I’ll try to list them as I can remember in chronological order

Denmark (Copenhagen)
Ireland (Cork, Kilkenny, Dublin)
Wales (Cardiff)
Spain (Majorca)
Scotland (Edinburgh)
Croatia - lots of small islands in the Adriatic Sea
Spain (Barcelona)
Italy (Rome, Venice)
Switzerland (Interlaken, Luzerne, Munich)
Germany (Munich) - Oktoberfest!!
Netherlands (Amsterdam)
Czech Republic (Prague)
Switzerland (Basel)
Egpyt (Sharm El Shiekh)
France (Risoul)
Morocco

wow, now that’s a lot for 2009!!! Lets just hope 2010 is just as good! Just that I can’t travel again. Sigh, I’ve sent my passport in for a visa renewal, then I don’t have to worry about that shit again for another 3 years. Fingers crossed I get it through without a hitch as my applications to the Home Office has always been double time.

This year I haven’t had any plans for trips just yet but I think I’m going to do more longer holidays than weekend trips. Just hope I get to travel, and meet more people

Until the next post!

Anyway, after my ordeal with losing my passport I eventually got it back just in time for Croatia in late July. Thank God I got it otherwise I would have murdered someone at Home Office given that I had already paid for my flights and the touring agency (roughly £750 all up). Eventually I had to pay for a premium service (£520 ouch! that did feel like someone kicked me in the nuts) as I needed to get my visa done ASAP. Initially I had submitted my application for a transfer of conditions (to transfer my visa from my old passport to my new one) via postal but that had been rejected due to either insufficient funds or wrong credit number. No f!@king clue since Home Office had my credit card details and passport for over a month. What to do? Go in person to waste 5 hours of my life that I can’t ever get back. So doesn’t matter, I finally got my passport and a visa with it.

On a lighter note, when I got off the plane at Split (Croatia) I checked the police report I got for my lost passport and this is what I read: -

Like WTF?! I didn’t notice that they called me a LOSER!! An official one!!! Bastardos! Guess I deserved to be called a loser for losing such an important document. Never again though!!

Stay tuned, I’ve got heaps of photos to filter and upload and hopefully that will result in more posts

Take this shot for example… After my gymming session at Bayswater, I went to the station and saw an awesome lighting condition. It was roughly 6:40pm and the sun was high enough to hit the rail tracks at an angle that would light up the dust at the end of the station. Couple with the angle of light coming into the station, you could see the light rays. I was kicking myself that I didn’t have my camera gear with me so I decided to go the next day. Next couple of days, the weather was just shite as it was cloudy. Then on Nottinghill Carnival day, it was perfect weather which I decided to give it a go knowing that there was going to be a bejillion people at that time wanting to go home. So unfortunately, I was only able to take a few shots and the photo above is the end result. I would’ve like to take more shots but within 10 minutes, the sun was at the wrong angles. SIGH!!

Next time but the weather is just crap now… sigh

How did I lose it? Well, lets add a bit of alcohol then a little bit more then a LOT more….. It was a workmates leaving drinks so we decided to hit the town for a few brewskis and whatever trace of alcohol we could get. Little did I know that I actually had my passport in my jacket pocket. I guess I forgot to unpack it when I came back from Majorca. Got home that night at 4am so all I did was undress then hit the bed - passport still in my jacket pocket. Anyway, yea discovered this when we finished dinner so I figured it’ll be safer in the jacket pocket as people might pick my pants pocket or steal my bag. I only realized the passport was lost when I came out of the bar holding my jacket upside down! DOH! Searched the bar high and low but still nothing and same thing the following day when I was retracing the steps I did through all the bars I went to that night.

Since the search didn’t work I decided to head to the Aussie High Commission to report it lost and maybe if some kind fellow returned it, the high commission would be the one to get it. So I went there to purely register that I’ve lost my passport and to provide my contact details. What did High Commission decide to do??? Cancel my bloody passport!!! AARRGGGGHHH!!!! Couldn’t they wait a few days for it to be turned in?? My working visa is in there you bastards!!!

So this is where I am now… Reapplied for a new passport (and £236 poorer) and was fined (sorry it’s a fee) for a LOST passport?! Yes, you get a fee for losing a passport… and now my new passport is stuck in the abyss we call the Home Office. This is the place which takes 4-14 weeks to process a form that says, “I lost my passport, can you transfer my visa to this one please?”. OK, yes it says more than that but seriously it’s only a few tick boxes, address details and all the documents to prove that I have the right to work here. For it to take 4-14 weeks? That’s just ridiculous!

I hope I can get my passport back soon cos in 7 weeks I’m going to Croatia to which I already paid £750 already!!! AARRRRggGGHHHH!!!

I was so under prepared for this trip it was not funny… ok maybe it is… The car was booked the night before and accommodation hadn’t been sorted out. I didn’t even know where Cornwall was! I thought it was going to be a 2 hour drive until I punched it into google maps and it said 433km!!! All I knew was to pick up the car after work and start driving the next morning following tomtom to the dot.

Picking up the car was an ordeal itself. I haven’t driven a manual car for almost 10 years so you can imagine the pain there. All the way from Heathrow to Barons Court… I think every stop I had, I pretty much stalled the damn thing. I understood the mechanics of it but in practice not so much. Eventually my memories and practices came back to me the next morning! So my road trip started and oh boy it was a long drive but it was fun doing 90-100mph (145-160 kph) on the motorway!

After 5 hours when I eventually got there, I needed to fill up the fuel. From memory I had requested a diesel car so I assumed it was diesel. There was no indication of the type of fuel except the fact that the nozzle didn’t fit. Having never driven a diesel I just thought it was weird but continued pumping anyway. The car started alright but after 5 meters it clonked out like it ran out of fuel (trust me, I know how that feels). You can’t imagine the panic that went through my mind. The sense that Hertz was going to charge me a bomb to fix the damn vehicle and having to be stuck in Cornwall until Tuesday… Grrr!!! But never fear, I sucked my pride, embarrassment and fears and called hertz. Surprisingly enough they gave me a free tow but no replacement car. Luckily the driver of the emergency vehicle knew a dodgy mechanic that could drain the car and for the cheap. Woohoo!! No hefty bill

So there I was in Newquay, Cornwall after 2 hours at a pub waiting for my car to drain, I met up with a friend to have a look around the area. Newquay reminded me so much of freo and at times Scarborough beach… It was full of derros and bogans!! I thought I left Perth to get away from them but no looks like this country has them too, though they call them chavs.

As I didn’t have accommodation, I slept in my car after a night out on the piss. Oh it was not a comfortable night at all. It was cramp and worst of all it was cold! Newquay is known for hosting Stag and Hen nights so you can imagine the type of people there. I actually drove out of Newquay cos it was so loud damn loud at 4am.

So there, that was my trip down in Cornwall… I’d highly recommend staying well away from Newquay and stay in B&Bs in Cornwall instead. Go and visit Tintagel Castle aka King Arthur’s Castle, Minac Theatre and possibly the Eden Project. I reckon I had a few good shots of the area but wished I did a little more.

So where to now??? Well, I reckon I’ll be over here for a little while as there is still so much more traveling to do. Every time I look at the easyjet or ryanair flight path, I’m just shocked by the number of destinations there are… There are just way too many places to visit!

A year on, I’m hoping there will still be a couple of years to go and hopefully I’ll meet more people, visit more countries and more importantly start getting back into blogging again. I’ve been rather lazy but it’s important for myself otherwise I’d be forgetting things

The most common comment about Copenhagen is that the people there are beautiful. I’d have to say they are ALL TRUE!!! My goodness, everywhere you go there are HOT women but I was surprised there were a lot of brunettes. The thing about Scandanavia is that quite a large proportionate are blondes but that’s not the case on the streets, it was quite equal. However the first bar we went to when we landed was full of blondes… Left right center…

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Apart from that we drank a lot, we went to museums, recovered from hangovers, and walked around. One place we went to was the State Museum for Kunst which cracked me up the whole day. It’s actually an art gallery if you were thinking what I was thinking before we went

Food and booze is quite expensive there and you’d be looking at around £5 per drink and £15 per meal. A burger king / maccas meal would be around £10 which was a rip off. Convert all that to aussie dollars and that’s $20 for a whopper meal?!? No way jose!

Have a look on my flickr page for more pics

The protest was going along as I would have predicted until the coppers with riot gear came along. That’s where I was expecting things to get interesting and possibly some proper rioting to happen? It’s not that I wanted people to get hurt but I just wanted to seem some action (and photograph it)… Ok fine, I wanted to see people get hurt (whether it be the protesters or the coppers). C’mon, how often do you experience a riot? Nicola told me of his story in Paris a couple of years ago for New Years Eve when a riot happened, there were the full blown and police with riot gear shooting rubber bullets and throwing tear gas into the crowd so I was kinda expecting that to happen on this occasion.

What I did enjoy was running around the city taking photos of the protesters and police officers. So still something that doesn’t happen everyday and was fun to experience