That's it, I'm done. All packed up, goodbyes said, beard in its apex (pics later), and a valid visa in my passport. To be honest it feels really weird to just wait. No schoolwork, deadlines, no shifts left at the restaurant, nothing. I still can't believe I got everything done in time, because it seemed close to impossible a couple of weeks ago. Oh well, must be my all-around general awesomeness, which is incidentally my second greatest virtue after my utmost modesty. Although, I will indubitably write here a couple of weeks later to tell you about all the things I actually forgot.
But I'll deal with that then and concentrate now on the slight panic and the incredulousness that I'm actually leaving in about 12 hours. In case you've just joined us, or I haven't told you in the previous posts, I'm flying via London, where I have a crispy 12-hour layover, from whence I then continue to Nairobi on an over-night flight. Then Zanzibar, then safari in Masai Mara, then Kilimanjaro, then something else. But I'll tell you all about the aforementioned in due time, in shorter intervals than 2 weeks, if I only have access to the wonder of the interweb.
In the meantime, look for my people-watching report from Heathrow, possibly even tomorrow. Of course most people might claim that they might have better things to do on Christmas Eve, but they would obviously be lying. So, see you guys there then.. I'd ask you to wish me luck, but as I am more a skill-oriented person, I won't.
Peace, love and understanding to you all.
(maybe I still have some time to grab a few pints with the lads...)
((outstanding idea..))
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Do You Take Visa?
Yo!
Haven't heard that in a while, have you? I mean the "yo", not the title. Unless you're a part-time waiter like myself. Or a part-time lover, to use a rather strong euphemism that is also an oxymoron. No point here, just though about that for some reason.
ALTHOUGH, it is one of those words that can make your day. Words that you haven't heard in ages and have almost forgotten entirely. They may have once been used commonly or even been "cool", but have since then slowly slid to oblivion. Then, when you least expect it, someone called Joey says "hence", or utters "moist" in an especially saucy way and you crack up uncontrollably and simultaneously start thinking furiously when you heard that particular word last. You may even find yourself smiling on several occasions later that week when that word pops up in your frontal cortex for no apparent reason. I know the examples above may not spark the same response in all of you, but you still know what I mean, right? I find it amazing or even "rad" that a something so simple as a single word can make a day. Additionally, even rare use keeps a word alive, enriching the language and keeping it from turning it into a boring mode of communication, a clinical, crude creole, that carries a message but lacks flavor, or "sound" as one particularly laid back artist, that sports a mullet and pulls it off, would say. So call me pompous and pretentious, but I plan to plant the seeds of language wherever I go. After all, being a little lackadaisical and phantasmagoric about language occasionally is almost a requirement, when one trots the globe boasting to be a cunning linguist.
Granted, a bit too deep for a Thursday night, but try and stop me. I couldn't.
Meanwhile, the preparations for conquering my fourth continent are going as planned. Actually even better, because I forgot to plan a bunch of things and still managed to get them done before I got thoroughly screwed. One of these things was getting a visa for Kenya. Being a European who is used to jumping between countries with little or no documentation at all, getting a visa slipped my mind for several weeks, until I stumbled upon a document that had the instructions for applying a Kenyan visa. This turned out to be quite a process. First I had to e-mail the closest Kenyan embassy that happened to be in Sweden of all places, so that they'd send me an application. So I waited for that a couple of days. Then I had to take several black and white passport photos to be enclosed with the application, fill the application that was honestly photocopied in the 90's (it had a date) and put my passport in that same envelope. After having taken my time with the things above I mailed the package to Sweden and thought about a couple of things: 1) Not a whole hell of a lot of people want to travel to Kenya because they haven't had to update the system in over 20 years. 2) I had just practically sent my identity to Sweden, in regular, good old-fashioned mail. 3) It might not make it back in time with the visa
Number one was more a general wonder-ing-ment, but the two later issues troubled me just a wee bit. What kind of jackass sends his passport, all his personal information in the form of a filled, well..form, together with several current photographs and a bank receipt with the bank's name, the account number etc.? It would take a retarded monkey no more than 12 seconds to steal my identity with that little starter-kit, and the next thing I'd know I'd allegedly stay in several expensive hotels, have bought most of the stuff that is sold online and would be test-driving a Ferrari F430 without actually doing anything than banging my head into a wall for being the single dumbest dude to ever be allowed in a University.
What's more, the application instructions specifically said that they should be allowed 4-6 weeks to mail my passport and visa back to me, and I mailed it to them with about 3 weeks before the trip. So if I wouldn't get them back in time, I would have to report my passport as a missing identity document to the police that would follow the protocol and put it to the international list of "wanted" documents. I would have to pay an arm and a leg for an express passport AND I would have to try to get an entry visa from the Kenyatta airport in Nairobi. WOW!! That went really bad really fast. Well, as luck would have it, the ever so efficient Swedes processed the (probably only) application in record time and I now have an official permission to enter the bliss that is Kenya and in some drawer in Stockholm there is a picture of me, looking like Tom Hanks in "Castaway", only with shorter hair and bald spot.
Alas!, this was came out to be a "Much Ado About Nothing"- type of post, but why not. At least I got a Shakespeare reference in at the last minute.
Rock on.
Haven't heard that in a while, have you? I mean the "yo", not the title. Unless you're a part-time waiter like myself. Or a part-time lover, to use a rather strong euphemism that is also an oxymoron. No point here, just though about that for some reason.
ALTHOUGH, it is one of those words that can make your day. Words that you haven't heard in ages and have almost forgotten entirely. They may have once been used commonly or even been "cool", but have since then slowly slid to oblivion. Then, when you least expect it, someone called Joey says "hence", or utters "moist" in an especially saucy way and you crack up uncontrollably and simultaneously start thinking furiously when you heard that particular word last. You may even find yourself smiling on several occasions later that week when that word pops up in your frontal cortex for no apparent reason. I know the examples above may not spark the same response in all of you, but you still know what I mean, right? I find it amazing or even "rad" that a something so simple as a single word can make a day. Additionally, even rare use keeps a word alive, enriching the language and keeping it from turning it into a boring mode of communication, a clinical, crude creole, that carries a message but lacks flavor, or "sound" as one particularly laid back artist, that sports a mullet and pulls it off, would say. So call me pompous and pretentious, but I plan to plant the seeds of language wherever I go. After all, being a little lackadaisical and phantasmagoric about language occasionally is almost a requirement, when one trots the globe boasting to be a cunning linguist.
Granted, a bit too deep for a Thursday night, but try and stop me. I couldn't.
Meanwhile, the preparations for conquering my fourth continent are going as planned. Actually even better, because I forgot to plan a bunch of things and still managed to get them done before I got thoroughly screwed. One of these things was getting a visa for Kenya. Being a European who is used to jumping between countries with little or no documentation at all, getting a visa slipped my mind for several weeks, until I stumbled upon a document that had the instructions for applying a Kenyan visa. This turned out to be quite a process. First I had to e-mail the closest Kenyan embassy that happened to be in Sweden of all places, so that they'd send me an application. So I waited for that a couple of days. Then I had to take several black and white passport photos to be enclosed with the application, fill the application that was honestly photocopied in the 90's (it had a date) and put my passport in that same envelope. After having taken my time with the things above I mailed the package to Sweden and thought about a couple of things: 1) Not a whole hell of a lot of people want to travel to Kenya because they haven't had to update the system in over 20 years. 2) I had just practically sent my identity to Sweden, in regular, good old-fashioned mail. 3) It might not make it back in time with the visa
Number one was more a general wonder-ing-ment, but the two later issues troubled me just a wee bit. What kind of jackass sends his passport, all his personal information in the form of a filled, well..form, together with several current photographs and a bank receipt with the bank's name, the account number etc.? It would take a retarded monkey no more than 12 seconds to steal my identity with that little starter-kit, and the next thing I'd know I'd allegedly stay in several expensive hotels, have bought most of the stuff that is sold online and would be test-driving a Ferrari F430 without actually doing anything than banging my head into a wall for being the single dumbest dude to ever be allowed in a University.
What's more, the application instructions specifically said that they should be allowed 4-6 weeks to mail my passport and visa back to me, and I mailed it to them with about 3 weeks before the trip. So if I wouldn't get them back in time, I would have to report my passport as a missing identity document to the police that would follow the protocol and put it to the international list of "wanted" documents. I would have to pay an arm and a leg for an express passport AND I would have to try to get an entry visa from the Kenyatta airport in Nairobi. WOW!! That went really bad really fast. Well, as luck would have it, the ever so efficient Swedes processed the (probably only) application in record time and I now have an official permission to enter the bliss that is Kenya and in some drawer in Stockholm there is a picture of me, looking like Tom Hanks in "Castaway", only with shorter hair and bald spot.
Alas!, this was came out to be a "Much Ado About Nothing"- type of post, but why not. At least I got a Shakespeare reference in at the last minute.
Rock on.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
One Step Closer
Jambo, dear fellow humans!
As I promised, this is an update on how the travel preparations for Africa are going, together with some misguided remarks and whatnot.
I have decided to save the packing for the last night. We have plans to go out with some friends to celebrate this country getting rid of me again, and getting a rich guy and a hot girl in return. And although I, myself, am not actually a general manager of any sports team, this three-way trade between Finland, UK and Japan is a friggin' steal for the land of lakes and drunken dudes, I'll tell you this for free. So here's the plan: the dinner starts around seven, probably ends around 22 hundred hours, then some drinks, maybe a shot or 4, a final sauna at the after party at Fab's pad, after having watched the end of Gladiator with tears in my eyes, again, and I'll be home at 5, which gives me a good three hours to pack my stuff and be at the airport by 6am, fresh as a baby's behind. Martijn, that old horse thief, executed a similar strategy in high school and found himself hung over in Switzerland with no underwear, (aspirated initial h-sound)whatsoever, and carefully folded swimming trunks, so I'm looking forward to matching that.
If you're deductive powers have not failed you, you may have noticed that I'm talking about a particular flight, ergo, I have bought some tickets. Unsurprisingly, flying to Africa cost like a bee-hotch, so I got my tickets for the 24th, which saved me quite a few doubloons. The downside, for those "glass is half-broken on the floor"-people, is that I have to wake up before most roosters of my time zone, and spend my X-mas alone at Heathrow airport... However, that gives my oodles of time for people-watching and most likely some interesting stories to share with you, if I ever go online again, that is. And if I don't mistake a pair of ever-so seductive "cannons" or "long John's" for my laptop.
Once I get to Kenyatta airport the next morning I'll be completely prepared to never see my luggage again, but either way, Jewelz, the ghetto fabulous tree-hugger, should be there waiting for me. If she's not, it's gonna be a hell of a blog post, but if she is, cool.
And here comes the cool part: for New Year's we're going to Zanzibar!! How you like them apples? And yes, some of you might have been there and so on, but it's still sweet as hell for me so screw you guys! In order to get there we have to take a 13-hour bus ride to Dar-es-Salaam and then cross over (like Iverson) to the island with a ferry, but I firmly believe it's going to be worth it.
THEN, once we get back from that little getaway, it looks like I'll be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with Martijn. HmmmI should probably go jogging a couple of times before that.. Naaaw, bench press and biceps is all I'll ever need to look like an ass globally.
So that's it for now, my munchkins and jigglewigglers, keep on keepin' on. (whatever that means)
Below: ZANZIBAAARRRRR!!!
As I promised, this is an update on how the travel preparations for Africa are going, together with some misguided remarks and whatnot.
I have decided to save the packing for the last night. We have plans to go out with some friends to celebrate this country getting rid of me again, and getting a rich guy and a hot girl in return. And although I, myself, am not actually a general manager of any sports team, this three-way trade between Finland, UK and Japan is a friggin' steal for the land of lakes and drunken dudes, I'll tell you this for free. So here's the plan: the dinner starts around seven, probably ends around 22 hundred hours, then some drinks, maybe a shot or 4, a final sauna at the after party at Fab's pad, after having watched the end of Gladiator with tears in my eyes, again, and I'll be home at 5, which gives me a good three hours to pack my stuff and be at the airport by 6am, fresh as a baby's behind. Martijn, that old horse thief, executed a similar strategy in high school and found himself hung over in Switzerland with no underwear, (aspirated initial h-sound)whatsoever, and carefully folded swimming trunks, so I'm looking forward to matching that.
If you're deductive powers have not failed you, you may have noticed that I'm talking about a particular flight, ergo, I have bought some tickets. Unsurprisingly, flying to Africa cost like a bee-hotch, so I got my tickets for the 24th, which saved me quite a few doubloons. The downside, for those "glass is half-broken on the floor"-people, is that I have to wake up before most roosters of my time zone, and spend my X-mas alone at Heathrow airport... However, that gives my oodles of time for people-watching and most likely some interesting stories to share with you, if I ever go online again, that is. And if I don't mistake a pair of ever-so seductive "cannons" or "long John's" for my laptop.
Once I get to Kenyatta airport the next morning I'll be completely prepared to never see my luggage again, but either way, Jewelz, the ghetto fabulous tree-hugger, should be there waiting for me. If she's not, it's gonna be a hell of a blog post, but if she is, cool.
And here comes the cool part: for New Year's we're going to Zanzibar!! How you like them apples? And yes, some of you might have been there and so on, but it's still sweet as hell for me so screw you guys! In order to get there we have to take a 13-hour bus ride to Dar-es-Salaam and then cross over (like Iverson) to the island with a ferry, but I firmly believe it's going to be worth it.
THEN, once we get back from that little getaway, it looks like I'll be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with Martijn. HmmmI should probably go jogging a couple of times before that.. Naaaw, bench press and biceps is all I'll ever need to look like an ass globally.
So that's it for now, my munchkins and jigglewigglers, keep on keepin' on. (whatever that means)
Below: ZANZIBAAARRRRR!!!
Friday, November 2, 2007
Africa, I hear you asking..
I think you agree with me, enough about Spain KENYA
The story started when I was coming back from the gym one day at the
Well. There go all of my plans for the future. After confirming the previously revealed facts, I hang up the phone, get on the bus and sit quietly with a moronic, blank look on my face until I get to Plaza
That was it, my mind was made up. Through the flawless logical deduction process described above I decided I'd move to Nairobi around New Year's. I was aware of those dozens of stories I had heard about guys who marry the wrong woman and end up moving to Vishnu knows where. My old basketball coach being one of them. But then again, I had resisted the urge of falling on one knee even on those dangerous moments on Sunday mornings when you're not exactly feeling like a 100 bucks, or smackers as my man IGL ("eagle") calls them, and your logic is clouded by the remains of alcohol in your cerebellum and an attractive lady that, for some peculiar reason, does not kick you out of bed, even when you smell like asparagus. So I'm good, nothing to worry about.
Except for the few facts I found out after doing a little research on that paradise on Earth I was moving to. For one, it turns out Nairobi's nick-name is Nai-robbery, because of the thriving street crime. Fun. Also, several foreign ministries advise travelers to stay away from Kenya, especially from Nairobi, unless they really really have to. AND, while trying to get travel insurance my current insurance company casually informed me that Kenya was on their list of war-risk zones and that the insurance would cost me an arm and a leg. AH! Oh well, I merely switched all my insurances to another company who didn't think there was anything wrong with going to Kenya. Who says ignorance isn't bliss? The silver lining, if you really want to see it, is that I had to take so many vaccinations that I can now have sex with Pamela Anderson, should that become necessary at some point in the future. Hell, Borat got close and he's even hairier than I am, so the odds don't look too bad after all.
Moving on..
SO, obviously I had to start organizing stuff, like how I can keep receiving student money from the government while in Kenya, without actually studying anything at all. Furthermore, we would have to sublet the apartment to avoid paying two rents and so on. AND to keep my sorry excuse for an academic career going somewhere, I had to complete a year's worth of classes in four months. I could list more things but you get the picture. A lot to do, little time. Which is why I haven't written here in a while. Well, that and the fact that I'm a lazy bastard most of the time, with moments of shining and uncanny efficiency. And now back to the drawing board. I'll let you know how the preparations are going in the flashest of flashes, trust me. :)
Peace up, N-town!
P.S. Here's a pointless picture of a Nairobian giraffe for those who only check in for the photos :
Monday, October 29, 2007
Closing the Lid on Spain...Finally!!
I believe I once promised you a list of all the things that sucked in Spain. Or at least the Top 50. I realize that listing the things that sucked might sound like complaining, but if you wanted only the good things, you could just as well ask a travel agency. Besides, as the hard-hitting journalist that I am, I feel compelled to tell my readers the truth, the whole truth and a little more than the truth, so help me Jeff, the god of biscuits. So here it is:
THINGS THAT SUCKED IN SPAIN (in random order)
1. The rain
2. Phones that never work
3. Fish, as a main course. Just a whole fish, nothing more. What the hell is that?
4. Gallego, the local language (what the hell happened to Spanish, I'm in Spain!)
5. The 35 min bus ride to the mountain campus in a jam-packed bus with no air
6. The dubbing
7. The local public transportation "system" (although, it's not really a system, per se)
8. The lack of parks, trees etc. in the city
9. The lack of basketball courts
10. The lack of skills of the local basketball players (there may be a connection..)
11. The infrastructure of the country
12. The hypocracy of some of the exchange student girls (different area code...)
13. Too many cars on the streets (by about 500 %)
14. "Put your hands up for Detroit" WAY too many times at clubs
15. The offensively tall transvestite who harassed me in front of Gazty
16. The motor of Citroen C3 in the mountains
17. The grenades that are classified as "fireworks" in Valencia and Sagunto
18. Sub-zero temperatures while in shorts (hung like a seahorse)
19. The constant drizzle that wouldn't quit...ever
20. The professional sports teams in Vigo
21. The Italian guy who kept hitting on anything that moved (I stood very still..)
22. My friend, Fab, who kept hitting on anything that moved
23. Me not being able to be hitting on anything that moved
24. Summer not showing up until I was just leaving
25. The water pressure (non-existent, obviously..)
26. Fat-Kat, who ate all the wires, earphones, chargers and kept hanging out in bags and literally chilling IN the fridge
27. The 4 simultaneous English accents of a teacher (it actually hurts)
28. Having to run to the bus stop EVERY morning due to lack of motivation
29. Having to run a half-marathon by accident
30. Having to run into the crazy girl who stalked me, repeatedly
31. The girl who thought and dressed as if she looked like Jessica Alba,
when she actually looked like Fat Bastard
31. Being called a "hairy fatto" by Nick
32. Actually looking like a hairy fatto in the photo above..
33. Losing my A-town cap in Madrid because of a cheese incident
34. The pouring monsoon-type of rain
35. Having to shave my beard (but HAHAA, I already have a new one!!)
36. The "food" at a "famous" restaurant in Segovia
37. The San Pepe festival that made Roskilde look like a tea party at the Hendersons'
38. The unattractive lesbian couple that got WAY too physical at the Brasilian club
39. The lack of attractive lesbian couples altogether
40. Having to lather Aloe Vera on Houdini's burnt hamstrings, 'cause he COULDN'T!
41. People who "commented" my blog, but never actually commented on anything..
42. Being the only guy in the class whose teacher is a raging feminist.. (got a 9,5)
43. Almost getting killed by an angry and jealous bouncer in Barcelona
44. Almost getting killed by a huge wave in Bayona
45. Almost getting killed when Kataya was behind the wheel in the mountains
46. The type of rain that goes into your nostrils
47. The men in tights at the gym
48. The people who just STOOD AROUND on the dance floor, smoking (It's Spain!!)
49. My lumpy hammock that the land-lady called a "bed"
50. Having to come back..
As you may guess from no. 50, these things, although sucky at the time, gave birth to the stories in this blog and created even more memories. I wouldn't trade my time in Vigo and elsewhere in Spain for (almost) anything and I urge all of you to use all the chances you get to hang out abroad at various locations, doing various things. It truly is "all that and a bag of potato chips".
So like Ben Stiller would say in Starsky & Hutch: "DO IT!"
Check in soon for the intro of the next trip
THINGS THAT SUCKED IN SPAIN (in random order)
1. The rain
2. Phones that never work
3. Fish, as a main course. Just a whole fish, nothing more. What the hell is that?
4. Gallego, the local language (what the hell happened to Spanish, I'm in Spain!)
5. The 35 min bus ride to the mountain campus in a jam-packed bus with no air
6. The dubbing
7. The local public transportation "system" (although, it's not really a system, per se)
8. The lack of parks, trees etc. in the city
9. The lack of basketball courts
10. The lack of skills of the local basketball players (there may be a connection..)
11. The infrastructure of the country
12. The hypocracy of some of the exchange student girls (different area code...)
13. Too many cars on the streets (by about 500 %)
14. "Put your hands up for Detroit" WAY too many times at clubs
15. The offensively tall transvestite who harassed me in front of Gazty
16. The motor of Citroen C3 in the mountains
17. The grenades that are classified as "fireworks" in Valencia and Sagunto
18. Sub-zero temperatures while in shorts (hung like a seahorse)
19. The constant drizzle that wouldn't quit...ever
20. The professional sports teams in Vigo
21. The Italian guy who kept hitting on anything that moved (I stood very still..)
22. My friend, Fab, who kept hitting on anything that moved
23. Me not being able to be hitting on anything that moved
24. Summer not showing up until I was just leaving
25. The water pressure (non-existent, obviously..)
26. Fat-Kat, who ate all the wires, earphones, chargers and kept hanging out in bags and literally chilling IN the fridge
27. The 4 simultaneous English accents of a teacher (it actually hurts)
28. Having to run to the bus stop EVERY morning due to lack of motivation
29. Having to run a half-marathon by accident
30. Having to run into the crazy girl who stalked me, repeatedly
31. The girl who thought and dressed as if she looked like Jessica Alba,
when she actually looked like Fat Bastard
31. Being called a "hairy fatto" by Nick
32. Actually looking like a hairy fatto in the photo above..
33. Losing my A-town cap in Madrid because of a cheese incident
34. The pouring monsoon-type of rain
35. Having to shave my beard (but HAHAA, I already have a new one!!)
36. The "food" at a "famous" restaurant in Segovia
37. The San Pepe festival that made Roskilde look like a tea party at the Hendersons'
38. The unattractive lesbian couple that got WAY too physical at the Brasilian club
39. The lack of attractive lesbian couples altogether
40. Having to lather Aloe Vera on Houdini's burnt hamstrings, 'cause he COULDN'T!
41. People who "commented" my blog, but never actually commented on anything..
42. Being the only guy in the class whose teacher is a raging feminist.. (got a 9,5)
43. Almost getting killed by an angry and jealous bouncer in Barcelona
44. Almost getting killed by a huge wave in Bayona
45. Almost getting killed when Kataya was behind the wheel in the mountains
46. The type of rain that goes into your nostrils
47. The men in tights at the gym
48. The people who just STOOD AROUND on the dance floor, smoking (It's Spain!!)
49. My lumpy hammock that the land-lady called a "bed"
50. Having to come back..
As you may guess from no. 50, these things, although sucky at the time, gave birth to the stories in this blog and created even more memories. I wouldn't trade my time in Vigo and elsewhere in Spain for (almost) anything and I urge all of you to use all the chances you get to hang out abroad at various locations, doing various things. It truly is "all that and a bag of potato chips".
So like Ben Stiller would say in Starsky & Hutch: "DO IT!"
Check in soon for the intro of the next trip
Thursday, October 18, 2007
TOP 4 Sporting Events in Vigo (The J-Man's Back!!)
Well, dear friends.
It looks like it's been a while again, and for that I apologize, but fear not my peoples, for I shall once again open the bag of stories that is my mouth and tell you stories stranger than fiction. For the record, I do realize that technically I'm not opening anything because I'm writing this and not dictating, but please just accept the poor metaphor and move on. Here are the TOP 4 sports stories from my time in Vigo. (Next time, final recap on Spain and future plans..very excited..)
4. Yell the town red!!
sport: Screaming
Having already spent a couple of months in Vigo I finally found out where the local basketball team was playing. And before you think "well you should've checked the website, I bet it's there", I dare you, as a matter of fact, it's a DOUBLEDARE, try it yourself. It's a lot of fun, until you find out it would be significantly quicker to build them a new arena than finding the current one. AAAANYWAY.. I found the place and heard there was a game against Mallorca (I think). Cool, count me in.
At first the signs were promising: Spain was the reigning world champion, the fans couldn't sit still and there was even a BLIMP floating around aimlessly above the court!! From there things went bad fast:
The fans would not give the referee a second of peace (shocking..NOT), the field goal percentage (shooting accuracy) was in single digits througout the game, honestly, I could hit more jump shots after a gallon of bad sangria, the cheerleaders (all girls) looked like me, but chubbier and some hairier, AND Mallorca's coach was about to have a stroke from all the screaming.
Since the quality of the game sucked so much I concentrated on the coo-coo coach. He was yelling at the ref, his players, the other team's players, the other team's coach, the fans, and I'm pretty sure he even gave an earful to the poor cheerleaders after a time-out. He went from regular red (like one looks like when one screams very loud), to fire engine red, to a purple-ish blue with spots of white. I was both amazed by the sheer volume (double meaning: loudness AND amount) of the yelling, and the fact that evidently this guy wouldn't go down. He couldn't have had a single O2 molecule left in his body when they finally threw him out in 5 minutes into the last quarter, but he wouldn't let biology get in his way.
He fought his way back to the court from the corridor leading to the locker rooms and two more security guards had to carry him away.. I had to get up and applaud the man's dedication. Luckily the home team scored only moments later, so I wasn't lynched by the fans and lived to tell the tale. And the funny thing is, as far as I know, the coach is still alive, too.
3. Half-marathon by accident
sports: running, idiocy
I had just watched 300 on my computer. Now don't blame me, because the Spaniards don't do subtitles because they don't have to because they're special because they're Spanish. (the old "Fuck it, I'm French-syndrome")
So it was going to be either:
"Este es locura!!"
"Locura!?!...Este...es...SPARTAA!!" in the movie theater,
or the illegal version in English. Can you guess which I picked?
Ladies, you have to understand that a movie like 300 can be very emotional for guys. I've heard stories about guys wandering around in the yard naked after some serious drinking, screaming "Is there no one else?!?!", and I probably would have killed a friend of mine after seeing Matrix the first time, when he somehow would have failed miserably in dodging the approaching bullets in slo-mo, both of us singing Rage Against the Machine's Freedom in a "Pa-naa-na-naa-na"-version. If we would have had a gun, that is.
So there I was, topless (only way to watch that movie), and wanted very much to go out and buy a shield. But the Spanish word for shield escaped me at that moment, so I was forced to go running, because there was no gym within a 3 mile radius to get rid of the excess adrenaline. I picked a direction and I ran. I came to the sea and started following the coast. After a while I got to the beach where we used to go and ventured onward. Soon I was dangerously dehydrated and stopped to drink from a questionable fountain, while watching a terrible street-ball game. Minutes later I felt like the Mallorca coach in the story above and thought it essential to keep running. I was already pretty far away but getting close to a long, narrow bridge leading to a small island with only a handful of houses.
Had I been a cat, I probably would have died of curiosity like in the proverb, but I came close as a human, too. I made it to the other end of the bridge and saw a gate. There was a guardhouse and a guard with a gun. I had to think on my feet, but since my feet were really, really tired, all I could come up with was a loud HOULA!! He didn't look like he invented the wheel, but even he could see I had no business on that island. He asked me for credentials, which I didn't have, since I had NOTHING except for a pair of sweaty shorts, socks and shoes. I tried to tell him that although I didn't live on the island, per se, my friend, Julio did. For a while he believed me, until I had to tell him where Julio lived. It turned out there is no "Rua del Mar 2".. AH.. The dude told me to take a hike, and I ignored the screaming irony.
Well, clearly I had not thought this through. I listed my options. There were two. 1) run back home, which might kill me 2) start shit with the armed guard, which would most definitely at least wound me mortally. Again, I opted for living to tell the tale ("It's a self-preservation thing" - which movie, I ask you??), so I started running again.
Several painful miles later I arrived at my ghetto-fabulous pad, checked my map and got a total of 22,4 kilometers run, and decided to buy an Eng-Spa dictionary.
I'm gonna save you some time and some knees. The word is Escudo. Just buy the shield.
2. Anti-Depo
sports: soccer, yelling, hating
I had already seen one soccer match in Vigo when Celta had played Werder Bremen in UEFA-Cup, but that game was quite lame, unfortunately. So I was excited when I found out about the local rivalry Celta-Depertivo (L)a Coruña. Rivalries are always fun, but one in Spain would have to kick the crap out of anything we have back home. With the exception of Finland-Sweden in hockey, maybe.
Since NONE of the guys that I knew wanted to go see the game!!!! (which is why they didn't make the cut to life-long international friends, those cunts), I had to go with girls. Ella, a Finnish girl in the same exchange program and her hot, although fantastically sunburnt, friend who was visiting her. The atmosphere before the game was intense, to put it mildly. There were enough armed police officers to overthrow the Spanish government (which might not have been a bad idea..), and the stadium was filled to the brim.
I'm not going to give you a detailed account of the game itself. It was an OK as soccer matches go, and Celta actually ended up winning 1-0. But the fact that made this game special were the fans. Well, I guess it would be wrong to call the fans, a word which has a positive connotation, because they were far from positive. The fans at the previous game had cheered Celta on and were genuinely disappointed when Bremen scored a crap goal to win the game. These "fans", in turn, were just plain mean.
The weather was nice and the full stadium looked impressive with hundreds of flags waving in rhythm above the masses of people. However, I soon noticed that there were almost no Celta Vigo banners or flags to be found. Odd, it WAS, after all, Celta's home game. Instead, everyone had ANTI-DEPO!! flags, banners, even scarves!
These "fans" didn't care if Celta won, all they cared about was Deportivo losing, and preferably getting seriously injured in the process. The rivalry was so out of hand that it wasn't even about sports anymore. It was closer to a civil war. Even the women and children were shouting stuff that would have made experienced pirates cringe, blush, and shield their ears. (EARMUFFS!!) Getting worried about the safety of my friends (and myself), we left the stadium a couple of minutes before the final whistle, because we didn't have any Pro-Celta OR Anti-Depo apparel, which had to mean that we didn't hate Depo enough to be allowed to live.
I read in the paper the next day that ONLY 12 people got arrested after the game, which was a 5-year low..
1. Houdini finds home
sports: orientering, survival
Just as my time in Vigo was coming to an end, two of my buddies decided to grace me with their presence. They came to wreak havoc, get dangerously sunburned, hit on anything that moves (at least one of them), and drink copious amounts of SUPABOCK!! (a very intense beer), 1906 (try to pronounce milnovecientosyseis to the bartender after the first few), aguardiente (dear lord), and basically to burn all the bridges that i had built in the first 5 months. And that they did..
Of the many stories I could - but should not - tell you there is one that beats the others as a sporting event. It's a one man's survival battle against complex city-planning, non-existent public transport system, enough drinks to compromise a man's ability to speak his mother tongue, let alone any other language, and finally the ridiculously poor English skills of the people of Vigo.
It was the second night that guys were in town, and thus also the second party. Normally, after a night of that caliber one's resistance to king alcohol would be as high as Snoop, but the drinking games and the general the fact that we were simply having so much fun caused two things:
1) Fab (friend 1) concentrated all his energy on hitting on a outrageously hot girl who was leaving the country the next, while I concentrated on cheering him on as a completely unnecessary wing-man..
2) Houdini (friend 2) vanished into thin air.
Now, the fact that his nickname (one of many) was Houdini even before this story should have told us that perhaps someone should keep on an eye on him, but the aforementioned girl was simply way too hot for us to pay attention to useless details like our best friends survival in a foreign country, thus forcing us to blatantly violate the sacred "bro's before ho's"-code. Whoops.
The problem, or more accurately the problems were:
1) We had no idea, whatsoever, where Houdini might have gone
2) He wasn't picking up his phone
3) We didn't notice that he had vanished until we had switched bars/clubs at least twice
4) Houdini didn't speak a word of Spanish and the locals didn't really speak English
5) He didn't know my address
6) That very address (home) was on the other side of town
7) The last time Houdini got lost he said he was going back to the hotel (north) and started walking southwest towards Compton (we were in L.A.)
As our livers were burning the booze, our brains starter getting increasingly worried about Houdini. He had done this before, but then we had had maybe 2/7 of the problems above at a time. After failing to take the girl back to her friend who had casually abandoned her earlier (a kind of a trend that night), we took her to my place, but the battle was lost. We looked like shit, she would probably miss her flight, and there was no sign of Houdini, which kinda killed the after party. Then, about 45 mins after we had all gone to separate beds my phone rings. It's Houdini. He says, can you please buzz me in, I'd very much like to sleep..
To this day we have no confirmation on how in the name of Zeus's butt-hole did he find his way back home, but he did. He said he had remembered a plaza and a blacksmith of some sorts and the name Tomas, and maybe taken a cab at some point.. I lived at Travesia Tomas Alonso, 200 metres from Plaza Eugenio Fadrique, a famous sculptor. I guess luck favors the brave.. And after all, Houdini wasn't great because he escaped, he was great because he always came back.
As I mentioned earlier, next time: Spain recap and future plans (Africa, I hear you asking...)
It looks like it's been a while again, and for that I apologize, but fear not my peoples, for I shall once again open the bag of stories that is my mouth and tell you stories stranger than fiction. For the record, I do realize that technically I'm not opening anything because I'm writing this and not dictating, but please just accept the poor metaphor and move on. Here are the TOP 4 sports stories from my time in Vigo. (Next time, final recap on Spain and future plans..very excited..)
4. Yell the town red!!
sport: Screaming
Having already spent a couple of months in Vigo I finally found out where the local basketball team was playing. And before you think "well you should've checked the website, I bet it's there", I dare you, as a matter of fact, it's a DOUBLEDARE, try it yourself. It's a lot of fun, until you find out it would be significantly quicker to build them a new arena than finding the current one. AAAANYWAY.. I found the place and heard there was a game against Mallorca (I think). Cool, count me in.
At first the signs were promising: Spain was the reigning world champion, the fans couldn't sit still and there was even a BLIMP floating around aimlessly above the court!! From there things went bad fast:
The fans would not give the referee a second of peace (shocking..NOT), the field goal percentage (shooting accuracy) was in single digits througout the game, honestly, I could hit more jump shots after a gallon of bad sangria, the cheerleaders (all girls) looked like me, but chubbier and some hairier, AND Mallorca's coach was about to have a stroke from all the screaming.
Since the quality of the game sucked so much I concentrated on the coo-coo coach. He was yelling at the ref, his players, the other team's players, the other team's coach, the fans, and I'm pretty sure he even gave an earful to the poor cheerleaders after a time-out. He went from regular red (like one looks like when one screams very loud), to fire engine red, to a purple-ish blue with spots of white. I was both amazed by the sheer volume (double meaning: loudness AND amount) of the yelling, and the fact that evidently this guy wouldn't go down. He couldn't have had a single O2 molecule left in his body when they finally threw him out in 5 minutes into the last quarter, but he wouldn't let biology get in his way.
He fought his way back to the court from the corridor leading to the locker rooms and two more security guards had to carry him away.. I had to get up and applaud the man's dedication. Luckily the home team scored only moments later, so I wasn't lynched by the fans and lived to tell the tale. And the funny thing is, as far as I know, the coach is still alive, too.
3. Half-marathon by accident
sports: running, idiocy
I had just watched 300 on my computer. Now don't blame me, because the Spaniards don't do subtitles because they don't have to because they're special because they're Spanish. (the old "Fuck it, I'm French-syndrome")
So it was going to be either:
"Este es locura!!"
"Locura!?!...Este...es...SPARTAA!!" in the movie theater,
or the illegal version in English. Can you guess which I picked?
Ladies, you have to understand that a movie like 300 can be very emotional for guys. I've heard stories about guys wandering around in the yard naked after some serious drinking, screaming "Is there no one else?!?!", and I probably would have killed a friend of mine after seeing Matrix the first time, when he somehow would have failed miserably in dodging the approaching bullets in slo-mo, both of us singing Rage Against the Machine's Freedom in a "Pa-naa-na-naa-na"-version. If we would have had a gun, that is.
So there I was, topless (only way to watch that movie), and wanted very much to go out and buy a shield. But the Spanish word for shield escaped me at that moment, so I was forced to go running, because there was no gym within a 3 mile radius to get rid of the excess adrenaline. I picked a direction and I ran. I came to the sea and started following the coast. After a while I got to the beach where we used to go and ventured onward. Soon I was dangerously dehydrated and stopped to drink from a questionable fountain, while watching a terrible street-ball game. Minutes later I felt like the Mallorca coach in the story above and thought it essential to keep running. I was already pretty far away but getting close to a long, narrow bridge leading to a small island with only a handful of houses.
Had I been a cat, I probably would have died of curiosity like in the proverb, but I came close as a human, too. I made it to the other end of the bridge and saw a gate. There was a guardhouse and a guard with a gun. I had to think on my feet, but since my feet were really, really tired, all I could come up with was a loud HOULA!! He didn't look like he invented the wheel, but even he could see I had no business on that island. He asked me for credentials, which I didn't have, since I had NOTHING except for a pair of sweaty shorts, socks and shoes. I tried to tell him that although I didn't live on the island, per se, my friend, Julio did. For a while he believed me, until I had to tell him where Julio lived. It turned out there is no "Rua del Mar 2".. AH.. The dude told me to take a hike, and I ignored the screaming irony.
Well, clearly I had not thought this through. I listed my options. There were two. 1) run back home, which might kill me 2) start shit with the armed guard, which would most definitely at least wound me mortally. Again, I opted for living to tell the tale ("It's a self-preservation thing" - which movie, I ask you??), so I started running again.
Several painful miles later I arrived at my ghetto-fabulous pad, checked my map and got a total of 22,4 kilometers run, and decided to buy an Eng-Spa dictionary.
I'm gonna save you some time and some knees. The word is Escudo. Just buy the shield.
2. Anti-Depo
sports: soccer, yelling, hating
I had already seen one soccer match in Vigo when Celta had played Werder Bremen in UEFA-Cup, but that game was quite lame, unfortunately. So I was excited when I found out about the local rivalry Celta-Depertivo (L)a Coruña. Rivalries are always fun, but one in Spain would have to kick the crap out of anything we have back home. With the exception of Finland-Sweden in hockey, maybe.
Since NONE of the guys that I knew wanted to go see the game!!!! (which is why they didn't make the cut to life-long international friends, those cunts), I had to go with girls. Ella, a Finnish girl in the same exchange program and her hot, although fantastically sunburnt, friend who was visiting her. The atmosphere before the game was intense, to put it mildly. There were enough armed police officers to overthrow the Spanish government (which might not have been a bad idea..), and the stadium was filled to the brim.
I'm not going to give you a detailed account of the game itself. It was an OK as soccer matches go, and Celta actually ended up winning 1-0. But the fact that made this game special were the fans. Well, I guess it would be wrong to call the fans, a word which has a positive connotation, because they were far from positive. The fans at the previous game had cheered Celta on and were genuinely disappointed when Bremen scored a crap goal to win the game. These "fans", in turn, were just plain mean.
The weather was nice and the full stadium looked impressive with hundreds of flags waving in rhythm above the masses of people. However, I soon noticed that there were almost no Celta Vigo banners or flags to be found. Odd, it WAS, after all, Celta's home game. Instead, everyone had ANTI-DEPO!! flags, banners, even scarves!
These "fans" didn't care if Celta won, all they cared about was Deportivo losing, and preferably getting seriously injured in the process. The rivalry was so out of hand that it wasn't even about sports anymore. It was closer to a civil war. Even the women and children were shouting stuff that would have made experienced pirates cringe, blush, and shield their ears. (EARMUFFS!!) Getting worried about the safety of my friends (and myself), we left the stadium a couple of minutes before the final whistle, because we didn't have any Pro-Celta OR Anti-Depo apparel, which had to mean that we didn't hate Depo enough to be allowed to live.
I read in the paper the next day that ONLY 12 people got arrested after the game, which was a 5-year low..
1. Houdini finds home
sports: orientering, survival
Just as my time in Vigo was coming to an end, two of my buddies decided to grace me with their presence. They came to wreak havoc, get dangerously sunburned, hit on anything that moves (at least one of them), and drink copious amounts of SUPABOCK!! (a very intense beer), 1906 (try to pronounce milnovecientosyseis to the bartender after the first few), aguardiente (dear lord), and basically to burn all the bridges that i had built in the first 5 months. And that they did..
Of the many stories I could - but should not - tell you there is one that beats the others as a sporting event. It's a one man's survival battle against complex city-planning, non-existent public transport system, enough drinks to compromise a man's ability to speak his mother tongue, let alone any other language, and finally the ridiculously poor English skills of the people of Vigo.
It was the second night that guys were in town, and thus also the second party. Normally, after a night of that caliber one's resistance to king alcohol would be as high as Snoop, but the drinking games and the general the fact that we were simply having so much fun caused two things:
1) Fab (friend 1) concentrated all his energy on hitting on a outrageously hot girl who was leaving the country the next, while I concentrated on cheering him on as a completely unnecessary wing-man..
2) Houdini (friend 2) vanished into thin air.
Now, the fact that his nickname (one of many) was Houdini even before this story should have told us that perhaps someone should keep on an eye on him, but the aforementioned girl was simply way too hot for us to pay attention to useless details like our best friends survival in a foreign country, thus forcing us to blatantly violate the sacred "bro's before ho's"-code. Whoops.
The problem, or more accurately the problems were:
1) We had no idea, whatsoever, where Houdini might have gone
2) He wasn't picking up his phone
3) We didn't notice that he had vanished until we had switched bars/clubs at least twice
4) Houdini didn't speak a word of Spanish and the locals didn't really speak English
5) He didn't know my address
6) That very address (home) was on the other side of town
7) The last time Houdini got lost he said he was going back to the hotel (north) and started walking southwest towards Compton (we were in L.A.)
As our livers were burning the booze, our brains starter getting increasingly worried about Houdini. He had done this before, but then we had had maybe 2/7 of the problems above at a time. After failing to take the girl back to her friend who had casually abandoned her earlier (a kind of a trend that night), we took her to my place, but the battle was lost. We looked like shit, she would probably miss her flight, and there was no sign of Houdini, which kinda killed the after party. Then, about 45 mins after we had all gone to separate beds my phone rings. It's Houdini. He says, can you please buzz me in, I'd very much like to sleep..
To this day we have no confirmation on how in the name of Zeus's butt-hole did he find his way back home, but he did. He said he had remembered a plaza and a blacksmith of some sorts and the name Tomas, and maybe taken a cab at some point.. I lived at Travesia Tomas Alonso, 200 metres from Plaza Eugenio Fadrique, a famous sculptor. I guess luck favors the brave.. And after all, Houdini wasn't great because he escaped, he was great because he always came back.
As I mentioned earlier, next time: Spain recap and future plans (Africa, I hear you asking...)
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Bar Celona
Finally, Barcelona. By this time we had walked way too much and were pretty sick and tired of seeing fantastically old things and taking hundreds of photos, so we concentrated onjust having fun. As we arrived at the main bus station from the airport Mart-Man was already there. He was the leader of a one-man recon team that we had sent to scope out the target area. And sure enough, he had obtained the specs of the local underground network (metro map) and a safehouse for regrouping (a couple of campus dorm rooms reserved for us). We dropped the Americans to their hostel smack in the middle of Barcelona centre, called ABBA, oddly enough. The reception-DUDE was sick, bored, high and/or drunk, and it was actually quite hilarious watching him struggle with stacks of papers, Spanish computer engineering (an oxymoron, btw), and his 8 remaining brain cells. Finally he managed to provide our comrades some kind of accomodations and we went to seek for some late dinner. Luckily there was a semi-decent restaurant that was still open at that time (late, as I recall), and we were able to get our hands on some local delicacies. Most of them were, as per usal, questionable to say the least, but isn't that exactly the point?...The jury's still out on that one. Either way, we had some baby squid, extremely spungy flan and sliced PIGS EARS! Remember my blog post on the Top 4 nastiest things? Right up there.
After this interesting meal and casual conversation in 3 different languages everyone was rather full, disgusted, tired and confused, so our attempt to still go out for a few drinks was like the losers hitting on Jennifer Lopez in the movie Out of Sight, D.O.A. The day's indisputable highlight was Mart-Man's story about his arrival at the campus lodgings. As you may know, the Spaniards are not exactly specialists in foreign languages, and neither is my man Martijn, so some difficulties were imminent. However, the part where I produced a Jerry Bruckheimer-style special effect explosion in bursting into laughter and spraying whatever was in my mouth at the time through most of the holes in my head (and maybe a little pee came out, who knows), was when Mart-Man went to the reception of our "hostel" to ask for directions. The reception guy whips out a map, mumbles something for a while and asks (I swear, I couldn't make this up if I tried): "Are you ex-military?" After staring at the gentleman on the other side of the counter with an incredulously blank expression on his face Mart-Man leans forward and articulates carefully, as Dane Cook has taught us, "WHAT?". The man leans in, too, and repeats his previous inquiry about whether or not my friend is an ex-military operator. Blank stare... Being a master adapter Mart-Man decides to play along, switches to his ex-military expression (cause we all have one, don't we), which in Mart-Man's case is a mixture of Dirty Harry and Harry Potter, and replies in a low voice: "Yes, I AM ex-military."The man's face lights up and he starts giving Mart-Man directions, lacking only a pair of binoculars (pronounced bainokjylaaas), and some artillery fire in the background.
I chuckled myself to sleep that night, having decided that not only is that question one of the Top 4 Random Questions that I've heard in recent years, but also one that I am definitely going to start using in awkward situations, in order to make them even more awkward.
Kataya had informed us very explicitly that she is not to be woken up under any circumstances, so the next morning Mart-Man and myself headed out as just the of us. (...building castles in the sky...) First stop: Monjuic (Moont Djuus, according to Mart-Man). That impressive hill/mountain is interesting for numerous reasons. Firstly, it offers a magnificient view of the city,
(Columbus can be seen pointing the way to the New World, standing on top of the tall column in the background), the sea and Mount Tibidabo.
Reader Quiz: In what TV-series is Mount Tibidabo mentioned in context with backpacking through Europe? Answers in Comments or Guest Book, por favor.
It also has the Olympic stadium of the 1992 olympics
a creepy but beautiful cemetary,
a statue of Dante Alighieri,
an old fortress with huge cannons,
and every type of cactus on the planet, which is my favorite useless detail about Barcelona.
We also went to check out one of the more impressive churches ever: La Sagrada Familia, which still isn't complete. And to think that it's only because its architect Gaudi, the poor bastard, got hit by a tram midway through the building, and no one wanted to help him because he looked like a homeless person. Well done there.
For the rest of our time in Barcelona we concentrated on the first syllable of the city, as the title of this post might imply. We found a very cozy little joint quite close to the beach, that was owned by two Dutch brothers from HOLLAND!! (ihsn't it veird?)
There I met also the next Random Dude, a phonomenon that had become an essential part of the trip.
Yan from Canada was an ex-music video director, an art major, a border-line alcoholic and a connoisseur of cinematography who was currently working on a cruise ship. We got into a remarkable and lenghty conversation about various twisted but brilliant movies, such as Irreversible and Lost Highway, to the point where the rest of the people were convinced that we were on an amazing first date and were about to start making out at any moment. To their disappointment we switched the topic to women and the public was denied any dude-on-dude action. As the evening developed we all wanted to go to a club to party like it would be 1992, and soon enough got directions to a chic night club. Unfortunately, and quite obviously, the bouncers laughed in my face when I approached them to negotiate our entrance. Apparently it would have required some serious cash, at least two models in skimpy dresses per guy, and an Armani suit. I went 0 for 3 and the rest of the guys didn't do much better, so it was time for a reality check. Yet somehow, only minutes later we scammed ourselves into a relatively classy night club whose name escapes me. This might have something to do with the fact that the music was abysmal, there was some dancing between some of our friends and I didn't want to disturb, hence I repeatedly found myself hanging by the bar, putting out the vibe. Of course by this point of the trip I was so far past my budget (exceeded it in London with the round of vodkas, if you remember..), that the only drink I could afford was, ironically, raw vodka. 'nuff said.
The following morning (read: afternoon) Mart-Man and I agreed that there was absolutely no chance that we would visit any museum that day, but instead went for some serious chicken in KFC, the pinnacle of traditional Catalonian cuisine. The evening came quickly, since we woke up muy tarde, and it was time to go out again. This time we got another recommendation and followed it. Lucky for me, I didn't have any small bills in my pocket upon entering this particular facility, because I would have no doubt gotten my scrawny behind kicked for harrassing the personnel. Let me clarify, they looked like this:
When the gentleman on the right sold me my third beer I almost apologized to him for my overwhelming physical inferiority, but managed to hoist the bottle to my lips before further embarassing myself. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun, just very, VERY different. Like a strip club, but with dancing and with less money shoved in people's underwear.
Finally, as the place started to empty, I got a wonderful idea. Thinking about You, dear readers, I approached one of the waitresses to ask her for a photo-op. I know, I'm a genius. SOO, what happened was that she told me that it was not going to happen and that I should proceed to the exits, as the club was now closed. Ah. BUT, knowing that sometimes women mean YES, although the repeatedly say NO, I decided to offer her some money for the photo. Even better, right? SOO, one of the waiters/bouncers (no difference in size) came over and I tried to explain to him that I was not, in fact, a sexual predator or a creepy guy trying to buy illegal services. However, it turned out that the guy was this girl's boyfriend and was far from impressed by my polite offer. Naturally, if it weren't for my innate bullshitting skills, I probably would not be writing this post right now, at least not two-handed, but somehow I talked myself out of that seemingly bottomless hole. At the same time, as I was toying with death, my main-man Martijn saw it fit to, instead of coming to help me or drag me out of there, take a picture of me on the verge of getting the white smacked out of me:
Two more things about Barca: 1) People smoke copious amounts of weed. We went to sit in the sun on some giant concrete cubes that formed a tiny peninsula extending from the beach to the sea. As we sat on one of the cubes an older couple who spoke German sat down underneath us and started casually to roll a joint.
A bit odd, I thought. But after they had finished with their spliff I could still smell the sweet aroma and looked around.. Everyone else was blazing up a doobie as well:
The blonde on the right in the grey shirt held one in her hand, the guy in the red shirt is passing a bone to his buddy on the next rock and the two women in red and white shirts, respectively, were also rolling a jazz-cigarette together. Maybe it was the official place for "puff-puff-give" in Barcelona but no one had told us, so instead of "passing it to the left" (because the right is the wrong), we passed altogether.
2) The local cops don't really mind public nudity. I saw a guy walking down the crowded La Rambla, the biggest boulevard in Barcelona in the middle of the day, dressed only in his underwear. The problem was that the underwear wasn't actually fabric but ink. You heard me, he was sporting nothing but tattooed swimming trunks. And to complete the look he had decided to wear some jewelry, yes, there. So what happened was that large groups of people started following him towards the statue of Cristobal Colon at the end of the street. Obviously everyone wanted to see what the guy would do once he got to the end of the boulevard, myself included. Two police officers walked by and I thought: "YOU ARE SO BUSTED, PRINCE ALBERT-CREEP!!" Wrong. They walked by him without batting an eye, as if it was completely healthy for the numerous children walking with their parents to witness a geezer strutting his stuff with jewelry in all the wrong places. Not cool. Funny, but not cool..
A couple of hours later we were sittin in a plane on our way to Porto, from whence we then took a bus to return to Vigo, the city of seafood and crappy weather. I was tired, but happy. After 11 days, 4 coutries, 237 photos, 1085 euros, numerous drinks, a couple of hangovers, 3 new shirts, a pair of Italian shoes, a watch, a lost bracelet, a ripped jacket, a ruined shirt, minor emotional trauma (Prince Albert-guy), several Random Guys, and hours and hours of laughter I was back. Not bad, not at all bad, if I say so myself.
And there you have it, an epic 11-day journey explained painstakingly thoroughly. I hope you liked it. And even if you didn't, it's always nice to get feedback, so don't hesitate to drop me a line, or HOLLA BACK, if you happen to be into rhythmically accentuated poetry.
Next time, TOP 4 Sporting events in Vigo
After this interesting meal and casual conversation in 3 different languages everyone was rather full, disgusted, tired and confused, so our attempt to still go out for a few drinks was like the losers hitting on Jennifer Lopez in the movie Out of Sight, D.O.A. The day's indisputable highlight was Mart-Man's story about his arrival at the campus lodgings. As you may know, the Spaniards are not exactly specialists in foreign languages, and neither is my man Martijn, so some difficulties were imminent. However, the part where I produced a Jerry Bruckheimer-style special effect explosion in bursting into laughter and spraying whatever was in my mouth at the time through most of the holes in my head (and maybe a little pee came out, who knows), was when Mart-Man went to the reception of our "hostel" to ask for directions. The reception guy whips out a map, mumbles something for a while and asks (I swear, I couldn't make this up if I tried): "Are you ex-military?" After staring at the gentleman on the other side of the counter with an incredulously blank expression on his face Mart-Man leans forward and articulates carefully, as Dane Cook has taught us, "WHAT?". The man leans in, too, and repeats his previous inquiry about whether or not my friend is an ex-military operator. Blank stare... Being a master adapter Mart-Man decides to play along, switches to his ex-military expression (cause we all have one, don't we), which in Mart-Man's case is a mixture of Dirty Harry and Harry Potter, and replies in a low voice: "Yes, I AM ex-military."The man's face lights up and he starts giving Mart-Man directions, lacking only a pair of binoculars (pronounced bainokjylaaas), and some artillery fire in the background.
I chuckled myself to sleep that night, having decided that not only is that question one of the Top 4 Random Questions that I've heard in recent years, but also one that I am definitely going to start using in awkward situations, in order to make them even more awkward.
Kataya had informed us very explicitly that she is not to be woken up under any circumstances, so the next morning Mart-Man and myself headed out as just the of us. (...building castles in the sky...) First stop: Monjuic (Moont Djuus, according to Mart-Man). That impressive hill/mountain is interesting for numerous reasons. Firstly, it offers a magnificient view of the city,
(Columbus can be seen pointing the way to the New World, standing on top of the tall column in the background), the sea and Mount Tibidabo.
Reader Quiz: In what TV-series is Mount Tibidabo mentioned in context with backpacking through Europe? Answers in Comments or Guest Book, por favor.
It also has the Olympic stadium of the 1992 olympics
a creepy but beautiful cemetary,
a statue of Dante Alighieri,
an old fortress with huge cannons,
and every type of cactus on the planet, which is my favorite useless detail about Barcelona.
We also went to check out one of the more impressive churches ever: La Sagrada Familia, which still isn't complete. And to think that it's only because its architect Gaudi, the poor bastard, got hit by a tram midway through the building, and no one wanted to help him because he looked like a homeless person. Well done there.
For the rest of our time in Barcelona we concentrated on the first syllable of the city, as the title of this post might imply. We found a very cozy little joint quite close to the beach, that was owned by two Dutch brothers from HOLLAND!! (ihsn't it veird?)
There I met also the next Random Dude, a phonomenon that had become an essential part of the trip.
Yan from Canada was an ex-music video director, an art major, a border-line alcoholic and a connoisseur of cinematography who was currently working on a cruise ship. We got into a remarkable and lenghty conversation about various twisted but brilliant movies, such as Irreversible and Lost Highway, to the point where the rest of the people were convinced that we were on an amazing first date and were about to start making out at any moment. To their disappointment we switched the topic to women and the public was denied any dude-on-dude action. As the evening developed we all wanted to go to a club to party like it would be 1992, and soon enough got directions to a chic night club. Unfortunately, and quite obviously, the bouncers laughed in my face when I approached them to negotiate our entrance. Apparently it would have required some serious cash, at least two models in skimpy dresses per guy, and an Armani suit. I went 0 for 3 and the rest of the guys didn't do much better, so it was time for a reality check. Yet somehow, only minutes later we scammed ourselves into a relatively classy night club whose name escapes me. This might have something to do with the fact that the music was abysmal, there was some dancing between some of our friends and I didn't want to disturb, hence I repeatedly found myself hanging by the bar, putting out the vibe. Of course by this point of the trip I was so far past my budget (exceeded it in London with the round of vodkas, if you remember..), that the only drink I could afford was, ironically, raw vodka. 'nuff said.
The following morning (read: afternoon) Mart-Man and I agreed that there was absolutely no chance that we would visit any museum that day, but instead went for some serious chicken in KFC, the pinnacle of traditional Catalonian cuisine. The evening came quickly, since we woke up muy tarde, and it was time to go out again. This time we got another recommendation and followed it. Lucky for me, I didn't have any small bills in my pocket upon entering this particular facility, because I would have no doubt gotten my scrawny behind kicked for harrassing the personnel. Let me clarify, they looked like this:
When the gentleman on the right sold me my third beer I almost apologized to him for my overwhelming physical inferiority, but managed to hoist the bottle to my lips before further embarassing myself. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun, just very, VERY different. Like a strip club, but with dancing and with less money shoved in people's underwear.
Finally, as the place started to empty, I got a wonderful idea. Thinking about You, dear readers, I approached one of the waitresses to ask her for a photo-op. I know, I'm a genius. SOO, what happened was that she told me that it was not going to happen and that I should proceed to the exits, as the club was now closed. Ah. BUT, knowing that sometimes women mean YES, although the repeatedly say NO, I decided to offer her some money for the photo. Even better, right? SOO, one of the waiters/bouncers (no difference in size) came over and I tried to explain to him that I was not, in fact, a sexual predator or a creepy guy trying to buy illegal services. However, it turned out that the guy was this girl's boyfriend and was far from impressed by my polite offer. Naturally, if it weren't for my innate bullshitting skills, I probably would not be writing this post right now, at least not two-handed, but somehow I talked myself out of that seemingly bottomless hole. At the same time, as I was toying with death, my main-man Martijn saw it fit to, instead of coming to help me or drag me out of there, take a picture of me on the verge of getting the white smacked out of me:
Two more things about Barca: 1) People smoke copious amounts of weed. We went to sit in the sun on some giant concrete cubes that formed a tiny peninsula extending from the beach to the sea. As we sat on one of the cubes an older couple who spoke German sat down underneath us and started casually to roll a joint.
A bit odd, I thought. But after they had finished with their spliff I could still smell the sweet aroma and looked around.. Everyone else was blazing up a doobie as well:
The blonde on the right in the grey shirt held one in her hand, the guy in the red shirt is passing a bone to his buddy on the next rock and the two women in red and white shirts, respectively, were also rolling a jazz-cigarette together. Maybe it was the official place for "puff-puff-give" in Barcelona but no one had told us, so instead of "passing it to the left" (because the right is the wrong), we passed altogether.
2) The local cops don't really mind public nudity. I saw a guy walking down the crowded La Rambla, the biggest boulevard in Barcelona in the middle of the day, dressed only in his underwear. The problem was that the underwear wasn't actually fabric but ink. You heard me, he was sporting nothing but tattooed swimming trunks. And to complete the look he had decided to wear some jewelry, yes, there. So what happened was that large groups of people started following him towards the statue of Cristobal Colon at the end of the street. Obviously everyone wanted to see what the guy would do once he got to the end of the boulevard, myself included. Two police officers walked by and I thought: "YOU ARE SO BUSTED, PRINCE ALBERT-CREEP!!" Wrong. They walked by him without batting an eye, as if it was completely healthy for the numerous children walking with their parents to witness a geezer strutting his stuff with jewelry in all the wrong places. Not cool. Funny, but not cool..
A couple of hours later we were sittin in a plane on our way to Porto, from whence we then took a bus to return to Vigo, the city of seafood and crappy weather. I was tired, but happy. After 11 days, 4 coutries, 237 photos, 1085 euros, numerous drinks, a couple of hangovers, 3 new shirts, a pair of Italian shoes, a watch, a lost bracelet, a ripped jacket, a ruined shirt, minor emotional trauma (Prince Albert-guy), several Random Guys, and hours and hours of laughter I was back. Not bad, not at all bad, if I say so myself.
And there you have it, an epic 11-day journey explained painstakingly thoroughly. I hope you liked it. And even if you didn't, it's always nice to get feedback, so don't hesitate to drop me a line, or HOLLA BACK, if you happen to be into rhythmically accentuated poetry.
Next time, TOP 4 Sporting events in Vigo
Saturday, June 2, 2007
When in Rome..
Sorry about the delay. Won't happen again. (blatant lie, obviously) But I'll work on it, I promise.
SO, after London the next stop was Rome, the controlled chaos including way too many churches, vespas and pizza. At the airport, which turned out to be over 100 km's outside Rome (thanks again, Ryanair), everything went surprisingly well. People spoke either English or Spanish, they knew where the buses departed from, and no luggage was lost. Obviously that seemed too good to be true...and it was.
But then again, that is exactly what makes all this so much fun: NOTHING is going to turn out like you plan it, no matter how much you try, so what you need to do is just adjust your attitude a little bit, laugh at yourself and enjoy the ride. (For more advice on how to live your life, please do read the Mary Scmich column from '97 that Baz Luhrman later made into a relatively famous song.)
And back to Rome..
While the Americans had booked their hostel in time, Katja and I went for the more adventurous "book as late as you can-style" and ended up in this hole that called itself a hostel. Let me give you some visual aids to paint a more vivid picture:
The breakfast. (from left to right) Pear juice, that had lumps and tasted a bit like rancid milk; Chocolate cake-thingy, that had more unnatural substances than Austrian Gatorade; "Peach" muffin-cake-bread contraption, which, I'm sure, had no such fruit in them, or any other fruit for that matter; Apple, that was almost normal; and my personal favorite, the Easter egg!! The wrapping had a Christmas theme and the chocolate was from 1998. De-friggin'-licious!
Bunk beds! YEY! Army-flashbacks.. And the cherry on the cake: a fan/lamp from from the movie Boogie Nights. We were even told that our room had a view of the Colosseum, but apparently it was blocked by some buildings, so it wasn't really a VIEW of the Colosseum, per se.
The corridor just outside our room. One of those "picture speaks more than a 1000 words" moments isn't it? There was also a hole in the floor.
The first night Katja and I went out for dinner and, once again, met a legendary random dude. The waiter, who bore a striking resemblance of Luigi, Mario's co-plumber from countless Nintendo games. He would call us his friends, congratulate me on amazing choices from the menu, and most importantly, sing bits of classic Broadway tunes. I swear, this guy was the long lost brother of the man in the van of the London story. The pizza was fantastic, too, so we went back there a couple of days later, only to find all of what I just described, plus Supper Mario, the chef. Priceless. The night got a fittingly nostalgic end when we saw:
Notice Kataya's infinitely cool 80's hang with the bended knee. (Perfected by Matthew McConaughey in Fast times at Ridgemont High, and later by Brian the dog in Family Guy, together with the legendary quote: "That's what I like about high school girls, I get older, they stay the same age..")
Next day: POPE STORE!!! It's true, I found it, I'm awesome.
My question to you is: How do they stay in business? Is there a minority of people in Rome who go around blessing people just for giggles, or is the "Papa" too holy for wearing the same piece of clothing twice?
The colosseum was..well, colossal, gargantuan, gigantic. Consult Mr. Felin for 14 more synonyms, of which at least 4 only used in the Bible. Not even my frantically flexed tricep could block it.
The Colosseum was also rather remarkable.
We managed to get ourselves on a tour with a guide who had as much sarcasm as she had information and cool details. Rarely has learning been so much fun. For instance, did you know that when regular gladiator battles started getting boring, the Romans built this huge complicated system that directed water from the aqueducts and filled the arena, making it possible to arrange naval battles! I also re-enacted Russell Crowe's entrance to the arena, because it's awesome. (Sadly Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Felix legions, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, never really existed, but the film is still one of my all-time favorites.)
Apart from the Colosseum, we also saw EVERYTHING else in Rome, as we walked around for several days, but I'm not going to bore you with random sights and their history.
Instead, I'm going to tell you about three interesting personalities. The first one is not human. She was the canine version of Ronaldinho, or Totti since we were in Italy. No one really knew where her owner was, or if she actually had one, but no one seemed to care. Even the cops who were patrolling (i.e. standing around, adjusting their berets, smoking, stroking their lover-beards, and hitting on passers-by) the square followed the dog's every move. The dog was so uncanny that everyone just stared and laughed in disbelief for several minutes. I bet one could have stolen at least 15 wallets without anyone noticing anything. It's just too bad that dogs aren't allowed in national teams, she would have made an excellent addition to the Finnish roster, and maybe we'd WIN a game every once in a while.
The second person is the Scotsman. He was also a tour guide, a hilarious man in his late twenties, who educated us on the quite colorful history of the Palatine Hill, where there once stood a luxurious palace, until it was stolen, cut up to pieces and shipped to the Vatican. This was a part of his hysterical rant against the Catholic church with all its numerous screw-ups, that I wish I had caught on tape. Also, the word "purple" comes from "purpura", which is Latin for a specific type of coloured marble, that no longer exists. (Also where the Finnish word "purppura" comes from, incidentally.) The ladies, of course, didn't hear any of this because they were concentrating more on undressing him with their eyes. And call me crazy, but I think I heard Kataya purr a little when he said the word "unfortunately" in his Scottish accent. Something for everyone, I guess.
Thirdly, there was Jerry. He was a teacher from England who we bumped into at a bar. We were waiting for the final of the NCAA Final Four to begin and we got to talking. He turned out to be one of the more fascinating people that I've met in a long time. He was thirty-something, smart and civilized, but still one of the craziest dudes in Europe, in a good way. For example, he was going to a small village outside Milan to stay with his cousins fiancée's friend's place. He had no clue how long he was going to be there, or what he would do after it. He had not reserved a hotel room for himself in Rome. He was going to talk to some people, have som drinks, and then either he'd crash at the apartment of some friendly stranger, or he'd walk the streets and check out the sunrise. I mean who does that at 35? He might have also had commitment issues, a pending jail sentence or the Mafia after him, but still. He was one of those people who open your eyes and remind that it's never too late. I'm not saying 35 is old, but you know what I mean.
And there's a pyramid in Rome, in case you didn't know.
Next up, Barcelona.
P.S. Don't forget to drop a line in my new and fancy Guestbook on your top-right corner.
SO, after London the next stop was Rome, the controlled chaos including way too many churches, vespas and pizza. At the airport, which turned out to be over 100 km's outside Rome (thanks again, Ryanair), everything went surprisingly well. People spoke either English or Spanish, they knew where the buses departed from, and no luggage was lost. Obviously that seemed too good to be true...and it was.
But then again, that is exactly what makes all this so much fun: NOTHING is going to turn out like you plan it, no matter how much you try, so what you need to do is just adjust your attitude a little bit, laugh at yourself and enjoy the ride. (For more advice on how to live your life, please do read the Mary Scmich column from '97 that Baz Luhrman later made into a relatively famous song.)
And back to Rome..
While the Americans had booked their hostel in time, Katja and I went for the more adventurous "book as late as you can-style" and ended up in this hole that called itself a hostel. Let me give you some visual aids to paint a more vivid picture:
The breakfast. (from left to right) Pear juice, that had lumps and tasted a bit like rancid milk; Chocolate cake-thingy, that had more unnatural substances than Austrian Gatorade; "Peach" muffin-cake-bread contraption, which, I'm sure, had no such fruit in them, or any other fruit for that matter; Apple, that was almost normal; and my personal favorite, the Easter egg!! The wrapping had a Christmas theme and the chocolate was from 1998. De-friggin'-licious!
Bunk beds! YEY! Army-flashbacks.. And the cherry on the cake: a fan/lamp from from the movie Boogie Nights. We were even told that our room had a view of the Colosseum, but apparently it was blocked by some buildings, so it wasn't really a VIEW of the Colosseum, per se.
The corridor just outside our room. One of those "picture speaks more than a 1000 words" moments isn't it? There was also a hole in the floor.
The first night Katja and I went out for dinner and, once again, met a legendary random dude. The waiter, who bore a striking resemblance of Luigi, Mario's co-plumber from countless Nintendo games. He would call us his friends, congratulate me on amazing choices from the menu, and most importantly, sing bits of classic Broadway tunes. I swear, this guy was the long lost brother of the man in the van of the London story. The pizza was fantastic, too, so we went back there a couple of days later, only to find all of what I just described, plus Supper Mario, the chef. Priceless. The night got a fittingly nostalgic end when we saw:
Notice Kataya's infinitely cool 80's hang with the bended knee. (Perfected by Matthew McConaughey in Fast times at Ridgemont High, and later by Brian the dog in Family Guy, together with the legendary quote: "That's what I like about high school girls, I get older, they stay the same age..")
Next day: POPE STORE!!! It's true, I found it, I'm awesome.
My question to you is: How do they stay in business? Is there a minority of people in Rome who go around blessing people just for giggles, or is the "Papa" too holy for wearing the same piece of clothing twice?
The colosseum was..well, colossal, gargantuan, gigantic. Consult Mr. Felin for 14 more synonyms, of which at least 4 only used in the Bible. Not even my frantically flexed tricep could block it.
The Colosseum was also rather remarkable.
We managed to get ourselves on a tour with a guide who had as much sarcasm as she had information and cool details. Rarely has learning been so much fun. For instance, did you know that when regular gladiator battles started getting boring, the Romans built this huge complicated system that directed water from the aqueducts and filled the arena, making it possible to arrange naval battles! I also re-enacted Russell Crowe's entrance to the arena, because it's awesome. (Sadly Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Felix legions, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, never really existed, but the film is still one of my all-time favorites.)
Apart from the Colosseum, we also saw EVERYTHING else in Rome, as we walked around for several days, but I'm not going to bore you with random sights and their history.
Instead, I'm going to tell you about three interesting personalities. The first one is not human. She was the canine version of Ronaldinho, or Totti since we were in Italy. No one really knew where her owner was, or if she actually had one, but no one seemed to care. Even the cops who were patrolling (i.e. standing around, adjusting their berets, smoking, stroking their lover-beards, and hitting on passers-by) the square followed the dog's every move. The dog was so uncanny that everyone just stared and laughed in disbelief for several minutes. I bet one could have stolen at least 15 wallets without anyone noticing anything. It's just too bad that dogs aren't allowed in national teams, she would have made an excellent addition to the Finnish roster, and maybe we'd WIN a game every once in a while.
The second person is the Scotsman. He was also a tour guide, a hilarious man in his late twenties, who educated us on the quite colorful history of the Palatine Hill, where there once stood a luxurious palace, until it was stolen, cut up to pieces and shipped to the Vatican. This was a part of his hysterical rant against the Catholic church with all its numerous screw-ups, that I wish I had caught on tape. Also, the word "purple" comes from "purpura", which is Latin for a specific type of coloured marble, that no longer exists. (Also where the Finnish word "purppura" comes from, incidentally.) The ladies, of course, didn't hear any of this because they were concentrating more on undressing him with their eyes. And call me crazy, but I think I heard Kataya purr a little when he said the word "unfortunately" in his Scottish accent. Something for everyone, I guess.
Thirdly, there was Jerry. He was a teacher from England who we bumped into at a bar. We were waiting for the final of the NCAA Final Four to begin and we got to talking. He turned out to be one of the more fascinating people that I've met in a long time. He was thirty-something, smart and civilized, but still one of the craziest dudes in Europe, in a good way. For example, he was going to a small village outside Milan to stay with his cousins fiancée's friend's place. He had no clue how long he was going to be there, or what he would do after it. He had not reserved a hotel room for himself in Rome. He was going to talk to some people, have som drinks, and then either he'd crash at the apartment of some friendly stranger, or he'd walk the streets and check out the sunrise. I mean who does that at 35? He might have also had commitment issues, a pending jail sentence or the Mafia after him, but still. He was one of those people who open your eyes and remind that it's never too late. I'm not saying 35 is old, but you know what I mean.
And there's a pyramid in Rome, in case you didn't know.
Next up, Barcelona.
P.S. Don't forget to drop a line in my new and fancy Guestbook on your top-right corner.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
London, Baby!!
OK, time to recap the Ulysses-like journey that we embarked on as Semana Santa provided us with a week of pointless vacation, because some holy dudes died a long time ago.
The ever so cheery (or cheerleadery, to be precise) Vicky from the great state of Connecticut had planned this trip for a while and Kataya and I just sort of tagged along, for no real reason, which is always the best one, isn't it? And so, on the May 30th we got on a plane to London. The plan was to stay there for 3 nights, then fly to Rome, from there to Barcelona, and then back to Vigo, via Porto. This would make one extremely long blog post, so I've decided to divide it into handy little bits. So here's Part 1 of 3, London.
Having been to London a couple of times already, I hit the ground running. Using most of the communication methods known to (hu)mankind, besides smoke signals, we had planned the whole thing out with Mart-Man, who was going to be our host in London. Ze Americans took a bus from Stansted to their hostel somewhere in St. James Park, and Kataya headed towards her cousin's flight attendant-pad near the airport, whereas I calmly walked down the stairs to the comfy Stansted Express, that would take me to Liverpool St. station, our (Make-peace and myself) official meeting point in London. (I realize we've only used it twice, but it's cool to have a meeting point in London, so there you have it.) Make-peace, my "brotha from anotha motha", was once again up for the task and took a train down from the woods of Nottingham to Make (hahahahha) the best of the long weekend. We had a few hours to kill before Mart-Man would get out of work, so we did what any self-respecting gentlemen would do, and went for a couple of pints. It was London, after all.
After recapping the TOP 5 Post-party Awakenings including Mo's waking up with a beer can in his pocket in Sacramento and some other classics, as well as some other nostalgic stuff from the past, it was time to jump on a tube and get our behinds to Canary Wharf. Mart-Man had really gotten his shiznit together and even learned how to cook, I have to hand it to the man. The rocket salad and the salmon pasta were quite amazing as was the white wine. Soon enough it was hammer-time. We were to meet the Doc (the female-one, not D.O.C) to find out about the vivid campus life of "something-something" med school. It wasn't half bad, we played some pool, found a random Finnish dude who didn't have a clue, and a pint or two.
Exiting the campus after a few hastily drunken beers we were arguing over the correct pronunciation of a few medical terms, which resulted in me not being able to say the word "defibrillate" ever again without Make-peace cracking up uncontrollably. A job well done all around. Next stop, Funk & Candy (or Kandi). This restaurant/bar/lounge was really something else. The furniture and lighting were classy and the music was chilled, but not the type that makes you sleepy. Once again, random dudes keps popping out of nowhere, which is one of the coolest things about traveling. This time it was a Swedish geezer who had been living in London for 8 years, and we got into an argument about which one is the better brand of vodka, Absolut, or Finlandia. Obviously there was only one way to find out.. Horrible idea by the way, since the prices weren't exactly similar to those in a bar in east Helsinki during happy hour, but who cares. So what I'm eating tuna and vegetable soup for the rest of my time in Vigo because of that trip.
Nevertheless, I had to cut that good, clean and healthy fun short, because the apple of my eye was about to join us. You see, as ever the operator I had bought tickets for Jewelz to fly in from Finland for a long weekend, and her flight had landed only minutes ago. But that didn't mean that Mart-Man didn't have time to turn into Space-Marty, a state, in which he walks around in huge steps simulating low gravity and making wind/Darth Vader noises with his mouth. Priceless.
Meanwhile, I kept receiving the same sms from Jewelz from the airport over and over again, and yet was unable to reach her. Vishnu bless the Spanish network operators. Finally Doc got a hold of her, and by some amazingly timed stunt managed to pick her up in our cab. Or those of us, who were still within regular gravity's reach. By this time we had been joined by Yahaa and Ze German, who had the connections for the next place. It looked liked a closed down theatre. All doors were closed, no queue to be seen, no bouncers. Still, Ze German insisted that it's one of the coolest hangouts in London called Paper. She knocked on one of the doors. Seconds later a huge bouncer opened the door and told her that they're closed. She told him something, a password or something, and went in, and the door closed behind her. I was doing my best to turn into a human question mark, in which I succeeded rather well, partly because I really had to use the lavatory really badly by now. A couple of minutes later the door opened and the bouncer welcomed us all to Paper. Well. Like I always say, connections make the world go around.
The place turned out to be one of the coolest clubs that I've ever been to. Hence the prices were also a bit steep, to say the least. No matter. We took over the dance floor and even Make-peace, who usually doesn't get jiggy with it so much, brought his A-game, largely due to the DJ who was nothing short of "on fire". In the midst of the general euphoria caused by the all-around awesomeness of the night, together with a 9 quid GT I got a brilliant idea. Or more accurately an idea that seemed brilliant at the time, because of the aforementioned circumstances. I saw a part of a wall that was cushioned with brown leather, making it look like a luxury asylum cell wall. Without further scrutinizing the situation I jumped against it almost horizontally, forming a human X. However, midair I spotted a crack in the middle of the cushioned area, leading me to believe that the wall was, in fact, not a wall but a double door. So moments later I found myself on the other side of the doors, on the floor of the VIP area, in an almost perfect human X. Obviously the bouncer at the door of the VIP section was not very impressed by my uncanny stunt. But he was also having a hard time keeping a straight face, because the rest of the people within a 8m radius were laughing their asses off, so he just escorted me back to the regular people's side. I wonder if Diddy did the same thing we he had a party at the very same club a couple of months earlier?
Eventually we were done for the evening and left. A polite gentleman outside asked us if we cared to purchase any "pills o' charlie", but no one felt like x or cocaine at the time so we respectfully declined. Very nice of him to ask though. As we were closer to Make-peace's pad and Space-Marty was long gone, Jewelz and I crashed there, and Make-peace loyally offered to take one for the team: (his mom was moving, so there was only one bed left)
The next day we walked around, along the Thames
and checked out a local market, where we got introduced to the best brownies in London.
They were delicious, I have to admit. As a matter of fact, the only better ones that I've had were in Montreal. I'm actually thinking about starting to import that stuff (the Canadian brownies), but as we are already a bit chubby as a nation, I'm not sure it's a good idea to force everyone to gain 5 kilos. Later that day we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant whose staff was overwhelmingly Chinese. I wasn't sure what to do with that. I mean they have the same writing system, they're both Oriental peoples and so on, but something about that setup was completely wrong.
As the night was closing in we contemplated different musicals and eventually ended up going to see Lion King, which Make-peace and I had already seen before. Nevertheless, it blew us all away. Honestly, the little black kid playing young Simba sang better than any Finnish Idols-contender ever, including the ones who have "won". Although I'm not sure if that surprises anyone, but still. The night was capped off by two excellent NCAA Final Four basketball games, that we watched at Mart-Man's pad in Canary Wharf. Eventhough, to be completely honest with you, the girls showed flamboyant disinterest towards the games, and we (the geezers) basically forced ourselves to stay awake and watch them despite them not being that thrilling basketball-wise, because in order to get the games to show, Mart-Man had to order some epic sports channel package for a year, and Make-peace and myself had raced from the other side of London, climbing over some walls in the process, to make it on time.
Third day. Indiya (pronounced [indaieiaia]) informed us that there would be another market open that day, this time consisting of clothes, accessories and other contraptions by young designers. Needless to say Jewelz was interested, and she actually managed to spend all of her travel budget within 20 minutes on a jacket, a dress and a purse that looked like a deflated basketball, but in a cool way, I was told. Due to a minor misunderstanding my lunch consisted of the things that food eats. I have no idea what half the stuff was, but it was green and left me feeling very healthy (read: hungry). Fortunately we were going to a Thai restaurant in Soho later so I was only cranky for a while.
The Thai restaurant's name was written in code and I had no idea whether to read it horizontally or vertically and from which direction, but in a nutshell, it ROCKED. Thai beer turned out be quite tasty to my surprise and the food was "fetén-fetén". (That's actually old spanish fo "outSTANDING" but I don't know any Thai so it'll have to do.) The meal even got some comic charasterictics when we, like any healthy young men, started to screw around with the spices and chili sauces. Here are some free samples.
After the dinner our team was rather spent and only a few of us had the energy to go for drinks later. We found this one place that was alarmingly close to the red light district, and the atmosphere was fitting. The events ranged from Men's 10 minute Toncil-Hockey, to "Are these real or not?, but a personal favorite was definitely the Jewish activist. You heard me. This guy apparently thought that we were laughing at him, when in reality we were following the humorous moves of a sloshed Asian girl, as she repeatedly attempted to pick herself up from the floor. He came over to us and started to rant about us being Jew-haters and so on. How he thought that we had known his religion remained a mystery, but it didn't seem to bother him. Instead he let us hear it for a good ten minutes, until reaching the apex by trying to convince us that he, a low-level computer engineer, was going to "rule all the companies and the world" in TWO YEARS. In my book that would be quite an accomplishment for any one person, Jewish or not, in any number of years, but he had decided to do it in two. Obviously, at this point our drinks were casually bursting through our nostrils as we wiped tears from our eyes and gasped for air.
But in case he actually takes over the world in 2009 you heard it here first. Man, is that going to be the biggest, fattest "I told you so!", if the poor bastard pulls it off. Remains to be seen, I guess.
I leave you with this random higlight: A van that drove around London centre advertising something. What made this van special was its driver, who was playing instrumental Sinatra songs from a loudspeaker on the roof, whilst singing the vocals into a microphone that hung from the roof of the cockpit. (Das Cockpit in German, by the way) This guy was actually GOOD, and he put his heart into it, too. You could see the progressing wave of smiles on people's faces as this car passed by, with soap bubble blowing from underneath it. I would have given him an award for making the world a better place, but I didn't have any on me at the moment and he was busy with the second chorus of "Strangers in the night".
Bonus question: Of which music video does this picture remind you?
The ever so cheery (or cheerleadery, to be precise) Vicky from the great state of Connecticut had planned this trip for a while and Kataya and I just sort of tagged along, for no real reason, which is always the best one, isn't it? And so, on the May 30th we got on a plane to London. The plan was to stay there for 3 nights, then fly to Rome, from there to Barcelona, and then back to Vigo, via Porto. This would make one extremely long blog post, so I've decided to divide it into handy little bits. So here's Part 1 of 3, London.
Having been to London a couple of times already, I hit the ground running. Using most of the communication methods known to (hu)mankind, besides smoke signals, we had planned the whole thing out with Mart-Man, who was going to be our host in London. Ze Americans took a bus from Stansted to their hostel somewhere in St. James Park, and Kataya headed towards her cousin's flight attendant-pad near the airport, whereas I calmly walked down the stairs to the comfy Stansted Express, that would take me to Liverpool St. station, our (Make-peace and myself) official meeting point in London. (I realize we've only used it twice, but it's cool to have a meeting point in London, so there you have it.) Make-peace, my "brotha from anotha motha", was once again up for the task and took a train down from the woods of Nottingham to Make (hahahahha) the best of the long weekend. We had a few hours to kill before Mart-Man would get out of work, so we did what any self-respecting gentlemen would do, and went for a couple of pints. It was London, after all.
After recapping the TOP 5 Post-party Awakenings including Mo's waking up with a beer can in his pocket in Sacramento and some other classics, as well as some other nostalgic stuff from the past, it was time to jump on a tube and get our behinds to Canary Wharf. Mart-Man had really gotten his shiznit together and even learned how to cook, I have to hand it to the man. The rocket salad and the salmon pasta were quite amazing as was the white wine. Soon enough it was hammer-time. We were to meet the Doc (the female-one, not D.O.C) to find out about the vivid campus life of "something-something" med school. It wasn't half bad, we played some pool, found a random Finnish dude who didn't have a clue, and a pint or two.
Exiting the campus after a few hastily drunken beers we were arguing over the correct pronunciation of a few medical terms, which resulted in me not being able to say the word "defibrillate" ever again without Make-peace cracking up uncontrollably. A job well done all around. Next stop, Funk & Candy (or Kandi). This restaurant/bar/lounge was really something else. The furniture and lighting were classy and the music was chilled, but not the type that makes you sleepy. Once again, random dudes keps popping out of nowhere, which is one of the coolest things about traveling. This time it was a Swedish geezer who had been living in London for 8 years, and we got into an argument about which one is the better brand of vodka, Absolut, or Finlandia. Obviously there was only one way to find out.. Horrible idea by the way, since the prices weren't exactly similar to those in a bar in east Helsinki during happy hour, but who cares. So what I'm eating tuna and vegetable soup for the rest of my time in Vigo because of that trip.
Nevertheless, I had to cut that good, clean and healthy fun short, because the apple of my eye was about to join us. You see, as ever the operator I had bought tickets for Jewelz to fly in from Finland for a long weekend, and her flight had landed only minutes ago. But that didn't mean that Mart-Man didn't have time to turn into Space-Marty, a state, in which he walks around in huge steps simulating low gravity and making wind/Darth Vader noises with his mouth. Priceless.
Meanwhile, I kept receiving the same sms from Jewelz from the airport over and over again, and yet was unable to reach her. Vishnu bless the Spanish network operators. Finally Doc got a hold of her, and by some amazingly timed stunt managed to pick her up in our cab. Or those of us, who were still within regular gravity's reach. By this time we had been joined by Yahaa and Ze German, who had the connections for the next place. It looked liked a closed down theatre. All doors were closed, no queue to be seen, no bouncers. Still, Ze German insisted that it's one of the coolest hangouts in London called Paper. She knocked on one of the doors. Seconds later a huge bouncer opened the door and told her that they're closed. She told him something, a password or something, and went in, and the door closed behind her. I was doing my best to turn into a human question mark, in which I succeeded rather well, partly because I really had to use the lavatory really badly by now. A couple of minutes later the door opened and the bouncer welcomed us all to Paper. Well. Like I always say, connections make the world go around.
The place turned out to be one of the coolest clubs that I've ever been to. Hence the prices were also a bit steep, to say the least. No matter. We took over the dance floor and even Make-peace, who usually doesn't get jiggy with it so much, brought his A-game, largely due to the DJ who was nothing short of "on fire". In the midst of the general euphoria caused by the all-around awesomeness of the night, together with a 9 quid GT I got a brilliant idea. Or more accurately an idea that seemed brilliant at the time, because of the aforementioned circumstances. I saw a part of a wall that was cushioned with brown leather, making it look like a luxury asylum cell wall. Without further scrutinizing the situation I jumped against it almost horizontally, forming a human X. However, midair I spotted a crack in the middle of the cushioned area, leading me to believe that the wall was, in fact, not a wall but a double door. So moments later I found myself on the other side of the doors, on the floor of the VIP area, in an almost perfect human X. Obviously the bouncer at the door of the VIP section was not very impressed by my uncanny stunt. But he was also having a hard time keeping a straight face, because the rest of the people within a 8m radius were laughing their asses off, so he just escorted me back to the regular people's side. I wonder if Diddy did the same thing we he had a party at the very same club a couple of months earlier?
Eventually we were done for the evening and left. A polite gentleman outside asked us if we cared to purchase any "pills o' charlie", but no one felt like x or cocaine at the time so we respectfully declined. Very nice of him to ask though. As we were closer to Make-peace's pad and Space-Marty was long gone, Jewelz and I crashed there, and Make-peace loyally offered to take one for the team: (his mom was moving, so there was only one bed left)
The next day we walked around, along the Thames
and checked out a local market, where we got introduced to the best brownies in London.
They were delicious, I have to admit. As a matter of fact, the only better ones that I've had were in Montreal. I'm actually thinking about starting to import that stuff (the Canadian brownies), but as we are already a bit chubby as a nation, I'm not sure it's a good idea to force everyone to gain 5 kilos. Later that day we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant whose staff was overwhelmingly Chinese. I wasn't sure what to do with that. I mean they have the same writing system, they're both Oriental peoples and so on, but something about that setup was completely wrong.
As the night was closing in we contemplated different musicals and eventually ended up going to see Lion King, which Make-peace and I had already seen before. Nevertheless, it blew us all away. Honestly, the little black kid playing young Simba sang better than any Finnish Idols-contender ever, including the ones who have "won". Although I'm not sure if that surprises anyone, but still. The night was capped off by two excellent NCAA Final Four basketball games, that we watched at Mart-Man's pad in Canary Wharf. Eventhough, to be completely honest with you, the girls showed flamboyant disinterest towards the games, and we (the geezers) basically forced ourselves to stay awake and watch them despite them not being that thrilling basketball-wise, because in order to get the games to show, Mart-Man had to order some epic sports channel package for a year, and Make-peace and myself had raced from the other side of London, climbing over some walls in the process, to make it on time.
Third day. Indiya (pronounced [indaieiaia]) informed us that there would be another market open that day, this time consisting of clothes, accessories and other contraptions by young designers. Needless to say Jewelz was interested, and she actually managed to spend all of her travel budget within 20 minutes on a jacket, a dress and a purse that looked like a deflated basketball, but in a cool way, I was told. Due to a minor misunderstanding my lunch consisted of the things that food eats. I have no idea what half the stuff was, but it was green and left me feeling very healthy (read: hungry). Fortunately we were going to a Thai restaurant in Soho later so I was only cranky for a while.
The Thai restaurant's name was written in code and I had no idea whether to read it horizontally or vertically and from which direction, but in a nutshell, it ROCKED. Thai beer turned out be quite tasty to my surprise and the food was "fetén-fetén". (That's actually old spanish fo "outSTANDING" but I don't know any Thai so it'll have to do.) The meal even got some comic charasterictics when we, like any healthy young men, started to screw around with the spices and chili sauces. Here are some free samples.
After the dinner our team was rather spent and only a few of us had the energy to go for drinks later. We found this one place that was alarmingly close to the red light district, and the atmosphere was fitting. The events ranged from Men's 10 minute Toncil-Hockey, to "Are these real or not?, but a personal favorite was definitely the Jewish activist. You heard me. This guy apparently thought that we were laughing at him, when in reality we were following the humorous moves of a sloshed Asian girl, as she repeatedly attempted to pick herself up from the floor. He came over to us and started to rant about us being Jew-haters and so on. How he thought that we had known his religion remained a mystery, but it didn't seem to bother him. Instead he let us hear it for a good ten minutes, until reaching the apex by trying to convince us that he, a low-level computer engineer, was going to "rule all the companies and the world" in TWO YEARS. In my book that would be quite an accomplishment for any one person, Jewish or not, in any number of years, but he had decided to do it in two. Obviously, at this point our drinks were casually bursting through our nostrils as we wiped tears from our eyes and gasped for air.
But in case he actually takes over the world in 2009 you heard it here first. Man, is that going to be the biggest, fattest "I told you so!", if the poor bastard pulls it off. Remains to be seen, I guess.
I leave you with this random higlight: A van that drove around London centre advertising something. What made this van special was its driver, who was playing instrumental Sinatra songs from a loudspeaker on the roof, whilst singing the vocals into a microphone that hung from the roof of the cockpit. (Das Cockpit in German, by the way) This guy was actually GOOD, and he put his heart into it, too. You could see the progressing wave of smiles on people's faces as this car passed by, with soap bubble blowing from underneath it. I would have given him an award for making the world a better place, but I didn't have any on me at the moment and he was busy with the second chorus of "Strangers in the night".
Bonus question: Of which music video does this picture remind you?
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
TOP 4 Beard Styles
All right, dear readers! The time has come to address the topic that has been on everyones (and by everyone I mean the 4 people that actually read my doodles) lips for the better part of the early spring. THE 'STACHE!!
What started out as a personal endeavour into the mystical world of facial hair due to lack of warm water, soon escalated into a phenomenon of international proportions. I started getting e-mails, comments on this blog, facebook messages, text messages, and of course honest face-to-face dissing. I even got a threat or two, and one fan went as far as photoshopping a free sample picture more to his liking. And while I naturally enjoyed the attention, I had no clue that people cared so much. Anyway, here's a montage to bring this thing to a close.
4. "The Fisherman"
All out, uncontrolled pile of hair. Sported by Hemingway, Grizzly Adams, Pau Gasol, and most homeless guys.
3. "The Lover"
A closely groomed, greasy look. (notice the fake smile)
Sported by Italian football players, Craig David and Ali G
2. "The Original 'stache" (only a little thinner, but give me a couple of years..)
Not allowed to be sported at all, anywhere, unless the person has lost a bet.
Exceptions include Eddie Murphy, Tom Selleck, Freddie Mercury and the late Matti Tiilikainen.
1. "The Trucker"
A personal favorite, a Play-Off beard gone wrong, only for Badass Mofo's. (self not included)
Sported by Hightower, James Hetfield and Hulk Hogan.
And as a special treat for those who can't get enough of this hilarious and witty visual comedy I give you: The cop from Village people by NickRad: (notice the out-of-place 2Pac reference)
Vote for your favorite and win a personal Top 5o Worst Things About Spain-post!
Lastly I want to congratulate myself on the most useless blog post so far.
(And for any Senaior citizens out there, its called a "comment" because it's supposed to comment something, perhaps even the corresponding blog post..)
Next time: Tour d'Europe, Part I
What started out as a personal endeavour into the mystical world of facial hair due to lack of warm water, soon escalated into a phenomenon of international proportions. I started getting e-mails, comments on this blog, facebook messages, text messages, and of course honest face-to-face dissing. I even got a threat or two, and one fan went as far as photoshopping a free sample picture more to his liking. And while I naturally enjoyed the attention, I had no clue that people cared so much. Anyway, here's a montage to bring this thing to a close.
4. "The Fisherman"
All out, uncontrolled pile of hair. Sported by Hemingway, Grizzly Adams, Pau Gasol, and most homeless guys.
3. "The Lover"
A closely groomed, greasy look. (notice the fake smile)
Sported by Italian football players, Craig David and Ali G
2. "The Original 'stache" (only a little thinner, but give me a couple of years..)
Not allowed to be sported at all, anywhere, unless the person has lost a bet.
Exceptions include Eddie Murphy, Tom Selleck, Freddie Mercury and the late Matti Tiilikainen.
1. "The Trucker"
A personal favorite, a Play-Off beard gone wrong, only for Badass Mofo's. (self not included)
Sported by Hightower, James Hetfield and Hulk Hogan.
And as a special treat for those who can't get enough of this hilarious and witty visual comedy I give you: The cop from Village people by NickRad: (notice the out-of-place 2Pac reference)
Vote for your favorite and win a personal Top 5o Worst Things About Spain-post!
Lastly I want to congratulate myself on the most useless blog post so far.
(And for any Senaior citizens out there, its called a "comment" because it's supposed to comment something, perhaps even the corresponding blog post..)
Next time: Tour d'Europe, Part I
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
