January 24, 2003

take me home

i've returned to a country with a bushfire moon, and directions to head south spangled across the sky.

yesterday the sun painted a building with molten gold and there are rainbow lorikeets nesting in the tree across from the bus stop.

there are new sounds and friends with new hair cuts. i will move into a new home with old memories and old objects loaded with history.

a boy i love may become my best friend, or he may dissolve into a solution of my memories. the paths we have chosen will write the future, but we don't know our directions yet.

i have new found feelings of independence and strength. i want to go away and come back, over and over again. in many ways the return makes the travel worthwhile.

i call this country home, and i cried when i saw my homeland again.

Posted by pipstar at 04:00 PM | Comments:

 

January 21, 2003

safe and sound

i've been back home for just over a week now.

i still haven't been able to condense my response to finishing travelling and being back in adelaide down to a succinct blog entry.

i am feeling happy about being home. but i do miss practising the art of travel an awful lot.

i'm already formulating plans in my head and writing lists on paper about three months in southeastasia at the end of 2003. and elaborate ideas of accompanying chris on the trans mongolian railway to moscow are also filling up space in my mind.

Posted by pipstar at 12:38 AM | Comments:

 

January 19, 2003

over the waves

i've put pictures which other people have sent me over here.

Posted by pipstar at 05:44 PM | Comments:

 

January 11, 2003

secret

i'm coming back to australia. i'm not going to thailand.

you might see me in a town near you soon.

Posted by pipstar at 06:42 AM | Comments: *

 

January 07, 2003

wow!

it appears that when i was walking from the lousiana museum to the train station i was in a real snow storm!

the arne jacobsen exhibit was amazing, but the russian avant-garde book exhibit was pretty cool. the handmade and small printrun books on display were like early zines.

and the website for that exhibition is very cool.

Posted by pipstar at 05:45 PM | Comments: *

 

and then....

while i was roaming around trying to find a bankomat that was working and would give me money, i decided to cash in the refund coupon that the die bahn conductor had given me.

so i went to the ticket bureau and the woman at the counter kindly informed me that the refund coupon was only valid in germany and could only be used towards other DB train trips.

so pix, i'm sending you a present!

Posted by pipstar at 05:34 PM | Comments:

 

should i stay or should i go?

well really, the question is, do i go straight home to adelaide or do i continue on to thailand?

i've run out of money. i need to get a job.

thailand is a slightly iffy place to go at the moment.

i'm feeling itchy and unwashed and slightly unhappy at the moment and not particularly enthused about thailand.

i think that i'll think about it tomorrow after i've got clean clothes and eaten properly. and then if the answer is home, off to the statravel place to attempt to change my ticket.

Posted by pipstar at 04:14 PM | Comments:

 

i think that today is

i think that today is coming in as the second worst day of my trip.

the 24 hours i spent in bilbao come in at first position because i had nowhere to stay and i'd only been travelling for a week, so i was scared and potentially roofless.

but today, that's a different story. luckily i know i'll get through it, and i have somewhere to sleep tonight.

i got on the train last night in copenhagen at 19.11. the train was due to leave at 18.51. but it was late.

i hadn't showered since the night before and i figured that i'd be able to get clean as soon as i got into amsterdam. night trains tend to make me feel grottier than actual exercise does, so the shower would have been wasted.

within my full, 6-person couchette compartment there was a 21 month, hyperactive, but very friendly boy benjamin and his mother and sister, an inoffensive turkish guy and a friendly, but overly talkative pakistani grandfather called ahmed who gave us a continuous narration of his first night train experience and who kept on telling me about the 12 years that he spent running a restaurant in australia.

it was friendly, but crowded. and hot. oh so hot. and benjamin clambered over anything clamberable in the compartment, which meant that it wasn't nice sitting down.

ahmed did give us all delicious food for dinner. chicken tikka. and home made naan. it made the trip a little better.

ok so far. except it was impossible to sleep, impossible to move. i got dehydrated.

worst of all, i got bitten by bedbugs. 5 months in europe and i've managed to avoid them. but last night i was got.

i itch terribly.

the night train was late getting into the duisburg station. which was ok, as i had a two hour wait for my connecting train to amsterdam.

but that train was over an hour late.

so i rang up the hostel i'd made a reservation at to say that i'd be getting in at 12 instead of 11. "ok" they said, "we hang around until 1 and we're only a four minute walk from centraal station".

once i was on the train to amsterdam, it broke down and we waited for about half an hour before switching to another train.

i was pleasantly surprised when the conductor came around and gave us all 25 euro credit vouchers, as my ticket had only cost 20 euros. sweet.

i got into amsterdam just after one. and found my hostel. only i couldn't get into it as reception doesn't open until 6.

scheizer.

so i walked back to the train station to put my pack in a locker. but the lockers cost E2.70 and i needed to get some cash out. only my credit card wouldn't work in the machines and i'd almost completely run out of money on my travelmoney card.

scheizer. merde.

so i wandered around looking for an atm which would work and found one and withdrew the final E50 from my travel moneycard and found an easyeverything cafe and here i sit.

i really, really want to have a shower. i want to have a sleep and catch up from last night.

i don't want to sit looking after my bag. and because i'm feeling skint, i don't want to have to pay the money for a locker.

Posted by pipstar at 03:08 PM | Comments: