eventually that I'd managed to lock myself in an automated bathroom, mistaking the 'delay exit' button for the one that lets you out, for the maximum 20 minutes while Katie headed back with Marco having not been able to find me.

By the sounds of it, San Sebastian had been more of a party stop than a cultural one for most of the others too. I felt like I knew the place and it was now on my re-visit list with the next destination now on the horizon. The bus ride over the boarder marked the end of my time in Spain with a new found fondness for this country that has so many more facets than I had expected. Having only had a glimpse of this country, it is now a top place to explore in the future. Having learned about the completely different regions in Catalonia, Valencia and Basque country made Spain a real surprise to me. With a national identity being to me a mix of creative flair, laid back life style and great food, I felt I had a lot to learn from the place. Till next time Spain.

Towards Basque country: Madrid

2013-09-19T16:32:00.000+08:00

A short walk from the bus an the drowsy Busabouters streamed into uHostel but I had other plans. This was another place I decided to avoid and down the road, I found the state run Hostel with the name I couldn't say which was immaculately fitted out. The internet had perfect reception in the rooms and the bathroom was refreshingly luxurious, making Madrid the top hostel so far.

After the general move in to the place, I joined the rabble once again on a trip to this tapas place called 100 Montaditos. This place was the best place for cheap drinks and was a bit of a franchise take on Tapas. We came to learn that Madrid was much more of a place for it than Barcelona not that this was the best place to find that out. Beers were 1.50 and the 100 different tapas varieties came in packages with names like "The Destroyer" and "Classica". Aside from the lame naming the place was a good start to the evening and the evening ended up kicking on way in to the morning with a trip to Maccas just around the corner from the 360 hostel belonging to some new found friends.

I went to catchup with Elenore, Katie and Lydia on another Sandemans walking tour. We walked around the city with Jose, out of Placa de Mayor, down towards the oldest restaurant in the world and then to the local 24hr chocolateria. Onward to the Royal palace and the opera before taking up Jose on his recommendation of a place called La Tiacebola. I guided the girls as the map reader and just as they thought all hope was lost and that the place was never to be found, we spotted the little old sign by the door. This was undoubtedly the best Spanish meal we had had up till then. Not only had Jose delivered on the tour but he had gone on to make the day for us. We dusted of a decent carafe of house wine and found our merry way to the Palace for a closer look. This, surprisingly, was actually the biggest Palace in Europe and offered some real treasures.

While it wasn't as consistent as say Versailles, it bettered the place in variety with the occasional instance where crazy creativity had taken over. Some rooms would fake it and some were over the top in a way that made you think that budget was low but that some artists would take it upon themselves to make a masterpiece. The highlight for me was definitely one relatively small room that we found where the wall wasn't covered in fresco, stuco or tapestry. It was covered in countless ceramic works, adorning the walls and coming out of them with green and turquoise leaves and cantilevered cornucopias. The roof was rich in texture and shape, changing shape as I moved around the room. The dining hall had a table to seat something like 100 people with the table settings immaculately measured. It was near closing time so we had just enough time to see the old school, in house palace chemist. Shelves stacked with elegant jars full of exotic spices and 'erbs made for a rather strange sight which had a weird sort of clinical feel. That evening was another tapas haunt with a rather different food policy.

All drinks came in 500mL plastic cups and there as really only one rule: If you still have something to drink, they'll get you more taps. I got one super sized beer and the surges of food started to come. It was clearly a good student and young person hang out as the food got noticeably more filling as the beer dried up. A great way to catch up with a big group of friends as when you finish eating, you've all already bought your drinks. No skwabble on paying for shared food. It was already built in to the drinks costs (and a beer really wasn't expensive anyway).

The main event of the night would be a flamenco show. We didn't get there particularly early which may have been an oversight as we got shunted down to a table down the end of one of the wings of the room. The rhythm was exquisite and the guitars looked a bit like they'd done that show a thousand times but the sound they made was still everything one would expect. Unfortunalty, the singer pitch didn't really satisfy but out of two singers, there was still plenty to love. It finished late so something brilliant came to mind: 24hour Churros. We made the trek across the town with hot chocolate in mind, not leaving the place till 2am.

I took a moment by myself the next morning to check out the famous Prado Gallery, walking just 20 minutes across this rather small capital city. The place was just choc-a-bloc full of Renaissance Spanish religious art and after that, it was full of the more crazy brand of art, edging closer to the surrealists. One curious work was a prelude to the Mona Lisa but a student of Leonardo. It had all of the hallmarks including the pose and the face but did not draw any attention. It was interesting to think of how close that painting was to the real deal in time and space. Of course there was a whole wing devoted to Goya which was packed full of tours and students alike. I had less than an hour to explore what could have consumed days but such is the beast of short term travel.

I joined the girls in the Parque del Retiro for lunch, taking in the warming sun and the space and silence afforded by an expansive city park. The sweet sound of unaccompanied violin filtered through the trees to compliment the last throws of our picnic. She played Bach's violin sonatas and partitas from memory and it was exquisite, I had been starved of good street music for so much of my time in Spain (a marked drop in quality when entering Spain actually) and she provided relief.

I talked to her after she played and learned about her move from Latvia to Spain and now to Switzerland where she had been playing in the orchestra belonging to Gideon Kramer, one of the true virtuosos of our time. I went bank to the group and they said I was obviously more interested in the music than them. They said I should ask her out which didn't really seem like a bad idea at the time. I said that I was going to see the Barber of Seville that night and that she may want to join. Funnily enough, she already had a ticket and was going with some friends. I had no phone and no method of contact but we arranged a place to meet at interval but having not been to the opera house before, soon after we said goodbye, I knew that we wouldn't meet again.

I headed down to the Teatro Real in time for 4pm to buy my last minute ticket as they sell them at 90% off in the hours before curtain open. I made it to the hostel to change and back in time to get a bite before the Opera started. Of course you have Largo al Fatotum in opening with Figaro boasting his wears. The house was big an although Figoro's voice was nice it didn't carry. Unfortunately he cracked a couple of times towards the end, setting a precedent for a relatively ordinary performance. The colours were bright and though the set was sparse, rainbow colours featured in the costumes and the final cast call was pretty. The orchestral pit was quite high and open, leaving me to wonder whether the fact that vocals sounded soft was due to the singers or the building, I did try to catch up with my Latvian friend at interval that night. Our rendezvous was to be on the second floor balcony facing the royal palace. Little did I know the size of this balcony. A VIP event consumed a segment of the balcony and the floor's bar, making it difficult to see all of the faces around the area. I thought of many reasons why I would not see her there, as it was a bit of an absurd idea in the first place and with half of the interval left, I went to explore the rest of the house. The interval food options being tapas rather than chips etc. looking like quite a good idea for the longer operas.

I left the opera feeling a little unsatisfied having not been impressed with the performance as I had been by other European performances and I had also missed the representative of those wonderful Bach violin sonatas. I decided to go and join a pub crawl at that time, the Spanish night still being young, I tried two venues I knew from adverts but those Madrid bars composed of this weird mix of bar and club where the music was too loud to talk but the light didn't seem right to dance. I was clearly more sober than many others at that point and couldn't really make friends or maybe just didn't want to. Some pub crawl guy tried to recruit me in to the crawl with a free armband, staying for a couple of free drinks before deciding that I just didn't seem in the mood for a night out.

I jogged up a couple of main roads, heading towards the hostel, not being a victim to those I saw prowling on the main road out of placa del Sol. The similarity it bore to La Ramblas in Barcelona the week before brought on an instinct to raise my senses and keep good distance in my jog home. It wasn't a time to be kind or friendly.

A Mediterranean Spain

2013-09-16T12:36:00.000+08:00

It was a big drive from Nice to Barcelona stopping in Avignon on the way. It looked like a pretty interesting town with a whole lot of Papal history behind it, so after the long drive, it was getting late. The bus arrived in Barcelona and stopped on a main road, leaving us to walk over, past a pretty considerable row of sex shops and finally on to the Be Sound Hostel which was one that I decided not to stay at and from the walk in and the tiny staircases up and as I saw the narrow little staircases up and down the hostel, I was pretty happy with my choice. I got myself on to their internet and figured out where my bed actually was then said goodbye on my walk up to the Barcelona St Christopher's Hostel.

My walk took me north along las Ramblas to the Placa de Catalonia. This hostel was the newest in the St Christopher's franchise and was fully configured with key card lifts, floor access barriers, room lockers, bunk curtains, hostel-wide wifi, a bar and free breakfast in the morning. Definitely the better choice. After I settled in to the room which even had its own little lounge area, I went out again, back towards the Be Sound to catch up with some friends for dinner. We were pretty keen for tapas as it was the sort of thing we were expecting to get out of Spain. I suggested a little square lined by restaurants that I'd passed on the way through. A couple of drinks down in the open air of the square under trees. A big group of school kids ran past on what seemed like some school physical education class. It was 7pm. Even though we were all pretty peckish at this point, 7 is really a pretty early dinner in Spain and we thought we'd have to force ourselves in to a new routine, We only lasted till 7:30pm before we succumbed to hunger and ordered a big 7 dish tapas pack. The tapas would always be ordered separately to the drinks it would seem, something different between the Catalonian area and other parts of Spain. One of a couple of cultural things we were struggling to figure out. It seemed to us that there were some quirks and lots of know-how about eating and drinking in Spain. A little past 10 and the same group of 40ish kids ran past, making us wondering what schedule they could possibly be operating on. Night over and it was time to sleep so I said goodbye as they would be heading out of Barcelona the next day.

The next day I woke up to the rustling of a girl in one of the other bunks of the room who I had met when I came in the day before. I let her know about the bike tour I had signed up for the day before and she jumped at the chance to join albeit without time for breakfast. Sophie and I walked on down to the old town where the tour was due to start from and with some pastries on the go; she was ready for the adventure.

Once on these fat wheeled bikes, we were gliding through the narrow lanes of the Barcelona old town, amazed at our brazen tour guide and his cavalier attitude to pedestrians. We heard about the old town hall and the earlier leaders that I can't remember so much about anymore. Over time we made it to the Sangrada de Familia, The single craziest structure I've ever seen. We learned about the architect Gaudi making his home in Barcelona and his demise during the construction of his masterpiece. This church resembled a melting sand castle with tall spires and great bunches of fruits adorning their tops. While this was my top destination in Barcelona, I would have to wait till another day. The tour took us past the biggest brick triumphal arch in the world and an old moor inspired bull ring. Lunch at the beach and then a little more history on the Spanish absorption of Catalonia and some of the reasons behind an independence vote and also the futility of it.

Sophie was pretty impressed by the Gaudi art we saw so the afternoon became a bit of a building hunt. We found two apartment block-type buildings including one which resembled a dragon in some way. The bombastic curves really thrilled me and while pretty amazing; I couldn't help but sympathize for the poor engineers that had to make it work.

That afternoon we considered trying to make it out to Park Guell for a picnic dinner but the weather closed in on us. Just as we were heading from the hostel to the metro station, the rain started pelting down with thunder following soon after. It would have to wait.

Tonight would be a big a big one. With the Hostel bar (Belushi’s) pumping up for the night, Sophie and I went down and introduced ourselves to a bunch of Belgian med students who were taking a post exam holiday together. We joined in on their drinking game until about 2am when the bar closed. Turned out that this was a thing they did every night and whenever the bar closed, there was always a hostel contingent that would go out to a club – a different one for each night. The club was great, down an inconspicuous staircase which popped out of the floor, down in to a beach side club called Opium. What was so amazing about clubs in Barcelona was just how civilized it all seemed to be. Even though it was almost 3am in the morning, everyone seemed so level headed and just wanted to dance and have a good time. I ended up going back with the Belgians at 5:30am as I heard stories of how wonderful Bruges was and how I should have had it on my itinerary. The club was just starting to get busy.

The next day and Sophie and I met up again over breakfast before heading out to Park Guell, Gaudi’s gift to public space. Gaudi was inspired by nature and only tried to enhance it so when he put his hand to a park, the result was so unique. Elevated rock balconies blended seamlessly into the surrounding greenery with rough pillars topped by aloe vera which looked like they had been naturally formed by centuries of erosion. We took to the high road and found a lookout which gave us a view of the whole city, quite flat and low but punctuated by the massive Sangrada de Familia which we had seen the day before. The mosaic art took even more time for us to explore as the patterns and colours absorbed us, despite the occasional spell of rain.

We came back to the city centre to the roars of crowds. It was the Catalonian Independence Day and the locals were out in full force. Sophie and I saw the traditional human tower and saw the little toddlers climb to the top, a good 8m up to be the 5^thperson at the top of the tower. It seemed like a pretty crazy tradition but I guess that what makes it so fun. The colours were all yellow and red with Catalan flags flying from every balcony. We said farewell as Sophie headed off to Madrid.

I rushed off soon after to a tapas and paella class where we I chanced across some more Busabout people. We learned about making a traditional tapa by rubbing a cut half of a tomato against the bread like a grater, the traditional Manchego cheese. A good sangria mixing tutorial and a couple more plates of nibbles and we were ready for the main event: A paella cooking demo by their fantastically charismatic chef at the Travel Bar.

The next day, I was on yet another wine tour that would also be taking us up to the picturesque monastery of Montserrat. We passed the city cemetery on the way to the mountain, a curious cultural quirk where cremated remains are slotted into holes in the mountain side and faced with plaques. The more affluent, the more people would pay for their loved ones to be higher up on the hill, ‘closer to God’. When we got to the Monastery, we were faced with a huge line, shaking our heads in dismay as we only had 40 minutes in the place before having to move on. We soon learned that the line was only to pray at the Black Madonna, a sacred site at the back of the church. We could simply walk in the front door to see the inside of this magnificent building. In the far distance, we too could see this relic as pilgrims passed by in front of it.

Before our time was up, we timed our arrival for the funicular to the top of the hill which was blessed with incredible views and many small chapels. I power-walked along the path to the first of many lookouts, most of which I’d have to miss out on. I raced up a steep, root infused rock staircase, up to the summit of the hill, granting a fantastic 360 degree panorama of the area, this rock being the highest point for as far as the eye could see. I paused to take in the strong breeze before scaling the path back down to the funicular station.

The Torres Winery was next and it was pretty obviously geared up for tourists. After a cinematic introduction, we were corralled in to a little tractor train with audio guide for a dozen languages. It passed by row after row of vines before taking us down in to one of the state of the art climate controlled cellars, sitting mostly underground. We could see endless rows of French oak barrels, stacked in these huge rooms. Passing by the big processing silos and huge cages of bottle aging wines, we could appreciate that this was truly a high production winery. We could taste wines and see a somewhat extensive history of the Torres name as they even had a little museum.

Coming towards lunch, we stopped in a little town called Sitges, a thriving community of gay men on the coast. The beaches were busy and it was a curious sight when you realized that the town seemed to be about 95% composed of men. We could walk up to the church and see the town hall but the town was pretty quiet over the weekend. We ended up relaxing for a while with beers and hot dogs, seeming to reinforce the stereotype belonging to our majority American group. I grabbed desert at this wonderful pay-by-the-gram bakery called ‘Granier pans artesans’, leaving with this beautiful apple and hazelnut pastry.

I’d seen adverts around town and online for a duo of Spanish guitarists and having arrived back in Barcelona just in time, I strode over to the little church where they would be performing, guided through the many pedestrianized streets guided only by my phone. I made it to the church just as the concert was starting so stood outside this little stone vaulted side chapel that faced a lovely cloistered courtyard. With a capacity of not more than 50, I slid into a seat between songs before the music really heated up. The players were husband and wife and played beautifully together, strumming closed-eyed with a somewhat sensuous nature. You could really see that they had grown up with that music and knew it in their souls. The small space erupted following the last song with a spectacular encore to follow. The couple whipped out their party trick with four hands on one guitar. The pair changed roles of fingerboardist, ground bass player, plucker and percussionist too many times to count as they romanced the instrument and each other leading to an even grander applause. We all stayed around to enjoy a glass of white where I enjoyed the company of an older Canadian couple who had not more than a couple of days in that brilliant city.

I met Claudia and her friend over breakfast the following morning and it seemed we all had one thing on our minds being… Lunch. And Sangrada de Familia. We started in La bouqueria which was a fantastically colourful market selling everything from seafood and Jambon to saffron and fruit juices. The two South African girls had been to this great little organic/raw type place around the corner from the hostel for the last two days and seemed keen on making it the third day running.

We avoided the long walk under the sun and took the metro to find the line already stretching around the building. Long but fast since 40 minutes later, we were in and admiring one of the most fantastical pieces of architecture I have ever had the pleasure to enter. It was like the rule book had been completely ripped up. As if Gaudi had walked into a rain forest one day and emerged with an architectural model of a church made of mud and sticks the next. The interior was so tall and full of colour, all engineered with minimal columns to hold up that colossal sculpted roof. Like in the park, the balconies were like eroded cliff faces and the whole atmosphere was like a reconstruction of a forest.

From the outside, closer to the carved facades, you could see people but from a distance, the structure continued to look like a melting sand castle. The place is still under construction with an estimate construction date being somewhere at the end of the century. There were a couple of models of the completed project which showed how it would look at the end. Apparently, the place is already so popular as a tourist destination that it’s making profit already. Some even expect the construction to be delayed because the church is paid well by the city until the date that it is finished.

The museum below the church was equally fantastic with full 3D detailed models printed and viewable. Apparently Gaudi left so many models and drawings behind that they can complete the thing without substantial re-invention.

In the evening we headed out to the ‘Magic Fountain’ which puts on a show at 8pm each night. We took a funicular out to somewhere up a hill and ended up having a really long walk through well-manicured but dark gardens, using phones to light the way on occasion. In the distance we started to hear Disney tunes and headed for the music. The show had already started and the crowd was huge! We ended up finding a place on the stairs and began to unpack our picnic. We unpacked the Torres wine, cheese, bread and chocolate and were sat transfixed. The music was timed and the light and water show was fantastic!

That night, we picked up some more hostel people before heading out to Razzmatazz, a Barcelona 5 floor super club. The line was long and we were ready for it but when we got to the door we found out that the cover fee was 30 Euros since there was some big act on that night. We didn’t really want to bother and moved on to another club, somewhat closer to the hostel. A little put out; we found a little place suggested to us called Jamboree. It was great fun in our little group of eight in this tiny club with a capacity which was probably not more than 100. We danced till the morning with some leaving later and later. I stayed with some a couple of new found friends till 6am since I didn’t really see the point of sleeping before hopping on an early morning bus out of Barcelona. I said bye and walked back to my own hostel, up Las Ramblas.

Had I known what I know now, I probably would have taken a more dodgy way home as believe it or not, the most popular pedestrian thoroughfare in the day is safe at night but still isn’t a great place to walk at 6am. Drinks were at least 10 EUR a pop at the club so I hadn’t had a drop for a good 4 hours at that point. I was in a pretty vigilant and sober way. It wasn’t the first time I’d walked back by myself in similar cities but it wasn’t going to be my night. I walked 10 minutes up Las Ramblas from the club, passed a police patrol and not more than 200m onwards, I passed a news stall. From behind that, two African women came up to me and grabbed me from in front and behind. It was pretty obvious that they were trying to sell sex so I just thought it’d be a simple no and to walk on but it wasn’t so simple. They distracted my hands at the time but I didn’t realize the significance of that till I checked by pockets not more than 20 seconds after they went away. My phone was missing. I looked around but of course they were gone. I jogged back down the road to the patrol I’d passed just moments before but the language barrier hit. They directed me to a station down one of the perpendicular roads. I knew at that moment that they weren’t even trying to sell sex and that that was the ruse in the first place. I still had my wallet which I was grateful for but a new phone getting taken was really not what I was looking for at that point in the trip. The station was open but they could only say that I should wait for their translator to get in at 9am to take the theft report. I didn’t have the time. I admitted defeat and headed back to the hostel, hoping to at least salvage some phone information while I still could. I saw countless other women along Las Ramblas on the way home who approached me so I ended up breaking into a jog instead to avoid any possible contact. Easy prey I realized and thank goodness I wasn’t drunk as I’m sure most of their victims were.

Back at the hostel, I logged into a handy little online phone locator and looked at the activity logs, finding out that these crafty women had already changed the sim card four times, I assume to find out whether it was locked and had finally turned it off. I sent the remote wipe and kill command but they knew what they were doing and not more than 30 minutes after the theft, they had wiped it off the face of the network.

I packed up and jogged on towards the bus rendezvous, somewhat put out but in the grand scheme of things, pleased that I still had my health and also my wallet. The bus arrived mid-day in Valencia, checking into the ‘Green hostel’ which was a pretty middle of the road place. Not wanting to sit in the police station first thing in the day, I went for a walk with some Americans around the town, taking in some of its really old roots. For quite a small town, they had a couple of very grand buildings including the Cathedral and a rather old Valencian Gothic Silk Exchange building. The de-commissioned bull ring was playing host to Oktoberfest celebrations and as far as food went, they were known for some sort of special tigernut milk known as horchata which was a pretty good drink, chilled under the afternoon sun. For its size the monuments were of a pretty good standard with the silk exchange hall of columns being pretty fantastic but I think I was getting a little used to the big city marvels and it didn’t amaze me as much as it might have at the start of my trip. The city had the hallmarks of a once great mercantile city.

I dropped into the police station later that afternoon and it would have been much easier with a phone to entertain me but the 3 hours it took to get through to an office passed pretty slowly. Eventually being woken from unintentional slumber, I was directed to a phone where an operator took down most of the detail in English, sending the translation through to the local officer who did all the rubber stamping. A well-cooked traditional and authentic paella put an end to a long, long day.

I woke up to the sun and realized that I had no alarm clock since my phone was gone. I never thought about the consequence though. I was late to a bike tour I had booked the day before. I raced to the reception and got the tour company on the phone. I let them know I was fit and able and moments later I was out the door running over to the bike store. I followed the map they had given and arriving, well puffed and hot, they found me a bike. Contrary to their protestations, I got them to put a likely tour path on a city map and then I was on the bike to go and catch up. I was almost an hour late for a 3 hour tour but I was going to catch them. I cut ahead to where I thought I’d defiantly be able to head them off. I then followed the map to the letter through little alleys and along busy roads till I was sure they couldn’t be behind them. Seated at the top of a staircase at the edge of the old city, I hoped I had guessed the guide’s path correctly and had found a foolproof choke point. I rinsed an earlier graze from a fall, having gone over the handlebars when I rode down some stairs while riding hands free, reading the map. Fifteen minutes went by and I was beginning to doubt myself. I back tracked a little bit, only along the most visible road options and in one of the small squares, I found them. The tour guide was surprised and a little suspicious of this random coming up to him claiming to be on his tour but armed with his name and a convincing story, I joined them. War torn but relieved, I joined the tour for the valuable last part of the tour.

This segment would take us to the new town. Santiago Calatrava, responsible for the Turning torso skyscraper in Malmo and the new World trade centre transportation hub in New York, was accused of bleeding the city dry after massive budget over-runs on this project of tremendous scale. The ‘City of the Arts and Sciences’ is an incredible architectural complex complete with opera house, sports stadium, physical sciences museum and planetarium. I was happy to get the background from the guide and felt my rapid and foodless morning was worth the struggle.

I ran into my New Zealand friends from Cinque Terre once more and joined them that night at a tapas festival down by the port. I had no idea it was on but thankfully I did run into them. What a great evening full of food, drink and cultural exchange. Money switched for tokens which you could exchange for tapas, drinks or deserts at one of 30+ stalls around the tent. Chefs were tasting and rating the morsels on a stage and the rumble of merriness echoed off the ceiling. After double deserts, we were so full at the end that we rolled into the taxi. I joined them for a super homemade breakfast the next morning before we caught the mid-day bus to the next destination.

I had learned about Catalonia, about Valencia (the fact that they were originally completely different Spanish cultures) and was ready to move west to the next area, to the centre of the country and the capital, Madrid. I had marvelled Gaudi architecture, partied till the morning with the locals, tasted the wines of the area and seen the land from a height. I was beginning to understand the flavour of Spain and where their relaxed and casual nature came from. Despite a little mobile theft setback in Barcelona, I was resolved to get by without and to make the most of the rest of this surprisingly intriguing country.

The coasts of Italy and France

2013-09-09T21:55:00.000+08:00

I had realised that it'd be difficult to get to the camp grounds outside Rome but I didn't realise that I would need to use this degree of resourcefulness. I must explain: My next leg would be testing out another means of travel in the use of the shuttle 'Loops' by Busabout. It’s effectively an inter-country bus service linking you between hostel drop off points within each major city of the South, West or Northern 'loops' that they offered. I would be leaving from Rome on the South and West loops that would eventually take me along the Mediterranean coasts of Italy and France to Madrid and then back up the coasts of Spain and France to Paris before threading through Switzerland to Munich.

The designated bus stop in Rome was a place called Plus Camping Roma which was rather out of the way. While I had intended to take the metro to a station close to the grounds, I always knew it would be tight in order to catch the last metro so when the flight was slightly delayed, with only two customs desks open and with my bag being the last on the conveyor I knew I had to change plans. My flight had come in at 10:20pm and in high insight it would have been a much better idea to get an earlier flight which could have utilised the camping ground's free shuttle from the airport till 10:30pm. However, in the real world, I relied on the last shreds of international mobile data credit I had on my phone to create a new travel plan. I caught the only public transit service which was still operating close to midnight being a shuttle service to Termini in the heart of Rome. From there I would catch a night bus which would take me most of the way to the hostel. I thought this would save me the 70EUR cost of the taxi which would be seven times the cost of my tent stay that night. When I got to Termini, I found that all the train lines were closed and with those last bytes, I figured out that I needed the N5 night bus which entailed 45 minute wait till 12:30am. It was pretty long and monotonous for the most part with the exception of one character who approached me after some time from around the corner shop over the road. At first I thought this portly middle aged man was striking up conversation making a gesture over his mouth as to say that I must be tired. While a being a little on edge and protective of my bags, I agreed and tried to recognise the tired verb but in less than a minute, he clarified the hand gesture a little more. I soon figured out that he was offering a blow job rather than conversation, at his place just around the corner. I realised that my gestures of encouragement before were very much misplaced and that my answer to that was a firm no. I saw that he realised my revelation so after laughing him off, he pleaded that "it would be easy, just 10 minutes"... Once again, I said no and told him to leave and that I was sure there were plenty of other people that he could ask standing around at the bus station.

I was both amused and surprised that this would be my first exchange between a local Italian in Rome but soon the bus came. The bus bounced over the stupendously rough cobbled streets until the street lighting got a little darker and my GPS told me it was time to get off. It was then that I realised that the camp grounds where definitely outside the bounds of the city. I took to the road armed with a mobile phone with maps and sign of life communication. I checked in with friends in Australia as they woke to give myself a little bit of a security blanket as I did my bag up for the long walk to home for the night. I walked the road under street light, blinded by the cars passing every minute or so. After 10 minutes, the footpath stopped with foliage on both sides of the road. Around the next bend, the road lights stopped too. At that point I thought it probably would have been a better idea to have shelled out the 70EUR for the taxi but there wasn't really a choice at that point as my last drip of mobile credit was out by that point. I was tense and listening intently for any sign of life residing in the darkness. I used my phone as a torch in the pitch black and after another 5 minutes found myself back under lamp light. It didn't get that much better after that since it seemed the place was effectively next to a highway. I walked up and down a couple of on/off ramps and suddenly I saw the golden light at the other side of the tunnel, praising my new phone for it's invaluable guidance on the late night journey. I was drawn to the light of the Plus Camping sign like an insect and once I had my key and checked that Busabout were really going to pick up from this obscure place, I made the last trek through the grounds to my tent.

This place was like it's own village with shops and bars and a restaurant. The tent that I'd hired was more like a mesh walled house with bunk beds and power points. I had the 3 bed area to myself and it was a perfect night to effectively sleep outside but I was still wired from the eventful trip up to that point. I headed to the bar just after they had served last drinks so joined a small group of British boys and Spanish girls which ended up picking up a little group of Argentinians. I stayed with the Argentinians when they offered me a share in their wine and we got to know eachother a little better. I got talking with one of them who actually lived in the north of Mexico and worked as a scuba instructor and tour guide in what she thought was the most beautiful water in the world. While I of course had to defend the places I'd dived including the great barrier reef and Kuta Kinabaloo, I figured that she probably knew what she was talking about. It seemed she liked Australians a lot so we kept exchanging stories in broken English till a little later at night.

I woke and scrambled to pack up the few things that left my bag, showering and heading to the bus for my first leg with Busabout. The group seemed nice enough and before long, I'd met a couple of nice South Africans. There was a surprising stop on the way to Florence. The tiny hill-top village of Orvieto was on the itinerary where we would take an extended lunch stop. They boasted two things: A massive basilica and boar ham, both of which I intended on sampling. The basilica was incredible from the outside but in true tradition was pretty devoid of 'distractions from prayer' on the inside. That being said, the quire, high alter and side chapels were still pretty amazing in their decoration!

The main strip up Orvieto.

The incredible carvings and mosaics of the cathedral.

With a boar focaccia in hand, it was back in the bus and off to Florence.

It wasn't long after we arrived at this 5 star hostel (complete with lockers and a pool) that we were out on a welcome tour of the town. It went past the famous Duomo, Logia, Affizi and bridge. We got a little introduction to Italian leather then settled in a place called the Red Garter for a big Italian meal.

Despite feeling bloated after the three course extravaganza, we all filed through to the next room, slightly more like a tall cellar with long tables and a mezzanine. It was happy hour and this meant 1.5L cocktail jugs or 4L beer towers for the next hour. You knew they had really planned this out when we were told that karaoke would be starting soon after that. I got involved and after choosing a song on the little computer thing after some sensible consensus on the song, I ended up losing my karaoke virginity to a song that got swapped in at the last moment. Three of us were up there looking fantastic and swapping the mic between us and sharing in the chorus of a song that none of us knew at all. Despite feeling a little violated by the whole violence of the rush, being pulled up the platform, being surprised by the song and then being dropped back down to the crowd after with just a few friends to sympathize with, it was still a good thing to get out of the way. Maybe it'll feel better next time.

Despite having kicked on to a couple of bars after the karaoke, I was up and comfortably jogging down the street in the morning to the meeting point for my Tuscan wine tour that would be taking off from the central bus station. There were few indications as to where in this large area we would actually be meeting but after looking around and recognising some similarly confused and slightly irate faces around the designated point, I'd brought together a couple of groups who were all looking for the tour bus. We sent out a couple of scouts to the possible secondary rendezvous locations but after a good 15 minutes after the time, an easy going Italian walked over the road to us and just stood there for a while until we asked whether he was a tour guide. After a little interrogation in broken English, we figured out that he was working for our guide company. After much fuss, we eventually crossed the road and hopped into an unmarked van which took us out into the Tuscan sun.

Is the tour happening?

We eventually came to a little winery called Il Vecchio Maneggio. This place had stables where we met our equine guides for the morning. I decided to re-name my horse 'Hungry' after a little while. I soon ended up at the back of the winery and grounds tour line when my horse decided to eat every green piece of foliage that came across it's path. I got in to a regular of stopping for a snack break then jumping him into a trot after to catch up to line once again. They stopped worrying about me after a little while when I'd got the hurry up horse signal figured out.

A view with San Gimignano in the far distance.

The vineyards from horseback.

After a little tasting of local honeys with all sorts of different flower pollens, we hopped back on to the bus for the drive to a UNESCO protected medieval village called San Gimignano. This remarkably preserved site was home to the country's best Gelato and after a cup of pistachio, hazelnut and ‘fruits of the forest’ gelato, I would say that I agree that it is. The guide told us about the rather funny way the rich and noble families decided to protect themselves from the poor and destitute of their city. They decided to build tall windowless towers that they could retreat up into at night where they would pull the ladder up to keep themselves safe as they slept. For this reason, there were over 10 of these spires around the city at various heights depending on wealth and status.

The old medieval roads, preserved.

The best!

The tour closed with a winery visit where we had a good 5 course lunch with 7 suited wines to taste. The selection was great and we also got some truffle oil with the lasagna which was amazing and then some 10 year old balsamic too which was pretty special. There were two couples on honeymoon trips so to celebrate; our guide took a sword to a couple of bottles of prosecco on the grass outside. It was a good way to finish off a pretty merry tour and a good way to drop in to a little afternoon nap on the way back to Florence.

Tasting and just the right foods.

The newlyweds.

I joined a pub crawl that night and took in some more of the numerous local and ex-pat bars before heading to main club in Florence, Space. This was a pretty great place for music that night and had a funny little system for buying drinks that I hadn't seen before. When you get in, you get a little card which you use to buy drinks. When the get a drink, they put it through a machine that will punch it so that when you leave, you know how much is owed. If you try to go to the door with a card that isn't cleared you are not let out. The line to the check-outs were stupendous when the club closed which was ok with some good conversation.

A shot in sync with the strobe.

After a good sleep in, the next day was a gallery day with the academy being first on the list. There was the famous David (which wasn't too unfamiliar after seeing the two duplicates elsewhere in the city) which dominated the main gallery. The unexpected pleasure though was to spend some time in the instrumental museum that was part of the main exhibition space. The old Stradivarius and Amanti instruments where living pieces of history and it was awesome to get some local context of what the Medici family did for arts in their time. The way I see it, the Medici family effectively embodied the enlightenment and catalysed major works from artists and composers alike. There were music samples from major renaissance choral composers, being reminded of the historic importance of patrons of the arts and their necessity for bringing about the creation of beautiful works.

The big man in the flesh.

The Medici commissioned Stradivarius to make the 'Medici quartet'.

When I walked into the hostel room, another room mate was checking in and I let her know about my plans to go up to an old orangerie in a park where a company would be performing Verdi's Rigoletto. She thought it would be a good thing to do and in 15 minutes, we were heading to the bus station. In real Italian fashion, the bus eluded everyone at the platform so by the time the next one came, we were in a little bit of a rush. A short walk up the hill in near darkness and she might have been hoping that she hadn't mistaken me for someone with less noble intents but soon we made it to the stealthy concert venue. We both flocked to the little food stall after grabbing tickets and relished the warmth of the last toasted panninis in stock.

It really was an enthusiast amateur production when it came down to it (perhaps with the exception of Gilda). The cross shaped stage in the middle of the room made it hard for the singers to make any good contact with any particular part of the audience let alone the conductor who sometimes had to flail at the tenor who would sometimes be almost a full beat behind. The opera was just too familiar, having done it soon before leaving home, to have missed all of the flaws, especially having known simple solutions for some of the problems they suffered. It made me appreciate and miss the skills of some of my colleagues back home in OperaBox. Despite this technical criticality, it was still possible to turn off some considerations and enjoy the opera. Despite my suspicion that a lot of the audience were family and friends from the distinct lack of any English spoken anywhere, it was fun to witness my first mid-opera encore as Gilda and the Duke closed act 2.

Over breakfast, I ran into my Kiwi friend from the bus to Florence and we headed out for a random roam of the nearby streets. We stumbled across the leather market where I picked up a proper replacement to my fake French wallet and then we made the great find of the day being the food market. This big shed housed the tastiest fresh and preserved foods we had come across in our travels as of yet. The vegetables, figs, limoncello, balsamico, cheese, prosciutto and pesto were just stellar and we wished we had emptier stomachs and fuller wallets to make it a more exotic food safari. We parted after and I embarked on an afternoon of churches and monuments.

Nom nom.

On the way in to the city centre and after getting a little lost, I ran in to an old convent named after Maria Novella. After that I finally made it in to the main attraction of the day, the Duomo and the whole museum complex. The Duomo interior was the first and it was as with many churches in the area, relatively bleak inside so as not to distract the congregation from prayer (with the exception of the cupola and side chapels which of course serve to distract the clergy). The crypt was pretty ordinary but facilitated some bumps on the head from low ceiling collisions. With the cupola line being ridiculous, I took on the stairs of the bell tower and took in the view of the city from the sky, admiring it's flawless consistency in period style throughout the city. Another fresco marvel back at the foot of the tower was the Baptistry which I checked out pretty quickly before lining up for my most anticipated experience.

The convent high alter is pretty lush.

The dome from below.

A long way up.

People on the top of the dome, dwarfed.

The baptistry ceiling.

Ever since I saw a documentary on the construction of Brunalescci's dome some 5 years prior, I'd wanted to visit this structure which proved to be a remarkable architectural and engineering fete at the time and for some time before it was surpassed by St Peter's at the Vatican in terms of space spanned by a dome. After a good hour in line, I was there, inside the cavity between the inner and outer domes, climbing the stairs to the gallery within the Duomo. The internal height of the gallery was absolutely incredible and the expanse of the all-encompassing frescos was truly awesome. There was just enough time left at the end of the day to drop into the last of the Duomo complex inclusions being the museum. It had some of the original religious art but wasn't much of a show after the structural masterpiece that was the dome.

The dome interior gallery.

It was a service entry really...

The view from the dome.

On the way home I found the Leonardo Da Vinci museum which was a little gimmicky to be honest but at least presented some real life manifestations of his plans alongside a couple of the original manuscripts. He is really a great representation of the polymath, one of these great men who dominated antiquity through their inventions in the fields of both art and science. He was a painter, musician, botanist and engineer and in all of these pursuits, he was renowned and appreciated. The great Greek philosophers also had so much background and recognition in mathematics. I just love to see these examples in history where it is not a case of 'Jack-of-all trades, master of none' but instead, 'Jack-of-all trades, master of some'. Just as we today will so often buy a DVD player and TV set top box separately rather than an all in one solution because of a perception of watered down quality in the second, people can sometimes be assumed to be better at one field because it is all they do. I suggest that like a DVD/set top box combo, the two functions enrich each other to the point where one field will inform the wisdom in another field. Just like a TV combo will be able to record TV to DVDs where the separate boxes may not. I think this is a concept that isn't so widely considered in Australia. While travelling in Europe, there is a much stronger appreciation of arts and science working together rather than separately and with different agendas. They study nultiple languages and history compulsorily later into their high school careers and avoid specialization too early despite finishing high school later than in WA. I was very fortunate at the end of my schooling to have the opportunity to work quite comprehensively with music alongside my predominantly scientific and mathematical course. To be able to bring the characteristics of creativity and time management into my science has allowed me to surpass my science colleagues in some instances just as the stepwise logic and rigor of mathematics has accelerated my learning in singing.

Having met a bunch of people the previous night at the bar, our six strong group of Brits, Aussies and Americans all met up in the morning to take on the famed Uffizi gallery. We braved the line for a good hour and a half before we managed to get in. This place was chock full of the finest renaissance art from the world over. It was fitting that the exhibits occupy the rooms of the Medici family who were so instrumental in the explosion of artistic production in the city. While it was a pretty incredible sight, one's eyes do become a little glazed after a good couple of hundred of paintings, predominantly in a religious style. We all became a little impatient and took the last half at a bit of a jog, starting to yearn for lunch. After a stroll around and over the Ponte Vecchio, we parted and generally drifted our separate ways back to the hostel.

Uffizi as a palace. Art everywhere!

Not just a gallery space. Everything is to be looked at.

On the Ponte Vecchio

I caught up with the couple of Americans from Arkansas who I took out to dinner the night before and having reminisced about it at the hostel, we just had to go again, this time with 3 others, two of which being the British boys from the museum. It was a killer dinner once more and after leaving bloated as usual, we would meet later that night to take on the Red Garter, this time with some supermarket beverage stock beforehand. Later that night, two Swedish girls and I got in to a little dance club, the three of us appreciating the craziness of each other's styles. Over a couple of cigarettes, we came to a realisation that sometimes you just want to dance for yourself and not in conformity with others. We could just move in what ever made us feel good about the beat and raw physicality of it. It was a fun stagger back to the hostel as about 15 of us took to the streets in a big multilingual gang of merriment at closing time. We took photos sitting on the eerily well parked lines of mopeds and bikes and continued talking on the steps of the hostel till 4am before finally sleeping after the long night out.

Contentedness over dinner.

Swedes on the dancefloor.

Another day, another 8am bus on very little sleep. So sleep continued on the bus till we arrived for a little stop in Pisa. I had no idea that it was the complex of buildings that it was, complete with church and baptistery. They were all pristine and despite only having 20 minutes, I wanted to visit them all! It was obvious after a little while that this was a papal seat and that Pisa was the centre of a dynasty that I had never known about. I took the obligatory tower photos and navigated the wash of tourists to the ticket office. The Baptistery was great but more so was the church which was the centre of the Square of Miracles, the centre of the capital of the powerful province of Pisa. I was running on nothing but an apple and a muesli bar that morning so I managed to find a panini which tasted like the best one in the world. The place was just so touristy with all of the café menus in English with meal deals and with tacky souvenir shops lining the complex walls. It was strangely relieving to get back to the bus and away from the bustle and know that the calm of Cinque Terre was coming closer.

Pisa isn't just the tower folks!

I didn't really meet any cool people on that bus so when we arrived at La Spezia, I didn't have many compatriots. I joined a couple as we all tried to decipher the train system (and hiking trail pass options which could also include transport) and find our way to Riomaggiore, one of the five little towns that constitute Cinque Terre. Once there, we found our way through a little tunnel and up the steep slope of the main road to the hostel reception.

Riomaggiore was the biggest of the five towns and had a population of only 2000. It felt like a tiny provincial country town, nestled in between ridges in a little gully so that all of the houses were built on terraced levels up the sides of the ridges. It was a post card of yellow and red pastel shade houses dotting the boarders of the main road.

The hostel was really a collection of little rooms scattered across the town. Four of us were to be situated in a room a bit further away from the reception. We started following our guide through some narrow lanes and over slimline squares but the same characteristic stuck. Every path was an endless hike up stairs. The views over the town distracted us as we ascended, soaring over the town at this point as we crossed a square by a church. Two of the girls had big suit cases and although a couple of us guys had volunteered ourselves to help, having not originally known the enormity of the task, we had to cycle the work around the group under the strong sun.

A little lookout on the way up to the room.

After a full 268 steps from the reception, we were in the room and what a fantastic view we had. A communal sigh of relief was breathed as we collapsed into the beds, two of the other guys figuring out how they were going to share the one double bed that was set awkwardly in an all single room. Once we gathered the strength to brave the stairs again, it was time for the beach.

The first swimming spot of Riomaggiore.

The jumpers up 12m on the cliffs.

The lookout at the end of the sunset.

As with all beaches in the area, the beautiful blue of the Mediterranean water was bordered by boulders and other sizable chunks of land that constituted our sun beds and change rooms. The best way in was to make a big jump and the cool water hit was just the best feeling imaginable. A cliff jumper added to the entertainment as he scaled the rock wall to the height of 12m, waiting until a crowd had been drawn till he made the fateful jump, flawlessly landing and plunging into the deep blue. The Riomaggiore crew were a good one and we ended up catching dinner together after drinks at the one bar/venue with wifi in the whole place. We finished the calzone dinner with a shot of grappa (wine distilled to 80% alcohol) which was surprisingly drinkable given its potency.

By the time we arose from the restaurant cellar, the sun had just dropped below the horizon but the twilight glow still lay over the town. Two of the guys from our room had the insight to catch the full sunset from the cliff top lookout on the way up to our place and were still coming down from the experience. After some sips of local limoncello, we all drifted off the bed as there really wasn’t much else in the town past sunset.

One of the four towns, Vernazza, suffered an unusually massive rainstorm in late 2011 which caused a catastrophic landslide, wiping out homes and businesses. The town was left under up to 4m of mud with two deaths and over 100 million euros worth of damage. Since then, with little support from the government, locals have been seeking help from volunteers to revive the lives of locals for whom life was already a little fragile before the storm. I joined in and on my second day, I was up and on the train from Riomaggiore to Vernazza before the sun was up. As you looked up to the steep sides of the gully that the town was set in, you could see evidence of where earth used to adorn the hills and the path of destruction towards the back of the town were the earth had ploughed straight through buildings. Six of us were led by a local as we were introduced to a farmer who had been struggling to regain safe access to his land as his only means of access was a narrow little footpath from the town. Armed with hoes and pickaxes, we carved and cleared the path. The sun rose over the hill and we continued in the heat, shedding as much clothing as possible as we continued at work. The winding hillside path eventually led us to an olive grove that was heavily terraced up the hill, saved from the landslides but where more help was needed to clear the charred remains of burned dead trees. I dragged the long charred branches down one tier at a time, coming to regret my choice of bringing a white t-shirt as I was stabbed over and over again by blackened branches as I pulled them from the pile. The middle of the day neared and it was eventually time to call an end of our labour and the presentation of the treat that we were all starting to look forward to. Homemade quiches and wine were laid down on the picnic rug under the shade of the olive trees.¬¬ We gladly tucked in to the meal and admired the view of the narrow valley below us and the little town of Vernazza that was nestled faithfully within it’s grasp.

The Vernazza clean up team.

Vernazza from above.

The narrow paths in Vernazza.

We made our way back to the town along our much more navigable path and through the narrow back alleys characteristic of these towns (back alleys so there would always be two ways to get in and out of the house in the case of a landslide). There was a silver lining to the landslide which in effect created a new beach for the town. In contrast to the other beaches, this pebble beach was only accessible through a little natural tunnel. After gelato where our guide worked now, we came back for a swim which was a little cut short when there were screams from other tourists when a group of stingers washed into the area. We were all on the lookout for those little sea nettles but had had enough of the water and were looking to explore some more.

The recently opened beach.

Cinque Terre is famous for the walks which you can take between the towns. We got on to the track from Vernazza to Corniglia and despite the ever present stairs, we were still cool enough from the beach and continued to be amazed by the views from that height. We came to Corniglia and headed straight to the beach, only just making it before our legs started to give up on the stairs. The water was a blessing once more and also the reaper for my new cheap watch which I had bought not more than 2 hours prior in Vernazza (I’m not really used to non-water proof watches yet…). It wasn’t really that big an issue to resign to the place without a concept of time once more. That being said, the time did end up catching up to us as we realized that the trains were only running disparately that Sunday and we had to rush over the hill to get the one we wanted. Of course there is always enough time for more gelato so we slurped at our cones on the way down the hundreds of steps to the station. Dinner with beautiful pasta and pesto and there was just so much joy and contentedness around the table after a day well spent.

Vernazza pano.

Starting the walk up from Vernazza toward Corniglia.

The first sight of Corniglia, perched on a ridge.

Stairs down from the town to the beach.

Hiking buddies taking a break by the sea.

Up in the morning for the bus and it felt as though two days was just not enough. I left Cinque Terre feeling it was certainly a place to go back to, a place to spend some real holiday time one day.

Riviera scale.

The bus shot across the coast, through the French Riviera and past countless, really built up, tourist accommodation rich towns. This was the road over the French boarder and into Nice and an increasing vision of affluence. On the way we passed the second smallest city state, Monaco. With my hostel booking made on the bus, I headed up to the Villa St Exupery Gardens hostel for 3 nights. Being a good 40 minutes’ walk out of the town centre and only really accessible via tram, night life options were limited so I ended up making some new friends over sangria. The bar sold 6 EUR bottles of wine so when we ran out of our own wine and then the soft drink mixers, the pot mix brew got stronger and stronger. There was a lot of clothes swapping before everyone ended up stumbling to bed, be it in someone else’s clothes or not.

Lazy Nice street artists.

Sangria times.

The next morning, we followed a man who wielded a baguette as his tour guide beacon and enjoyed confronting awkward locals as he included them in his stage re-enactments of various historical events around the town. We checked out the expansive Italian quarter, heard about the people who resided in Nice including Matisse and Chagall and some of the differences between the Nicoise and the rest of the French due to its historical swapping from French to Italian and back again. With its Italian influence came gelato and while not of the best quality, one place compensated by boasting the biggest selection of flavours in the world where I sampled the rhubarb and lavender flavours. We finished with a picnic lunch on the hill beside the port, a brilliant place to see a panorama of the city on both sides. Despite Nice being boasted as a beach side haven with many people in the morning tour flocking to the coast after, having just come from the impeccable water of Cinque Terre, I didn’t feel the need. I roamed with a new group and we finished with dinner in the Italian quarter with a mix of Nicoise and Italian cuisine to the booms of fireworks over the Francophone festival in the main square not that far off.

Spices in the Saturday markets.

View from the waterfall.

Nice is a pretty big city.

Liquor by the millilitre.

French patisseries.

Quirky ice cream.

I felt like a slow day so after sorting out some laundry, I got on to planning a little day trip to Monaco by myself. I was on the public bus just after lunch and was at the Monaco harbour in an hour and a half. The amount of wealth that was captured in those mega yachts was staggering. Porches and Ferraris lined many of the roads, with the whole place just screaming wealth to the point of gaudiness. It was a place that was more about wealth for the sake of vanity and superficiality than for enjoyment.

I walked endlessly, around the port, up to the oceanarium, the cathedral and then over to the Monte Carlo where I was surprised to get in despite my thongs, shorts and t-shirt. It was immaculately finished with fantastical chandeliers and gilded plaster over the ceilings. While the card room was stylish it was sad to be reminded that it was very much just a casino when going in to the next room, full of flashing pokie machines.

Play boats.

The Monaco port.

My last stop in France for this leg would be in Avignon on the way to Barcelona. While it was only a lunch stop, I could tell from the history I hadn’t known of before that this would probably be somewhere I could come back to another day. Like Pisa, as it was the papal seat of power for some time, the structures built there were pretty impressive.

Avignon charm.

As I said goodbye to the south of France and the Mediterranean coast of Italy, I couldn’t help but appreciate the tremendous amount of culture captured by this area and its effortless mix of environmental beauty and historical intrigue. The introduction of the Medici family and the various motions of the rule of the Holy Roman Empire through the area gave me a stronger understanding of the significance of the areas and while I could probably do without more time in Nice, I would definitely be hoping to visit the coasts of Italy sometime in the future.

Return to England

2013-08-30T16:22:00.000+08:00

In a way it was a little like coming home. The familiar sights and chaotic sounds of the roads around St Pancreas reminded me of the year spent abroad a good two years prior. Without the luxury of my phone, I relied on memory to find my way on to Caledonian road, familiar from my last couple of weeks in London after term where I stayed in the area. Soon, I banged into Journey's hostel, my bed for the next 3 days. Besides it probably being the most densely packed hostel I'd ever been in (3 storey bunk beds), the services were pretty great and even included little curtains over the entries to each bunk bed. After about 2 hours sleep the previous night, it was time for a bit of shut eye.

The first matter of the day was to find a phone and I was already pretty certain of what I was going to get. The Google/LG Nexus 4 was what I wanted and for a couple of reasons. Of course it was a good smart phone but would also be assured to be unlocked as it can only be purchased in that condition (it would be hell to change network provider in the next country and be unknowingly stuck with a locked phone). I needed to find one on a Sunday or Monday so took to the internet and Gumtree as I knew it had a massive following in London. After one prospective seller fell through, I would head to Cavendish town later that day to pick up the rare handset.

In the meantime, I thought I'd pop into the British Library which had an exhibit on propaganda at the time. The art of perception and influence over the masses is an interesting thing for the library to portray. The many historical examples where people could not realise that they were being misdirected just reminded me of the constant need for impartiality and a hint of critical inquiry.

After I'd acquired the phone in a friendly residential exchange, I dropped back into the hostel for some mingling. The card games started in the muggy basement/kitchen later that the night, eventually dribbling out into the few still open and nearby pubs. I really wanted to dance so despite the dropping off of some of the Journeys' people, Tamarra and I pressed on to Koko, my favourite place from exchange. For once my navigation skills were trumped, Tamarra proving to be the Queen of the roads North of Kings Cross. The old converted theatre was all that I remembered from before with the dress circle and stalls all pumping, being presided over by the VIP bar on the upper circle. Tonight was hardcore dance and we all moved accordingly. More entertainment took to the stage with the crowd getting higher and higher. Expectations met and exceeded!

Waking up in time for hostel breakfast was a little hard but today was when I would finally visit St Paul's Cathedral as a tourist. Having been there with the Kings College London chapel choir for evensong and with Madde for the Ceremony of Carols close to Christmas, I'd never been able to go to the crypt or the cupola. With a pre-booking, I breezed in and took in the amazing building one more time. On the top of the dome, I met Giulia from Italy as we exchanged photo help in front of what I think is the best view of London. We became museum buddies as we crossed the river after a supermarket sandwich lunch in one of the tiny parks around St Paul's. After getting moved off by the curious wasps, I filled her in on the history of the Millennium bridge while she was the font of knowledge when we entered Tate Modern. Giulia was a doctor and art buff in her spare time so it was a pretty cool to get a little more time to explore the permanent collections with her. Maybe we'll catch up later in Verona.

We parted later as I returned to Journey's for another evening adventure. Tonight, it was Popcorn, the slightly more hetro night on the calendar at Heaven in Charging Cross. This club is pretty much a collection of vaulted cellars, reminiscent of Tube stations. The CO2 cannons were cooling down the hot rooms as high healed, leather clad drag queens danced in sync on the stage to the yells of the packed crowd. Tamarra and I ripped up the dance floor again, occasionally fending men off me or men off her in funny shows of dimly lit masculinity. Night busses made it another easy night to get back home with door to door service. Late night transport to be envious of...

I didn't really go out to the clubs when I was studying at UCL. Something about the studies or my chosen friends or singing so I felt as if I had caught up a little on what so many people remark on regarding London, albeit a couple of years after my exchange.

Since I had changed my plans quite late in the day, my tickets were not the cheapest since they were first class fixed time tickets. They ended up much cheaper than the coach class off peak ticket which I would have got without the advice of the sales attendant. I left for Kings Cross to board the train, relaxing as I hit my first class seat amongst the older couples who didn't have their laptops and phones all charging while connected to the free wifi. I was loving life as we cruised through the countryside. I caught up on some writing and was pleasantly surprised by the inclusive drinks and tasty lunch. I was showered with chips, cakes and apples by generous attendants. I felt a little compelled to consume for the three other empty, unbooked seats around my table. The one hour delay due to diversion didn't faze me at all as I plodded on with my inbox clearing so when we arrived in Manchester, I was convinced that this sort of train was easily the best way to get around a country. There wasn't too much to do in Manchester that night so I was pretty happy to have some pizza and a quiet couple of pints over a game of pool with two Finns and an American at the nearby bar.

Having caught up with some sleep after the long previous day, I got right into it. Manchester is a pretty quiet city when it's out of student season so without any real walking tours going on, I followed my mobile with Tripadvisor, past all of the sights which aren't all that numerous. The soccer museum, Chet's music school and their really old library. Then the city's old really old library: The John Roland's Library. That library was an early architectural marvel, also with a collection full of curious volumes. I dropped into the town hall too and after asking nicely, got let into the top floors of the hall where I joined a little guided tour, getting some background to the magnificently decorated halls. After that, there really wasn't much else to see. Or at least that's what I thought before I stumbled into the Manchester Tate. The Tate had a really fun mix of art from all ages (back to renaissance) all the way up to some recent works which were more like little games that you could play. One example: "Tip a bicycle seat so that the front tip points upwards. Use it to squeeze lemons. Exhibit the seat and squeezed lemons". I just loved the humour of so many of those works, spending ages checking each one out. On the way out, an usher suggested that I visit a funny little private library called the Portico. They had a temporary exhibit of these cool little wood carvings that I checked out while I rested my feet and charged my phone. It was a nice little sanctuary where I could read a big public infrastructure architecture book in peace, away from people and cars.

I joined a couple of gap year guys for a hearty pub dinner pie before we joined the hostel for a little pub crawl to a local favorite. It was really fun to get another little insight into the thoughts of those just leaving highschool, still finding 17 too early to decide on future studies. After some drinking games at the hostel, made slightly awkward by the frequent Spanish translations of the rules, we headed out. The Manchester dance scene was pretty subdued with only the Spaniards really taking to the floor. The Mancunians seemed to prefer to talk at this place. I got the impression that it would be very different during the university term.

With a relatively early flight in the afternoon, I tried to make the most of the day and got up early to check out the Manchester museum of science and industry. As I realised when I got there, it was a little more aimed at kids but still had some good stuff with a whole workshop full of evolutionary editions of steam and hydraulic powered engines through the years. It was cool to see some of the mechanisms that were used to automate steam flow and generally do things that we'd just use PID feedback for today. The exhibition highlighted Manchester's role as a powerhouse in the industrial revolution and the amazing growth in productivity that came with it. There really wasn't much time so I checked out the sanitation section then legged it back to the hostel, getting in to the station with just enough time to catch a fast train to the airport. Boarding my flight to Rome, I readied myself for the next leg of my trip.

With a little change in travel plans, I went to London and Manchester rather than Wales. It gave me a chance to see a backpacker's perspective of London, my home in 2010-11, and to spend a little more time in the North. Manchester (outside the 2011 Parklife experience) was a place with a more industrial history than I've been used to while I've been travelling. It's nice to be reminded that every place can be historically significant in so many different ways. Next stop: Rome and the start of my time travelling around central Europe with Busabout.

Paris with Leona

2013-08-26T07:30:00.000+08:00

It was my first time flying in to Charles de Gaulle airport and it seemed to tippify some of the things I remembered from Paris the last time I came. The design was utilitarian and brutal and they had this funny circular design with satellite terminals all joined to the core by these little underground passages. The baggage and passengers all got jostled through this centre atrium of the massive don't core. It just reminded me that the French do it differently and like to own that difference with pride. Something I mostly associate with their language and fierce patriotism.

I hopped on the terminal train and while chatting to an American girl going in to Paris to be an aupair, the train stopped and wouldn't move on to our terminal, quoting a mysterious piece of baggage left at terminal 3, our destination. After much confusion and a couple of useless emergency replacement bus rides to the wrong terminal, we ended up on the same train, this time taking us all the way to the city transfer busses. Taking note of the signs we figured out the line closures for just today would get us to Paris in a bit of a different way but either way, I managed my way into Gare du Nord, a short walk from the hotel.

I just love Paris. It's a place which ticks all of my boxes with it's layout, public spaces, transport, food, style and even the people which are more of an intrigue to me than a bunch of stereotypically rude people. A city becomes vibrant when you shove millions of people into it with only space enough for far less. It brings people out of their small apartments and into the parks, the cafes and the theatres. Vibrancy is born.

I would be travelling for the week with my friend from Wales, Leona who I met a year earlier while performing Beethoven's 9th Symphony with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain in the Proms at Royal Albert Hall. We were both staying at the same hostel and met with her friend over some drinks after a rehearsal and the performance. After keeping in touch for the last year we decided to catch up in Paris.

I explored the area while waiting for Leona to arrive from London, checking out the locality of Marais and then walking around the Musee des arts et Metiers. This place was pretty fascinating and held Foucault's pendulum as well as a whole host of seminal scientific instruments and inventions that underpinned the enlightenment. I walked past beautiful clocks for navigation and the first calculating machines by Pascal, precious binoculars from Aluminum when it was harder to refine than gold, exhibits on major French civil infrastructure projects and models of the first pumps, generators and blast furnaces that we take for granted today. While pretty specific, it was a fantastic museum for a scientist and engineer. There was just enough time to walk northbound to Montematre for a peek at Sacre Coeur before heading to the station to greet Leona.

It was really cool to catch up after a good couple of months out of contact but it's always a little difficult when you've missed out on so much of the context of recent events and life of another person. Character that you exude online in text and broken video is always incomplete and I continuously become amazed at how much communication is enhanced when being there in person. I guess it's not surprising then why companies will just fly people around the globe rather than dabble in the most modern video solutions available today.

We headed up to the top of Notre dame, across Pont design Artes, Sainte Chapelle and the armoury where they had lists of all those decapitated in the Revolution square, now Place de la Concorde. Leona studies law so we thought it'd be fun to walk around the Courts which surround Sainte Chapelle (the 'Palace of Justice', a pretty awesome name for your work place). We found an open room where it seemed 3 guys were getting charged together for some sort of theft or assault. We were metal detected and searched before going in to this small little chamber where the police guards outnumbered the accused two to one. It was rather fun to try and figure out what was going on without language and to figure out how the systems varied. After a couple of little attempts to sing in one of the cavernous and empty halls we were off. That afternoon, it was blissful to settle in the Luxembourg gardens where the number of people and the shear joy of the surroundings make it so very pleasant to just sit and enjoy life.

We met Francois at a metro station in the evening for a drink. We talked about his new internship and some of the perks about consulting in the oil and gas arena. Some local opinions of Paris are always welcome too so after a little recommendation on restaurants, Leona and I settled at a little Indian place called Old Kashmir.

Leaving the resting Leona, I checked out the Pantheon and then the Pompidou centre, the modern art museum. It's amazing how high the French hold up their physicists, engineers, composers and artists. They put their physicists in the Pantheon crypt with political revolutionaries and then put their composers names on the Eiffel tower. This is a sort of place that really values culture and enlightenment in all forms, a pretty stark contrast to the occasional cultural chasm back home.

I thought I'd go and ride around a bit more, checking out the quiet and serene Montparnasse cemetery and then going to the Catacombes, finding that a solid 3 hour line had formed to get in. After being told that I wouldn't even make it to the door before closing time, it was back to the hotel to catch Leona for the afternoon.

One big thing I just missed out on last time I was in Paris was Napoleon's tomb in Les Invalides. The whole complex was stupendous in scale and grandeur, constantly reminding you of the power that the Emperor Napoleon commanded at that time, forging so many parts of what France is now, even after so much cleansing during the revolution. The exhibits in the war museum were so helpful to get a grasp of the tumultuous history of France and now I think I have finally figured out the difference between Napoleon the 1st and 3rd.

After Les Invalides, I said goodbye to Leona at the metro and rode to Place de la Concorde for the sunset. I ran into Le Madelaine and saw that there was a concert on the way home. It was Vivaldi's four seasons combined with some songs for Soprano soloist. I had to go an after a while milling around trying to get some wifi to let Leona know, I popped in and saw this magnificent church by night. The concert was great overall with a fantastic but certainly buoyed by the Soprano. The orchestra weren't really that professional and the concert master seemed a little oblivious to the group sometimes in terms of ensemble and timing. His solos as part of the Vivaldi were proficient but pretty conservative re cadenzas and generally mediocre to watch. I left after chatting with a couple of older French women who didn't know a word in English. It was fun to share some views on the concert and they were happy to give me the time to check my Google translator on occasion. I was very happy and lucky to have bumped in to the concert in the way I did and left pretty ecstatic. I took a scenic ride past Le Louvre to see the pyramid by night. An awesome end to another day.

The following morning was for a little market and then the Eiffel tower. We took all of the obligatory photos on Champs de Mars and then joined the ques for what we would soon find to be a good 2 hours. I'd been to the tower before but not to the top so when we were half way through the que and it said the top was closed due to overcapacity, I was pretty crushed. I drudgingly took my took my ticket but was then told that we'd be able to buy on the middle floor if we waited there for another hour. So we did but it was worth it to get that extra height and to get a true idea of how much this thing towered over the whole city.

With most of the day gone, we cycled over to the Champs Ellise for some window shopping and then to Montematre to catch Sacre Couer before it closed. That whole area was fantastic and completely filled by portraiture pilgrims, filling what was something of a portaiter's square near the La Boheme restaurant where we ended with dinner after beholding the spectacle of Sacre Couer. The interior was spectacular with a massive amount of light streaming through the high dome in the centre. The mosaics were adorned with gold over the high alter and the space really met a nice mix of simplicity and complexity in the decoration.

Dinner was topped off by a visit to Le petit musee du chocolate which was an awesome loose weight chocolate shop with fantastic slithers of all the dark chocolate varieties around. Back home and we were tossing up whether to go on a pub crawl or not since we were a good hour late for the start but instead went straight to the final destination. O'Sullivans filled up pretty early that evening with a bunch of Contiki groups which all seemed to converge on this ex-pat heavy bar come club. Leona ended up leaving pretty early as she was still pretty tired. In high-insight I should have probably joined her as she only just missed the last metro home and got a little lost. I stayed on and had a fantastic time with a number of the Contiki girls from Australia, Spain and Korea who all had names starting with M for some reason. I got back pretty early in the morning after sobering up a little and getting a bike back. I continue to love cities with hire bike schemes for this reason too as taxis are never that much fun when going home alone.

I checked out the Pompidou centre (modern art) by myself the following morning and found heaps of intriguing and sometimes hilarious art works which push the boarder of what art is. For example, one of the works which had only three directions for the curator along the lines of: 1. Select an average sized gallery room. 2. Hang four or five canvases of typical dimensions (the curator had obviously gone out on a limb by selecting one oval canvas - rebel!..). 3. Paint the walls and canvases in the same colour. Viola, art! Of courses there were all the usuals like Picasso and Duparc and Mutt's famed urinal. Not that all was Dada and abstract, the fauvists and more current painters balanced with bursts of colour and also a bunch of fun little moving installations.

On the way to the Tuilleries I joined a mob for an attempted glimpse of Eminem at his hotel on Rue du Rivolli beside the Tuileries and strolled through the adjacent amusement park, toying with the thought of how often they had to clean the full body vomit guards on one of the more daring rides. I thought I had better not be a contributor to the statistic in the state I was. The L'Orangerie was one of the big items for the day and it didn't disappoint. This was a fine collection of works from the impressionist masters of course culminating in the presentation of the panoramic water lillies of Monet in their purpose built, oval rooms. Leona and I indulged in a 3 course meal with wine that night, the French restaurant continuing to make me love the food of Paris.

Despite it being my second time to Versailles, it was so much more vibrant in the sun this time around. Last time Madde and I had so little time and the rain made it impossible to check out the gardens. It seemed that the whole place had been freshly gilded since my last time as the gold gleamed brightly during the whole approach to the palace. After 40 minutes queuing for security in the blaring sun, we were in! It was pretty different to the last time with new audio guides and really good 3D introductions to the place. At last I could see the gardens but made the mistake of waiting in line for the little guided train trip around the gardens. In the sun again for a whole hour to find that it was effectively a shuttle bus which I could have done without. Down the far side of the gardens, the Petit Trianon got me with a full priced instead of free ticket because I'd left my Swedish ID as collateral for the audio guide just a little earlier. Although a little embittered, I checked out the place and could imagine that it would be a nice sanctuary for the queen who it had been gifted to.

Time just got away and soon I found myself running back to the train station to make it to Le Marais to meet with Francois' boss to find out a little more about energy business consulting. I got the idea that while I would love to work in Paris and live in Perth, the work life balance would be in question. The type of work sounded really interesting making the hours enjoyable, but as a whole, it didn't seem like a healthy sort of lifestyle for me to lead. Moderation in everything. I left with a much better idea of consulting as an expatriate. Maybe I'll try something similar one day but with more intriguing options available, maybe later.

That night was the big pub crawl night. I tagged along from the second bar and met a bunch of nice guys including crazy Sebastian who lived with his family in China and was about to start a language course in Paris. He was having his first big night out so needless to say, he became a pretty funny bloke as the night went on. Together with the Spanish and Italian guy, we eventually got to good old O'Sullivans where things devolved quite nicely, with one girl in particular.

We sobered up on the avenue near Blanche metro, got pickpocketted then had to figure out how to get back home without knowing the name of the hotel. Both of us were all safe and sound by 6am after some ingenious navigation (trying to find the hotel we didn't know the name of) and after a couple of hours sleep it was back on the road for another action packed day, now short one mobile phone. Thankfully I had a pretty good picture of Paris at that point so after checking out of the hotel and waiting in a police station for 3 hours to get a stolen report (catching up on some sleep at the same time), there was just enough time to check out Galleries Lafayette. It was the first rainy day for a week in Paris so it was a pretty good time to go. This was a clothes shoppers paradise and architecturally, a pretty cool place to put a department store (it had an incredible stain glass dome atrium in the centre. Like an art gallery for clothes in certain areas.

Back in time to walk up to the train, Leona and I walked up to Gare du Nord for the connection to London. Leona and I parted ways for the last time at St Pancreas after some more sleep catch up on the train. Paris mk. 2 had been a cultural and social adventure with more discoveries along the way than any of the travel legs so far. Never have I faced so many challenges to my own character and had to ask whether I'm being true to myself and travelling to make the most of this limited time abroad. Next stop: London and a little change of plans heading to Manchester after some realisations over the week just past.

Sweden and Copenhagen

2013-08-16T16:53:00.000+08:00

There were three great reasons to go to Copenhagen. First and foremost: A wedding. The second being a tailsuit and the third being some time for some family company and relaxation.

It would be a couple of days before my parents would come to join for the wedding of my brother and his fiance so there was some good scope to recover from what had become a pretty aggressive cough. It was the best weather to do it in though with the sun giving me a little chance to acclimatize after being in sunny Greece. One thing that was very welcome after some shockers on tour was some good food which Copenhagen certainly has. While the concept of asian food is a little blurry, one thing they certainly have down pat is sushi! After a good couple of nights in, we were met by the storm of le parents and the father of the bride, all meeting to cram into the apartment for just one night.

Weddings seem to have a different sort of scale in Scandinavia and while there are of course lavish debt filled celebrations here and there, there's another side which seems somewhat more intimate and equally valuable. Call it an affirmation of the understood and a satisfying formality. The six of us all taxied to the Copenhagen town hall in the morning, a beautiful building with all of the solid features and heritage of an old people. Walking through the vaulted corridors and up to dark and beautiful holding room with frescoed roofs and Nordic scenes on the walls. Over time, the room filled with around four different parties who were to get married on that weekday morning. We were first up and were asked by one of the three presiding officials to come into the small room adjacent. The ceremony did not last more than 10 minutes and was largely composed of a welcome, a couple of simple questions like: "Do you want to get married?". At the time I produced the rings and with a signing of the register with witnesses, they were presented with a nice little commemorative book from the town hall and it was done. With much hand shaking and hugging, we left to take some photos in the beautiful square in the centre of the hall grounds and the nearby area.

What came after was perhaps as memorable as the ceremony and was a great chance to just come down from the event a bit. Following a slow celebratory lunch, we took a lovely private canal boat around the waters of Copenhagen with a couple of bottles of Champagne before settling in to a beautiful many course dinner. I cant help but love fine dining of that sort. The idea of eating to taste excellence rather than to be sated is something of a worthwhile pursuit in my point of view. To be surprised by what can be achieved with ingredients and to be know that innovation can be felt at the dinner table too is a fun thing.

Objective two: As I found back at home, soon before I left, something that is often expected of a concert singer is to agree on the dress code a couple of days before the concert. Be it dinner suit, blacks or tails, it pays to be ready and well equipped. Perth doesn't seem to have tails suits so it was time to go shopping in Copenhagen. Trolestrup is a beautiful store full of the tasteful sort of clothes that adorn the well dressed. We walked up and found a selection of three beautifully made tails so without much adew, the required alterations were noted and picked up a couple of days later, feeling much more prepared for the Messiah concert later this year.

Over to Sweden after the wedding and within 30 minutes from the Copenhagen apartment, we were at home in Sweden. The time had come to recover from the dreaded Contiki cough that i'd caught the week before. It as so good to take in the place without any expectation to go out and see anything or do well, anything in particular. Being able to stop and sunbath under the shy Swedish sun was lovely despite the persistence of the cough that plagued me. I visited the doctor a couple of days later and knew I'd be in for a familiar virus for the next couple of weeks. I settled in and took pleasure in the simplicity of being able to walk around the side of the house to pick rasberries and plums in garden, to taste my new sister-in-law's famous plum conserves and eat copious amounts of the Swedish breads that I've come to love. I visited Mormor (grandma) for what may be the last time and played her some music samples that I had accrued from my concerts since the last visit. After sending some time helping Nik move massive sheets of steel out of the basement last time I was in Sweden, it was cool to take the technical guided tour of his completed replacement home heating system. It reminded me of just how little we have to thing about energy consumption in Australia. The ideas it also brought to my home design tinkering also made it a really fun way to catch up with my brother.

I left the house early in the morning some days later and was dropped off at the Copenhagen airport ready for my next leg. With a good bit of relaxation and a truly memorable wedding celebration seen, it was time for my second taste of Paris.

Contiki Part 2: Greece

2013-08-09T00:37:00.000+08:00

It was pretty evident on the bus that few of us had really considered what was meant by cruising the Greek islands but for some reason a bunch of us thought it’d be as a chartered little Contiki group boat but when we saw ship, it made a bit more sense. Small boat implies sailing, cruise means cruise liner. Our one was a 1600 bedder with a full pool deck and a couple of restaurants. We said goodbye to our Turkish guide and after what seemed like hours in the customs que, I was at the foot of this 9 floor boat where we were photoed and issued with our access cards and keys. It was then we were shown the optional unlimited drinks package. As I explained the offer to a friend who was given a Spanish copy of the page, I saw her eyes light up. Unlimited drinks and ice cream for the 3 day voyage for 60 euros. Judging by the money lost the previous night, we all thought we’d make pretty short work of that break-even point.

It was a bit strange and a real change in pace to be out of the same bus and by chance I no longer had a triple share but had a double cabin to myself. I found a couple of people to join for lunch getting lost in the buffet ques and feeling quite lost and unknowing of the standard practices of cruising. I soon picked up on how to order drinks. We all soon picked up on how to order drinks and as I picked up desert, the ship gave out a tremendous bellow and we left the port of Kusadasi.

We had a big team meeting and met up with another Contiki group who joined the cruise in Athens for the full round trip (just a day longer). We would be setting down anchor soon at the Greek island of Patmos and we were to decide on a bunch of possible tours and options for the following days after that. I went for one tour a day at each of the destinations which seemed to be a difficult but pretty rewarding choice in the end. Landing in Patmos via tender boat was our first taste of the sheer prettiness associated with a cruise as you got all of the costal views and got slotted right into the middle of this little village which was pretty obviously fueled by the steady stream of cruise line traffic. I joined up with Simon, we talked about sustainable architecture and when dropping back in to a fantastic ice cream parlor, we met up with a couple of the girls from the other tour. I spent most of the afternoon with Christina with a nice stroll along the beach in a hopeless attempt to find sun glasses under 100 euro. We settled by the smooth stoned beach for a welcome cool-down before hopping back on the tender to the ship. We enjoyed a nice 4 course dinner, delivered with great speed as she explained with her hospitality experience that they’d divided the floor in to one big rotating restaurant to cater for the hundreds of guaranteed guests for the night.

Tonight was the dual Contiki group Toga party! We all met up to give each other varying degrees of help with toga tying and after reveling in all of the strange looks from other residents, we converged at the Oklahoma bar for our first night of mayhem. There were group photos, human pyramids and countless strolls through the ship’s casino to the nearest bathroom. We certainly paid off that unlimited drinks package that night as we all tested the quality of our toga tying methods and got to know the other Contiki group a bit better. A little group of 4 of us ended up in my room at 4am when the party broke up and we were all gone but with the aid of some after hours pizzas and water we all sobered up a bit till Akor simply passed out on my other bed. It was good night to the others and we called it a night, dreading the impending wake up in under two hours. Akor wasn't going to be making it to the tour in the morning...

I woke on a ship outside Rhodes with just enough time to sleepwalk in to breakfast at 6:50am for the tour rendezvous at the Cancan bar at 7. I was stunned at just how big Rhodes was since it took over an hour to drive across to Lindos, the main sight for the day. Before that we stopped to see the traditional art of the area. We saw pots being turned, etched and painted to create rather beautiful terracotta plates I would have loved to take home. At the base of the Lindos acropolis, I opted for by first donkey ride up the hill. Through the streets of the small town, up the stairs and beside the steep hills as the landscape opened up, the donkey jostled forward in its chain ganged pair. Poor little creature, the guide wasn’t very nice to the one mine was tied to as he’d been walking slow all day so far. The view from the top was simply amazing! surrounded on two sides by sheer cliffs, the foundations of the temple on the Lindos acropolis gave an uninterrupted exhibition of landscape to all of the horizon. On the descent, a cooling orange juice and a lucky find of 10EUR sunnies brought me to the group just in time for a trip to the ice bar. This funny little freezer box sat opposite one of the car parks and no joke. It was a bar, made out of ice so it was understandably quite a shock to walk out from the 37 degrees outside to the neg 10 inside where the ice sculptures and ice glasses and walls were smooth and immaculate. Another bus ride back home and it was lunchtime on the ship.

It was still scorching and I joined the group on a walk down the nearby beach and to the water sports shop on the far side of it. The beaches of Rhodes were full and covered with people right up the far end where we deliberated on whether to parasail or to do one of the other drag-behind-a-boat sort of activities. I was quenched and relieved by the waters while I waited as I met a little group of Aussies and Kiwis who were from the other conditions group. It was eventually my turn on the Stingray so I joined the two South Africans as this blow up platform for up to 4 was hurled around an imaginary racecourse. I think the idea was to just hold on for dear life and not be the one who looses grip before disappearing into the wavey wash behind. At one point one of the girls lost one hand hold day we got air going off a steeper bow wave but she got it back not a moment before the next big jump. With our arms a good 5cm longer and with two fewer layers of skin on our palms, we hit the beach once more.

Sculpted in concrete and laying on the stone sea floor a good 100m offshore, was a permanent diving platform. With 4 levels up to 8 meters high, everyone was testing their courage or trying the next best type of somersault. The best one I saw was a guy who managed to hook the tops of his feet on the 8m platform, hanging upside down on the strength of his toes before he uncoupled himself, dropping straight like a pin, head first into the water. I'd jumped from 10m and other cliffs before but the thing about this one was that the water was just so clear that you could see the intimate features of the rocks not that far under the water. I jumped from the top and it was just high enough to pause and think after having left the platform: "I'm still falling but.. I haven't hit the water yet". We used brute peer pressure till everyone had made the jump and had got their obligatory mid-air photo.

It when we had just finished showering before heading back to the ship that one for the girls asked me the time and I looked to see that my favourite Titanium Skagen, a 21st birthday present, was gone. I went into panic mode for a moment before remembering that I lost a watch once in the past while jumping the cliffs at Blackwall Reach at home. If the waters weren't so incredibly clear and the water not more than 4m deep near the platform, I wouldn't have bothered but instead I told them that I was going back out to go looking for it. I sprinted out and intercepted a passing swimmer as I approached the platform. In broken Spanish and English, I asked to borrow his goggles but he said he'd look for me. He made shallow dives and I treated water, trying to look through the water from above for the dull glint of brushed metal on the rock floor. It was almost 10 minutes after a couple of near misses with platform jumpers that I was going to ask him call of the search but just then he made a slightly deeper dive and where I thought I was about to hear the bad news, he held up the watch he'd pulled from the sea. It was such a remarkable thing! I swam back slower, clutching the watch and was met halfway by two of the girls who were about to join the hunt. Feeling like the luckiest person in the world, we all headed back to the boat before it left the sunny port of Rhodes.

Another night, another party and it didn't take long after getting on the boat that the 5 of us went up to the sky bar, looking over the pool decks from above, that we were back at it. While we ordered cocktails from the bar, Trinity, went down to the pool deck bar where they had ice cream to make us 5 chocolate milkshakes complete with a shot of Baileys.

It was time to scrub up tonight for our formal dinner and then cocktail reception followed by a meet with the captain. With the exception of the dinner, this whole affair was quite a lot of fuss about nothing. It seemed to me like this was the sort of novelty that I could have done without because it seemed like it just entailed a whole lot of queuing for a handshake and a group photo I wasn't going to get anyway. Either way, it wasn't long before we re-took the dance floor, not getting to bed till 3am once more.

I was getting used to those 7am starts and it was just as well because the Palace of Knossos on Crete was great! Sometimes dubbed 'the first European city', this 1700BC palace inhabited by the Minoans had all of the trimmings with running water, piped sewers, two storey buildings and design promoting natural ventilation. All this they accomplished without a standing military and they still had trade partners who were armed (unless they had a massive navy that they haven't found any evidence for yet). I guess no one really wanted to mess with the big local Economic power of the time. We didn't have long in Crete because Santorini was the second stop for the day.

We all took in the arrival over lunch where we entered the caldera of the old super volcano and approached the sheer cliffs of this highly elevated town. We bussed up the perilous cut zig-zag road past the immaculate white washed, blue topped houses of the towns on the way to the title piece being Ios [[[IS THIS THE RIGHT NAME??]]. Melly, Nadia and I were dropping into little paths to try and find the best niche for taking photos of the town, draped over the cliffs when I saw a group of Koreans. There, taking photos of them selves in their usual style were Stella and Sarah from one of my days in Istanbul. While I knew they'd be in Santorini at some point, I never thought we'd actually meet there especially since we only had a couple of hours to roam the place. The astonishment in their face when I called out to Sarah was amazing. So we took our photos and we parted ways again. Maybe we'll meet again in South Korea some day.

Melly, Nadia and I were a little peckish so we saw an awesome menu and plunged into a cafe. There was a little roof terrace and when we climbed the steps, we knew we had arrived at the right place. The height gave us the most spectacular view of the town. I got a freezing yogurt smoothie and nibbled on this amazing fried Greek cheese called [[[INSERT NAME FROM NADIA]]]. We were all just completely absorbed by bliss and as it always does, time caught up to us and I went for a run off to the lookout further down the road before dodging people traffic back to the last bus to the next spot. On the way I found out why the architecture was so uniform in Santorini: Firstly, they all have to be the blue and white you see on the Greek flag or sometimes cream or another light pastel is permitted. Naturally the white helps against the relentless sun too. Secondly, at least one room must have a vault which is safer and much more flexible against earthquakes that have destroyed so many houses in the past.

There were more tourist shops in [[[[INSERT NAME]] but it was pretty nice and after a good perusal, I joined a bunch of people at a bar with super views before we went down to the donkeys. These were much bigger animals than those at Lindos and soon we saw why that made a lot of sense because the cliff face we bussed up before, we were about to go down the donkey trail equivalent. We all agreed after that this ride was probably the best mix of terror and excitement that anyone had had for a long time. It wasn't like a rollercoaster where you know the restraints are made of good steel and have been running every day for the last 10 years without incident. That sort of security makes it easy to be thrown forward at 100kph without batting an eyelid. This was more about holding on to that harness and trying to stop your thongs from slipping out of the foot pieces as this work horse jerks forward down the cobble steps, having to steady yourself each time it slips a little on the smoother ones. As we got a little confidence, we got a bit bolder with photos and one handed rodeo rides. Sunset approached as we descended and you could get an idea of how magical it would be to stay up in the towns to watch it all from the cliffs. The donkeys would stall here and there, would take particular affection to one of the others in front of you or try to overtake on a corner, tackling the steeper gradient stairs on the inside. It got closer and closer to the last tender time so when dismounting, Cristina and I legged it through the narrow roads to the last waiting tender.

We had our bags ready before going out and left them for the porters and the next morning it was all over. We docked at Pireus in the night and after a long wait to clear customs, it was sobs and hugs and last minute exchanging of details as we all said goodbye to our Contiki mates for the last 10 days. It didn't take long to realize that Melly and a bunch of others were heading to the airport around mid-day too so we all caught the bus in after a little morning roam through a sleepy Athens. At the airport it was final goodbyes to the best people and for me it was off to Copenhagen.

Contiki Part 1: Turkey

2013-08-05T01:43:00.000+08:00

My first Contiki experience began by walking into a little underground hotel restaurant filled with a mix of anxious and hyperactive faces ready to be let loose on Turkey. Following a little (read lengthy) introduction by our Turkey tour guide Ahmed, we tucked into our first group meal. It wasn't long before we were all getting to know each other, finding out about each others travel plans and finding out that most people lived in Australia (all east coasters bar myself though). Being a relatively late meet up, we all trotted off to a nearby bar and got to know each other just a little bit better.

We only had one day in Istanbul so the bus set out to the city nice and early and dropped us at the Spice Markets. It was a time for raw nuts and Turkish delight and there were plenty of offers by shop owners to taste and smell. You got an idea of who was trying to rip you off pretty quickly so the buy was always pretty satisfying after a little haggle.

To the Blue Mosque next and after dropping our shoes and covering up legs and shoulders, we could slide in and admire the tremendous space that is the mosque. We checked out the Hippodrome next door and got some really interesting background on the remnants from the Ottomans and those who came before. It was pretty free form from there with free time to hop on a boat doing a similar trip to the one I did the day before. I had been waiting for this moment for the last 3 days to check out Hagia Sophia. As we were reminded many times before, Hagia Sophia was the first of a new style of domed mosque which is exemplified in the design of all mosques from the date after it's conquest by the Ottomans in 1453 by Sultan Mehmet II. At that time, it was a Byzantine church full of mosaics and frescoes depicting holy figments and since the invading Muslims did not like depictions of holy people in their mosques, they were all plastered over. While I was there, some of the frescoes and mosaics had been uncovered, really giving an idea of the history seen by this building since the year 537. What was more astounding was that by the power of faith and manpower, this colossus was built in just 5 years!

Blue mosque above and Hagia Sofia below.

A group of us went down to the Basilica Cisterns which formed one of the main water reservoirs storing water from the Byzantine aquaducts in the 6th century AD. It was amazing to see this underground hall over 100 meters long in dim lighting with a capability to hold 80,000 tonnes of water. This was certainly a highlight of Istanbul along with the Sophia.

Our first real evening out started at a funny little underground dinner hall with a stage and band. The music started as we sat down and we were barraged with both food and the sights of belly dancers and other traditional dances from around Turkey. They got the crowd in on the action, amazed with the occasional flaming knife trick and at the end they dropped the dance floor down and everyone got on the dance floor to some slightly more modern tracks.

Leaving the restaurant a bit more pumped up, a bunch of us got a lift from the tour bus to an exclusive lounge style, outdoor night club called Reina. The drinks were pretty steep but we were already bouncing around on the luminous dance floor. Bec and I took to the dance floor and got some grind on rather artfully standing on the top of a big seating arrangement, being greeted with some complimentary energy drinks by the lonely Italian guy who was watching pretty contently. The night kicked on till the early hours when we finally crammed 4 of us side by side into the back of a taxi up and down a suspicious, slightly too windy route back to the hotel.

It was a long drive that morning but soon we were passing the Dardanelles and were at ANZAC cove. Those harsh inclines and that inhospitable coast did so much to highlight the futility of that landing (however unintentional the landing location). It was possible to grasp while standing beside the graves just how well the Turks were able to defend that short, rolling stretch of land from the Galipolli coast to the Dardanelles. A little trip up to the Lone Pine memorial and we saw the majority of the ANZAC graves and the chapel used on ANZAC day every year. There were trenches scattered around that area and on the way to a massive statue of Ataturk, we saw opposing trenches less than 10 metres apart. The nature of this fighting just seemed raw and hopeless for the Australians. While it was supposed to be 'just' 10km from the beaches and over the hills to the Dardanelles guns, it was always going to be a death trap.

We caught a ferry over to the continental Asian side of Turkey and meandered towards a secluded beach side resort just out of Cannakale. We got to the beach and pool as soon as possible and after a good round of pool volleyball, it was time for dinner. While we wanted to head out to the pub, it seemed pretty quiet so after a couple of rounds of table tennis, the night closed with a little beach side party arranged by a friend recently dubbed Mama Contiki. It was great to have almost the whole group of 40 down by the water just chilling out together. Us stragglers finished with a dimly lit midnight swim as part of a soon to be established nightly dare club.

Today would be a solid day of driving, living on a lonesome diet of grapes i bought earlier, leftover from the beach party. There were no good lunch locations so most resorted to a place that did toasted sandwiches some time around the middle of the day. Eventually, we rolled into Troy, the site of new fewer than 9 cities rebuilt over each other and starting from 2920BC. Of course the Troy we think of was the 7th city associated with the Trojan war, some time in the 12-14th centuries BC. It was fun to see the little innovations in things like wall design, happening for the first times, making these places so admirable in their time.

[[more photos to come when I get some proper wifi]]

Next was the Asklepieon or mental hospital far below the Acropolis (high city) in Pergamum. Founded in the 4th century BC, it was one of the original and best known centres for healing in the ancient world. The role of water in old Greek towns also became apparent with heaps of fountains and channels for water still visible with the old Lithium rich spring water still trickling around the sophisticated network. We went down a dark enclosed passage which was part of what seemed like a very ceremonial and meditative healing process. It had a well preserved library and theatre for a good 2000 people too so of course I had to try a little musical interlude while I was there!

There was a little Onyx mill nearby which we went to after to see the crafting of this local stone. A man with a lave showed us how to turn and polish the stone and we were told about the different qualities of stone for monuments and the typical depths of the Onyx grades. It was a pretty impressive place with jewelry as well as the sculpted stone pieces. We eventually got into Izmir, got settled, had a pretty average dinner (they served a plate of grapes for desert which wasn't too welcome after grazing on my leftovers for the majority of the day...) then got ready to go out on the town. It was an interesting exercise in bar salesmanship as our tour guide tried to negotiate some good rates before we sat down. While he managed to shave off a couple of lira off the drinks, when people got to the bar they managed to pull a blinder and use imported spirits rather than local, avoiding the deal and charging more. After the first drink we got our act together and figured out we could get a 75cl glass of beer for less than the special 50cl beer price. We were set from there but another lesson learned. To the sole clubbing aisle in Izmir and we brought the party to the clubs on the early side of the night. It wasn't long before the rest of the street reacted to our choice and then the club got busy. I found myself being a body shot table and soon after we were all pretty lively on the dance floor, bouncing under the sound of a proper unregulated Turkish sound system. Another shonky taxi ride home, 4 in the back and we had some hours till the bus the next morning (I suggest finding out the likely fare and getting your driver to agree to if before you leave on your way home).

Who would have thought it but we all seemed to be pretty drawn in by the Turkish carpet house visit the next morning. They showed us all of the steps of grabbing the silk strand ends from the cocoons and pilling them into long, wet and very strong threads. We learned about thread counts, wool and cotton bases and the Turkish double knot. With a glass of cold apple tea in most of our hands, we sat down as our very charismatic host brought out carpet after carpet for us to see. There was wool on cotton, wool on wool, silk on silk with every different colour and geometry imaginable. Even though Turkish carpets weren't really on most of our shopping lists before, it seemed that most of us were making silent vows to work, buy a house and come back to Turkey to bring these treasures back to a place of your own. Back on the bus...

We made it to the Pamukkale mineral ponds after an awesome lunch in a Turkish wedding lunch celebration place and were immediately stunned by the sight. The whiteness of these ponds was just so pure and the water with this light tinge of blue that just made it so surreal. This was a whole hill-side that had been preserved (after some pretty terrible mis-management which almost destroyed the site 10 years prior) to allow for tourist consumption. We passed on swimming among some roman ruins in the spring water and moved off enjoy our beautiful resort for the evening.

We congregated around the pools and tried out thermal baths, sipped cocktails in the pools and baths then readied for the expansive dinner on offer. With white tables set for us, we swanned up to the buffet and just as well we showed up when we did because then the Russians descended! Swarms of tour bus hardened Russians streamed onto the scene, heads down and on a mission to get to the hot food as fast as inhumanly possible. Second course was chore as pushy tourists would edge right up against you in an attempt to shave off that half a second to get the potatoes from Bain-marie to their piled-high plates. One kid behind me went so far as to resort to the poaching the meat sauce sans spices from an industrial dish before it had been mixed under head with the penne not more than a metre ahead of me.

We closed the night with a session of truth by the hammocks with our slightly stronger home mixed drinks. We learned a little more about each other under the wonderful coercive power of the group and as more and more people disappeared to bed a few of us found our way through an unlocked door into one of the thermal ponds, holding silence as the few silhouettes passed under the lights outside.

Ephysus was a big and ancient city for 250,000 inhabitants complete with 25,000 person theatre and the 3rd biggest library of the ancient world. At its height in 100AD it was thought to house up to half a million people making it the largest city in Roman Asia at the time. In fact, the only popular Turkish beer ‘Efes’ was named after this place, so suitably, it was chock a block full of tourists to a much greater extent than we’d seen before. Motifs like the Medusa and the snake in medicine made more sense with some more mythology of the area and we eventually made it out. We got out of the heat and got taken to an authentic Turkish bath.

We got corralled out of the bus, through the elaborate lobby and up the stairs to the change rooms where they attempted to get a couple of couples into private booths before shunting everyone else into the big room behind where we all wondered a bit what was happening. Eventually someone drew a curtain between the sexes and we were shown a couple of lockers for possessions so it became a bit more obvious what to do. There was a little confusion as to whether nude was ok but it became pretty clear that they offered the tourist version so we kept bathers on and headed to the bath room. It was a big marble octagon inside, some 8 metres wide and with a solid 4m wide, knee high table in the centre. The heat was pretty mild but over time we could splash down with water mixed in broad bowls. Of course some of us got a little creative with the cold water and some people got a little surprised when the icy splashes came over a shoulder. A few of us went next door into the sauna to try and heat up a bit more and we saw the big hairy Turkish men go back and forth with towels, soap and big buckets. One of the seedier guys flashed a couple of girls through the glass door on his way past much to their dismay. It wasn't till we went back into the bath room that we found that the same guy would be the chief cleaner. They weren't really sure about this guy with the massive beer gut giving them a fully body rub down. It wasn't till he filled his soapy bag with air and pushed out a glistening cloud of foam that the worries started to die down and we started to get a little more excited. It was a two station process with the first being the exfoliation. Everyone found the dead tan from the last week rubbing off and down through the shower drain between stations. The foamy rub down closed the process, feeling silky smooth and glowing. It was a good time!

The resort was beautiful with views all the way down the bay to the port where we would be embarking the following day. After a beautiful dinner, washing away some bad tastes from some of the previous days, we all got ready for our last night out on land. It was a pretty big one, with few photos and limited memories but it all started with the bus out to the bars at around 11pm, negotiating the drinks rate and then sticking to it. I almost got charged double at one point but stuck to it and there was no problem. Throughout the trip we had a corny Turkish song which got played at the start of each day in the bus and became associated with hangovers and the general haze of morning bus rides. It came on and before we knew it, just about all the girls were up on the bar dancing to it. It must have been a good quarter hour before they came down again and soon we were taking over the bar with Bec and another serving drinks with the tenders and with more cocktails rolling out, it was a pretty good night. Eventually a bunch of us tried out some of the other joints down the road. All pretty similar in format but slowly but surely we ground to a halt with Mama Contiki sensibly getting a Giros before we all crammed into a taxi once more, back to the hotel.

Dolmabache palace and Galeta tower

2013-08-02T00:09:00.001+08:00

Dolmabache palace was first on the list for the second full day with Galeta tower on the secondary. Apparently is was a pretty common itinerary so once again, I met someone over breakfast. Sarah and Stella from South Korea had seen the palace in their tour books and wanted to go straight away so having seen it from the tour boat the day before, who better ot act as a guide to the relativly distant attraction. It was pretty easy, simply taking the 3 lira tram from outside the hostel down to the stop not more than 400m from the palace.

Sarah and Stella from South Korea. Dolmabache palace, lunch salad hunt, Galeta tower, grand bazar, shoe fail, Start of Contiki
In some of the rooms, it was absolutely comparable to Versailles. The plaster reliefs combined with the scale seen in Ottoman mosques fused into a pretty incredible place. The crystal chandeliers and candelabras were of particular note with the one in the picture weighing in at 4.5 tonnes! They were pretty hostile to photos but I couldn't go past the celebration room which just blew all of us away with it's size and grandure.

Next to Galeta tower, gazing over the whole city. We did a little bit of lunch hunting first and shattered our conception that it was quite difficult to eat cheaply in Istanbul. We ended up finding a generous self serve salad place for 6 lira! The tower gave an absolutely incredible view and we spent ages taking all out selfies and panoramas.

Walking back past the pushy restraunters under the Galeta bridge was a little difficult with one actually grabbing my arm for a while so he could make his pitch. We got through and soon found ourselves in the spice markets and grand bazaar. With not much time, we breezed through until disaster struck! My throngs died... With a bit of medical tape, a swiss army knife and some engineering know how we were back on the road and at Cheers again in no time.

I said my farewells to the Korean girls and Melissa who had been out on a package tour and made my way to the tram station ready to get to the meeting point for my Contiki tour.

Archaeology and the Bosporus

2013-08-01T23:55:00.001+08:00

Melissa and I met over a simple yet fresh and delectable breakfast the following morning to plan our attack of another day of tourism. First on the list was the archeology museum, adjoining the Tokapi palace. In no more than 10 minutes from the door of our hostel, we were at the first building within the museum seeing artifacts from Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Hittite, Assyrian and early Ottoman civilisations. The constant reminders of the high level of advancement of these civilisations before the rise of central Europe kept on amazing. The cuneiform tablets were pretty amazing too and to see words written millennia ago was quite humbling. Before we knew it, we had been browsing for a good two hours so we made a swift sweep of tiled pavilion with it's painted works.

Off to the docks for a ferry tour up the Bosporus, between the Asian and European coasts. While waiting for it to come, we shot across the road to behold our first Mosque. The 'New' mosque was one of the biggest mosques and it was my first opportunity to admire the floor to dome painting and glazing to adorn the interior. After some listening and happy snaps it was back to the ferry.

We picked up some cool little map based audio/visual guides for the ferry trip. We could simply tap which site we wanted to hear about while we sat on the covered bow of the two floor ferry. It took a good hour and a half to float to the mid tour termination. The number and quality of the Sultan's different palaces was quite incredible. It seemed that just about every sultan had to have his own. It also became obvious just how many mosques are smattered over the landscape. Even more obvious when the call to prayer blared across the landscape through the minaret speakers.

After doing a bit of bargaining, we found ourselves sat at a waterside fish restaurant where we had some grilled sea bass before some real Turkish gelato. With a bit more time we could have made the castle on the peak of the nearby hill but with a well paced meal to be had, we were content to have a little nap on the way back to the hostel. The sun continued to fill the air with moist heat, finally bringing us back to the hostel as the sun began to fall below the buildings.

I woke from a evening siesta amongst the other exhausted guys in the room at 10pm ready for dinner and met up with a Mexican guy. We roamed and after finding an alright place close to the hostel, it was to the roof bar. There were heaps of people I'd bumped into over the last 48 hours, pre-drinking for a night out to Takasim square. I stayed back and took a 2am night for another tourism workout the following morning.

First night in Istanbul

2013-07-31T01:03:00.001+08:00

The world is a small place. Before even leaving Perth, I ran into a friend at the Dome in the Perth Terminal and then once I was on the Quatar Air flight to Doha, I found myself sitting right next to a friend from high school. We caught up over take off and caught up on a whole bunch of fun movies that we agreed had just slipped passed us during the turbulence of the uni term. We split in Doha and I hopped on my second scarcely populated flight to Istanbul.

Having talked to a couple of people at the hostel I now know I was not alone in the struggle to avoid a single taxi fare into the city from the airport. Despite making a prior reservation (without payment at least) with 'Istanbul airport shuttle', their bus stand was nowhere to be found. After some garbled attempts at speaking non-English with some of the other bus drivers and wanting to stay above ground, I found a Havitas bus which got me two thirds of the way. It seemed most were going to Takasim square, turning North before reaching Sultanahmet. Anyway, it was great to walk the 30 minute road to the hostel, mack bang in the middle of the old town. Cheers Hostel is a lovely, typically narrow three-storey plus roof terrace place down a cobbled lane off one of the main roads. The first people I met in the lobby were naturally from Perth. Small world again. After settling in and recovering a bit from the steaming walk with my pack in Perth winter clothes, I went for a little roam. Istanbul is just so full of beautiful, nicely-run-down charm. The locals are happy help you out if they're not bent on selling you something and even if they are trying to sell you stuff, the gifts and trinkets in Istanbul are actually really nice.

I went up towards the Sofia mosque which is closed on Mondays then after admiring some shop front window carpet weavers and having a chat with this lovely old painted porcelain salesman, I went on up to Tokapi Palace. The massive walls and lavish gateways channel you into one huge courtyard before entering the palace actual. There are armed guards and without reading up on it too much, I would tell that it was a real historical mark of the Ottoman empire. I only got there with two hours till closing which ended up as a pretty perfect time to check it out. Like no European masterplan palace, this came up in the 13 or 14th century, was low lying (one storey all around really) and sprawled out after accumulated additions. It housed all of the treasures of the past sultans of the Ottoman Empire and simply put, it was extraordinary. I saw all of the jewels, gifts from other states, weapons, clothes and holy Islamic relics. The artistry was just hard to behold in the tiny details and also in the shear size of some of the pieces including thrones and beds.

Back to the hostel and I ran into a mottled bunch of Americans, Canadians and Kiwis to go out to dinner with. They'd booked a table for a Dervish dance dinner and they said I should come on with them. It was on a roof top with a beautifully framed view of the Sofia Mosque that we sat and made our Shish orders before the dancing started. A little trio of instrumentalists took their place and after a slow procession, 4 dancers took the stage then glacially built into the traditional spin that makes up the Dervish dance. It was pretty hypnotic and the whole sight and sound was pretty awesome for the first 5 minutes. What we didn't know is that the exactly same dance started and stopped another four times with slightly different music so it did get a bit old. We were all pretty chuffed with the meal but realized that we probably got a little suckered for what we paid for. All in all, we went on to find a beautiful Turkish delight and baklava shop and relished the flavours.

A drink on the roof top bar back at the hostel tied off a pretty great day. Ready to relive the jetlag red-eye before the first full day in what is already showing itself to be a pretty awesome place!

A turning point

2013-07-29T20:25:00.001+08:00

It's only at this point, when I'm on a flight to Istanbul, somewhere over West Turkey, about to begin my 3 month overseas break that I find myself without any means of internet communication, without anything that can take my attention away from what I've accomplished up to now, the oasis between significant journeys. I finally have the break I've strived for for so long and can sit back and let it take place without need for thought on university, music, work, projects or people, at least for a while.

It's been a long five and a half years study to finish the engineering and physics degrees and I am certainly pleased to have it behind me. That being said, it seems relatively anticlimactic, a relief more than cause for celebration. I am now ready to start life in the real world past the educational institutes that have punctuated all of the life of a young man of 22. While these three months may be a brilliant period of freedom and relief from commitment, it now does seem well deserved. Without having taken a gap year, I would really say I've been going flat out since year nine at secondary school to total a good eight or nine years of pretty packed time. It does take it out of you to keep on full throttle so much of that time which has made that final stride so exhausting. I'll say it: The last year and a half years at uni were certainly a struggle, a chore rather than a pleasure and a result of gradual burn-out. Something about going on exchange made coming back to UWA rather un-inspiring. I've learned a lot about self-motivation in that time and while it was effective in terms of high grades and continuous average raising, it was not nearly as effective as it could have been. The seeming need to jump through the hoops while already feeling ready to affect change in the society and perform effective work in a corporate context certainly made it harder.

I think it has to do with this apparent personal need to always be doing something. I think my mind is a pretty restless entity and to have a set of unit outcomes defined by the university that are so unambitious and closed to extension and reward that I've certainly distracted myself with things that fill the gap. Music and sports have always been thoroughly enjoying ways to fill that time and to broaden knowledge in a pursuit of more wisdom than a tertiary education would ever provide.

This conclusion of studies is a fantastic opportunity to look in retrospect at how I've worked well in the past and is a good point to re-structure the future and my working life to get the best out of both work and play. My choices thus far have made me very happy and with any luck I can continue to get that mix right. There are just a couple of things that I think need to change which I want to record here. Maybe one day I'll read this again and think I got it completely wrong but it'll be helpful either way.

What has been the point of all this study anyway? I think it's been a tool. Over the course of my degrees, I think I understand this question much better than what I did when I chose to go to university. I now know that I'm not interested in physics research, the goal of my first course choice of Advanced Science. I now know that I love the discipline of engineering and appreciate what the education allows me to do. Mechanical engineering an physics is the best combination of degrees if you want to know how the built and natural universe all works. From geology to building bridges and electronics, the knowledge allows you to deconstruct the most complicated phenomena and objects into base elements and then come to grips of how everything works. That pursuit intrigues me: 'How stuff works' with the corollary being 'how do I make broken stuff work'. The latter seems to drive motivation and is why I can see myself being very happy in a corporate engineering workplace. Higher education means that you become more qualified for more and more jobs. If you make the right degree choice and you can figure out what makes you happy, you might be suitably qualified for a job you really enjoy working in. I believe I am now qualified enough to get a job that I really enjoy. As it stands, it's just a matter of getting the right offer. Maybe I can make a better comment on the result of that in 6 months time.

So once you're working, what about the rest of that time you're not in the office or on site? I think this is where I'm blessed with a number of choices. Maybe too many sometimes. Since finding the need to fill time around uni and becoming obsessed with many of the ideas put forward by speakers on TED.com, I've wanted to do something more with activism. People who find pleasure in finding a problem, a challenge on the planet then doing something to make it less of a problem.

Anyway, without wanting to ramble too much, the plane is about to touch down and while I mightn't have written all I intended, it's time to explore Istanbul! Perhaps this will be continued further down the track. I guess the point is that this trip is going to be about what I find to be the best way to travel or maybe the best way to relax and whether this is the best way to recover from the past and be ready for the future.

London HQ - Ramsay Hall

2011-08-07T21:56:00.010+08:00

With a couple of weeks under the belt, I was starting to get used to the lifestyle of Ramsay hall student living. Some new things were getting more familiar such as laundry, earplugs at night, an indoor swimming pool, biking London and the daily trips back and forth to KCL or UCL.

The lifestyle of college halls is somewhat different to what you get back home. Every weekday, I wake to the smell of a hot breakfast as hordes of drowsy uni students proceed to the dining hall at the latest possible moment to collect their rightful prize. The dining hall servery production line is the primary source of nourishment with your daily serving of bacon, eggs, beans and hash browns. While this might sound ideal and a dream come true for some, the novelty wears off rather quickly when you realize the bacon is normally a day or two old recycled from previous days leftovers and when the powdered scrambled eggs always take the prime time towards the end of the week when stocks are getting low. Luckily that is not all that is on offer to the residents of Ramsay hall.
With a full complement of your typical sugary breakfast cereals and a super sweetened porridge, you could be assured that hunger wouldn't be an issue. I opted for Weetabix, muesli and yoghurt with dried fruit while some of the girls in particular vowed never to engage in the oily goodness of the hot meals (except maybe on the odd heavy night out).

The regular morning wake up is accompanied by the short sleepwalk down the corridor to the bathroom block shared over the floor with about 30 people. With 3 showers and 3 toilets for the men, it has never been a problem to get a shower in the morning. The push button design triggers for the showers bug you a lot with the water constantly cutting out after 20 seconds at the most but I guess the shower dance including pirouets to strike the switch to the 3BPM rhythm of the shower is something you get an instinct for.

For a catered hall, Ramsay has some pretty good kitchen facilities. By that I mean that we have stoves/ovens, toasters, fridges and microwaves. This appliance set-up is standard around the hall from what I hear with each kitchen being shared by about 12-18 people. From what I've heard of other halls, this is not always the case with some other catered halls having only a little tea break kitchen available for residents. After a couple of weeks some of us started leaving communal items in the kitchen such as a kettle. The first sort of gripe you form with the kitchens is with the fridge as certainly around freshers week or other clubbing central nights, students will often come back hungry and drunk looking for a tasty treat to send them to sleep. The fridge gets raided in our kitchen a bit more often because we share ours with the first floor of Paris (the neighbouring block) as well as being close to the stairwell. Most Saturday mornings early on in the term were started by walking into the kitchen and witnessing some strange things, such as opening the fridge and seeing that someone had taken somebody's block of cheese, unwrapped it, taken a big stereotypical bite of this cheddar block then left it out on one of the shelves ready for the owner to return. A couple of Saturday mornings I too was victim to the infamous New York milk thief, having to eat my weetbix in the way that no one should ever have to. After a couple of other thefts from my bag resulting in a lunchless Thomas, I headed to Sainsbury's and go myself one of those small 6 bottle wine bags as a bag i could lock up, hopefully deterring the miscreant from my bad and directing them onto other less fortunate shoppers.

After finding my bag slashed and lying on the kitchen counter with the rusty blade lying nearby, I resolutely bought another bottle bag the same day to reclaim my security. It took another couple of weeks before I was walking up the stairs to the New York first floor and lo and behold, as I ascended I saw my groceries bag on the lonesome roof of the ground floor having been thrown out of the kitchen window! I saw this with both shock and also a great deal of laughter as I imagined the drunkard wandering in to the kitchen to find my bag full of nothing but tomatoes and rocket leaves, throwing it out of the open kitchen window in rage. After spending a good 20 minutes with the help of one of the cleaners, trying to hook my bag with the vacuum cleaner head and save it from the inaccessible roof from the window, something dawned upon me.

Generally when the typical Ramsay hall party-goer arrives back home, there are two possible thoughts running through the mind: Firstly the urge for greasy food in hangover recovery mode or secondly, the urge to find more alcohol having run out of money or having found Tescos closed at midnight. I also realised that my bag while padlocked also very distinctly appears as a 6 bottle cooler bag, generally used to hold said ether. Put the two together and naturally, this person investigates the fridge to find food, sees printed bottles and thinks: "This bag must have been locked for a reason... Because it has alcohol in it of course!". Wrong, but of course it takes a slashed bag to figure that one out.

So following my experience in locked wine bag logic, I achieved the current solution both out of the resistance to get another new bag and also out of the understanding that by that time, notices had started to emerge in the kitchens from the warden stating that theft was occurring and that disciplinary action would be taken. Since then my half slashed, locked wine bag has retained its place in the fridge. I haven't used the lock for months and just use the slashed side to grab my food. While a communal hall and kitchen works for the most part, one of the only things I find I would have liked to have to myself would have been a fridge (and even better a little freezer compartment for cooked food).

Besides my experiences with the fridges, using the kitchen has been great when they've been clean. One would quickly realize that after Friday night parties and no cleaners over the weekend, cooking on a Sunday evening is not the nicest experience. When people fill they're room bin the bags generally stack up along the wall inside the kitchen to the point where it gets harder to open the door. During holidays, this goes double. This being said, I have now cooked many meals over the weekends in our kitchens following my trek out to IKEA.

When you are a student and only staying for one year but you still want to cook, you want to get a cheap set up and where does that take you? IKEA has a special place in my heart with its Swedish styles, meatball lunches and ridiculous prices. Having been in and out of the kitchen and having made my shopping list, I took the long tube and bus ride (it took 1.5 hours each way after travelling to and then waiting for the shuttle bus service from the Stonebridge park tube station) to IKEA Wembly. I stormed through the familiar layout with kitchens in mind and found myself a wok for £2.44(I mean what can't you cook with a wok?), a set of 4 knives and block for £2.65, a set of 3 non-stick saucepans and cutting boards, can opener, sorting boxes and wooden spoons. IKEA really is the place to get all of this stuff but it isn't somewhere you want to go back to when you realize you've forgotten something. It is quite far out from central London and I haven't been back since despite my cravings for Annas Pepparkakor.

Ramsay Hall serves dinners every weekday with the exceptions of a couple of weeks over Christmas, Easter and some long weekends/bank holidays. The format is pretty standardised with soup, a choice of 2-3 mains, one vegetarian option, 'vegetable of the day', desert and salad. Dinner is served between 5-7pm with massive surges of people arriving on each hour. The quality of the food varies from day to day but on the whole, compared to other halls it is one of the best. You will become accustomed to the sugar and oil that permeates most dishes but it seems that style of food is dining hall custom. There have been a couple of themed events including a Chinese buffet style evening and of course the customary full roast Christmas dinner. These evenings break the monotony of the daily dining hall routine and always bring out the good side of people. It was amazing to see the Christmas cheer of everyone as students could celebrate away from home and in the company of their closest within the hall.

Over weekends and during the hall breaks where the dining staff take a break, residents are faced with two options: To cook or not to cook. Most will default to the easy option around the corner. The Court 4 pound burger and pint is a pretty popular option and the ridiculous value makes it easy to get over the food quality and cover it with the taste of beer or cider. It take less than 5 minutes to get to a host of fast food vendors on Tottenham court road such as Subway, Japanese Kitchen, Wasabi, Eat or Itsu. If you can be bothered walking for an extra 5 minutes, you will be on Goodge street. At the intersection there with Charlotte street, Ramsay hall is this close to one of the most popular restaurant districts in London. Charlotte street hosts a vast array of flavours but I think it certainly is dominated by the Italian variety, especially chain types such as Zizzi, Pizza Express and Spaghetti house. A student haunt around here is Icco, With bright red signs on the window boasting their 4 pound take away margherita pizza, you can always see traces of these boxes in student garbage as you walk down Charlotte street past the neighbouring Astor hall.

Some will try to be cheap by eating nothing but spaghetti and sauce or noodles all weekend or by picking up a 2 pound Tesco meal deal on the way home. I chose the final route for my culinary adventures. That being said, with a rather primitive kitchen that is never particularly pleasant to use and with nothing but a thin wok and a pot, one has to be quite selective with what can be tackled at home.

I do not know how many toasted ham and cheese sandwiches I have made this year (at least 50) but I think I can safely say I have mastered it. It all began with the bewildering trip as you walk into the Sainsbury's supermarket just around the corner. I didn't really anticipate just how lost I would be when going shopping in a new country where I to embark on a completely new lifestyle. I wondered up and down the isles, contemplating what I would need for those weekends, lunches and just those other necessary room based chores. I spent 10 minutes doing stupid things like comparing washing liquids and powders for the laundry just to settle on Ariel because it said colour and had my girlfriend's name. Even if I knew what mum uses at home, I didn't know why or what the UK equivalent was. These just aren't the things you think about and you only realize that fact when you give it a try. There were more instances of this as I tried to introduce student economy to a healthy diet. I didn't want to settle for the daily noodle or microwave meal so I quickly derived a standard shopping basket with wholegrain bread, grated cheddar cheese, ham, tomatoes and rocket leaves. This would complement my Sainsbury's 10 pound sandwich toaster giving the lunch time standard I have become rather familiar with. I guess the reason why I've been discussing how I went to buy groceries one day since it sort of represents what I had to do a number of times in the first months. This process of going out to do something you thought was simple, realizing your original solution in the context of home doesn't work then having to re-evaluate a new way comes up more than once. The best part is the optimization where you can start from scratch and try and make the best way forward as you can.

I had a wok and I was darned well going to use it so I hit one of these road blocks: What can I cook in a work with relatively cheap ingredients (it should be cheaper than just going to Subway or Wasabi) that will give a good feed and can be kept in a fridge that is susceptible to being left open or straight out robbed by other residents. I tried out a recipe for a red lentil dahl from home. I'd done it once before at home but the prototype is always the least efficient and time consuming and I spent almost 2 hours slaving away in the kitchen for my big wok load of brown slop for a good 2 dinners on the weekend and 2 lunches through the week. This model was copied later on as I tried a couple of other recipes that also avoided fresh meat in the fridge such as a salami and olive based Mediterranean risotto. Some techniques were refined like leaving preparation to be done in the room at my desk, chopping onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger. The smells that filled my room on occasion were pungent especially when the window restricters and general poor circulation would leave that garlic odour to stick around for a couple of days.

The day came when my sandwich toaster had toasted its last meal and my 10 pound investment died, shorting out the kitchen circuit breakers after 10 seconds of operation. With this loss though came new light as I borrowed a friend's frying pan in attempt to salvage lunch. This was a revolution with my new sandwiches having a lighter, crispier crust cooked on the easily cleanable non-stick pan. However mundane, the time I had spent cleaning the cheese from the hinge of that sandwich toaster... Another revelation was found when cooking up a filling red lentil based spaghetti sauce having just had more food stocks stolen. Failures have kept on leading to better and more innovative and creative solutions.

One thing that is impossible to avoid at Ramsay hall is the inevitable series of fire alarms that will disturb your study, your sleep, your dinner or worst of all your shower at the most unlikely of times. The fire regulations in this country are extreme and hence there are smoke detectors, fire doors and fire extinguishers everywhere around Ramsay. There are cooking fires, liberal deodorant sprayers and smokers in this building who all contribute to the wonderful community inspiring occasion that is the fire alarm evacuation. The dreaded claxon will go off about once every 2 weeks on average whether you are at home or not. While you would like to think these occasions may be legitimate, I have not once seen evidence of the fire brigade engaging in any extinguishing while in the building making our building possibly their most hated false alarm destination. As the term went on, you could see the number of people responding to these alarms, people sometimes just lock the door, bear with the noise and move on. The boy who cried wolf... A call out fee apparently gets deducted collectively from our deposits each time they come around which only gets annoying when you see drunk people you've never seen before in your corridor, fighting each other with CO2 fire extinguishers. Shortly afterwards you hear the alarm and confirmed by posters the following day, they have gone to the basement afterward on their raid though the corridors and have gone and hit one of the fire alarm buttons.

There are some really stupid and quite frankly violent people at Ramsay. This conclusion was finally reached on the last day of exams for most of the med students and D-day for our kitchen. Around 11pm that Friday, there was a rumbling along the upper floors and soon afterwards the running and yelling of a couple of people rung through the corridor once more but on our level. None of us think much of it and most of the time I will have my headphones on so the sound is mostly dissipated. It was only when I came into the kitchen 20 minutes later that I witnessed the aftermath. There was trash all over from the bin that had been emptied onto the floor, there was soil scattered all over from Leyla's pot plant. Yogurt from the fridge has been smeared all over the sink fittings and worst of all, the microwave had been taken. After contacting the warden and security, they asked me for any info I had which was really nonexistent since everyone really just sits tight when people are rampaging.

The following morning, I realised that my unopened 2L bottle of milk was missing from the fridge so assuming it had been taken the previous night, I went out to the reception to get the UHT milk from the vending machine for breakfast. It was only when I came up the stairs that unrealised that my milk was actually lying on the inaccessible ledge outside the kitchen window. It was way out of reach but what stuck me then was that the microwave was lying directly below the kitchen window, door hanging snapped in a fatigued acceptance of its end of life. Other remnants of the kitchen were found around the courtyard later including the smashed fragments of the plastic kettle.

While this act was rather shocking, it was understandable given that cocktail of first year traits at Ramsay and the time of release following the end of exams. The badly represented students in London have often nurtured an early drinking life, have just become able to buy cheap Tescos alcohol and have moved away from home or boarding school, away from rules. There are many nearby clubs, student parties and no one really owns anything apart from what is in their own rooms. The hall's way of keeping people from vandalizing the place is to hold their bond money over the fire. Since there are only a couple of CCTV cameras in the corridors, when something happens, not much can be done to catch the culprit and the bill will be taken up be the bond pool of all of the residents instead.

Besides all of these rather dark comments on some of the residents, I've had a great time at Ramsay Hall. The way the place brings so many students together in one melting pot of personalities. You meet people at the dining hall, in the kitchens and just out on the corridor. The way that so many students of similar age and inclination are crammed into one hall makes it so exciting. You get to hear stories from all of these different people from different parts of the world and even without going to their homelands, you feel you get some of their culture just from being around them. It is such a great thing to be a part of and despite the lousy showers, messy kitchens and fire alarms at odd hours. Maybe I will have another chance to come to such a busy place once more.

Having been away for a good month now, I miss the people I would see from day to day. I've never lived away from home before Ramsay Hall and miss that way of social habitation. The way events can spontaneously materialize when two or more have an idea is truly unique and having lived in London for the last year, I know now how London can be such a centre of innovation as all global cities are. The excitement of a city so full of culture and concentrated activity is something I will miss. While I now enjoy the calmness of Perth, granting a break from a hectic London, I'm sure I will go back once more to embrace the big city again.

A brief taste of Paris

2011-06-05T05:25:00.002+08:00

I realized how lightly I had prepared for the trip: I knew there were a set of sites and museums I just had to see but I hadn't really paid attention to the finer details of your typical trip to another country. Without mobile Internet, I whipped out some offline maps on my phone that I had thoughtfully got before leaving home. With the help of GPS it was pretty easy to find my way to the hostel relying on nothing more than a photographic memory of the hostel's location on Google maps (this could have ended badly though with no backup plan had I recalled falsely). While I had intended on using the Paris rental bike scheme, Vélib, my credit card kept on getting declined so while maintaining my resolve to see the city from above ground and not from the dark tunnels of the metro, the long walk was the only choice.

St Christopher's is a such great hostel to be in: It quickly becomes obvious that this chain of hostel's has learned from its past reviews and has answered every bad point with a clever solution. Our room overlooked a beautiful canal portion of the Seine, the view adding to the clever bunk system which included curtains, night lights and power points built into each of the 10 bunk cells. A lockable cage rolled out from under the beds giving a secure place to store luggage and valuables while out and about. Madde joined an hour and a half later having not been so lucky with her London sleep as I had.

By purchasing online, I had circumvented the payment problem for Vélib and it was time to go exploring. My first meal in Paris after having not eaten anything since Ramsay dinner the night before was a beautiful tuna and egg roll on the most gorgeous freshly baked bread. After such a long time hungry, it was the best meal imaginable! It really does seem strange when Madde and I reflected on having been in a different country that morning, hopping on a train and being in a completely different cultural surrounding. The French don't seem to like using English and we both felt so inadequate when high school teachings had obviously accounted for nothing regarding speech. We tried but they probably were only getting hints from our body language.

Maybe it was just the fact that it was a beautiful and sunny Saturday but I felt astonished by just how many people we saw outside. Be it running, sitting at the Cafe or just soaking up the sun in a park, everyone seemed to be out and utilizing every common space in the city. While the hostel's north west part of town was rather quiet, as we approached the centre of town, it got so busy as people all seemed to be on foot or bicycle. It seemed to me that Paris was another one of those cities where the car seems just a bit redundant.

After struggling at first with the hire bikes, with nothing but a random sense of direction taking the lead, we started seeing more and more people on the footpaths, encouraging us in the right direction. The first sight confirming our direction was the Opera Garnier, a fantastically sized, opulent building dedicated to music. Next came the Collone Vendôme before the sights started to come on heavy. Having followed the road along the north side of the Tulleries gardens, we rounded the corner and as if from a fairy-tale, the Eiffel tower rose from the skyline. With the Obelisk and the tower right in front of us, we then knew we had found what we both associated with Paris. It is here that the the latter half of the 18th century really shows itself where Paris was a world centre for science and the arts. The remarkable architecture in this part of town impresses no end with remarkable buildings like Hôtel des Invalides and Grand Palais simply astounding the mind with respect to scale and artistry. With this epic concentration of art at the city centre, one quickly understands why Paris is such a must visit destination.

Having cycled and walked in the summer heat for over 4 hours without eating or drinking, it was time to rest the weary legs and return home to recover from the long morning and the physical exertion of a full on day of superficial but astounding sightseeing. We rode through the Louve on the way home, once again struck by the sheer scale of space dedicated to the arts in this city. It became more understandable that one could spend weeks and weeks in that place and not see half of it.

This little expedition has only just whetted my appetite for what is to come and I am now so excited for tomorrow. There are just so many places I have seen today that I want to know more about and want to see in more detail from the outside and from the interior. Sleep will come easy tonight and a big day awaits.

Getting to Paris in a hurry

2011-06-04T17:32:00.000+08:00

So after a solid night out from 11pm at Tutu's last night following the last exam of the year, following a solid 2 hours of sleep, I was remarkably lucky to have heard the life saving call of my 4th alarm notification as sleep tried to pull me away from the 6:22am Eurostar trip to Paris. I felt so inclined to check the time as the watch blared away again, luckily choosing not to doze back off one once again. The time read 5:55am which kicked me into gear as I realized that I had no more than 27 minutes till my Eurostar train would leave St Pancreas, hopefully with me on board.
At this point all of my careful preparatory work had been worth gold as I leaped out of bed and donned the small pile of cloths I had set myself earlier. With shoes on, a pre-packed bag on my back and a head throbbing from the inevitable hangover, I flew out the door and was on the path to the station, taking no more than 3 minutes from the bed to the front door of Ramsay hall. Time was ticking and I hoped that the memory of my departure time was correct, not daring to pause and check the digital ticket. Jogging towards Warren street tube station, I kicked myself as I saw that there were no bikes at the stand, hoping to make up time by tagging in and running down the Warren street tube escalator only to find that the Victoria line was closed hence evaporating my easy passage to Kings Cross. There was still hope as I dashed back up and over Euston road to a well stocked Boris bike stall, quickly checking out a bike. I legged it the whole way to Kings Cross, dodging buses and depositing the bike only 200m from the check-in point in the terminal.

I was starting to regain hope as I had only spent 10 minutes from bed to St Pancreas but I was still counting the minutes as I approached the check in barrier. I crossed my fingers and toes as I held my phone to the 2D bar-code reader, having tempted fate with the choice to stay paperless. In an example of ideal smartphone engineering, the door opened and I was through to the security check, throwing my bag on the conveyor while trying not to appear like terrorist. Through the passport check, I hoped my packing was as thorough as was required, lifting the new Swedish passport from the bag and out into the hands of the awaiting French official. I could almost smell the engine oil at this point, sighting the escalators up to the trains.

I approached the ladies at the foot of the escalators feeling a bit foolish as I held a phone with nothing but an un-inteligible 2D barcode on the screen, standing in a short line full of people holding their full printed tickets. They obviously had no way of re-checking my ticket in a similar way as they sighted the details on everyone's paper. With 12 minutes till departure time, they sent me to the help desk to print my ticket making me wonder if my choice of medium had been as good as I thought 5 minutes prior. That hope was soon revived as the desk person said that it should be ok to show the PDF version of the ticket I was waving around on my phone. With some French murmurs of a trail system accepting the digital alternative (I had read earlier that it was initiated back in 2008, I guess implementation has been slow), I was through with 5 minutes to spare, strolling triumphantly down the platform to my coach. It was only when I settled into seat 45 that I truly relaxed in the knowledge that I had succeeded, putting an end to the mindless rush that had occupied the morning so far. Hoping not to have the same process inflicted on Madelene, I gave her a ring to check she had awoken from a similar club-night-induced coma and was on her way to catch her 7am train. Not long after, the train pulled away from the platform, dead on time. I then knew that in just a little over two hours I would be in the centre of Paris, standing in a different country with a whole new culture to explore.

New York, London

2010-09-29T23:30:00.016+08:00

I was starting to get used to Heathrow by my fifth visit and found my way to the Heathrow express to Paddington. With a student fare I was in the city within 20 minutes and made my way to the underground. At the Euston square I was confronted with ever more stairs to haul my year stay suitcase up and down. I whipped out my little map and headed to Astor Hall which was just a 15 minute walk away. On the way I passed the main entrance of University College London (UCL) and what seemed like one of the older buildings, a red brick colossus with all sorts of turrets and 4 distinct wings. Immediately I was in awe of this old institution I would soon be involved in. It wasn't long before I was re-directed to my permanent halls being told that the document I had received regarding early check-in at this Astor wasn't happening. It was just around the corner so I was happy to be able to move straight into my permanent residence rather than having to move out of Astor in a couple of days.

Ramsay hall looked pretty utilitarian with the entrance being composed of the currently open big steel gates framed by the two turnstiles, administering the entry of each student in single file. I was given my new key at the reception and negotiated the basement passage passing two of the other blocks being Rome and London. I arrived at the first floor of New York, number 155, my new home for the year. It was small, basic but with a sink, a little wardrobe and desk, it would be all I'd need.

I went for a little walk in search of the breakfast I'd be providing myself for the next week before meals at the dining hall were provided. I found Weetabix, their attempt at Weetbix back home and some basics, beginning the process of stocking my room. On my way in and out, I met Jordan, an American exchange student. I passed on what experience I'd already gleaned about the way of Ramsay hall, helping with the various locked doors and the door numbering along the corridors. I met Leyla a little later, an Egyptian girl studying in Toronto who was also on exchange. Once we observed more people coming in, It seemed like our part of New York was a rather exchange student rich place with about 80% of the place coming from outside the UK.

It was a matter of just getting used to a different style of living. The little kitchen at the end of the corridor would be shared with a about 30 people and the showers all used push buttons to work. Being me, of the three showers it wasn't long before I knew which one went for 6, 13 or 22 seconds between pushes. I met Kim from Hamburg on the way to UCL for enrolment. This being the week allocated for exchange and international student enrolment, the non-EU passport que was a mile long but lucky for me, I was about to get some more use out of my new Swedish passport. With all of the paperwork done for internet access at UCL and at home, I was back online again. After a couple of inquires at the 'Car Phone Warehouse' on Tottenham court road, I also fixed up one of the connection settings on my phone so I also had mobile internet around London.

It was time to meet David Trendell. I made a slow walk to Kings College London on the Strand (KCL) via the Russell Square Gardens. I found the place eventually having had plenty of buffer time to find my way into the heart of the main building where the chapel was located. It was a beautifully decorated with the colours even stretching onto the painted organ raised above the main entrance. Despite having finally fallen ill after a good month travelling and singing, I did some simple sight reading and technical work for David, quite a moment of truth given the fact that he would have heard all of the other choristers at least once in the audition process for the choir. Rehearsals would begin the following week when uni started.

With some new found friends on the corridor, we all went to Goodge street nearby, eventually settling with the cheapest food we could find. Soon after it was back to Ramsay where we found a corridor party on the 4th floor. It was truly a strange sight to see a good 40 people lining the walls in a big frenzy of newcomers hype. One thing lead to another and before we knew it, we were on the road to The Roxy, the nearest student club which is apparently all the rage every Wednesday night. This small little club/hole in the wall seemed to be exclusively for Ramsay hall students that night with our brigade having just arrived to fill the dance floor with an alcohol fuelled fervour. While the place certainly wasn't the best in the world, it was the people and the raw sense of excitement that seemed to bound alongside the midnight throb of sub woofers.

The next couple of days shot past with various introductory talks about life in London, finances and the services offered by the student union. Having read up on account types months prior to visiting, i already knew what the scene was like so when the special student offer was made from Santander with a relatively low monthly fee of 5 pounds. With a debit card offered and reasonable interest and overdraft conditions, it seemed sensible to go with this account especially since a branch was located on my daily direct route to uni. The most important part of the conditions associated with this account though was that you only required a passport and a letter of acceptance from UCL to apply. This did distinguish it from some of the other student offers since it became so easy to initiate the account. Since there were so many applicants it did take a while until I received my card and account details.

All of the talk around Ramsay seemed to be dedicated to deciding on which of the many union sponsored clubbing parties to go to in 'freshers week'. It seemed this was the way first years introduce themselves to their new found university life. I got fast selling tickets to the Freshers Fiesta at KOKO and a guided bus tour for the following day.

This bus tour ended up being a great way to get a well rounded view of the city and overview of the historical significance that seems to be entwined with every building, park and statue. Armed with rain jackets and umbrellas, we were assaulted by the wind and rain from the top of the double decker bus. We passed fantastic places such as Trafalgar square, the departments along Whitechapel??? and on through to Westminster Abbey and the houses of Parliament. The big glossy adverts that you may have at some point seen showing off the London Eye and Big Ben tower, these images were suddenly being seen in real live (albeit in the grey gloom of a rainy day rather than the ideailk blue of a marketing image), bring home the reality that home was now a major city of the world. Passing Kings College, the bus driver introduced and fostered the rivalry between KCL and UCL, repeating the renown words of historian Thomas Arnold in his description of the secular UCL being "that godless institute in Gower Street". That very day, I walked into the college chapel for the second time and met the rest of the choir in our first rehearsal for the academic year. Something I chose to keep quite about at just that moment. It was so great to get started with this choir which was composed entirely of KCL students (with some exceptions). The standard of reading was good with progress going toward the first couple of services the following week. I got to know a couple of names and knew I would be in good company for the rest of the year, getting a good weekly dose of new music every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

With the formalities of the week complete, it was time for a bit more socialising with the other occupants of New York. That evening I joined a couple of american people I had met only the night before at the UCL union bar. Even in this week before the local UK students had graced the scene, the union bar was still busy with people heading out for the night. The popularity of the bar was certainly solid with pints generally below 50% of the normal 3 pound London standard. Having the requirement of being over 21 in clubs in the US, Devan and Dylon had taken to the task of going clubbing every night since they had arrived in London. I joined them for 'pre-gaming' in Dylan's room before heading to the clubbing central of Leicester Square. At 11pm this part of London was just coming to its peak life with night goers filling the malls and club sprukers spilling onto the streets to beckon people onto their dance floors. After wafting around the square dazzled by the lights, we eventually settled into Bar Rumba, a small club with some serious R&B beats. It was 3am and after a full night on the dance floor with the others, it was time to head home. With the tube closed and since Devan insisted on getting a cab to Ramsay, we ended up walking all the way to Piccadilly square where we finally found a late night black cab to Ramsay.

With some time off over the weekend, we banded up a group of 1st floorer's to explore some more of the surroundings, revisiting some of the destinations visited by the tour bus earlier in the week. On top of the typical sights like Piccadilly and Trafalgar squares, we went into the Covent Garden Markets, right next to the Royal Opera House. After vast amounts of walking, it was time for the pub with all of us rolling into the UCL union bar together for some games. The festivities continued the following night with the freshers fiesta taking place at KOKO in the evening. This amazing venue is an old converted theatre with a full dress circle and balcony setup. The stage acts as a massive platform for the DJ, pumping sound though the floor for an awesome night out.

One important initiative with regarding transport in London came with my adoption of the Barklays hire bike scheme. This program was set up in London in early 2010 and since then has been growing exponentially as Londoners take up the congestion friendly alternative. Having figured out part of my timetable for the following term, it is likely that I will have to make some weekly dashes from lectures to rehearsal. These clashes will require that I waste as little time in transit as possible and since the tube trip to KCL is not very direct and takes almost as long as walking direct from Uni. Having looked at the likely routes and pick up/drop off stations for the bikes, I calculated that making a walk/bike from uni to the KCL chapel would take around 40% less time, leaving that bit more time in clash lectures before sprinting off to rehearsal every Tuesday and Wednesday. Having reviewed all of the membership options available on the Barklays bike site, I settled on the annual access fee for just 45 pounds. Just 4 days later I received my membership key in the mail, letting me approach any bike at a docking station, insert my key, wait for the little light to go from yellow to green then give a sharp pull on the handle bars to get it out of the station. The bike is then mine for up to 24 hours but to avoid any fee on top of my 45 pound annual access fee, I can return the bike at any station within 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, I will be charged an extra 1 pound then an extra 4 pounds after the next hour. That being said, my main journey is not more than 15 minutes by bike.

Today I got a surprising message from one of my oldest friends, Felipe! It seemed that he would be arriving to London in 2 hours. I left Ramsay with Mel, planning to take the opportunity to see some of London by bike in the morning. We cycled through Hyde park and ended up at Buckingham Palace just as people started to amass for the changing of the guard. Over the deluge of drums, tourist delight and the inevitable crush of the crowd, we found each other and both continued the tourist behaviour with our cameras. We headed towards Westminster after the ceremony had finished, aiming to take in this iconic district of London with the towering Abbey and clock tower gazing down on all of the people pouring through the area. I said goodbye to Felipe for the meantime and it didn't take long before I was back home, preparing for the afternoon at uni and then to my first evensong with the KCL choir.

I had been wondering what would happen on my 20th birthday, wondering who I would celebrate with in my new environment and also what I would be doing to mark the occasion. I hadn't expected my birthday to begin with my first proper lectures in the mechanical engineering department but that was how it was. I left soon after the commencement of the second of my clash lectures, heading out to the bike stands and to KCL where I would be till the 4:30pm. With the coming of the 29th of September came a whole series of surprises. The first came in the form of a big cardboard box at the reception upon arrival after rehearsal. I opened it up when I got up to my room and to my great surprise it was full of red roses from Ariel back home. It came with a glass vase and before long the stems were cut and the flowers were sitting on my windowsill. Not more than an hour later, Mel came into my room with a tray of freshly baked cupcakes.

Purely by chance, I stumbled upon the news that the band MGMT were to be playing at the Brixton O2 Academy in the evening. With the company of some willing friends on the corridor, we all got tickets and were soon on the tube (after a prerequisite pre-game...) and on our way to the end of the Victoria line: to Brixton. The atmosphere was slow on arrival but we were all ready to see the show and had fun throughout the supporting acts. The excitement continued until MGMT set the stage with their dazzling light show and memorable rhythms.

After a long night of dancing and many spontaneous smiles, the clock ticked over and it was no longer the 29th. Time for another year to begin, this time in a different part of the world with one old friend and a whole lot of new ones. London has been so new and exciting so far and I'm sure the unique facets of the city and the people that I inhabit it with will make the year just as exciting for the up and coming months. The introduction to university in the UK so far has been a smörgåsbord of parties, cultural excursions and insights into new people and the places they come from. Ramsay hall will be a great place to live and with its location and the people living so nearby, there is so much to come!

Stockholm, Sigtuna and Skånes Djurpark

2010-09-20T17:34:00.003+08:00

Arrival in the morning was perfect to get the most of my first day in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. Walking along Vasagatan, I was taken from the central station to the waterside and the water took me to Kungliga Operan (The Royal Opera) where I planned to meet Lena. I found the stage door and signed in, receiving my security pass as Lena arrived at the door. She took me to her office where I could drop my heavy luggage before we set on about a tour of the opera house. My first opportunity for amazement was when we slipped through a warren of doors, finding myself right in the middle of an orchestral rehearsal for Rigoletto. The music was exciting and very polished, getting ready for the opening night a couple of days later. We moved on towards the back stage area and then to the under-backstage area where we found interesting contraptions like trap door riser platforms, the heavy mechanisms to change the rake steepness of the stage and even the very low pistons to sink the whole stage down for scene changes.
A quick wisp around these parts and into the stage manager's box where I saw first hand the gadgets and prompt lights to command the crew stationed around the stage in order to get everything technical in place around the singers. We also went further into the managerial hub of the opera, delving into costuming, the wig factory and the rehearsal spaces for both the opera and ballet both housed in the building.

This tour was just so thorough that I really felt engrossed with the lifestyle and environment of the people that worked there from day to day. I wish I could just roam into the auditorium to listen into current rehearsals in progress during the work day like Lena did. The music was wonderful and it really made me want to aspire to getting onto that stage as a singer. Maybe one day I will sing an opera there.

I went with Lena to the home of her daughter, Kajsa. I met her family and recent newborn. I was warmly welcomed into the newly furnished home in Täby and got down to important matters. Viktor and I drove down to the local pizzeria and soon we were sitting down to dinner marking the end of my first day in Stockholm.

In the morning I got a little chance to catch up with correspondence and got the first draft of the schedule for the Kings College London chapel choir which was to include an evensong at Westminster Abbey. While this was quite a cool introduction to a new day, I headed out the city and went out to some of the attractions around the old town (Gamla stan). I started with some of the magnificent churches like Storkyrkan and St:a Clara kyrka. Moving back to the city, I checked out the Kulturhuset where many local parliament members were giving speeches with the impending elections. Towards the end of the day, I picked up a 'Stockholm card' which is like a one pass entry to culture in the town. I went into the ballet museum and also the Nobel museum before everything closed. Without anything being open, I walked to the underground and made my way back to Täby. In true holiday fashion, I took a seat with Kajsa's younger son, Anton who promptly reminded me of my lost skill in the area of Nintendo. We battled turtles and spiked fiends together in an epic fight between good and evil until the evening came to an end.

The Stockholm Stadshuset is the home of the Nobel prize and was my next stop. I took the tour through the building, witnessing the unique illuminated space of the Blue Hall (Blå Hallen), the current venue for the giving of the Nobel prize. The stairs were specially made for gowned women to descend elegantly into the awaiting audience to claim their prize. We were told about all of the special sections of the wall that are used now as markers for the laureates to gaze at to quell the nerves of claiming their prize. One fact that surprised me was that the room houses the largest organ in Scandinavia with 10,270 pipes which could hardly be seen from ground level. The Golden Hall was absolutely stunning! With over 18 million golden mosaic tiles depicting figures from Swedish history lining the walls and roof, this really inspired especially given the fact that all of the artwork had to be finished in a mere 11 months. As well as these areas, the building also held local parliament which was housed in yet another magnificent room. We were told that it was often a popular wedding site as well with the shorter of the two available ceremonies being only 30 seconds long.

After a quick tour through the treasury and the crown jewels, I headed back to the opera house for a bit of a break where I watched some of the new production of Rigoletto. Following this wonderful chill out session, it was back on the tourist trail, browsing the National museum and its intriguing timeline of Swedish home interior design through the ages. I walked on to Skeppsholmen where I would board the boat Af Chapman. This converted trade frigate and navy training boat was sold to the city of Stockholm at the end of World War Two when the navy saw no further use for it. It was refurbished as a hostel and was officially opened in 1983. I headed to the opera in the evening and took my seat to see the Marriage of Figaro with a rather modern layout and brilliant singers.

Taking advantage of the location on Skeppsholmen, I went to the modern (Moderna Museet) and architecture museums in the morning. I found the architecture museum particularly interesting, spending over an hour in this relatively small set of exhibits. The history of the state's models in housing through the 20th century. The million project stood out as the dominant implementation of state run building and fostering of the standard three room apartment based on the model 2 adult, 2 child family.

The political party of the time was was the Social Democratic Party which has historically been the dominant party (this election may be the first it hasn't won in many). Its socialist values emphasized the need to raise the communal standard of housing by building 1 million new dwellings over the 10 years of the program. This meant that whole communities were built from the ground up, leading to a number of large identical apartment buildings which still characterize some Swedish areas to this day. This new historical knowledge made me better understand the background to one of these areas I had visited earlier just outside of Malmö called Rosengård. This is often regarded as a pretty rough neighborhood being the site of numerous riots and social unrest. One case of this was in April when a riot broke out with cars and families being set alight. Firefighters were called in but required the help of many riot police to get the fires out. The suburb has a typical unemployment ratio of close to 40% and is roughly 60% inhabited by migrants of Iraq, the former Yugoslav state, Lebanon, Somalia and Afghanistan. A fun quote from the Guardian: "Of the 1,200 students in the secondary school, eight are native Swedes". It seems like social problems in these sorts of estates, especially with high immigrant populations have been hot topics on the news with the election looming. The Swedish welfare state has been feeling increasing pressure recently and some think it will not be so successful this year due to these trends in immigrant influxes and the welfare payments they receive while unemployed.

Concluding my visit with some shopping, I gazed at the designs with a certain sense of homecoming, recognizing many things from home. I made my way back to Kajsa's home where I met up with Christer, one of Dad's oldest friends. We drove up to Sigtuna, between Stockholm and Uppsala, a beautiful area that still resembles the archipelago nature of Stockholm but with the stillness of lakeside land. We visited some sites from Dad's youth and I saw some of Christer's old army service photos where the resemblance was really quite striking, Dad being around the same age as me at the time. I was taken to the cultural centre of the town where they were preparing for a big annual run and it seemed so busy in such a small town centre which was mostly an environment of century old houses which had been preserved. There I was introduced to an old Swedish cafe called Tant Brun (Aunt Brown) with low dwarfish doorways and traditionally dressed waitresses. We had some sandwiches and a particularly good wienerbrod of course. With the limited time we had, the next stop was Uppsala where we made our way through the university town and towards the cathedral which had possibly the most ornate roof painting I have ever seen. How did the artists paint these intricate patterns so high above atop the ascending columns?

Today was election day so I followed the Sandbergs to the polling station at the nearby school. The results will be in and counted with the results coming to the media within 2 days time.

While having enjoyed the company of Christer and Britt, I had to move on to the next destination being Denmark. I was taken to Bromma airport where I said my goodbyes and hopped onto the bus-like airplane journey to Copenhagen. It wasn't more than an hour before I was walking out to greet my brother and Ajia once again. We went straight into the rural part of southern Sweden where we found things like elk and bears! While this was in a wilderness park called Skånes Djurpark, it was really quite a suprising array of forest wild life, many of which I had never seen the likes of in real life. After milling around the park till closing time, it was time to go and witness the outcome of the election back at Stensåker after dinner with Mormor.

It was election time and the verdict came out with a rather regretful result. On the back of an increase in recent anti-immigrant sentiment, the racist party managed to get a threshold vote of over 4% which means they will now have a couple of seats in parliament. What makes it particularly bad is that neither of the major party coalitions have a majority vote effectively granting the racist party balancing power in votes hung between both of the major parties. This will make for an interesting period in Swedish politics.

After a quick fling of tourism in Copenhagen with Niklas the following day, we met Aija in her lunch break at Cafe Norden for a little farewell lunch before heading to the airport. It would be the first time I would use my new Swedish passport and after spending the last 2 weeks touring through the country without the company of my parents, I felt I had soaked up enough of the land and culture to feel like a Swede. I have now eaten Kraftor and fresh apples in Huskvarna, recycled bottles with refund machines in Tranås, I have witnessed relics of its architectural history and have enjoyed the arts from the inside of other iconic buildings in the country's capital. I have been a grateful recipient of so much local experience and kindness from relatives I may have never seen or met before. Having had this opportunity to travel before my placement in London gives me a comforting sense of local connection with Europe as a whole, knowing that Scandinavia is only a stones throw away.

Now begins life in London as a student, a singer and a tourist. I hope I will get another chance to visit this country soon and with it being so close, I am sure I will come back and meet again before heading to the other side of the planet, home to Australia.

Småland

2010-09-14T09:00:00.001+08:00

Taking a thereputic train journey with my digital right hand reattached, I arrived in Nässjö and was met by dad's brother, Peter. We drove through the forest lined highways, passing the occasional elk sign. Eventually we came to the vast expanse of water by the name of Vättern, marking our arrival at Jönköping, Peter took me to the waterside of the lake, remarking about my time there as a young child, playing in the sand in the warmer months of the year. This sight was just minutes from the home of Owe and Ann Marie who greeted us at their door. It was a rather strange experience to walk into this place where I saw old photos from over a decade ago where Ann Marie is sitting beside their white upright piano and I am sitting with her, white-haired and small.
We took the same type of picture but in the current day. To me, the two pictures seemed to be almost indistinguishable except for my added age. Owe and Ann Marie looked almost identical as did the piano and the pictures on the wall. That night we all moved to a restaurant by a smaller lake inlet, set with an everlasting sunset over the flat water. As the night moved on, the sky grew dark tones as the sun finally submitted to the tree line. We took a short scenic drive through the city and then up to the city park, perched up on a rocky hill, overlooking the lights of Jököping. It reminded me of Kings park back home with this great elevation sitting over the city. Passing construction works to clear the road of a small rockslide on the way to the Friberg residence, we arrived in Kaxholmen, a comfortable area with a great balance between country surroundings and city locality.

The morning brought good weather and a desire to run out into the small forest that lay nearby. Within a 4 minute run, and with some direction by Peter, I found myself on the local running group's circuit. There were different paths pounded into the earthen floor and even lamps were found over the the more traveled paths. This was possibly the most enjoyable way to run, brushing up against the infinite greenery of the outdoor wilderness with a single winding road to take oneself through the eventual exhaustion of physical exertion. When I got back, Eva had prepared a wonderful breakfast complete with home made sill (pickled herring), muesli and home made bread. A real treat for the start of a new day. The days battle plan was to make the trip to Grenna to checkout their polar museum and learn a little bit of local history including the stories surrounding the town's kitchen candy works origin. Following this exhibit I had to make an obligatory trip to the polkagrisery, indulging in my favorite fresh candy, (insert lemon licorice name!). Following another picture with the Grenna roadside troll, we went to Huskvarna to the Stadshotellet for a buffet lunch.

Some more time was spent in Jönköping later in the day with a walk through the old matchworks and then a coffee break to soak up the wonderful wienerbrod that most Swedish cafes have on offer. With some indoor warmth rekindled and the sweet tooth satisfied, we went around the corner to the dock where an old restored sailing ship would be arriving to take part in a historical annual market visit. At this event, many locals would come in olden day attire and share their wares at the dockside, dance and generally be merry.

Lucky for me, the annual kräftor festival (Kraft sasongen) starts in early August so that evening I was treated to this unique traditional celebration. The general theme of this is to eat kräftor(sort of like yabbies or small crayfish). This is complemented with other traditional foods like more of Eva's sill and also there was the obvious consumption of snaps, accompanied with snaps visor (schnapps songs). I've always heard about the celebtation but never had the opportunity to join in. It's this sort of culture you just can't get if you're just traveling around the country as an uninformed tourist. That's why I consider my self so lucky that Peter and his family were so kind in showing me around and feeding me as another Friberg. The evening was filled with nostalgia as I hooked up the laptop with the TV in the basement, showing some of my travel photos and some from past years too.

The apple industry is a great example of the sort of local surrounding that makes Kaxholmen such a country location. We readied the bikes in the morning, ready for our morning commute to a nearby apple orchard that was holding something like an open day. Within 15 minutes by bike we were at the farm and greeted with a tasty 'Discovery' apple fresh from the field, being handed out with a friendly welcome. This fully functional apple farm was today hosting a range of local companies, demonstrating their products. I tried some salami, a great smoked salmon salad mix and tried some freshly pressed (pressed before my very eyes) apple juice from more of the farms produce. While waiting for the apple safari to begin, I found myself talking to the man who wad guiding a work horse for people to ride on. I found out about his horse, his work and the way he was using only traditional pulling techniques instead of tractors on the farm over the road. He told me that this massive creature was one of his best and that in the winter I could come to his yellow house on the far hill and he would let me ride in the horse drawn sleigh. I thanked him as I left to hop onto the apple safari carriages as they rolled down the hill.

A tractor-towed people trolley took us through the narrow isles of apple trees where the driver hopped out and explained some detail about the apples. Having been shuttled up and down the orchard, we arrived back at the farm house to indulge in a lunch treat of apple cake, svart vinbärssaft (like ribena) and some farm brewed apple cider. All sugared up and ready to go, we dropped by the farm shop, stocked up with things we had seen and took the bikes back home.

More traditional foods were on offer in the evening prior to our excursion to the Jönköping bowling lanes. That night, a team game was in offer for 3 person teams. This implied that instead of everyone bowling their two shots per 10 pin reset, each person bowled once then would leave it to the next person to finish the remaining pins. This allowed for a more even an continuous playing style. Over 6 games, there was a chance for prizes too. There were a set of bright yellow pins in circulation and sometimes one would appear in your set. If one of these pins was the leading centre pin and you scored a strike for that round, you would win a 25kr drinks voucher for the bar. We ended up winning 7 of these by the end of the competition with just under half of them coming from Linn's miracle backwards facing between the legs shot which won us the challenge competition after the regular 6 games. A great finale to a good night.

We headed to Tranås the following day and by Peter's suggestion, I took the wheel of the car for the duration of the trip. Having only passed my manual drivers licence test 2 months prior to the day, the mechanics were still quite fresh in the mind. One major difference was the right hand traffic of Sweden. Contrary to commuter driving in Perth, the route from Kaxholmen to Tranås was a scenic one with the fun element of fast, winding country roads. The time passed quickly and in just over an hour, we had arrived at Fafar's house without a single accident or stall. We headed out of the apartment as soon as we got there, joining Farfar for his daily walk and passing by Dad's favourite Trånas bakery, hearing stories about his recent visit. We came back to cake and coffee before Dad's friend Carl Johan came in for lunch. Farfar had been cooking again and had prepared goulash for us all. He got an upgraded TV a while ago, one with an SD card reader so I added some more recent Friberg photos to the card and had a look at them later on. While the laptop was still out, I thought I'd nerd out just a little more by using my mobile phone as a modem to make a Skype video call to Mum and Dad back home. This was a fun little novelty which let everyone say hello in a video rich way, making a nice conclusion to my time with Peter, Eva and Linn.

In the evening, I joined Carl Johan on a pre-dinner expedition to the yacht club to see his new boat and also to witness the awesome stillness of Sommen. The water sat as a silent mirror while we were, suiting the cooling early evening atmosphere. This glassy surface was broken only as we headed back to the car, being pursued by a mother duck and her young children from the water below the high set pontoons of the jetty. Farfar came for dinner at Carl Johan's in the evening over a Lapin Kulta and meat on the outdoor barbecue. Carl Johan showed me some photos from the house in the winter time, showing the ridiculous amounts of snow that fell in the recent extra potent cold season. Hopefully I'll get a chance to get some good snow this year.

Carl-Johan took me out to his work place in the morning on a full tour of the facility. This factory covered a vast range of mechanical processes right from the pressing and laser cutting of elementary components. There was a lot I could take from this guided walk as I saw the whole cycle of manufacturing. TR specialize in solutions for moving and bathing bed-bound patients using hydrolic assistance. While many companies undertaking this sort of cycle would probably mass produce and compartmentalize labour, the number of units produced per year makes it feasible to do everything in-house. This includes the initial design in the office, the preparation of sheet metal, the use of the computerized and manual bending machines, the powder coating ovens, the assembly workshop and even the testing and quality control platforms. Seeing the new multimillion dollar automated cutting machine that could move a large sheet, cutting, engraving and drilling it based on a pre defined program was quite cool, giving me an idea of the sort of design requirements and cost involved with this type of machine use. I was also shown through the powder coating process, a series of widely adopted steps that I hadn't understood prior to the visit. This gave me a much stronger appreciation of way the process gives a good coverage on all surfaces that could otherwise be vulnerable to corrosion. Immediately follow this interesting industrial sight seeing, we moved to the train station where I left for the next destination on the trip.

I was met in Linköping by Rolf who had somehow managed to position himself right infront of the very carriage door I left from. I met Maj Britt at the car and we set off for the historical area. This place was the centre of the old town where all of the oldest buildings had been transported in to make the place a small village. There were many cottage industries in these small wooden houses including an old style blacksmith, a woodworking and puzzle shop and also the lolly shop, stocking all sorts of small candies (små godis). We left with the obligatory bag of sweets and headed off towards the Linköping university to take a glance at one of the universities of Sweden.

After a short roam through the extensive grounds, we crossed the road to the golf club for lunch where the serving system reminded me so much of some key elements of the Swedish psyche. The main element is based around maximum self service and efficiency. Everyone knows how it works by picking up their tray at the beginning, taking their optional items such as drinks and cakes and then sliding to the checkout. Having seen the main meals on offer on large TV screens while waiting in line for payment, one has a chance to decide on the primary dish. Stating this selection at the register, you will then move to the servery with your receipt and collect your choice. Everyone will then pass by the salad bar and other included extras such as bread and sparkling water before taking any available seating space, leaving no single chair gaps between groups of people at the same set of tables. Swedes have the long term core sense of the commune, the socialist mind that has over time grown comfortable with this relationship between the obligation of self-service, limited choice and a cheaper, better quality meal for everyone.

Göta Canal is a long artificial body of water that stretches a vast distance over Sweden, linking Lake Vättern and the Baltic. Now if your going to have something like this that encompasses some of the many vast inland lakes that are dotted over Sweden, you need to change water level a great number of times. This gives rise the dramatic existence of the locks I was taken to. Having not seen (in my memory) this sort of installation before, the array of 7 lochs in one section (Berg's slussar, bridging a height of 18.8m) and 4 in the other struck me with a sense of engineering awe. The evolution of the pumping and opening mechanisms made more sense to.me when seeing a great series of.these water walls one after another.

We moved back towards the main suburban areas and met their daughter Åsa and her husband Magnus. Having only just arrived home, Åsa took me with her to pick up their children with a slight detour to a stiller part of the same canal we saw earlier. The stillness made the surface a perfect reflector for the greenery that draped the banks of the canal creating this infinite valley of greenery.

I got some good time to talk to Åsa about life for a.new homebuyer/builder in Sweden and the sort of lifestyle that one slots into when the children are just starting to become more self sufficient. It was really fun to get the time with this younger generation of the extended family even if I practically exist between her generation and that of her kids.

Coming into the newly finished household was like coming into the familiarity of home. The colours and ideals behind the interior design match our taste at home too so the home grand tour was much apriciated. There is always a lot of attention given to Scandinavian home interior. Whether it be due to the winter weather or the necessity of staying inside, the home has to be clean, practical, visually appealing and comfortable. In the evening, I had an opportunity to share my travel experience with some images after and then I was shown some pictures from the northern highlands of Sweden. Maj-britt and Rolf had done some really cool walks up there which looked pretty picturesque. I should go up there too.

Late that night we checked on the status of clean up operations after a high speed train had hit a tractor that was too close to the tracks. Luckily there had been no deaths in the accident but there were some serious injuries to some passengers on the train. Unfortunately the accident had taken place on the exact line that I would be taking the following morning so until we checked online, we didn't know whether I'd be able to travel my intended route. I took a substitute bus service that circumvented the accident the following morning. When boarding my train to Stockholm after the bus transfer to Norrköping. I found that the carriage I was supposed to board didn't exist on the train so I ended up squeezing into the second carriage with some other confused individuals. I found a seat after the real occupants had found their booked places, sat back and enjoyed my apparent upgrade to first class on the last leg to the capital.

Passing through the heartland of Sweden on the way to Stockholm has given me a great chance to connect with my relatives in a way I haven't been able to on when in the company of my parents. While I wish I could speak Swedish in the fluency required, it always seems very easy to get by in English. Being one of the strongest countries to speak English as a second language, it seems as though everyone you speak to who is born after world war 2 can speak with quite a wide vocabulary. Even if there was a particular word they might not know, I could often recognize the Swedish version and narrow things down a little. This also made it harder to learn more of the language too since it always just ends up being more comfortable to go with the best second spoken language. I was really lucky to experience some of the cultural events too. With kräftor and midsommar back to back, I got to celebrate familiar festivals but in the right country and the right environment. I am so grateful all of my relatives and family friends were so generous with their time, showing me all of the local attractions and providing their own personal taste to the historical context. After getting this one-on-one time, I feel like I know my Swedish family in a more personal way rather than in a procedural meet and greet context. Having taken in a more country side lifestyle in this part of the trip, I am slightly more rested and ready to take on the sights and scenes of the beautiful archipelago city of Stockholm.

Gateway to Sweden: Malmo and Copenhagen

2010-09-09T15:00:00.032+08:00

With Niklas and Aija in the perfect position, they were the first people I saw as I came out of the Copenhagen Airport arrivals door. We shot off along the coast for some lunch at the Rungsted Havn, a beautiful marina, covered by a board walk of great lunch restaurants servicing the great Danish thirst for good frokost. With a meal complete with chilled Flädersaft (traditional elderflower summer drink), I was happy to eat something after the rushed morning departure and commute from Kingston in London. We moved on to get some ice cream, indulging in the summer atmosphere of the well-lit harbour side.

Taking advantage of the good weather, we headed further north to Helsingor and Kronborg castle. While this castle is normally open to visitors, we made it just after the close time, instead following the perimeter of this picturesque building and battlement. The tactical reinforcements of this area are rather interesting with elaborate interleaved fields for cannon fire and a series of moats to hinder attacker progress from a time of horses and chain mail. The air was so clear that day so the view over the channel to Sweden was crystal clear. From this place, we could also see the ferry that we would soon be taking on our way to Helsingborg in Sweden. Driving onto the ferry was quite a novelty to me with a comprehensive system of signalling and automated drawbridges locking in perfectly to the open decking of the ferry ship. These boats are optimized for the short 20 minute trip with a small tax free shop for chocolate, alcohol, cigarettes and souvenirs. The small ship even has a fast food depot for the passengers and perhaps for the number of truck drivers using the boat. We had a long drive through the countryside on the Swedish side back to Oxie, crossing fields that are polka dotted in wind turbines. Arriving back at Mormor’s home, I shared some photos from the trip so far and found welcome in the nights sleep after another travel-heavy day.

One of the main practical aspects of the visit to Malmo was to finalize my Swedish citizenship and passport. To do this, we headed out to the police department in Lund. This new station has all sorts of specky gadgets associated with the passport and ID card procedure including the use of these height adjustable booths which ensure the correct lighting, take a photo, register two finger prints and also records your signature. There is even a screen to preview what the passport will look like for checking your details and photo. This made the process quite thorough and fast after having to convince them that my Swedish personal identification number was correct despite implying that my birthday was the 89th (yes 89th) of September. I would receive both my new passport and ID card (this card can act as a passport within the EU too, cool!) less than a week later, wonderfully fast.

The next couple of days covered Malmo, firstly meeting my cousin Rasmus for coffee and getting some insight into the trials and tribulations of a modern computer game programmer. Malmo castle was a real mixed bag of history and modern exhibition coming complete with aquarium and nocturnal animal area in the basement.

Wednesday was Copenhagen with a crash course into driving in a rather anti-car city. Nik had great fun trying to use the GPS to get us as close as possible to Rundetaarn (the round tower). This met a rather dismal failure, taking us around the all of the tiniest one way streets past many full inner city parking bays and then out onto Strøget, crossing the busy mall in an awkward state of realization of where we were. Having finally made it to the attraction, we climbed the characteristic spiral ramp all the way to the top where we were met by an absolutely wonderful view over the city. This gave a great sense of place and let me see the characteristic forms of architecture over this old area. After meeting up with Aija, we made a dash for my cousin Ingrid’s house in the Swedish countryside. Crossing country to Sweden from the Danish capital is easy with the massive bridge and tunnel infrastructure spanning the gap over and under (or technically resting on the bed of) the Öresund.

After a wonderful night out, I finally got my replacement phone the following morning! With my link to the digital world reformed, I was very happy to get it charging so that I would have it ready for the later train journey north. Before that, Niklas took the opportunity to show me the Dieselhouse (next to the Copenhagen main power station), a massive 5 story high diesel motor that used to be a functional power generator for the Copenhagen electrical grid during peak loads. Now it is started up once a month as a demonstration and to check its functionality. Nik and I had great fun here trying to put our technical minds to work and decipher the function of every part and vent, theorizing how it would be moving if we had come on one of the demo days. We didn't have much time any more for other sights so it was time to go back home to Sweden, picking up some Danish smørrebrød on the way back for lunch with Mormor. With a comfortable buffer to get into Malmo, Niklas took me to the train station where I said my temporary goodbye, knowing I’d be back in a week or two. It would be a 2 hour train journey to Nässjö and the beginning of my journey into the smaller towns and cities of the Swedish south.

Performing in London and Recording with Rodolfus

2010-09-05T11:00:00.004+08:00

A short sleep in was very welcome after the last 3 weeks of comprehensive singing but I had to get onto some more serious matters. With my primary communications hub (the mobile) lost, I had to communicate my situation to the outside world and also arrange recovery or replacement. Making use of the first wireless internet connection on the laptop I had had in 2 weeks, I got in contact with the police and my parents to figure out where to go from here. I still wanted to explore the very minute possibility that I had left the device on the coach at Coventry but being a Sunday, I would have to wait until Tuesday when they reopened the office.

Having researched directions to the Coventry station and the trip I would make to Kingston via tube and over land train to Kingston on Thames, I set out to the Britania hotel. The night before, I had been in contact with James from the NYC who was going to London as well. I met him in the lobby of the hotel and having called a cab, we waited to be picked up. At this point we probably waited a little too long for one to arrive since when we got to the station, we only had 15 minutes to get onto the train we wanted. While I was getting my youth railcard and ticket sorted out the time ticked by. I swiped my travel card and it was rejected… I think the rail network in general is the only place that has problems with it. This is where things started getting really tight since I had to unlock my suitcase, find my passport pouch, get this card out and have the payment confirmed all in the 3 minutes I had before the train left. James was already by the platform when the teller and I both realized I wouldn't make it so instead, I got my train card and ticket for the next train to come. I embraced the new found hour I had with a hearty bacon and egg sandwich. Having not been able to find anywhere to eat breakfast earlier in the day due to a Monday bank holiday, I was already hearing my tummy rumble.

I boarded the train at 1pm and just as we were set to depart, there was an announcement over the PA telling us that there was a problem with the front carriage. Over the course of the next hour, all of the front train passengers crammed into my carriage (the 2nd of 2) as the front one was towed away by another train. We left at 2pm, 2 hours after I had originally planned in a very full train to London Euston. Passing by the country communities by train was a great way to see their character. There was a distinct sense of repetition since whole neighbourhoods of houses would often be exactly the same from street to street and from town to town.

Having eventually found my way to Waterloo station on the Southbank of London having re-routing due to works on the Victoria Line, I found the line to Kingston over land. This last leg took 30 minutes, dropping me off in this rather busy borough. Walking in 1 of 2 possible directions I could have taken according to the rather vague map I had, it didn’t take long before I realized I was walking the wrong way. I turned back 180 degrees and walked towards Dan’s house, realizing how helpless I was without my mobile and an insightful page on Wikipedia about the sun position and telling north from south in the northern hemisphere. That being said, with the perpetual overcast, I don't think the sun really would have helped as much.

I was met at the door of Dan’s (parent’s) house by the man himself and a delightful dinner complete with a nice Australian wine, a very welcome change from the rather ordinary meals of Tudor Halls. I was made to feel at home right away with these kind hosts, getting a chance to learn about them and some things about life in London along the way. A quite night in was welcome after the longer than expected commute.

Tuesday brought singing and dancing with the outbreak of the Notting Hill Carnival. An old tradition starting back in 1966, the festival came about after a large migration of people from the West Indies settled in the suburb, taking their traditions with them. This massive street festival is a manifestation of those traditions where the families take to the streets in vibrant costumes and mass behind ever more powerful sound systems. Our adventure into this surreal street scape began after an introduction to peak hour tube travel, arriving close to Notting Hill. At this point the festival participants were still getting dressed up, applying body paints and sparkling sprays. The sound systems were incredible! There was a full size semi-trailer near this mob of people, emanating the atmospheric beats of Caribbean reggae. This massive trailer was headed with a two commercial size (about 3 cubic metres each) diesel generators, feeding the comprehensive sound system further back. The scaffolding on the trailer lifted the DJ stand into a control tower-like position so that massive speakers could line the sides of the carriage. The entire rear was devoted to 4 heavy duty subwoofers that would blare into the dancing followers, synchronizing their bodies into one hypnotic motion. We continued to move closer to the centre of the celebrations for some food, tucking into customary Jerk chicken and goat curry, made in old oil drum barbeques along the roadside.

We went into a small kiosk/deli soon afterwards to find a drink. Under the liquor licencing policies in Britain, I quickly learned that alcohol is available in most stores like the one we had just entered. Another difference from Australia is the allowance of street drinking (apart from public transport) which was very obvious from the amount of people that were drinking around the event. Exploiting this different policy, all of us got Jamaican beer (called White Stripe) for the road. Of course this policy can have dangerous consequences in the instance where the privilege is abused. On these streets, alcohol is not the biggest problem though with over 6 times as many people arrested for drug possession at the festival. Over 3 days, the policing operation costed 6 million pounds. With over a million people passing through the grounds in this time, the vibrancy and busy nature of the festival was amazing. Strong colour and brilliant flares of movement were everywhere. I felt so lucky to be treated to this event, something I would have never even hear about if it wasn't for Dan's family taking me under their wing.

As per London custom, we headed out to the pub later in the evening with some of Dan’s friends to a true ‘family’ pub. There were mostly singers at the pub and conversation could easily turn to talk of Oxbridge college choirs. Dan had recently received some more information about his acceptance into King’s College Cambridge and James is currently at New College so there was much expertise in the choirs' current standing and variety of tours the choirs embarked on. This also brought to mind the possibility that Kings College London may also have some sort of tour at some time in the year. After chatting I began to find out that people I knew from NYCGB or Eton choral courses would also be singing in Rodolfus and that one in particular would also be singing in the King’s College London Chapel Choir. This was yet another reminder of the often small world of choral singing both in Perth and the new found ground of the English scene.

Tuesday 31 August marked the first day of rehearsals with the Rodolfus choir for the Spem in Alium Concert and BBC Music magazine Christmas recording. After tubing to Pimlico and arriving at St Gabriel’s Church, I was greeted by some familiar faces from NYC that I had seen only 3 days prior. All 40 of us received our personal folders with all of the required music and after a short warm-up, we began with some easy Palestrina before doing some of Allegri’s Miserere. The assumption in Rods is that all singers are capable of holding solo parts so when Ralph asked for 5 different solo quartets for the semi chorus passages it was just a matter of volunteering for the role. I put my hand up and we got started with enough solo high sopranos to manage the top E in each semi chorus. After we had become familiar enough with the group, we began the main work of the concert, Spem in Alium by Talis. Having not had a real chance to look at a paper hard copy of the music before with all of the activities the 3 weeks prior, I was a bit anxious about singing the piece since every one of the 40 parts are completely different and to get lost makes for a very difficult recovery. Perhaps I was lucky but with a largely grounding bass part and a steady count of one through four, the first read through wasn't half as bad as I had imagined it. Some of the other voice parts were not so straight forward with difficult cross-rhythms and obscure intervals.

Over the following day, we ripped through the repertoire, sight reading skills getting a good workout. Work was swift and efficient with the singers responding quickly to noted fixes. Intonation was an unfortunate problem, especially in the morning but as the day progressed, the tuning would often lock in a little more accurately. With a few too many basses in some sections I would sometimes be asked to whisk up into counter-tenor mode, taking an alto 2 line for a while.

Regarding my lost phone, I had tried earlier to retrace the position of the phone, contacting the coach company to see if they might have possibly picked it up if it hadn't in fact been stolen. The verdict came through, they had found two phones but neither matched my description in the slightest. I continued to lodge a police report, having my number barred and going about finding a replacement. That morning I sent in an order for the replacement with my VISA card but I soon found that I was to be thwarted by the fact that I could only purchase items and have them delivered to the address my visa card was registered to ‘for my own safety’. This was a source of endless anguish since no delivery could occur over the weekend and I was left with no other payment option before having to leave for Sweden on the Sunday morning.

Thursday was the concert day and with its advent, we moved into St Dunstan’s in the West, an old church on Fleet Street, just down the road from St Paul’s Cathedral. This unique, octagonal space had all of the history and acoustic of a classically old place, perfect for the music of our concert. Following brief runs of all of the pieces in performance order, we used the spare time to go over some tricky bits in the Christmas CD repertoire. This sort of minimal rehearsal is a great aspect of Rods where we can steamroll through new repertoire and have everything ready for performance so soon after rehearsals have begun.

The concert began in a rather unconventional fashion with the 40 of us lining the church, singing the title piece: Spem in Alium. This soon progressed through to the interval with a gentle transition into a Palestrina mass and then a more radical one into 3 works by Tavener. The unique part of a concert with Spem is that it is always performed twice, the second time being at the very end. The response was wonderful with an audience of approximately 240 people leaving the small church with a sense of auditory fulfilment.

Like all good UK conclusions, ours went to the nearby pub for drinks but on the way I met some old members of the Rodolfus choir. They were reminiscing on their time in the choir when the King’s College London Chapel Choir (KCLCC) popped up. It turned out that at that moment I was talking to a member of the choir who was a bass and just leaving having finished his degree. I would be his bass replacement as it seemed. Just when we were walking along the Strand, he pointed out that the King’s Chapel was just through archway we were passing and that many of the beautiful surrounding buildings were a part of KCL. Coincidence strikes again.

Recording began the following day with an introduction to a new venue and a completely new style of rehearsal and delivery of song. Having found the early 1900s brick church in the distant Hampstead Garden, we were pleasantly surprised by the acoustic, great for recording. The interesting aspect here though was that it was ungainly close to a main air lane, presenting the possibility of a turbine roar interrupting the soft sounds of Christmas carols. While this was a recurring theme in the recording process, we quickly got used to the fact that recording segments would often be squeezed into the 15 minute gap between regular sonic booms. The atmosphere during recording is one of quite apprehension, with an equal mix of concentration on the music and a fear of having your mistakes recorded for posterity. In my experience, this temporary worry had to be quelled and replaced with an almost equal proportion of confidence in one's reading/memory skills. If you don’t think about what would happen if you make a mistake, you don’t make them. Through all of these takes, we had some really helpful quality control tips by Nigel Short, the founder and director of Tenebrae. While most of the notes were about tuning, more insight into the likely direction and phrasing were given to take the recording to the BBC music magazine level.

Over this time, I became more familiar with the people I had met on NYC and got to know about some more links between the people in the choral world represented by the Eton Choral Courses/Rodolfus and the National Youth Choirs. While these choirs seem to represent different ideals and aims in their approach to choral music, the presence of the same people in both camps gave some interesting opinions on the merits of both wings. On a more local context, it really felt like a small world when talking to one of the people in both NYC and the recording, Jamie. Having found out that he was currently at Gresham’s School, it seemed that he had been working with 3 different friends from Perth (past CCGS drama vice/captains) when they had come on gap year exchanges to his school.

Charlotte (the girlfriend of the other guy staying with Dan) had her birthday on the 3rd of September and we marked the occasion with a night out to Leicester Square. Finding a place to eat was easy in Chinatown in the bustling streetscape that is central London. Being a Friday night, the roads were sometimes packed to a point where you would actually have to squeeze through people just to get down the road. I could see that this was the place to come for weekend night life. I found out a bit more about KCLCC at this point with the realization that another 2 of the recording people were members of the King’s choir. I met them the following day, being reminded that there might be up to two tours with the choir to other parts of Europe.

The last day of recording finished right on time, leaving another fine group of singers not to see most of them again. Thankfully there was time in the evening to extend the moments I got with these people. We headed in the general direction of Kingston to James’s place where a good 10 of us could carry on into the early hours of the morning. Most of the people there decided to stay over so at about 2:30am, I said my goodbyes to everyone before catching one of the 24 hour night bus back to Dan’s place ready for a 6:15am wakeup and commute to Heathrow for my flight, departing at 10am. With a bus and a train the following morning, I was at Heathrow and through the most detailed luggage check I have been through just under an hour before departure.

This flight ended my first instalment of UK experience, having an opportunity to soak up the colossal amount of choral opportunity that the country’s culture brings. From Oxford to Banbury to London, each course has led to new friends, local know-how and links to be utilized in the coming year. I have sung Britten solos in Merton Chapel, had a master class with Iris Dell’acqua on Mozart aria, sung with the 140 strong National Youth Choir of Great Britain having caught up with Mike Brewer again after Adelaide and then having begun the second half of the concert in Coventry Cathedral by leading with a solo part in Pueblo Sunrise. This list has continued to expand with my eventual introduction to the Rodolfus Choir after a full 2 years of membership. With a concert in central London and a recording for the BBC Music Magazine Christmas Edition, this final addition has been a sweet icing before heading over to Denmark and Sweden.

National Youth Choir of Great Britain Summer Course 2010

2010-08-29T11:00:00.117+08:00

Having begun the next part of the journey, Beky and I set off from Merton, aiming to catch the next train to Banbury. We already knew that it’d be tight on the time side having spent a little too long at the café. Only 5 minutes up the street from Merton, we saw a bus pull in. It happened to be the bus bound direct to the train station so we hopped on and were at the station in 10 minutes, making us thankful that we didn’t walk the route that was really much longer that we thought. Arriving at the station, we used the automatic ticket machines. When trying to use my travel card for the ticket purchase, it was declined despite the fancy little VISA logo sported by the card and the ANZ banking advice that came with it.
While I’m not sure if the card will work at an ATM, I have cash in the meantime and won’t be spending anything substantial over the courses as they are residential and catered. Anyway… I got a ticket and it was only a matter of minutes and seconds till the train was scheduled to leave. I grabbed both of the suitcases and we ran up the stairs to platform 2, sprinting over the gangway and down the stairs to greet the arriving train. The carriages were completely packed but we managed to squeeze in through the doors for a standing ride.

Only 20 minutes later, it was off the carriages and down the stairs where we met another couple of members of the National Youth Choir including Octavia who I met back in 2008 when I went on my first Eton Choral Course. We all got together to catch a taxi to the Tudor Hall School, only just managing to squeeze in our 4 large suitcases into the boot.

Arriving at the school, we saw groups of people gathering around the main hall, obviously catching up since the last course they had been on. Beky showed me to the registration area inside the hall. Lining the walls and the tiers of the grandstand were a total of 140 chairs, all laden with the music that we would be covering over the next 10 days. Part of the registration procedure in the hall included a quick video where each person who was new or had only been on one course beforehand would say their name, age, school and interesting point. Later we realized that these clips were for Mike to assist him with learning the name of every single person in the choir (and by day 2, he certainly knew everyone). After everyone was settled into their rooms, having met some new faces along the way, we had our first full rehearsal.

Our first encounter with the music was with Mike Brewer himself and his own piece, Meguru. Despite the substantial number of people who hadn't sung the song before, we sang it off by heart. Lucky for me, this was one of the pieces that we did in Adelaide so I already knew it well enough. Singing the song brought back floods of great memories from Adelaide and reminded me of the people who I had them with. The sound emanating from this 140 strong choir was truly amazing with all of the force and sensitivity that made for quite an awe-inspiring experience. Right from the word go, I was practically in heaven. There is something special inside that is triggered by the physical wash of auditory vibrancy that can be experienced in such a choir. Straight after the first run through, Mike was straight onto his trademark work on sound production with a unique emphasis on the creation of harmonics in every singer.

Our first main rehearsal quickly gave way to sectionals, a pivotal component of the NYC main choir tactic. I was part of the Bass 2 section for this course, also known as the only ‘real’ men on the course. I soon realized that each section really did have a strong characterization and that each section would form quite a close bond. The first in a small trove of things to know about NYC that was made clear from the beginning was the institution of the 5 minute rule. This simply means that everyone is required to be seated and ready to sing a full 5 minutes before the quoted rehearsal time, letting the conductor start exactly on the time with absolutely no delay. Penalties for disobeying this rule are generally handled by the singer’s section, ranging from a sharp hiss from the Soprano section to a de-hairing of the leg using Veet by the Baritones or a flip-flop (I should probably stop calling them thongs) slap to the rump by the rest of the section in the case of a Bass 2. Other punishable offences in the Bass 2 section are: Not having a pencil during a random pencil check and also in the rarer case, getting a part of the music wrong after many tries in solo testings. This made for a great system where everyone generally made sure they were prompt, looking for opportunities to catch other basses out on their late coming, making sure they had their watches set to the sectional room clock. Whilst taking our first look at some new music, we were also split into 3 mini groups which were named Doris, Jeannine (mine) and Babra. We would often split into these groups of 5 or 6 singers to raise the accountability of each singer, ensuring we were not relying on each other to get the music right. This was an exciting part of the choir since it gave a better arena to lead and show ones confidence in reading the new music at hand. With such good infrastructure to ensure all singers are performing, this makes for a very high standard where everyone is expected to perform and ring true on those expectations.

Whenever one is singing for more than 7 hours in any one day, it becomes apparent that an extensive morning warm-up is essential to maintain the required vocal stamina. After the 8am breakfast call, we began every morning with a 9:15 warm-up. This is usually in a sectional scene, focusing first on a physical warm-up including stretching and a general rise in heart rate. After the body is warm, we will move onto some gentle vocalization. Some aspirated consonants and then to some hummed noted, slowly encompassing the whole range, including both head and chest registers.

The previous day, some other elements of the week’s schedule were outlaid including times for various auditions. Most of the auditions were for later in the week, covering the series of solos available over the songs for the concert. The one for the second day is different though, it was for Laudibus, Mike’s high grade chamber choir. While the chances of me getting into this prestigious choir were very low, especially given the competition from other singers with much more experience in the area of sight singing, I had to give it a try as my time is short. After plenty of time waiting for the previous candidates to audition, I went in and was faced with a panel including Mike, Robert (one of the other conductors) and Lisa (one of the other admin staff). I was asked to sing a descending arpeggio from a given note and then a rather simple (deceptive though) sample of music without accompaniment. It was at this point I realized that I really hadn't had any proper experience auditioning in this way before. It went abysmally really, screwing up all sorts of trivial things and not giving myself any time to think about tone production or musicality. Despite leaving the audition rather disappointed with myself, it was still good experience, really pointing out a particular weakness in my singing. It made me ask questions of myself like: How could I let myself be so affected my the audition conditions (I normally don’t get too nervous about other solo sings) and also; How does my sight singing work in the first place? After a couple of days I had an idea (or maybe just a rationalization?) as to where my sight reading strengths and weaknesses lie. The way I read music normally will depend a lot on harmony and the progression of the melody and where my part fits under it. I use this knowledge of tonality and of where the music is going to narrow my field of interval ‘guesses’ to a point where I can pick the correct interval. This of course doesn't work half as well if you don't have a chance to determine harmony and the placement of a melody in the instance of the audition. While I can obviously pitch any interval with a little bit of thought, the necessity of an instinctual correspondence of read interval to vocalized interval means that I still have much work to do. The development of my sight reading has arisen almost entirely from singing in St George’s Cathedral, in an environment where there is always harmony and always a varying degree of accompaniment. Therefore this method has always done me quite well in the choral environment, allowing me to quickly learn music and know when I am wrong in order to lead a section in a correct way whether it be renaissance polyphony or abstract works from the 20th century. I am very lucky to have the voice I do and it is always a great let down to have myself hindered by sight reading ability when there are such amazing groups out there. If I wish to gain a places in the highest institutions and choral groups then this weakness must be amended. This skill of direct interval correspondence takes nothing but practice to improve and I intend on using two books to do it: Firstly, upon recommendation from Ralph, Hindemith elementary training for musicians and secondly, Mike’s own sight reading book - Improve your sight singing. This can only be fixed in an unaccompanied environment and that is how will address it.

In other news: The News! There are many perks and traditions that are entwined with the proceedings of day to day life on the tour. One of those is the news which happens every evening after rehearsals and all of the admin announcements. The news begins with a theme song as all good news programs do which is started by the basses. The news is a bit of a comedy show, hosted by one of the singers, telling humorous anecdotes from throughout the day and also including any relevant ‘banter’ (general relationship gossip about any two choristers). The news can also be given a prelude in the instance of a birthday. Once again started by the basses, the up-tempo, harmonized version of happy birthday is quickly learned by all new comers. Another little quirk arises upon every mention of the number 45, coaxing the rest of the choir into a chorus of repetition of the number. No-one knows why… it just happens. Following the news, there are normally social activities (or competitions) to get you integrated into the choir, starting at the ‘family’ level. By coincidence, I was in the same family as Octavia and Beky who I already knew (about 10 people in a family). You would also travel in this group when on the road. In true social tradition, the last hour of the day was always dedicated to the pub. In our case, the nearest pub was in Banbury, a good 25 minute walk. The pub was also the site of a popular drinking 'game' where if someone slipped a penny (1 pence coin) into your drink, you would have to 'save the queen' (the back face of the coin) by drinking your drink as quickly as possible. The sign in time was 23:30 with a loose lights out time of midnight. This sign in time was enforced by making any late comers mark everyone off the sign in sheet the following night, effectively impounding in the common room for the night.

On the third day, we rehearsed a bit more with Robert Isaacs, covering a couple of his pieces, one being Spiderman and another being a rather simple homophonic piece by Bassey. This piece was used as an exercise in sight reading at first and then as an exercise absolute tuning (rather than equal temperament). To do this, he had all of us sight read the piece using scale degree numbers (it was in D major the whole time so no changing tonic) instead of the words. After we had tried using this technique to figure out our parts, recognizing the pitch of the scale degrees and then reproducing them whenever the number came up, the line went more to the memory. At this point we began the more high fidelity task of absolute tuning. In the main choir, I find every person really has very good intonation and certainly knows when they are singing badly off pitch whether they are singing in tune or not. This meant that this aim of absolute tuning is certainly a worthwhile goal. What I mean by this is that when we play a particular scale on a keyboard, it uses what is called equal tempering where a middle ground pitch is used so that we can play in any key without things sounding off. In a vocal world though, we can change the pitch of our notes very minutely and tune into the scale degrees of a particular key in a more precise way. The ‘absolute’ scale degrees can be attained from the harmonic series of a particular root. This means that when compared to an equal tempered keyboard, the minor 2nd is slightly higher, the major 3rd is slightly lower and so on. This is where singing of the scale degrees served as a good reminder of the differences in pitching between equal temperament and absolute pitch. When everyone started getting these pitches just right, the harmonics grew tremendously with an amazing ringing sensation in the head.

By day 4 I was starting to think about my travel and lodging arrangements for the following weeks. I got word back from Dan in Kingston (on Thames), confirming his address in London and when I could come around. This was a great relief as it was starting to get a little close for comfort to not have address details. Just talking to people here and there, I quickly found that there were quite a few members of Rods who sang in NYC, about 4 of which who would be heading down to London after the course. All those who knew Dan said that he’s a great guy so I look forward to meeting him and getting into London music.

Another one of the checks that the members take is in the form of a voice lesson. I sang for Kevin who asked me to sing my prepared pieces for him, including Der Lindenbaum, parts of the Mozart aria and Sea Fever. After that I sang some scales and did some exercises before we sat down to talk. I asked about teachers in London and he advised that I contact Mark Wildham at the royal academy of music. He was happy with my performance and said that I should take a diagnosis lesson with him and go from there. I plan on contacting Mr Wildham soon to try and organize a time in 3 weeks when I come back to London. After talking to Kevin, I took the chance to ask Lisa, one of the staff on the panel whether she had any tips on the Laudibus audition I had tried before. She said it was really just as I had suspected an requires not much more than just practice. While asking about other groups in London, she also mentioned this group of London based NYC singers called Chantage. This group meets once per week (Wednesdays I believe) and would be another nice singing opportunity if I have any spare time. She also thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to contact David Trendell when trying to find a suitable voice teacher.

After all of this advice and a little bit of grounding in the process of auditioning, I prepared myself for the up and coming solo auditions. The first one on the list was called Pueblo Sunrise, a real belt up. Coming into this one, I felt quite confident since a couple of people from my section had already recommended that I give it a shot. While the Laudibus audition was a private audition, the solo part ones were done in front of the other contenders, providing an excellent opportunity to hear the other voices in the choir in a solo capacity. This little listening session reminded me how lucky I was to be singing with these people.

Day 4 marked the first of some sectional specific theme days. In this case, we had Soprano 2 attitude day. This theme embodied itself in the diva personality of the soprano and involved the donning of sunglasses (only in the evening) and all black cloths. This would be followed later by alto Love day, Tenor 2 pride day and Bass 2 water pistol day. Yet again this is just another little NYC quirk that helps to break the monotony of continuous daily rehearsing with a bonding dose of humor within the participating sections. In the afternoon I had a one-on-one with the spacey Alexander technique teacher who had come to help on the course. This was a rather surreal experience since the most part of 40 minute lesson was really just consisted of surrendering one’s body to the likes of this rather crazy haired person who seemed so chilled out she could have come straight from the 70s. Most of the session comprised of laying on ones back in the ‘semi-supine’ position as she slowly stretched each one of your limbs into the theoretically correct positions. After about 20 minutes of this mostly silent exercise, I would slowly stand up and find myself in this new, more sustainable and efficient position. Two main pointers for me were to stretch my shoulders away from each other and also to lean forward slightly more to achieve a straighter lower spine. She recommended that I find time (about 10 minutes) to occasionally to lay down on the carpet and lay in that position to become more familiar with the position. If there is anything I have learned over this long course, it is that good singing posture is essential to good vocal stamina. Just 20 minutes of bad singing in a slouched position would always leave a lasting diminution in the day’s vocal status. For this reason, I took those pointers into mind during rehearsals, trying to achieve that back position and avoid shoulder tension. I think this concept of posture, along with a good morning warm-up and proper on-the-voice singing has kept me running for so long under heavy rehearsing conditions. Having got back to the main rehearsal after the lesson, I was told that they had rehearsed Pueblo Sunrise while I was away, one of the pieces I had hoped to get a solo in. In this run, my name had been mentioned but another singer had sung instead in my absence.

There were more auditions and vocal works on the next day. Today the audition was for a bass solo in Lux Aeterna by Edward Fissinger. This went without much fuss, stating my interpretation and what I would give if chosen. I knew my chances were slim given the quite light tone they likely desired for the cantor like lines. I just had to give it a go really as one can’t know the aim of the conductor until the position has been allotted to a singer. Some interesting remarks were made later in the day where Kevin (my voice teacher for the course) held a workshop. He made some points about the role of head voice and the desire to extend the head voice downward and add the sonorous qualities of the chest voice as the two registers become more interchangeable. Ideally this desirable blend can be maintained through a wide range, achieving the ability to control volume and tone superiorly by using the registers as needed.

Rehearsals continued and a couple more auditions popped up which I tried for in vain where narrative character was a crucial component. By this time, I had I great idea of how the other singers in the choir sounded. To think such a great collection of soloistic singers could come together for this choral project and still all blend so wonderfully in the group context.

Soccer at lunch was a great way to pass the 2 hour break we had that day under the unusually bright sun. This delusion of summer was quashed no longer than an hour after kickoff with a rainstorm that even came with a decent rumble of thunder. This rainy reminder of England’s more typical weather patterns forced us once again into cover and to the next rehearsal. After some talk in the rehearsal about the next NYC event being a recording of new works by Karl Jenkins, I asked Mike about the conditions of my membership in the Main Choir and he said he’d be happy to have me there and at the Easter course. It was around this time that Mike also said that I would be able to do the Pueblo solo in the concert. It would be another 2 days before I would get the chance to perform the solo with the rest of the choir.

The 25th of August saw the institution of pink day where everyone wore some item of pink clothing. Two days later, in similar fashion we had pyjama day. This day also included our Bass 2 outing to the pub in Bloxham where we had our customary Bass 2 steak and chips with a pint of British lager.

Upon return, I made a call to the UCL housing authorities. I was very pleased to hear that I had been accepted into Ramsay hall, my first preference for accommodation close to UCL. I immediately contacted the hall and accepted my place and asked them about early arrival. Luckily for me, the earliest possible arrival day is the 20th of September which also happens to be the day I have booked for arrival from Sweden. Once reminded about issue of accommodation outside a choral course and having found that there would be no accommodation provided immediately after the concert in Coventry, I realized I’d have to book a room for that night. After a short time I had checked up different hotels near Coventry Cathedral on Google maps and had called to book a room at the simple but effective ABC motel, about a 5 minutes’ walk away.

Just as we were getting comfortable with the repertoire, it was time for recording. For this tour, we would be recording 5 tracks at Merton College Oxford, in the same chapel where I had been the week prior for the Eton course. The acoustic of this chapel was ideal for the recording of all 140 of us with an extensive array of microphones surrounding our position at the high alter. We began with the recording of the ‘Tau Bet’, a powerful piece by Augustinas in Estonian. This recording would be the last in a lengthy affair of producing the NYC Baltics CD. After a good 90 minutes of patching and re-recording, we then split into 2 groups, one group doing one piece each, giving each other group a little time to recover for the next recording session. I was in group X which concentrated on an arrangement of Mozart’s Lacrimosa by Mindaugas Urbaitis. Our session took another solid 90 minutes of pure concentration. After a well-deserved break for lunch and a stroll around the commercial outlets of Oxford, we returned back to the chapel for the last frontier. This last piece of music was Totus Tuus by Gorecki, a piece I was familiar with back from the Winthrop Singers in 2008. This piece is an absolute marathon, repeating the same set of words to the same tune in a very repetitive way, getting softer and slower from start to finish. While the effect can be quite eclectic, the performance is very tiring. We struggled to keep our tone throughout the recoding but after the allotted time had passed; we had a version of the song that would be ready to be added to a CD for pieces by the same composer. With the recording session only finishing at 7pm, we had no hope of returning to the school for a meal within an hour so it was time that we were released onto the dining institutes of High street. We stopped at a chain bar (All Bar One) with some nice food to take us through the night. Following this time-restricted meal, we all made our way through the rain and darkness to the coaches. Some people crammed into the bus still wielding their drenched pizza boxes having picked something up for the hour long trip back.

At this point of the course, we only had one more day of rehearsing left before the big performance day. This passed lightning fast as we skipped from song to song, checking on known hot spots in the music and working on the finer points of tuning and sound production.

Concert day came, its onset defined by minimal warm-ups and rehearsals in the early morning before being bussed to Coventry Cathedral. As we arrived in the city, it was apparent that there was a real contrast between post and pre-war buildings. Historically, Coventry was very heavily hit by German air raids during the Second World War. This could not be demonstrated by any structure more than the decimated ruins of the once colossal pre-war Coventry Cathedral. The remaining segments of stone wall and window frame faced onto the English retort to the destruction of the wonderful building. The new Coventry Cathedral is a concrete tribute to the old cathedral and makes a very modern take to the cathedral concept. With the vast interior space, walls adorned with impossibly heavy carved stone plaques quoting selected bible passages and a wonderfully high ceiling, this building makes a comment of defiance. I have never been in such a vast but modern building. The stain glass had a theme of minimalist depiction of religious figures, the sculpted roof defied all traditional designs and all of the interior furnishings had obvious intentions to be new, rethought to move into a new time and place rather than dwelling on the ruins outside. Centred in the cathedral, in front of the choir stalls was the highly tiered stage that we would be standing on for the concert. Despite the height of this 5m staging, it looked dwarfed by the thin but high ascending pillars and the massive depiction of Jesus covering the whole rear wall behind the high alter.

We moved downstairs to our holding rooms before the concert, changing into our dinner suits when I realized that my mobile was missing. Having just used it earlier on the bus and having had it in my pocket all other times, I had absolutely no idea where it could be. While this was an issue of vast distress, it was not something I could attend to with the concert starting so soon. All I could do was to put it out of my mind for the moment and think of the task at hand.

The concert started with our 3 choir configuration, split into three lines that would give the audience some serious stereo sound for the Guerero ‘Duo Serafim’. Moving on to our Estonian piece, we produced some incredible chords that rang all the way up and down the building with the great Russian depth of sound that this music required.

Having rehearsed all of our stage movements on, off and to the sides during the dress rehearsal, we also tried out the choreography of the Pueblo Sunrise where Dave and I would be the tribe leaders/soloists, leading the choirs on for the second half of the concert. This was scary but much more exciting than anything else, being able to fill the vast space with the first word after interval, driving a top D into the roof in full voice with all the strength of a 140 amazing voices coming in in stages behind me. Being able to sing in front of this group made me very proud to be a part of the NYCGB and to sing with all of the people I had come to know over the past 2 weeks.

Towards the conclusion of the concert, we sang some American inspired tunes taught to us by Robert such as Spiderman, John Henry and Rocks and Gravel. With the end of the course looming, it was a matter of trying to give the best result, making a lasting impression on our audience, closing with the spirited El Cascobel and Meguru. The last song provided an opportunity for those leaving the choir to have a little ad lib solo time as the rest of the choir slowly moved to the back of the cathedral and down the stairs humming the background accompaniment.

Recordings of the 2010 NYCGB Summer concert at Coventry Cathedral

The post-concert atmosphere was full of an eclectic mix of triumphant completion and of sad goodbyes. With the concert over, all of the members slowly drifted out of the basement foyer and off to nearby homes or with family for a long drive home. I said my farewells, exchanged my contact details as best I could without having a mobile any more and then found a group who would be carrying on at the pub for a while after. I decided to join them and also that it would be best to stay with people before making my way to the ABC motel I could no longer navigate to without a phone. Following a pint and a conversation about Cambridge entry to a choral scholar of St John’s at the nearby pub, I got some rather vague directions from a taxi driver outside and made my way towards the motel. It was 1am in the Sunday morning when I made my way through the seedy clubbing district of the city, eventually making my way down a dark, short road where I found the back door to the motel. Having checked in, I found myself having been given a free upgrade to a 2 bed suite with a fridge, kitchen sink and very nicely appointed bathroom. With the addition of fast Wifi, I was set, shooting off all of the necessary correspondence to begin phone retrieval operations. Having called home for the first time in 2 weeks, I was ready to sleep and ready myself for the next big leg of the English choral adventure.

Over the course, many people had asked me about choirs back home and how the NYC compared. To this I could only say that it was a matter that hinged on the history and culture of the place. The outcome of the English church music tradition is a unique and wonderful thing. With all of the traditional institutions that have been training young children to sing in the country and with a sheer size in numbers. This mix of population density and choral culture makes for the best capability for youth singing that I know of. With that in mind, it becomes possible for this sort of fully auditioned, sight singing capable group to emerge. While there is an astoundingly strong group of singers back in Perth, their number is sparse and the number of young new singers coming up into the choral ranks is low. This is why when I say we don’t have something like the NYC in Perth to the people on the course and they say I should start something similar; I say that it is not so easy. I don’t think it is possible for these large high quality groups to arise back in Australia just because of the numbers game coupled with the distances we deal with. When I asked admin about the number of applications for the National Youth Choir of Australia, it numbered at only 20, 18 of which were accepted into the choir for the Adelaide tour. This shows the contrast in demand for such a choral exercise and how far people will go to get it. Having now tasted the glorious sound of such a tight nit group, I am already beginning to wonder how I will manage when I come back to Perth having experienced all of the singing opportunities that England has to offer.

For the next week I will be in London, singing with a rather different group, the Rodolfus Choir with Ralph. After this, the music will just keep on coming through the King’s College London Chapel Choir and also in late October when I will sing ‘The Armed Man’ by Karl Jenkins with the NYCGB in the Royal Festival Hall in London. With all of these events and opportunities popping up without having to even look for them, I know it is going to be a very musical year.

Eton Choral Course: Oxford 2010

2010-08-19T21:53:00.002+08:00

I woke early on my first full day at the Eton Choral course to join Ralph and some of the other singers I had met the previous afternoon for the daily morning run at 7am. We joined at the Merton College Quad and then set out towards the Christ Church College grounds. With a crisp summer morning, the green grounds of the grounds took an idyllic tinge, acting as the perfect distraction from the pounding of feet on the well-trodden path.

Coming back to Queens College for a shower, I was slowly getting used to the endless corridors, low doorways and staircases that make up Drawda Hall, the section of rooms in the college that I occupied. The trip to the showers was just as confusing since I had to enter a completely different part of the college in order to find the single shower to be shared by most of the people on our floor.

The day begins at 8am sharp where you are expected to arrive at breakfast, ready to sing at 8:45 for the morning vocal warm up. This began a regular morning routine that set up the beginning of a stringent weekly schedule, marked by the quarterly chiming of the Merton bell tower.

Rehearsals began without fuss and with a professional discipline of silence and timekeeping. We quickly began working together in full rehearsals with Ralph and then with our new consort groups where we aimed to put together a sung grace following a particular dinner in the week and also a lighter song to be sung off the page and with actions at a workshop later in the week.

A later rehearsal of Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb showed off the magnificent acoustic of the Merton chapel where the barely audible unison introduction glowed in the old cavernous building. When we approached a bass solo (“for H is a Spirit…”), Ralph was kind enough to grant me an opportunity to try it. This was a bit of a shock at the time because the solo sections will normally be skipped till after some audition process has taken place. Having done the piece twice before, hearing David and Robert do it at the cathedral and in Giovanni on separate occasions, I knew how it went and was happy to accept. It went very well and I was happy to have done the solo I had many a time wished I could have been doing. This really marked the beginning of a general domination of a lot of solo parts through the duration of the course.

After the evening coffee break, I met with my voice teacher for the course, John Bowley who had had my first lesson rescheduled to a slot earlier that day for some reason. I sang ‘Hai gia vinta la causa’ from the Marriage of Figaro for him, working primarily on the line and intent of the plot-filled phrases. At the conclusion of the lesson, he asked me to sing the following day in a master class given by Iris Dell'acqua. This was great news that was also coupled with a strange little sense of déjà vu having been asked to sing for the same person in the 2008 course I came on. This realization struck a little bit of fear in my heart as well because of her very high standards, especially in relation to the word for word meaning and conveyance of aria text. I wondered whether she would have me jumping across the room again like last time.

The following day brought new readings of the other pieces in the repertoire including the Eric Whitacre piece ‘I thank you god for most this amazing day’. When Ralph remembered that we would be going through this piece, he contacted the composer to see if he could come in and work with us. Unfortunately after a couple of hours, we were informed that he had only left England 2 days ago for Los Angeles. The day passed by with a relaxing lesson in Alexander technique, involving some good notes on posture and time for some proper stretching out.

Following a short rehearsal with David Goode on the Mozart, the master class began in Queen’s College chapel in the afternoon. The higher parts sang first, starting with Alicia, a native Swede from Stockholm who I had gotten to know earlier in the day. Alicia was followed by two other members of my consort group (alto and counter tenor) before I got my opportunity to sing. I got not more than 4 notes into the piece before she started to sink her teeth into the music. I’m glad I had a faint idea of what she was going to do before the master class as it gave me an opportunity to study my literal translation again before the performance. By the end of the 30 minute analysis, I had been coaxed into the character of the repugnant Count Alamaviva, pacing up the chapel into the audience, staring at them in the eyes with the all of the malice of a vengeful man. I was given many useful pointers which helped in bringing a perpetual interest to the sometimes repetitive phrases.

The next day posed another big day for solo performances. I was surprised at how little I was tiring after the past intense days of singing. Having paid very close attention to posture and technique for the maximum stamina required for 4 full weeks of singing, I was glad to see that I was on the right track for my voice to hold out until Sweden. The first event of the day apart from the regular rehearsals and meals took the form of an audition session for all of the different solos available in the repertoire. While most of those were for altos and sopranos, 4 basses turned up to give the Britten segment a shot. I sang it once after the other three contenders. Most of them were a little put off and discouraged from giving it a go since I had already sung it once in rehearsals. There were still a couple of strong contributions and I was relieved to find that I had been successful later in the day.

Having got wind that I was on the program for the solo songs concert that evening, I managed to squeeze in a short lesson with John to get some pointers on Der Lindenbaum from Winterreise by Schubert. With some work on characterization, I was much better suited in the concert to supply the contrast between the wistful memory of summer love and the harsh winter winds facing the battered traveller while passing the linden tree. It was a tremendous pleasure to sing in such a great acoustic that lets you feel so engrossed in the sound bouncing all around you.

By the 4th morning I had realized that my morning had become so regulated that I knew where I should be at what time in order to not be late to the morning warm up to a scary precision. This resulted in the following ridiculously accurate procedure:

6:45 Wake

6:58 Leave College

7:00 Start run from Merton Front Quad

7:18 Back to Queens after run

7:31 Finish shower

7:53 Leave Queens for breakfast

8:31 Leave breakfast to get ready at Queens

8:41 Leave College (3 minute and 30 second walk from my room to the Merton Chapel)

8:45 Morning warm-up starts

This plan also allowed for a bit of time to indulge in some morning communications. After getting the useful advice on the bus from Heathrow that room based internet was often accessible from unsecured network ports, I bought a network cable from the porter and logged in. This was very useful as it allowed me to call home a couple of times in the mornings to Mum and Ariel, and show them around the room and through the window onto High street via Skype call.

After the first main rehearsal for the morning, David Goode approached me to ask if I could sing two pieces with the organists in order to help them work on their accompanying skills. I was told that two of the players would be accompanying a couple of singers in the solo songs concert in the evening. In the 10 minutes spare time I had before the accompanists rehearsal, with the help of a piano playing singer and also a girl who had done both of the songs before, I had time to run through both ‘Du Bist Du Ruh’ by Schubert and ‘Music for a While’ by Purcell. After this hour long workshop, I had got some good tips for the pieces and also had two new pieces under my belt having negotiated the high F and German in the Lieder and having figured out the tricky little baroque flourishes in the Purcell.

Recording Links to come.

With the informal concert looming, a group of 8 of us were picked out one night at dinner time. Having been asked to sing the barber shop number ‘My Evaline’, we got on to rehearsals, quickly picking up the music and starting to add some amusing actions. After auditioning for the concert the day after, we continued rehearsing in the Christ Church grounds, presenting our performance to passing tourists.

Monday was tour day where the full choir would be performing in evensong at St Alban’s Abbey. For this evensong we first rehearsed for a couple of hours under the cathedral with Owen Rees from Queens College who would be conducting us in the evensong. This service made for great concert practise and a chance to soak up the broad acoustic of the longest cathedral in England. On the way back to Oxford and with travel in mind, I met another member of the National Youth Choir of Great Britain called Beky. After having this revelation dawn on us we made sure to coordinate our travel plans up to Banbury.

Following our arrival at Oxford we had dinner, performing our grace piece (Exultate Deo by Palestrina) and then moving into the chapel to sing our consort group numbers. Group G performed ‘The Bear Necessities’ from The Jungle Book. It was really great fun after all of our rehearsing and provided some great relief to the rather serious mood of the other musical endeavours of the day. After some notes from Giles (a staff member), we retried the opening and then went back to our seats to listen to all of the other wonderful show pieces.

Recording Links to come.

With the final recital looming, we all knuckled down for the last rehearsals of the course, making sure the finest possible sound would be coming out only hours later. The concert time came lightning fast with people streaming into the anti-chapel where we performed our first concert segment of organ accompanied works (using the organ students who were also on the course). The audience of about 90 then followed us into the main chapel stalls for the unaccompanied works. After doing my solo in the Britten, I could relax a little and enjoy the amazing sounds bouncing back and forth across the chapel walls.

Recording Links to come.

Promptly after the main recital, we moved over to Queens chapel where we would have the informal concert. There were many good items on the list including some instrumental groups, some soloists and of course our humble barbershop octet. We put ‘My Evaline’ across in true close harmony tradition with a couple of anecdotal additions to the music that made it a real crowd pleaser. With everyone on high in the wake of two successful concerts, we all took the 20 minute walk over to the Merton playing fields where we had a little post course celebration.

Recording Links to come.

The next morning, much against my better judgement, I got myself up after the late night out to go for the regular morning run that I had done for every morning prior. That morning there were only two of us, a major diminution of the regular 10-12 that normally showed up. The night before, we were instructed that we should be packed and out of the room by breakfast at 8am the next morning. This didn’t quite leave enough time for me to pack my endless baggage into the 25kg suitcase, cramming everything in in order to make breakfast.

After Ralph had given his final reports, the singers began culminating in the front quad, saying goodbye to their new found friends. Once most people had left, a small group of us went out to get some coffee before we were due to leave for our next destinations. I was introduced to some staple shopping points in Oxford including Jack Wills (motto: “Fabulously British”). Following this little Oxford city expedition, we all peeled off to go our separate ways. Beky and I picked up our luggage from Merton and began our short trip up to Banbury.

Having completed this wonderful course, I get a chance to reflect on all of the things that have occurred and just how lucky I am to have become a part of all of this. I have come to England and have been greeted with nothing but kindness and opportunity from the word go. I have been lucky enough to sing in all of the solo passages possible and have generally been able to extract as much new knowledge as possible from all of the choral (and academic) wisdom surrounding me. I have been able to discuss future singing plans and toy with the possibilities of choral scholarships to Oxbridge universities following the conclusion of my studies in Perth. To think that only one week has passed and I can already be completely dazzled by the immensity of musical activities that one can strive for. Things will only get better though, with NYC and Rodolfus events in rapid succession over the next 3 weeks, I am sure to be further amazed by a depth of music I have never known before.