December 22, 2002

phew

i'm pretty sure that mary and joseph breathed a similar, aramaic sigh of relief when they found a manger to sleep in.

after 30 hours of stress waiting for aidan to get in touch with me, i finally know where we're going to be spending christmas!

it's back to berlin, two weeks after i left! but i know that it's going to be brilliant there.

and cold.

btw: thanks to everyone at sir toby's who prevented me from going mad today.

Posted by pipstar at 09:32 PM | Comments:

 

christmas potluck

i love sir toby's. out of more than 30 hostels so far on this trip it has come out as number one.

as of today i've spent the greater part of a month here. 22 days in fact.

yesterday i was finally ready to leave.

i'd drunk many cups of tea, helped cater for the manager's birthday party, hung out with the staff and other guests on a number of different occasions and even helped wallpaper one of the rooms with old communist newspapers and maps. i gave up going to budapest so that i could hang out here.

but yesterday was the day when i was going to head off to olomouc to make a trifecta of chilled czech hostels (sir toby's, krumlov house - cesky krumlov and poet's corner - olomouc). and on monday i was going to head from olomouc to krakow to meet aidan for a freezing cold, potentially white christmas.

but i'm still fucking stuck in sir toby's. it's not the fault of sir toby's, or me, or aidan. and i love sir toby's. i just have to leave.

but i can't. i don't know where i have to go.

aidan was refused a polish visa for stupid minor technical reasons and now we can't spend christmas in poland. we can't even spend christmas in prague or cesky krumlov because he wouldn't be to obtain a czech visa soon enough.

which brings us to a major problem... where are we meant to spend christmas? we've both had ideas (strasbourg, vienna, interlaken, back to paris), but we haven't had a chance to actually speak about the ideas and decide on them.

then there's the battle of accomodation... and the potential that once we get accomodation we'll be unable to get train tickets to said place.

aargh!

Posted by pipstar at 01:23 PM | Comments:

 

December 16, 2002

wandering star

i'm happy to say that my little brother alex has made it through his back surgery and although he's in pain (he gets morphine!) he can still feel his hands and feet (paralysis was one of the major risks as his spinal cord was at risk of being damaged in the process of straightening out his spine.

and i'm still in prague. i came through for a week a while ago, but i've come back and i'm still here at sir toby's.

is it the people? the city? the kitchen in the hostel?

i don't know, but the kitchen is a main factor in my presence in prague.

gel and i have produced some pretty exciting meals, of which the standout is fried tofu, ginger and mushrooms and scrambled eggs with canned peas.

but i've been getting to bake.

normally i'd have helped mum bake many different christmas treats, so i've had to improvise in the kitchen and made just brownies and almond peanut cookies.

and i've learnt (finally) to play chess, and it really snowed last night. big flakes which stayed on the ground and my nose and eyelashes.

Posted by pipstar at 03:27 PM | Comments: **

 

December 12, 2002

i thought you'd be interested

alex my little brother will kill me about this, but he told my mum last night that he's getting facial hair.

my little bro, with a bumfluff beard? weird.

Posted by pipstar at 01:04 PM | Comments:

 

November 30, 2002

[i've had to process]

a couple of weeks ago, when i was in munich, germany, i had the privilege of visiting the dachau concentration camp memorial site.

it's taken me a while to process the things that i learnt while i was there.

dachau was not an extermination camp such as auschwitz or berkenau, it was a concentration camp, like the gulags in the former soviet state.

germany, 1933. an attack was made on the reichstag building. the newly elected national socialist government passed a fire bill. it allowed them to arrest anyone who was seen as a threat to the regime.

at first it was mostly communists.

then, jehovah's witnesses, priests, gypsies, compulsive criminals, jews.

once someone was arrested, they didn't have access to lawyers. not that having a lawyer would have helped, you were just locked away in a camp for political prisoners such as dachau. without trial. without the access to justice that we take for granted.

the words "you are either with us, or against us" and "department of homeland security" seem even scarier now.

Posted by pipstar at 04:49 PM | Comments: *

 

nanowrimo II

i wrote 1800 words. in the first two days. that's 48,800 off the target word count.

i should have:

had an idea.
had a plan or story line.
actually been really motivated.
not attempted to write my first novel without a computer, while i'm travelling.

Posted by pipstar at 04:11 PM | Comments:

 

How do you plan to

How do you plan to keep learning, trusting and believing in a world that changes and challenges us all?
See the world while it lasts. Technology is infectious. Every time an antenna is raised in a remote village, another local culture becomes extinct. No society is equipped to withstand the onslaught. Every satellite launched, every cable laid, the death of every elder, hastens the end of cultural diversity.

If you are 25, it will disappear during your lifetime. Forget about stopping it; you can't. Instead savour every chance you get to absorb a passing world, to experience as much as you can before it fades into a big version of anyplace.

Each and every culture, no matter how small or remote, represents a vast body of experience-of wars and adventures and art, of medicines and music and hairstyles, of living with parents, living with nature, playing, dancing, kissing. Together these cultures are the culmination of millions of years of practice living on a precious, fragile planet.

Go now. Go for the people, not for the weather. Go to learn. Pass along to your friends and later, your kids, the things you learned, wherever you went. Use the technology you have to record what you find. Take pictures, tape music and stories, make videos. And leave nothing behind. When you go back home, take things away in your head, not in your suitcase.

Courtesy of Colors Magazine

Posted by pipstar at 03:50 PM | Comments:

 

November 28, 2002

a list

buy nothing day - 30th november

buy nothing christmas - some alternatives to buying gifts

wwoof - willing workers on organic farms

make your own dubya speech

Posted by pipstar at 03:53 PM | Comments:

 

November 27, 2002

things i've learnt

in america they sell bacon with the rind off. in czech, the bacon comes in a giant unsliced block.

uh oh, lea anna is from california and didn't know about rind, and she volunteered to chop up the bacon. we didn't realise that she hadn't removed the rind until we'd added it to the risotto.

chewy.

Posted by pipstar at 02:46 PM | Comments:

 

slaughtered

i stupidly drank two absinthe, 3 beers, and a vodka and redbull in a very short period of time last night.

ouch.

luckily the headspins from the absinthe were distressing enough to prompt me to "purge" myself early on. so i'm a little dizzy today. but not hungover.

thanks to amy, amanda and lea anna for looking after me on the walk back home!

the actual act of preparing the absinthe is cool, even though the drink tastes something like a cross between listerine, lighter fluid and rocket fuel.

you fill a teaspoon with sugar, dip it into the absinthe so that the sugar is soaked in absinthe, light the alcohol / sugar mixture, wait until the sugar begins to bubble and caramelise and then quickly stir the sugar into the rest of the absinthe and then pow! shot the coolant looking stuff back.

Posted by pipstar at 02:41 PM | Comments: *

 

November 26, 2002

expect me when you see me

the money situation is close enough for critical that i had to ask my mum to lend me some cash so that i can get through the next couple of months. luckily i do have access to some funds with which i'll pay her back on my return.

i'm currently in cesky krumlov staying at krumlov house. life is easy here. i could easily spend a couple of weeks just sitting around drinking tea and occassionally going off on a walk to smell the inside of the botanicus store.

i also went for a horse trek today. and we saw wild deer in the distance.

when we walked up the road i saw a dead porcupine. well i saw its guts and i saw its spines so i guessed that it had once been a porcupine.

Posted by pipstar at 04:58 PM | Comments: **

 

November 22, 2002

through a lens darkly

the nato conference might have scared the majority of tourists and czech residents from the streets, but it means that a whole bunch of political celebrities are in town.

sitting next to me in the globe bookstore internet cafe is rossano manischalchi, the official us embassy photographer for the nato summit.

today he photographed dubya and colin powell. tomorrow he will photograph madelaine albright. and he just showed me an email from ray manzurek from the doors.

Posted by pipstar at 04:48 PM | Comments:

 

still in prague

i've spent the last day umming and aahing over how to spend the next month and how to include all the places i want to go...

copenhagen, berlin, vienna, budapest, cesky krumlov

and i'd decided on a route of

prague > copenhagen > berlin > vienna > budapest > cesky krumlov > prague (again) > krakow / warsaw to meet aidan.

but my plans were foiled by a lack of accomodation in copenhagen for the next week.

it stuffs up my use of the superexpensive interrail pass which i bought whilst in switzerland... as i really didn't need to buy a pass for eastern europe and i'd like to get as many german trips in as possible.

so now it looks like i'll go to budapest on monday, then up to vienna, berlin and copenhagen and down again to either prague or budapest before going up to poland.

Posted by pipstar at 04:01 PM | Comments:

 

November 20, 2002

city links

list of official tourist boards for european cities.

Posted by pipstar at 05:38 PM | Comments:

 

prague

with some kind of uncanny timing, i've managed to turn up in prague for the same week as the NATO summit.

half of the sights aren't open. helicopters are buzzing overhead. the day before i arrived, my hostel had two sudden passport checking raids. and hardly anyone is around.

spooky.

i have been to see the alphonse mucha museum. that was very beautiful. and has started me off on a potential collection of beautfiful playing cards.

and i've eaten a lot of gulash, and drunk a lot of beer.

i also went on a very wet walking tour of prague.

bye bye nicole and torri!

happy birthday amanda! a package should arrive soon for you and lue!

Posted by pipstar at 05:02 PM | Comments:

 

November 18, 2002

$?

i think it could be because of my recent realisation that i have very little money left, or maybe because i'm now halfway through my trip, but i'm not just making and then lists...

but i'm now beginning to think seriously about what i'm going to do and how i'm going to live when i get back home.

i'm trying to work out what subjects i'm meant to be studying next year. this research has provided me with the discovery that i have a four subjects in second semester and only about 2 in the first. i hate being reminded that i would be finishing my degree in july next year if i hadn't decided to take this semester off.

so, first semester; component engineering and a couple of first year subjects i never took, and possibly computer systems architecture.

i'm hoping to take computer systems architecture instead of intelligent systems technology in second semester. learning the basics of assembly code seems much more useful than the horrible language lisp.

and then database technology, secure and high intergrity systems and professional computing.

it seems that the first thing i'll be doing when i get back home is organising a big meeting with one of my course coordinators so that i can work out what i can and can't do.

and yes mum, i now know that i should have worked that out before i left!

and i've been writing lists of money that i'll owe (credit card and money to mum...) and things that i'll be wanting to save up for.

a new computer (super important), some new stereo components, a couch, a washing machine and eventually, a new car and a house deposit. but more importantly, new clothes(!) and of course enought money to go overseas again as soon as possible.

which led me to writing out a list of places i could get work at / would like to work at whilst still studying.

which led me to do a couple of websearches for jobs in adelaide. just to see what the market's like.

eek. it don't look good.

Posted by pipstar at 11:50 PM | Comments:

 

yay for prague!

wicked!

i'm finally in prague! it's one of 'those' towns which everyone always raves about.

they're right.

we (myself, torri, nicole (who i met in salzburg)) got off to a late start today. in fact, nicole was feeling sick so she didn't really get to start at all and stayed in bed all day.

but one of the things torri and i did was to have lunch at obecni dum.

another highlight was seeing an exhibition of photographs of the recent flood catastrophe in prague.

Posted by pipstar at 06:38 PM | Comments:

 

April 27, 2002

Obecní Dùm (The Municipal House), Prague

Obecní Dùm

pretty website of the French Restaurant at Obecní Dùm.

:::...

This building has original decorations by Alphonse Mucha in it!

[from wanderlust's prague journal on roughguides]

Posted by pipstar at 03:49 PM | Comments:

 

March 18, 2002

birthday in prague?

this year i'm going to be spending my first birthday in a completely different place from my loved ones.

last year i woke up by myself in my old share house. that was a strange day. aidan was busy studying so i didn't stay the night with him. and i woke up and walked around my cold, damp, oven-not-working, taps-falling-off-the-shower-walls sharehouse feeling a little bit lost. expecting a cup of tea from my mum. a grunted greeting from my little brother. a happy h-birthday h-heather from my step-dad h-ed (we're a bit weird in my family).

i took photos of myself looking grumpy and then took a photo of chris, the first person i saw when i turned 22.

this year i'm going to be in a completely different country, continent, state of mind.

will i be waking up in prague, spain, greece or croatia?

who will be the first person i see? an aussie backpacker, a loud american or the waiter who serves me my morning coffee? who's going to be the person bemused when i say "fromage!" and take a 23rd birthday first person photo?

Posted by pipstar at 02:22 PM | Comments: