CZ

Coming from a business background it ensures i view the world as capitalist right winger, with an emphasis on gaining personal wealth. 

I have found myself doubting my own beliefs when i came to the US, the homeless and the rich living side by side. In San Fran, the two are only a block away. one side of the street has homeless jacked up or sleeping with the potent stench of piss. Although they are mostly black i dont think it is a racial issue. go two blocks over and you have people shopping at burberry and driving a BMW. The system has some form of balance. i had a conversation  with a fascinating english man who had squatted through university and understood the inner workings of London very well, a city that was constantly tense. It made me understand the only thing stopping the poor uprising was there desire to become one themselves, as Marxist theory would suggest. 

This draws me to where i am now, the CZ student co-op at the uni of cal. It has 120 students all living and doing what ever they please to the dorms and common areas, there is graffiti everywhere and quotes on the walls. it is an amazing set up and vibe. As it is mostly feeled with liberal arts students there is allot of drug use and debate about the world. with a quote from one of the guys that will stick with me for life 'when have you ever meet a black vegan? whites are always trying to make themselves feel better about their lives as they hold all the power' these racial issues are no prevalent in Australia as the aboriginals just drink goon under a tree as a majority. t think capitalism is doing that. community wealth is as important as monetary wealth, a listen i learnt from the dutch! 

But this is a problem that cannot be solved easily and i think its time to go to a frat party and enjoy the co-op and forget about the world issues for the time being! 

Bayern round 2

It is amazing how little things change in a town. It was almost 5 years ago I was in immenstadt my host city and the only change was the token asian of the town had closed his Chinese restaurant. Not to bother because this gave Tri more drinking time with us. The elps in summer are amazing its about 30 degrees and you have the lakes from the melted snow. You can go mountain walking with beer as a prize at the top. It seems beer is always the prize in Bayern. The great majority of my week was taken up by the local beer festival where the sole activity is eating and drinking in traditional clothes. Which is amazing because if the Bavarians didn’t have it good enough with the beer and beauty. The girls are amazing and the traditional dirndl has a system where depending on what side the knot is on it tells you whether they are single. So walking around the crowd drunk as hell I could determine who was single at a glance. It makes courting much more fun! The festival consisted of a large tent where you get table service beer by the litre and come about 8 when people are drunk enough the music cranks up and everyone starts dancing on tables and generally shit gets real! The snuff makes you that much more drunk or as the Germans would say more drunken. So by the end of the night we caught the night bus home. The first night I was just really drunk. The second night I passed out onto a random German guy I met and the final night I passed out, woke up to three people vomiting snorted some snuff and contemplated migrating. The days were spent at the beach or at the river if in Munich. If we weren’t at the festival at night we were at a bbq which involved lots of beer (of course) and schnapps. It is my second home and I know exactly why! 

Ios

It is no wonder as to why the Greek economy is so fucked! They have a great inability to run anything to plan. I first ran into the Greek maybe time system when I was trying to head to Ios. As it turns out if the ferries are booked out they arnt! you just need to go island hoping to get to your destination.  Boarding the ferry at 6am I headed for Ios a 12 hour ferry ride which became 14 because the Greeks decided to add a few islands to the journey, which upset allot of drunk aussies. At first I thought my ferry was just fall of my own kind but allot more bogan. I was wrong the Island of Ios is pretty much owned by the aussies, the camp site was flying a Greek an EU and an Australian flag. Arriving at far out camping there were girls running around in bikinis everywhere the pool had a huge DJ stage with the beers truly flowing wicked party atmosphere, walking in I heard my name and half way across the world I ran into Blake so I checked into my tent POW style accommodation and went for pres and to the awesome nightlife of Ios. Awaking deep into the day I went and rented a quad bike and rode around the island running into goats and alike. Ios is tiny and it is pretty much a port and clubs and a couple of beaches.

But the night life is the true reason for going to Ios. The second night I meet up with some girls from contiki. We went out to dinner and started pre drinks at about 10. There was no one in town and the 1 euro shots were makes us very loose. We went on our own pub crawl of the town visiting all the small clubs along a footpath on a hill. Going to places like slammers where you take a shot whilst getting hit across the hit onto your supplied helmet, the night ended up with some skinny dipping and in bed by 6. An early night really, we didn’t go to rehab a club that opens at 3am and goes til 10am. 

Contiki!

Contiki is a mixing pot of different types of travelers. You have your people who are scared of the world and find peace in the fact they travel in a huge group in a controlled environment, the people who go to party and those who just want abit of structure to their normal backpacker ways.

I entered the briefing and quickly sized up the group, many attractive girls with a ratio of 7 to 33 girls. Not only was the ratio crazily in my favor but out of the 7 guys 2 had partners, 2 were Asian and the other was a socially awkward fat man. So teamed with my roomy for the trip John a 30 year old music teacher from New York we went down to try and get a crew to go out as we ready to have a big night but as it happened we were the only ones!

Contiki is very similar to a school trip you see all the main things but you don’t really discover the sole of a city. This wasn’t too bad in my case because we toured the country side in our bus visiting all the historic sites of Turkey. Our third night resulted in a good night I had smashed a little too much Raki (fire water) and found myself drinking on a pier with a bunch of Canadians. This was a quality tame night. But the next morning walking around troy I found out the hard way how to use those asian toilets that are just a hole in the ground.

The tour carried on, mostly having quiet drinks at night with a few people who wanted to drink with John and I. By this time we had started on our trade mark ficis jokes as it was the name of a beer so we found it hilarious to make double osunders wherever possible. Everyone had broken off into little groups with some stand out characters, there was a girl who wore the same thing every day which created controversy amongst the girls, a girl who had nothing positive to say ever! and a girl who looked like a turkey and really got on my nerves, but the group was good fun as a whole, some really nice people.

One night we went out with our bus driver and a few girls in turkey where me and the bus driver got smashed and spoke extremely broken English to each other. This was the night I finally got a beer tower it pretty much made the trip! We also found out that Turkish taxi drivers are almost as fun as Bali with sub woofers and extreme speed! But the funniest thing was the next morning when I was feeling very seedy there was contiki Ahmid at the wheel with his aviators and I thought this guy was smashed 4 hours ago and he has 4 hours of bus driving ahead but he was a trooper he even tried to pick up turkey the night before having a wife and kid in istanbul!

Before I knew it the Turkey part of the trip was over and we were chilling in the port town where our cruze ship was docked. Speaking to contiki ahmid about the plans he said 'tonight is big like good titties' genius! On this information, me and John made it our mission to go out with a bang so of course the best way to do that is to invite the favorite girls and the korean guys to your room for kings with raki thrown in at 50% just for fun. Arriving at the turkish Irish pub we ordered stout but no go so to set the tone for the night jamison shots! My memory of the night isn’t too good but I did manage to make John sleep in another room on a fold out couch! and come breakfast was easily still drunk not to mention very poor. I left the hotel with 50TYL and 25Euro that night and came back with zero but on the plus side I did get a free pair of shorts from the bar! 

Starting the new day on the cruze ship we changed our joke theme to seamen jokes. We also decided to invest in unlimited drinks so come 10am in the morning I was smashing cocktail after cocktail even getting roadies for the island stops, life doesn’t get much better! The cruze ship did only have one nightclub so the first two nights were very tame. I did catch up on sleep though the vibration of the engine which was right next to our room put me to sleep nicely that or the carbon monoxide still trying to work that one out.

The last night on the ship resulted in just me and John making it to the 2am cut off drink point but we had made friends with some aussie girls who were very smart indeed! They stock piled drinks all night and as a result we found ourselves drinking in there room with a texian drug dealer with a gambling addiction. Then we had a very funny addition Victor the Ukrainian bartender who had stolen a bottle of tequila from the bar just for us. As it turns out every drink I ordered he had charged two to our accounts so that come the end of the night the bar staff could have a field day. I didn’t mind because the tequila was awesome and by now the no does had kicked in. Victor let us in on the inner workings of a cruze shit how his roommate had a wife and kids in the Ukraine and also had fucked pretty much everyone on the ship. His English was hilarious, and the girls taught him that a loose chick had a poorly packed kebab. We stumbled into bed only to be woken up an hour later by a very angry Russian woman who shouted something at us but I figured we had slept past the check out time. I got up feel straight into the wall I could barely walk up the stairs and checking out with the rest of the group who were all well rested was very funny and that my friends was contiki!

'I like Turkey' English is confusing to the world!

This adventure started once again at Amsterdam airport. I found myself drinking in an irish pub with a dutch irishman (these are very rare). A couple of pints and a pie later i was stumbling to my gate. The dutch turkish woman next to me was nice she told me about all the cool things to do in istanbul but then when i asked her how to get to hostel she got me worried. Her explanation went like this;

'You need to catch a hanvas bus to taksim square which is very busy and is one of the most dangerous parts of istanbul. There are kids who do sniffing drugs and can be quiet aggressive and people will try and scam you, from there im not sure maybe a taxi but make sure they dont scam you either'

Very comforting piece of information really, when i asked whether the sniffing drugs were cocaine or paint she wasnt sure of the translation but it wasnt either. What was this new drug of the istanbul youth?

After the bus ride as i was told i was in taksim square at 2am with thousands of people and even more taxis. Got in a taxi with a man who looked like he could play the evil russian in a james bond film i agreed to pay him 10 euro to get me to my hostel this was done with finger counting and shouting. We made a stop off at a street vendor to ask for directions this happened about four times and an hour later i was fast asleep in my dorm. As it turns out taksim is not dangerous at all!

The next day i was wondering the city and chilling out in the 35 or so weather. At night the hostel had planned a BBQ party on the roof. i smashed beer after beer and made friends with what would later become our 'crew' it was two dutch two germans and two americans. A very funny combination because we confused each other in one way or another, my sarcasm mostly being the centre of it. We moved on into town and smashed shesha and mojitos, really an awesome combination when its still 25 when the mosque goes for its 4am session of annoying crap.

At the start i wanted to accept the muslin culture, making it a rule to stay out past the first morning prayer. This soon changed, me and the crew ventured out to the princes islands, a beautiful set of islands off the coast where there are no cars. The ferry cost a dollar and went for and hour and half. the whole city figured this was a bargain too so we jammed about 4000 people onto a sydney style ferry leaning heavily to one side, the germans were freaking out it was very funny. On the island we found out there are no beaches just rocks on the edge so we decided this would have to do. We all got changed, i was done and had alook around, every set of judging eyes were looking at us the guys were dog whistling, it didnt help one of the germans had brought her brazilian bikini, but we all found the funny side and splashed around in the mediterranean.

Istabul is a beautiful city with nice food for nothing and chilled roof terraces, breakfast in the hostels. nothing better than waking up and eating fetta and olives and maybe some cucumber or melon, its a nice change. But one of the funniest things of my travels so fare is the amount of aussies overseas im amazed there are any people still in Australia. Tomorrow i start my contiki, some small turk has most of my clothes washing and ironing it for two bucks, i am amazingly sunburnt as i fought i was invincible coming from Australia and last night i watched harry potter with a bunch of girls who cried the whole way through. it seems everything is random when you are a lone traveller and it is incredible just to go with the flow and see what happens.

Family Connection

When I look at my family in Australia I wonder where my desire to go hard comes from. But today I found out it definitely comes from the Dutch side of my family.

Sitting in my auntie’s boat in a harbor on the canals of the Netherlands I was smashing down the half litre cans with my uncles, whilst my aunty and Oma destroyed their Rose’. When everyone let up a cigarette I was asked whether I would like one. In Australia I hide the fact that I smoke from my family as the lectures are really annoying but in the Netherlands this isn’t an issue as everyone doesn’t care what you do, it’s your choice. So I accepted and got handed the Drum, one problem there was no filters. When I asked whether anyone had filters I was meet with confusion, as it turns out no one in Europe smokes rollies like we do, it is with no filter or a roach at the most. ‘When in rome’ a rollie without a filter is actually quite good and it did make me wonder why we go to the trouble of putting one in.

My aunty is by far the biggest smoker I know, she can finish a 50g pouch in a day or so. Rolling cigarettes that are as thick as your thumb, but once I had got over my fascination with the difference in rollies amongst countries we went onto land for dinner. In the restaurant the drinks kept flowing and before long I found myself in gods waiting room, a kind of nightclub for old people. As it turned out this was quite a funny place in my smashed state. With at one point in the night my 80 or so year old Oma was dancing in the middle of circle to ‘I don’t speak no americano’ or whatever that song is called whilst wearing an afro. It was then that I saw the family connection! 

Amsterdam Round 1

The Dutch are very interesting people, always putting in a smart ass comment when they can, but I guess when even the average mcdonalds worker speaks four languages this is only appropriate.  My favorite comment came from the ticket man at the railway station responding with ‘sorry, can you say it in Dutch please’ when I asked whether he can speak English in Dutch. shitting himself laughing by the time i realised what was going on. I love the Dutch, their chocolate milk is to die for and there is something very attractive about girls on old school bikes.  

When I first went into Amsterdam I thought all coffee shops would be the same, full of young kids smoking up which is partly true but they vary massively. Similar to pubs, you have your low end shops full of English men who I don’t even understand to that where you would be happy to bring your parents. My first experience was somewhere in the middle. A shop with only a few people but very chilled. The guy at the counter after informing me ‘you give me money I give you weed’ when I asked him how it works explained to me the difference between the different types of weed. From diesel a mellow hi to haze C3 a super strong skunk that will knock out even your most seasoned smoker.  I once again settled in the middle with the menu mix, a mix of mellow weed with abit of giggle thrown in for good measure. Sitting down with my pre rolled joint i looked around. A black man, posh German girls and a group of British men one wearing a matching green track suit and poker style sunglasses. Typical of Amsterdam a weird mix of things, having weed and the red light district in the same city as famous museums and art, with old tourists and drug tourists in one big happy mixing pot all while people lived and worked.  A nice mellow hi and a toastie went down nicely. I can now say I understand baseball after becoming fixated on the tv for god knows how long.

Stepping out of the coffee shop and back into the light, I relised how hi I actually was, I could barely walk! I should have known though I couldn’t speak when I ordered my tea in the shop. I wondered the streets not at all dazed at the fact I had no idea where I was walking. Until I found myself looking at a 40+ prostitute pushing her tits together, continuing the next window was a reasonable looking eastern block girl who suggested we have a 3-some with the random standing next to me.  I stumbled across the red light district and it scared me a little. I figured I would save the sex show for a time with friends as doing alone would be a little creepy.

 After more wondering I once again found myself in another coffee shop, this time a homely feel where everyone was alone and reading a book. Getting stoned and trying to read a newspaper is more difficult than it sounds, the diesel went well very mellow. Sitting in the sun and reading stoned is a very relaxing way to spend an afternoon.