Australia and maybe some New Zealand

Does anyone still have this thing in their reader? If you do here is a bit of an update I wrote yesterday, on a ferry. It's boring.


Wow. I'm on a boat and I'm writing emails and ... whatever. That song is old now.

So, update time, it's been quite a while since I've updated anyone. Here goes. (FYI, some of this got long and boring, a bit to detailed at times, sorry)

The last time I was in Vancouver was ... November 27th or something. From there we flew directly to Sydney (which was awesome and worth the extra couple of bucks to do it, screw 30 hours of flying when you can do it in 13). We made our way over to Kim's friend Bridget's house (who lives with her boyfriend Chike, pronounced Chick-eh) and we proceeded to take over there spare room and call it home for almost 2 months. Way back when Bridget moved to Sydney she stayed with Kim in her bedroom (which was 1 of 4 in the house her and her roommates were renting) where she also lived with her boyfriend (in the same room, so 3 people 1 room and then 3 other roommates). Needless to say Kim felt she was owed one so we cashed in that ticket. B & C live in Newtown, which is kind of a university type part of town in Sydney. Also, there are lots of suburbs, everything is a suburb and all of that makes up Sydney, at least in my mind. The day after we arrived we picked up our scooter from a place where Kim had arranged to buy one from (if we liked it when we saw it). This is where I become the passenger...I really should have passed that f'ing motorcycle test in BC, life would have been a lot different.

The day after that Kim and I met up with the person who was taking care of the cat sitting business (Debs or Deborah) who was so sick of cats and was so happy to give the whole thing back to Kim. So that's when cat sitting started. It was slow at first, 2 or 3 a day, then picked up to 8 or 10 a day, culminating in 26 visits for Christmas and something like 19 for new years. The whole cat sitting thing didn't really go off like I thought it would. Kim had to go and introduce herself to all the people she was going to be sitting for and then also see the new people coming up. She hated this, I mean who wants to go meet random people and hear all their nitpicks about their cat and their building and security and where they throw the cat shit. I guess none of this info is terribly exciting, sorry. So the cat sitting was in Bondi and the living was in Newtown, these are around 15km apart. Kim would generally drive this twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon/evening, sometimes she stayed out there for the day to meet people or to deal with cats that people requested be visited at certain times. I would go with her sometimes but mostly I stayed at B&C's and worked on our websites (we launched the natural health site a little while after we arrived). This annoyed her a bit because she had to go out and do stuff she didn't like and there was a possibility I was at home relaxing doing nothing having a beer or something. Anyway, cat sitting was annoying and Kim was usually driving >100 km's a day on her scooter.

Oh, I never covered why I didn't cat sit. Turns many out people are super picky about who they let in their house and who they trust and I wasn't that person. I tried taking a couple of calls and all the people I talked to cancelled. So Kim did all that. I just worked on a website to take bookings and show what needed to be done that day and show a map of where things were and all the fun shit like that.

Also, it rained and the weather sucked, almost the whole time (coldest summer in 50 years kind of thing). The first 3 weeks (or more) it rained almost every day and was like 20 degrees or less. There were a couple of nice days but not many. Then Christmas came! We house sat for someone in Bondi which was very nice because their place was pretty nice and Kim didn't have to drive so much and the weather got a bit nicer. B & C had us and a bunch of friends over for turkey and all that. I signed up to make the turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. I was anal about it, making sure we had all the spices and everything turned out awesome (to tute my own horn), everyone loved it, people who didn't like stuffing ate stuffing, it rocked. We got tickets to a club downtown for new years, Architecture in Helsinki played, it was good but it turns out I'm totally over clubs and going out like that and this night helped confirm that. I also learned that the harbour bridge fireworks are pretty crazy, we could see part of them from the club but if I'm here next year I might try and see them instead of a club. Wow, this email seems really down. The whole time all of this was going on Kim and I were both working really hard to get the website working and work on cat sitting stuff and trying to go swimming and see different parts of the city and stuff. Also trying to go surfing but we only made it once in the 2 months we were in Sydney because it's hard to carry surf boards on a scooter and the weather/waves were extremely erratic and so it was just hard to pull off without a bunch of help from friends. The crappy weather also meant that I couldn't (and didn't) ride my bike much which is to say basically not at all. 2 rides in total. One from Newtown to Bondi and the other on Christmas which was the day Kim let me help her cat sit. 1 cat and 4 km's in I got a giant flat that couldn't be fixed. Blah.

January chilled out a bit, we had a couple of more house sittings which was nice (the only catch for them was that we basically felt like we had to clean their whole place in order to leave which made the end of the house sitting really stressful). I was looking for vans on the internet a lot. We didn't really get out and see much of anything other than Newtown, Bondi and a bit of the more downtown areas. When we started to actually go see vans we started seeing more of the western suburbs and shitballs, there is a lot of them. First one we trained to but it took 3 hours return and the drive was a lot shorter, Also, the van we wanted to see was sold but the place still had the ad up. That was a bit annoying but the guy was so friendly and helpful it seemed like he would help us find what we needed. It never worked out though, after going out to the west a couple of times I found a van in Maitland (about a 4 hour train ride away). I talked to the guy and said I wanted to come and see it, he said that someone was about to buy it but if it didn't work out he would call. The next day he called back and I arranged to see the van the day after because the guy was trying to play games with him and the price of the van. We did all the VIN checks on it to make sure it didn't have a shady past and early the next morning I got on a train to basically head out alone for the first time in Australia. The guy met me at the train station and took me around town in his van, let me drive it (which was the first time I was driving on the left side, and it was standard) he was a cabinet maker who broke his ankle and hat to walk with a cane so could no longer to installations, super nice guy and I totally trusted him from the minute I met him. I gave the van a good look over and there was nothing really wrong, a couple of oil leaks but nothing huge. So I told the guy I wanted to buy the van after talking with Kim on the phone. He showed me emails of 3 other people wanting to buy the van, like asking for his bank details to get the deal done, so we negotiated fairly openly and settled on 500 less than he was asking. I was pretty happy but he basically said it wasn't ours until he had the money and he wanted it all in one shot. So I called Kim and she went to get on a train so we could pay for it. Then she called back and said she could just transfer the money into my account and I could find a branch out there to write a cashiers cheque. Personal cheques aren't really used here so this was a great solution, after a bit of searching we found the right bank and the van was ours! I headed off on the highway in the pouring rain to meet Kim 1/2 way (in a place called Fassi Fern of all names), she was worried about me driving through crazy Sydney traffic in the middle of a storm when it was my first day driving on the left. We finally made it home after oodles of traffic and some cat sitting on the way and we arrived in Newtown, in our new mobile home. (Pics of the van are on FB)

So that's the story of getting the van. Then we went shopping and bought a gazebo as well as some old curtains from an op-shop (their term for second hand store, which stands for opportunity shop). The curtains were great, they had the black-out style material in them so we took that stuff and Kim set out sewing curtains by hand. 3 days later they were ready to be put up. I was also super excited about the gazebo, I had been looking online over boxing day / new years and finding out that they were expensive, especially for one that has mosquito netting around it. We randomly walked into a hardware store and they had one on sale for 50 bucks that had netting all the way around, I almost pissed myself I was so happy, it's funny how the things you piss yourself over in life change as you get older ;) This is also 1 day before we leave for NZ.

I guess I forgot to mention that way back when (July or August) we booked our trip around SA and to Australia that we also booked flights to see NZ and Kim's family for most of Feb.

So now we are in NZ, we arrived in Christchurch and immediately hopped on a bus to Dunedin (her home town where her brother and dad and step-mom and step-brother live). Her brother lives in a university style house with 4 other nerds (somewhat reminiscent of the place me and the boys used to live in on Wellington Cres) except their rent is cheaper than ours was, he pays $70 a week. Their place is also a bit dirtier. It was f'ing cold. We had just come from a couple of 30 degree (at night) days and were used to hot so 14 degrees was cold and the house didn't really have heating or insulation. It was fun though, seeing Kim's old town and having her show me all these places that she found magical when she was young. When the weekend hit we drove up to Kim's mom's house. She has a little hobby type farm with a B & B on it. It's a straw-bale house and is totally gorgeous, it's in Central Otago, near Wanaka and Cromwell. It looks just like Kamloops/Penticton area in BC. Her mom's farm has an olive tree orchard and she makes olive oil to sell every year. She also has a bit of other fruit and grapes, and wild rabbits are going nuts in the hills, seriously hundreds of them, I was welcomed to try and cull the herd. So we stayed their for one night and then headed up to the west coast to start camping and adventuring for 4 days. This was great although hard to find places to camp for free that we wouldn't get caught and fined. There were also loads of sandflies, and they are smaller than our mosquito netting. I've got so many bites and it's driving me nuts, I thought being from Manitoba would have prepared me for this but no, insane. Anyway, we saw so many amazing lakes and rivers (all of which were freezing cold but so clear and blue) and glaciers and coast lines. The last part of the trip was up to the gold coast, the north western most tip of the south island. There is so much of the NZ coast that is un-reachable and wild, it's crazy, I never new. Kim wants to do a hike from the top of the gold coast down the west to the next in-habited kind of place, it takes 5 days and there is nothing there, I'd love to do it. The Heaphy track. We should all get together and do it...

I was kind of trying to find a time to propose during all of this camping time but Kim was feeling sick the first day when we had climbed 1/2 way up this beautiful, freezing, waterfall and the next day we both felt crappy so that day was out. The next day I got super sick from either a bug and/or driving on really windy roads that made me get super motion sick. That night we found a place to camp that we were worried about getting caught/fined for so we got up pretty early (730) and packed up and headed out without eating. We drove up the road and before we knew it we were at pu-pu springs. I didn't really know much about this place other than Kim had loved it as a child and had really fond memories of it, we thought we would make breakfast here and see the sights but there was no place to cook except the parking lot and it specifically said no food or drinks were allowed on the trail as it's an important Maori place so we cooked up some coffee in the parking lot beside the 3 other vans that were clearly just waking up, had our coffee and went down. It was cloudy so when we got down to the springs it wasn't very impressive looking but we stuck around for a while and some people came and went and then finally the sun shone through the clouds for a little bit and everything lit up and I realized this was it so I proposed. Kim initially said "really?" as I was waiting on one knee. I didn't have a ring so the confusion was a bit justified. Her mom offered that she could use her Grandma's ring that was being passed down to her (which her mom made sure we both knew when we were there). Anyway, she said yes and we were all happy, we drove down the road to the next town because I told her I wanted to buy her a ring to make it more real (which she was very happy about) and less than 10 minutes of driving later we came up to a place on the side of the road that said Gold, Silver and some kind of stone smithing. We went in and looked but nothing really suited, the guy working there started inquiring so we told him we needed a wedding/engagement ring and that we just got engaged and he smiled and said that he could make us one if nothing suited. This was the first person to hear the news, it seemed odd to tell a stranger before our parents or friends but it was really neat that he would be the one to make the ring so it was special. He said he had gold that was panned from a river not far from where I proposed, it was gold coast gold and it felt really right and so we went with it and Kim had a wedding ring made (not engagement, so this is a very basic ring) but it's really nice. He mixed the gold up himself (it's 18 kt, not 24 because we have no money and I think something harder might be better for rings). The reason he did it himself was because the place that makes it officially doesn't send you back your gold, just gold from NZ because it all gets mixed together in 20kg lots so he did it himself. He buys it from a local guy who pans for it, he showed us 2 vials of chips, and it all seemed to be so neat and kind of spur-of-the-moment magical and so Kim was really really excited. After this we headed to the local town and ate some food at a pub because that's all there was and waited around and tried calling family and went swimming in the ocean (which also just happened to be where the river the gold was panned for met the ocean and we were basically swimming in the river so it was f'ing cold). We both hadn't showered or cleaned up in 3 days so ... we weren't pleasant to be around. We finally got to talk to everyone. Also on a weird co-incidence Kim plugged her phone in to charge it (it was completely dead) and it turned on once it had enough battery, maybe 10 seconds after it turned on her dad called her out of the blue. So random.

So we drove back to the ring makers and picked up the ring in the afternoon after seeing Farewell spit and headed back towards the ferry. That's mostly where this story ends. Last night we found a proper camp ground in Nelson and it turned out that a cabin with a bed was 12 dollars more than a campsite so we stayed in luxury. We looked for a nice place to have supper but all the "just fancy enough to have great food but not so fancy that we can't walk in in flip-flops" were far away, we settled for a bar that had pork ribs on the menu. We both didn't order the pork. Oh well. Today we are on a ferry to wellington to so where kim went to university and meet old friends and then meet up with MY PARENTS! They are out to visit for a month, we will show them some of the east coast of NZ and then fly to Australia and see some of Sydney and that area and then head up to a place called Surfers Paradise where they got a condo style place for a week where we will chill out. Dave Willms is also flying out for a friends wedding so he's going to join us up there for a couple of days. He's going to Byron Bay where Kim has her heart set on moving, actually, she wants to move to Bellina where one of her friends lives and says it's paradise. I can't wait to visit the tea-tree lakes near-by there and go surfing all along the coast. After my parents leave we stay up in our van for another week or two and then drive back to Sydney to figure out what we will do with cat sitting and then we don't really know. We want to go back to NZ for June to help pick olives (well, I do) and back in Canada for July/Aug for knee surgery. After that we really have no plans, 0. Just hopefully make some money and travel and live life.

That's the news. That's a really long update, I hope it wasn't too lame.

So the ferry didn't have internet I just wrote all that up. It's the next day now and we are at Kim's friends place and finally have internet to send this.


Done.

I'm freaking sore

Today was a lot of carrying trusses around. The people who delivered them put them right where we wanted them, parallel to the side of the basement right beside it but they put the front end at the back so it was a major pain in the ass to turn them all around. It hurt almost, some of these things were long. By the end of the day I actually managed to get a cramp in my forearm, that's never happened before. Bring on the jokes.

We finished the sill plate up by lunch, then Randy and Garrett both went and bought big boots because they're feet were getting cold. I already own a pair of -100 sorels so I was gtg. After lunch we started firing up the trusses, after a scare on the first one because we thought they were all 4 inches too short, turns out the labeling on the trusses was covered with ice and after looking at it properly we had taken a truss that was incorrect. After that we were rolling. We only really slowed down when we had to put in the beams that hold up the trusses around the staircase going to the basement. Getting those hangers on and everything going there took a while.

We worked 9 - 9, it was such a nice day out, -19 at least, 0 wind, balmy. After moving all those trusses I was sweating pretty good. Later in the day it got a bit colder, because the trusses had snow in them my gloves got all wet and in the evening the gloves totally froze up, it was ridiculous trying to handle anything when you're gloves are sheets of ice.

I had some fun thoughts during the day but I'm so tired that I totally forget what they are. Maybe tomorrow. -35 with the windchill for tomorrow: Hello Frostbite!

mark.

My stiff frozen upper lip.

Schteeve. Stiff. I'm absolutely sure that the person who coined the phrase "stiff upper lip" was from a northern region and had a substantial amount of facial hair, especially in the mouth region. If I'm outside for more than 10 minutes my whole moustache turns to ice and it's hard, it feels like when you put a band-aide on your finger and it feels good and then you move your finger and it's all in the wrong spot. It freezes into one position and then all other positions are bad.

Anywho. Although yesterday was technically the first day building today was the first day we actually worked. The plan for today was to put the sill plate on, we got it about 1/2 done, things always pop-up that we forget about or think will take no time but they do.

So, the sill plate is a 2x6 that runs along the top of the cement basement walls, these walls are formed with logic blocks (i think that's a brand name) which are just styrofoam walls with a gap in the middle where the cement is poured into (after the metal has all been put inside them). They look like big lego pieces all fit together. So on top of the cement wall we put the sill gasket ( a rubbery, poly-something-o-fane-y thin flat layer of stuff), then the 2x6, then we drill holes through all of that, into the cement. Then we hammer anchor bolts into the holes with nuts on the end to hold the plate on, the bolts are placed about every 4 feet. We put the plate 2 inches from the edge of the logic blocks so that 2 inch styrospan (just another fancy name for 2 inch styrofoam) can be put against the floor trusses making the truss area even with the outside styrofoam from the logic blocks, our sheeting for the walls will come up against this outer wall of styrofoam.

After installing the sill plate we will lay our floor trusses onto the sill plate. Because these trusses have specific placements (it's an engineered floor so depending on what will happen in that area of the house ie. kitchen or bedroom, there may be more or less support meaning more or less trusses), we mark out where the trusses will be placed on the plate before drilling the anchor bolts to ensure that the bolts don't line up with where a truss should be placed -- if the two are in the same spot we'd have to cut the anchor bolt off and put it somewhere else which we don't want to do.

Tomorrow we'll finish the plate and hopefully finish getting the trusses in. After that sheeting the floor I think.



You can see the sill plate there and a beam that the guys are shimming up so it lines up nicely with the top of the cement. That's that. If you are looking for more pictures check facebook, I've been putting them up there.



Over and out.
mark.

From something to nothing

Sorry about the lack of posting on this here thing. I'm working on some things, and by that I mean I am doing everything I can to avoid work in any and every form. That's not totally true. Anyway, I've now managed to force myself to get some things done on a computer and so a post is coming forthwith. I made some notes on my drive home from BC and I wanted to incorporate some of those in the post but I left them in my car and it's at the "shop" right now getting certified for MB so all you're getting is this lame post.

In order to satiate your wild appetite for my fine looks I will provide a picture :)





That last one is because I know how much matt likes his picture on the internet

And on the last day, Mark posted to the internet

We actually had a good "quote of the day" way back in Zadar, Croatia. It wasn't by one of the crew but the late middle aged man was from Toronto so he was practically one of us. "I can't wait to get back to Canada and have an ice cold Canadian and a pack of Du Maurier king sized." Hahaha, this guy loves all things Canadian I guess.

Innsbruck, July 27, 2008. It's noon, I've got a cough, the day started sunny and we had breakfast, shortly after that the clouds rolled in, again; avoiding rain today is going to be a chore. What am I writing? This needs to stop.

Last night Jen and I went out to a New Orleans styled outdoor concert that was the culmination of of the weekends New Orleans festival. It was pretty fun, there was one very Austrian man in the band that was actually from New Orleans and they rocked out. But that wasn't the really fun part. Jen and I rode up to one of the several bars available at the event and ordered two of their finiest draft beers. Jen received hers first and after what was about 15 seconds of waiting for mine I look over and see beer flying in the direction of the man waiting behind Jen, then a funny surprised look on the face of that very same man. Jens right side is drenched in beer, her cup is overturned and her head is down because she is embarassed at how much beer she has just spilled all over everywhere and -- this is gold -- because she has gotten beer in her eye and it stings. At this point I'm pretty sure I laughed but I don't really remember. The bartender brought over my beer and saw Jen in all her beer covered glory and said "she was thirsty." He then promptly brought over a full glass and winked at me, I'm pretty sure he liked me. That was really the highlight of the night for me. Jen felt it as a different kind of highlight I think but at any rate we both had a good time.

The night before this we were in Vienna, the "supermodel" of european cities enjoying a nice outdoor, bigscreened opera. I'll write about that another time but I will say it was a treat.

mark.

Lookout ladies!

Wow, what a day. I spent the whole day wandering around Prague thinking I might eventually find the train station, only to find out that the 2 maps that I had were not to proportion at all (the transit one doesn't even have the river path on it correctly) and most of the roads are not on the maps. This kinda makes things hard but I did manage to find my favourite intersection. I sat and read at it for a while (in the round-about area) and then had coffee at a place at one of the 5 parts of the intersection, I also had a chocolate croissant. Mmmmm. Thank you Beth for introducing those to me.

I still haven't managed to get to the meat of the post. So here we go. All day I've kind been searching for places Ravi, Josh and I were at last time I was here so I can kinda get my bearings but I couldn't seem to find any. Then I found one, or two but they were the big sites and those are really hard to miss so I kept looking. Around supper time I found this place that I distinctly remember we felt lost at, so I ate there. I sat down by these 3 guys, one of them clearly speaking a dialect of north american english I like to call "normal", possibly "plain" english. Right off the bat I notice that the one dude (normal guy lets call him, Norm for short) is standing up and kinda giving these other 2 dudes a speach. First I thought they may have been getting ready for a business meeting, maybe they had to give a presentation for a class they were taking or something but no, in fact the other two dudes must have been paying this guy to teach them how to be "players."

Now, I'm going to skip ahead here to prove Norms "playerness" so you believe me. At one point he said, and I roughly quote, "about a year and a half ago I looked at the list of girls phone numbers I'd gotten, did that math and realized I'd only slept with about 1 in 30 of them. Now, after using the techniques I'm teching you, I'm at about 1 in 2 1/2. I go out 4 nights a week, get at least 1 number a night so I'm pretty much guaranteed every weekend." Norm, you're a stand up guy, thanks for being you. Oooh, he also mentioned that any , I think he called it "play", you make in the afternoon has a far higher chance of leading to booty than one in the evening.

I walked in well into the talk and it seems they'd been doing this for a couple of days already so this is only a small amount of what must be the "bastards handbook" but I'd like to share.

When I walked in they were just covering what you need to be like when you're talking to a girl you've just approached. The answer is? High energy, especially when you're in a club/high energy type area. If you're in a pub or somewhere else where the energy is lower, you have lower energy also, but it must be above the average of the place. The idea is to get her energy going also. Energy is kinda loosely used here. Oh man, I'm forgetting so much of what this dude said which may or may not be fortunate for me (cough). Now at this point you're supposed to be playing games with her, this must have been covered earlier because that's all that was really said. He said something about trying to make her feel like it was her fault that you were talking to her. "Why you gotta be so hot tonight? I just wanna throw you over my shoulder and take you home you're so hot", a lot of that kinda talk, making her feel like this is her problem.

Then he covered kissing, meaning how to initiate it, I'm going to skip that, I can't share all my secrets :). Then he wrote down some graphs which were energy level and you're chances of getting a second date / getting laid. He used these two interchangeably. Once you have the girl excited and into you, "you're building her interest in you up" I think he said, you have to transition from a physical excitement to an emotional one or things will go like "this" then he drew the graphs, I couldn't see them but we can assume the graph looked like something limp (I'm imagining the opposite of the picture jacky treehorn drew in the big labowski). She'll give you a sign that she's interested, tilt her head and look up at you, maybe touch you in a certain way, hrm, there was one other thing, that's when you change gears and try and make the emotional connection. "You want to make her feel like she's winning you" were Norms words. In order to start this off you need to change you're tone, lower energy, calmer, more laid back I guess. Then you go from skimming over topics to getting deeper into some to make it feel like you're getting to know each other more personally. Getting her to tell you about something that you're interested is one way to get her to feel like she's winning you, fitting into you're puzzle. "I really enjoy impressionist art, do you have any favourite artists?" (That was close to what he said but not quite there), he really said he didn't like doing it that way though. "I was recently in Berlin and I really connected with the city, I can't explain it, have you ever felt that way?" He had a couple other examples. Getting her to dish something really deep to herself seemed to be important and when he was talking he took this with all seriousness, this was something sacred to him that you don't joke about.

He also covered the "close". Give a complement and then just pop a question was generally the way it went. His complements kinda sucked though and were mostly about how "hot" the girl was but he did pull out a couple of good ones which, of course, I managed to forget. The close was actually discussed before the switching to the emotional part so I kinda forget most of it. The two guys listening wont' though because they had notebooks and were feverishly writing. Norm also mentioned that after he figured these things out he wrote in depth articles on some website, I thought it was RMS web but I looked that up and it's wrong, then, during my search I discovered that this is a pretty hot topic on the web, who knew?

There was also a question and answer period, I didn't catch the question but the answer went something like,

You have to treat it like the prisoners dilemma he said, if she is into you, you're attitude must be "she's into me" and if she's not into you, you're attitude must be "she's into me" because the only way you win is if she's into you, so you have to act that way. I was sorta surprised he pulled out the prisoners dilemma for this one, and he is right here, the prisoners dilemma does have the prisoner doing the same thing no matter what the situation, you're chances of winner are better that way.

SO that's about it. I just couldn't get over this guy and needed to laugh, and then write about it so here we are.


Also, about the PDA post, I meant to mention that we should start a new extreme sport: Extreme PDA. Let's make a new show on that extreme sports channel. Who's with me?

mark.

Shirts with sayings on them

It seems that in Croatia/Bosnia/Serbia (and possibly everywhere I've been, I can't really remember) shirts with sayings on them are really popular. Especially for the ladies. "100% organic cotton" "I love my shirt" and there are lots of others. I'd remember more but the sayings are generally spread over an area of the body that distorts flat surfaces and leaves the person who was trying to read the shirt generally trying to get a better look at the distortions. It's kinda like trying to look at one of those 3d images.

There is a specific reason I bring this up: this fad seemed to be big in north america before europe and, in my general understanding of fashion, this is backwards. Also, there seems to be more women wearing the shirts than men, and in the womens case it's almost always a tight fitting shirt with big letters that are shiny silver or something and generally no graphics. The content of the words / graphics are generally self promoting "I'm going to do X with my body" or "This t-shirt is too hot for you", etc, etc. Nothing really crude, until today. Granted, it was a 45 year old man wearing the shirt but it really threw me off. Again, young children, skip the rest of this paragraph. The shirt had 2 people on it and the saying below the people was "get a job", after reading the saying I looked more closely at the people, which was a man with another person (possibly female) on their knees at the other persons midsection. I was kinda floored, I'm not sure why but all the different parameters that went into me seeing that older gentlemen at 11 in the morning on a saturday at a grocery store. Anyway. It was this mans shirt that reminded me I hadn't posted anything about all the girls wearing shirts with sayings.

Thats all.
mark.

Morning coffee can be rough

Yesterday, maybe the day before yesterday, I had an interesting experience trying to pay our bill at the coffee shop just around the corner from our hostel. We had been at the cafe about 1 1/2 hours (this might seem like a long time but when you don't know what day it is ... it just isn't, hard to explain).

Our server, who appears to work day and night, was at the counter. I had just finished using the internet and we were all done so I was nominated to pay the bill. We didn't really know how much the bill would be but we figured 2000 forint would do the trick. 8 coffees (Matt and Jen are nuts about coffee, I'm trying to take it easy as the shakes aren't really my thing anymore) and internet = 3150 forint. whoop, I had no more cash so I went to the kids to get more money, I walk back with an extra 1050, put it down, smile, she looks at me like I'm a crook and then says enough english to make me realize i'm still short. I would have assumed that 2 coffees would be enough to wake my mind up, this does not appear to be the case on vacation. A trip to the kids and back produces enough money to cover the bill and some change. At this point I'll mention that it's about noon, maybe 1230 and there is an older (large) gentlemen at the bar having a beer. I give her the money and get the change, as I do the older (large) man grabs my hand, says something to me in Hungarian (which I don't think it's actually called) and then turns my hand over and makes me put the change on the bar as a tip. I smile, say in English that I was going to leave a tip at the table as the amount that was on the bar was not enough -- about a 4% tip or something -- he smiles at me, says something back and I interpret it as "leave", so I did, no extra tip, sorry lady, you need to get ride of the big bar guy before I leave more tip.

That doesn't sound quite as funny as it may have been as Matt and Jen thought that would make a good story for the blog. Sorry for wasting you're time.

I keep making older european gentleman mad at me for some reason. I think they might be jealous of my hair. First thing I do when I get home is going to be shave my head. Done and done.

mark.
mark.

PDA

I've got some things to say but first I want to clear up one thing. PDA, public displays of affection (for those of you who haven't reached the age of 13). In Canada/North America these acts are often seen as grave social mistakes which under the right (or wrong) circumstances can have you ostrisized by not only you're friends but everyone around you.

This does not appear to be the case in the parts of europe we have visited.

You've been warned.

This interesting distinction in social behaviour was first noticed in the city of Zagreb. After arriving in Zagreb and finding a place to stay at a local hostel (hostel international or something of the sort) we went for a walk through the local square/park. After passing one couple on a park bench straddling each other almost falling off of the bench making out our eyes were quickly opened to the rest of the benches which hosted couples in varying stages of the game "make people uncomfortable around you by kissing/touching/groping/kooing/sitting in the most uncomfotable position while giving the person in front of you 'sexy' eyes." It was shocking. It turns out after a couple of walks through the park this activity by the locals (we assume) goes from uncomfortable to watch into more of a spectator sport where you really start to root for the couples to do something even crazier than they already are. This went on at pretty much every city we visitid. No, not pretty much, every one, without question.

The spectating wasn't exactly a "pick up the popcorn and coke" style deal but at least it provided something to look at when the 1000 year old buildings got boring (and they do, who needs all this carved stone anyway?). Everything was fine until Belgrade. Jen and I were minding our own business (sitting on a park bench at the Canadian standard "we're just friends" distance apart) drinking Fanta in the old town/castle area of Belgrade at an area where we are quite high up, the wall is maybe knee height and then goes up well over our heads. At the knee height area there is a nice view of part of the city and the drop off is not like looking out the window of a plane but it's nothing to roll down the hill over either. Whew. So, as we are minding our own business (I think I was trying to read a book) this young couple comes up, leans against the part of the wall where it starts to get taller, the male has his back against the edge of the wall and the female is agressively pushing herself into him while they are ... kissing ... I guess, hard to say what it's really called. He starts to fall over to the side from all the pressure and I start to worry for their lives, the thought "My son died while making out at the old castle" flies through my head and I chuckle because, if you believe in evolution, this is probably pre-determine to happen but is not really required, all they really need to do is move over 1/2 a foot but they don't, I lose interest and nobody dies but it was close there for a second. So ends my spectating of PDA in europe, it's not worth the stress.

mark.

Buda-pizzest

So we landed in Budapest yesterday morning a bit after 5. That was after falling out of the train a bit before a bit after 5. There was a big music festival near Belgrade called "Exit" I think (in Novi Sad maybe) and so the train, after looking like it was going to be mostly empty (we finally managed to get our own cabin on the train) wound up being over full, every compartment was packed and the hallways were lined with people all wanting to be sitting somewhere comfortable so they could sleep for the remaining 5 hours of train ride. First time I've ever been saved by the manditory seat reservation but it was worth every cent of the 2 or 3 euros we had to pay for it.

That's pretty much the news. I was hoping we'd head to Kosovo but the amount of travel to get there would have been insane. Looking at the map it probably doesn't seem like a lot of trouble but you can only enter kosovo through certain borders and the ones we were close to were not part of that set. Everyone had mostly had enough of the coastal lifestyle and heading north meant an easier trip back to the airport in germany so Budapest it was. Followed by Prague (I think) for me. We'll see I guess.

In other news, if you are a small child reading this, read this post with a filter because it's about to get awkward or something.

Last night we were walking around looking for a place to eat, we wound up on the "shopping" road on the north end heading south. We passed the usual 2 H & M's and still hadn't picked a place, la-dee-da, we keep walking, all of a sudden this dude in a suite comes up to me and asks "you like the boobs? pussy? fucky sucky?" and his voice is so funny and his words so un expected i couldn't help but laugh, it seems we had managed to walk right into the stripclub/whatever club part of town and I was not prepared. so we turned the corner and found a place to eat. I wasn't expecting much because we were a stones throw from dirty alley but I wound up having one of the best meals of the trip. Don't get me wrong, almost anything wrapped in bacon is going to be good but the bacon wrapped tender beef thing I had yesterday with potatoe in wedge format all spicey and saucey was amazing. The place was called apotels or something, it looked a lot like apostel but wasn't quite. Anyway, i recommend it. Our waiter was super awesome too.

Anyway. Back to "real" life.

mark.