I’m still here. I’ve been in the same city for almost five months which is quite an achievement for me. Here’s what i’ve been doing, seeing and thinking since i last wrote a load of guff in February.
I bought a mountain bike which put a sizable hole in my savings account and a large smile on my face. I cycle out through the small village lanes and farmers tracks just north of Leeds every weekend where i stamp on some peddles, eat some dirt and generally annoy motorists which i recommend to anybody. The sun in your eyes, the wind in your face and farm animal shit in your tyre tread makes working all week almost worth it.
Work is a strange place. It’s mainly strange because it’s just an office – nothing more, nothing less – but some people there treat the place as if it were the command centre for the Apollo 13 mission. Failure is not an option. People react to mistakes as if you’ve just thrown a grenade into a crèche or pushed a disabled woman into a canal. It’s really not that important. It’s just monkey work in an office. Have a cup of tea, nibble on a biscuit, dream of somewhere else and shut the fuck up.
In a similar vein some of the people of Leeds seem to overplay the importance of the city. As if it was a place to be seen and a place to on up. To me, Leeds is a bog standard relatively small English city and it always will be. Nothing wrong with that. There’s some nice shops, some great architecture, plenty of local tasty beer and more live music than you could ever wish to listen to but if a city didn’t have a least a few of those things then it wouldn’t really be a city. For some reason though half the population of the place seem to disagree and prance around clutching an iphone in one hand and sizable amount of bullshit in the other as if life’s one big catwalk and everybody’s watching. But it’s just Leeds. It’s not NewSanFranShangRioKongTown. I don’t get it.
I do get teaching and travelling though so that’s the plan as it stands right now. I applied to do a CELTA course (a certificate for English teaching) which starts at the end of May and lasts for a month. Part of the application process was to go for a group interview so there was me and two other applicants as the people who run the course like to see how candidates interact and communicate as part of the selection process. One requirement of the interview was to do a five minute lesson to the other people present. We were told we could teach anything. I racked by brain to try and think of something. There were two other applicants who did the same. One of them did some origami and tried to teach us all how to make a bird from a sheet of A4 paper. The one i made looked liked a dragon with leprosy. The other guy told us how make the spaghetti he had the previous night for dinner. It didn’t sound that appetising. I gave a short five minute lesson entitled 10 Easy Steps on How to Change a Flat Tire On a Motorbike in a Mongolian Rainstorm. I quite enjoyed myself. And i got selected for the course so fingers crossed with that and then hopefully i’ll find a job in the summer teaching somewhere in Asia.
Unfortunately though i’ll still be here when it’s General Election time. It’s unfortunate because for a month you have try and avoid watching TV or listening to radio or reading websites because you know you’re going to have your intelligence insulted by a prick in a suit. Here’s my plan. I’m going to vote for None Of The Above. Join me on May 6th if you've still got the will to live. At the ballot box don’t vote for any of the dithering, sanctimonious, condescending fuckwits that feature on the ballot paper but instead just write None Of The Above at the bottom and then make a little box of your own and tick that. It’s not a political opinion that will feature heavily on any news items in the coming weeks but it’s the only thing i can think of that makes sense. So there.
Thanks for reading. Hope you're doing well. Have fun.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Leeds vs. Seoul
Things have changed. I now spend more time everyday staring at a computer screen and making phone calls than i do sleeping. I live with my parents. I own a pair of shoes. I can overhear conversations and i know what people are saying. I drink infrequently, normally only on weekends. I live in a small city in northern Europe not a massive city in East Asia. It all feels slightly unnatural. It’s almost as if i don’t really belong here which is weird because it’s where i’m from. This is home. Home is obviously very different from Seoul which was the last city i lived and worked in. So obvious that i’ve made a list:
In Seoul the drunk people on public transport are old men. In Leeds they’re teenagers.
In Seoul different ethnicities stand out. In Leeds we all blend in.
In Seoul you can use public transport to travel large distances with a small amount of money in a short period of time. In Leeds you can use public transport to travel short distances for a large amount of money over a long period of time.
In Seoul you can buy a huge pitcher of crap beer for £3.00. In Leeds you can buy one pint of great tasty beer for £3.00.
In Seoul the teachers assault the students. In Leeds the students assault the teachers.
In Seoul everybody loves Manchester United. In Leeds everybody hates Manchester United.
In Seoul everybody hates summer. In Leeds everybody loves summer.
In Seoul when it snows everybody goes skiing and snowboarding. In Leeds when it snows everybody avoids going to work and throws a snowball in a friends face.
In Seoul people riot and protest over anything. In Leeds people write a strongly worded letter to their local politician.
In Seoul the parks are tiny, few and crap. In Leeds the parks are massive, plentiful and great.
In Seoul fat people are a minority. In Leeds thin people are a minority.
In Seoul old people are seen as a part of the family, community and society. In Leeds they are seen as a hindrance, a tax burden and an inconvenience.
In Seoul the Han River is home to windsurfers, kite surfers, pleasure boats and water taxis. In Leeds the River Aire is home to disused shopping trolleys, dead animals and police divers.
In the centre of Seoul the buildings are drab blocks of dull functional concrete. In the centre of Leeds the buildings are Victorianesque classic gothic old gnarly things full of character.
In Seoul the gargantuan shopping centres and enormous multi-level supermarkets are shiny cathedrals of commerce and capitalism where people make a weekend pilgrimage to spend as much money as humanly possible on things they don’t really need for no reason what so ever. In Leeds the supermarkets are only on one floor.
The truth is i don't really care how different (or similar) the two places are. I miss Asia. I miss the buzz and the rush for the future whereas England (and probably most of western Europe) is continually lurching to the past ungratefully dragging itself forward. I'm working a job in Leeds saving cash, going through the motions waiting. Waiting for another Asian high, some more English teaching and traveling tales.
Between now and next month i'll try and do something worth writing about. Until then thanks for reading. Have fun.
In Seoul the drunk people on public transport are old men. In Leeds they’re teenagers.
In Seoul different ethnicities stand out. In Leeds we all blend in.
In Seoul you can use public transport to travel large distances with a small amount of money in a short period of time. In Leeds you can use public transport to travel short distances for a large amount of money over a long period of time.
In Seoul you can buy a huge pitcher of crap beer for £3.00. In Leeds you can buy one pint of great tasty beer for £3.00.
In Seoul the teachers assault the students. In Leeds the students assault the teachers.
In Seoul everybody loves Manchester United. In Leeds everybody hates Manchester United.
In Seoul everybody hates summer. In Leeds everybody loves summer.
In Seoul when it snows everybody goes skiing and snowboarding. In Leeds when it snows everybody avoids going to work and throws a snowball in a friends face.
In Seoul people riot and protest over anything. In Leeds people write a strongly worded letter to their local politician.
In Seoul the parks are tiny, few and crap. In Leeds the parks are massive, plentiful and great.
In Seoul fat people are a minority. In Leeds thin people are a minority.
In Seoul old people are seen as a part of the family, community and society. In Leeds they are seen as a hindrance, a tax burden and an inconvenience.
In Seoul the Han River is home to windsurfers, kite surfers, pleasure boats and water taxis. In Leeds the River Aire is home to disused shopping trolleys, dead animals and police divers.
In the centre of Seoul the buildings are drab blocks of dull functional concrete. In the centre of Leeds the buildings are Victorianesque classic gothic old gnarly things full of character.
In Seoul the gargantuan shopping centres and enormous multi-level supermarkets are shiny cathedrals of commerce and capitalism where people make a weekend pilgrimage to spend as much money as humanly possible on things they don’t really need for no reason what so ever. In Leeds the supermarkets are only on one floor.
The truth is i don't really care how different (or similar) the two places are. I miss Asia. I miss the buzz and the rush for the future whereas England (and probably most of western Europe) is continually lurching to the past ungratefully dragging itself forward. I'm working a job in Leeds saving cash, going through the motions waiting. Waiting for another Asian high, some more English teaching and traveling tales.
Between now and next month i'll try and do something worth writing about. Until then thanks for reading. Have fun.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Leeds again
I haven’t written anything on this blog for about a month and there are a variety of reasons for that which include, in no particular order, rats, job centres, snow, snooker, beer and Where’s Wally.
Being back in the UK and Leeds is slightly strange. Everything is familiar and yet at the same time different. In my home city there are now more strip clubs than bookshops (apparently). Local buses are brand new and yet still have a faint whiff of sick. Leeds United beat Manchester United but we’re in different leagues. And it’s a multicultural city full of nightlife and interest and yet, to me, it feels painfully ordinary. If it were a colour it would be beige.
Quite predictably i spent the first few weeks back in Leeds getting repeatedly drunk. I went to a bar called Sub-urban (it was, literally) where i went to the toilet, stood at the urinal having a piss and was greeted by a man who said hello, blatantly stared at my cock and then asked everybody in the toilets if they had any cocaine. That’s one thing about Leeds that perhaps isn’t ordinary; the people.
Another thing i’ve noticed about people since i’ve been back is their size. Now, i’m not a large person. If you’re being polite you’d probably call me “svelte”. If you weren’t being polite you’d probably call me “a skinny little tosser”. But there have been times here where i’ve looked positively anorexic. In one pub last month i felt like a chopstick in a room full of space-hoppers. Brits are big.
The weather also occupies people’s minds way too much as well. For some unknown reason we British people expect this country to have a climate similar to that of Miami. We are genuinely surprised when it throws it down with rain and cannot comprehend a weather phenomenon called “snow”. Snow in Britain is like Kryptonite to Superman. It just makes us go weak and little bit mental. If we wake up in the morning, open the curtains and see a carpet of white we think world is going to end. And this behaviour isn’t limited to winter. Just wait six months. Everybody will be equally amazed and goggle eyed when the sun comes out for a few weeks and, surprise surprise, it gets a bit hot. It’s like this every year. You would have thought we’d have got used to it by now but for some reason it’s headline news. Snow In Winter! Heat Wave In Summer! We are actually factually stupid.
Like a lot of people here i avoided the winter weather by staying in pubs. I drank so much and so frequently over Christmas that i decided to give my body a rest by keeping clear of beer for a while. Since then my Dad keeps reliably informing me that proving you can stay off the drink for a few weeks is a classic sign of the first stage of alcoholism. First stage? I’ve been drinking solidly for ten years. How many stages are there? One memorable night was my brother’s 30th birthday where, through circumstances that are still quite hazy, i got so drunk that i found myself in the centre of Leeds in a gay bar searching for my lost coat whereupon a transsexual DJ insulted me by telling me i look like the 1980’s cartoon character Where’s Wally. I told you we’re not ordinary.
I’ve been hunting for a job which is probably the easiest way of lowering your self esteem that i know of. Write your life down on one piece of paper, send it to potential employers for jobs that trained chimps could do and then watch them ignore you. Or walk forty five minutes to the job centre in the snow to save money on bus fares. It’s great to be back.
I’ve done a few other slightly interesting things such as find and dispose of a dead rat that had been partially eaten by a fox in my Mum and Dad’s front garden, i’ve read two and a half books and i’ve laughed at snooker. You might think that watching snooker is boring and you’re probably correct but the saving grace is the commentary. It’s as if the TV channels just grabbed two old men, sat them in front of a microphone and told them to chat vaguely about the sport they’re watching whilst inadvertently inserting more double-entendres into a few frames of snooker than you thought was possible. They say things such as, “Well, he’s on 69 and he’d just love to get the pink into the corner pocket,” or, “Well, he wasn’t expecting a double kiss on the brown,” (sorry) and one genuine quote last night from British Eurosport’s coverage of the UK Masters Championship was, “Ohhh this boy is quick. Down. In. Hit. Score.” Accidental genius.
So, that’s my life as it stands right now. I’m trudging through snow and slush to a job centre, clearing vermin from gardens and giggling at snooker commentary. Rock and roll. Was i really stood on rusting ships on the Aral Sea? Did i really hike around Shikoku? What happened to that guy? And when the hell is thinking of making a return?
Being back in the UK and Leeds is slightly strange. Everything is familiar and yet at the same time different. In my home city there are now more strip clubs than bookshops (apparently). Local buses are brand new and yet still have a faint whiff of sick. Leeds United beat Manchester United but we’re in different leagues. And it’s a multicultural city full of nightlife and interest and yet, to me, it feels painfully ordinary. If it were a colour it would be beige.
Quite predictably i spent the first few weeks back in Leeds getting repeatedly drunk. I went to a bar called Sub-urban (it was, literally) where i went to the toilet, stood at the urinal having a piss and was greeted by a man who said hello, blatantly stared at my cock and then asked everybody in the toilets if they had any cocaine. That’s one thing about Leeds that perhaps isn’t ordinary; the people.
Another thing i’ve noticed about people since i’ve been back is their size. Now, i’m not a large person. If you’re being polite you’d probably call me “svelte”. If you weren’t being polite you’d probably call me “a skinny little tosser”. But there have been times here where i’ve looked positively anorexic. In one pub last month i felt like a chopstick in a room full of space-hoppers. Brits are big.
The weather also occupies people’s minds way too much as well. For some unknown reason we British people expect this country to have a climate similar to that of Miami. We are genuinely surprised when it throws it down with rain and cannot comprehend a weather phenomenon called “snow”. Snow in Britain is like Kryptonite to Superman. It just makes us go weak and little bit mental. If we wake up in the morning, open the curtains and see a carpet of white we think world is going to end. And this behaviour isn’t limited to winter. Just wait six months. Everybody will be equally amazed and goggle eyed when the sun comes out for a few weeks and, surprise surprise, it gets a bit hot. It’s like this every year. You would have thought we’d have got used to it by now but for some reason it’s headline news. Snow In Winter! Heat Wave In Summer! We are actually factually stupid.
Like a lot of people here i avoided the winter weather by staying in pubs. I drank so much and so frequently over Christmas that i decided to give my body a rest by keeping clear of beer for a while. Since then my Dad keeps reliably informing me that proving you can stay off the drink for a few weeks is a classic sign of the first stage of alcoholism. First stage? I’ve been drinking solidly for ten years. How many stages are there? One memorable night was my brother’s 30th birthday where, through circumstances that are still quite hazy, i got so drunk that i found myself in the centre of Leeds in a gay bar searching for my lost coat whereupon a transsexual DJ insulted me by telling me i look like the 1980’s cartoon character Where’s Wally. I told you we’re not ordinary.
I’ve been hunting for a job which is probably the easiest way of lowering your self esteem that i know of. Write your life down on one piece of paper, send it to potential employers for jobs that trained chimps could do and then watch them ignore you. Or walk forty five minutes to the job centre in the snow to save money on bus fares. It’s great to be back.
I’ve done a few other slightly interesting things such as find and dispose of a dead rat that had been partially eaten by a fox in my Mum and Dad’s front garden, i’ve read two and a half books and i’ve laughed at snooker. You might think that watching snooker is boring and you’re probably correct but the saving grace is the commentary. It’s as if the TV channels just grabbed two old men, sat them in front of a microphone and told them to chat vaguely about the sport they’re watching whilst inadvertently inserting more double-entendres into a few frames of snooker than you thought was possible. They say things such as, “Well, he’s on 69 and he’d just love to get the pink into the corner pocket,” or, “Well, he wasn’t expecting a double kiss on the brown,” (sorry) and one genuine quote last night from British Eurosport’s coverage of the UK Masters Championship was, “Ohhh this boy is quick. Down. In. Hit. Score.” Accidental genius.
So, that’s my life as it stands right now. I’m trudging through snow and slush to a job centre, clearing vermin from gardens and giggling at snooker commentary. Rock and roll. Was i really stood on rusting ships on the Aral Sea? Did i really hike around Shikoku? What happened to that guy? And when the hell is thinking of making a return?
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Photos
I've finally managed to upload some photos so if you haven't seen any pictures on facebook and you're looking to waste some time then look no further than here http://davelearoyd.shutterfly.com/.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Leeds
Home. Home cooking. Homemade. Homeward Bound. Homework. Homing signal. Home, home on the range. Home furnishings. Homosexual. Homosapian. Homophobic. Homeopathic. Homer Simpson. Home. I’m actually home.
Last week i was in Amsterdam which is the kind of place that you go to with expectations. Canals, cannabis, red lit women and dance floors spin through your mind before you get there and in front of your eyes once you arrive. It’s a city that felt almost anonymous or independent from anywhere else. As if it floats above the rest of the world promising to come back down soon but knowing it never will. Some call it a melting pot. I think it’s more like a blender. But all the human zoo of the red light district and surrounding bars is neatly confined to a few square kilometres near the central train station and the rest of the city is a maze of canals and old, big terraced buildings glinting in winter sunshine or European drizzle depending on your luck.
I met Matijs and Joost, two Dutch guys that i first met when i travelled in Mongolia a few years ago. We met up again and the three of us swapped stories, drank beers in different little bars bulging with people escaping the winter chill.
I left Amsterdam too quickly but i had a seat booked on a bus to Brussels which was driven by a big French man who had crap 1980s music blaring from the radio all the way to the Belgian capital. We glided across the Dutch landscape which is so flat you can almost make out the curvature of Earth as you look out of the window.
Brussels was a really pretty city full of grand old buildings covered in Christmas neon with the smell of chocolate wafting through the streets and the beer flowing not far behind in the cold evening air. The following morning i was zipping towards London on the Eurostar train wondering how and when it became normal to take a train that travels through a tunnel under the ocean linking two different countries.
I spent that night in Oxford where I met two old friends, Stu and Max. I hadn’t been in England for 18 months. Now, i wouldn’t want to add to the reputation that the English are all drunk idiots but you can probably guess what happened next. We played some drinking games in a pub and then I got so drunk that i vomited all over the streets of Oxford, fell asleep in the back of a car and woke up trying to piece together the previous twelve hours of my life without much success. Then we had a fried breakfast at lunchtime. Welcome back. The next evening i was in my home city of Leeds.
Europe has been immense fun but for the past few months i’ve felt like a stone skimming across the surface, seeing place after place, city after city only for the journey to end and being forced to plunge back into something familiar. England. It’s a country where almost 60% of its GDP is national debt. Where a light covering of snow brings the whole nation to a halt. A place where getting drunk or spending money are seen to solve all your problems. Where the politics is centred so firmly on the middle ground, you wonder how politicians are able to sit down properly with all the fence posts stuck up their arses. Where the majority is silent and everybody else seems utterly fixated with Celebrity X-Factor Big Dancing Brother On Ice with Harry Potter in Afghanistan. I wonder how long i’ll last.
As always, i’m already planning the next trip. In the mean time i’m unsure of what to do with the blog. What do i write about now i’m not sleeping in hostels and eating kebabs? As i won’t be travelling for a while would it be true to the title to keep it going? Should i change the title to something more honest such as ShutUpJustTryAndGetAJob or ShutUpJustDrinkUntilYouVomitInTheStreets? Let me know what you think. I’ll leave you with some questions that have, for whatever reason, entered my head over past few months.
1. Why are e-tickets printed on paper?
2. Why are power cuts never during the day?
3. Why are you always oblivious to announcements at train or bus stations until it’s one about your journey, even if the announcement is in a language you don’t understand?
4. Why is it whenever you book a ticket the train is empty but if you don’t book one the train is packed?
5. Why is it when you’re desperate for a shit and you use a public toilet there’s never any toilet paper? Or worse still there are only two sheets left so you try and wipe your arse with toilet paper the size of a bus ticket and get shit on your fingers.
6. Why is it wherever you go in the world you always see a pair of old manky trainers tied together and thrown over a telephone line? Who started this and why did people decide to copy it?
7. Why is it wherever you go in the world you always see a child wearing an English Premier League Football shirt? How the fuck did the Manchester Utd away shirt from the 1996-97 season find its way to rural Uzbekistan?
8. Why do you always see one glove on a fencepost every winter regardless of the country you’re in?
9. Why do people who drive their car with the windows down and the music playing loud always play really shit music? It’s never The Killers or The Kings of Leon is it? It’s always Warren G or DJ Otzi.
10. Why is that six months of your life travelling through different continents and countries taking in mountains, beaches, deserts, cities, villages, friendships and dozens of journeys in cars, boats, buses, trains and planes whilst eating all foods and knocking back strange drinks seem to race by so quickly that at the end of it all you can barely remember what you just did and yet waiting thirty minutes in the cold rain for a bus can seem like a lifetime?
Thanks for reading. Have fun. See you soon.
Last week i was in Amsterdam which is the kind of place that you go to with expectations. Canals, cannabis, red lit women and dance floors spin through your mind before you get there and in front of your eyes once you arrive. It’s a city that felt almost anonymous or independent from anywhere else. As if it floats above the rest of the world promising to come back down soon but knowing it never will. Some call it a melting pot. I think it’s more like a blender. But all the human zoo of the red light district and surrounding bars is neatly confined to a few square kilometres near the central train station and the rest of the city is a maze of canals and old, big terraced buildings glinting in winter sunshine or European drizzle depending on your luck.
I met Matijs and Joost, two Dutch guys that i first met when i travelled in Mongolia a few years ago. We met up again and the three of us swapped stories, drank beers in different little bars bulging with people escaping the winter chill.
I left Amsterdam too quickly but i had a seat booked on a bus to Brussels which was driven by a big French man who had crap 1980s music blaring from the radio all the way to the Belgian capital. We glided across the Dutch landscape which is so flat you can almost make out the curvature of Earth as you look out of the window.
Brussels was a really pretty city full of grand old buildings covered in Christmas neon with the smell of chocolate wafting through the streets and the beer flowing not far behind in the cold evening air. The following morning i was zipping towards London on the Eurostar train wondering how and when it became normal to take a train that travels through a tunnel under the ocean linking two different countries.
I spent that night in Oxford where I met two old friends, Stu and Max. I hadn’t been in England for 18 months. Now, i wouldn’t want to add to the reputation that the English are all drunk idiots but you can probably guess what happened next. We played some drinking games in a pub and then I got so drunk that i vomited all over the streets of Oxford, fell asleep in the back of a car and woke up trying to piece together the previous twelve hours of my life without much success. Then we had a fried breakfast at lunchtime. Welcome back. The next evening i was in my home city of Leeds.
Europe has been immense fun but for the past few months i’ve felt like a stone skimming across the surface, seeing place after place, city after city only for the journey to end and being forced to plunge back into something familiar. England. It’s a country where almost 60% of its GDP is national debt. Where a light covering of snow brings the whole nation to a halt. A place where getting drunk or spending money are seen to solve all your problems. Where the politics is centred so firmly on the middle ground, you wonder how politicians are able to sit down properly with all the fence posts stuck up their arses. Where the majority is silent and everybody else seems utterly fixated with Celebrity X-Factor Big Dancing Brother On Ice with Harry Potter in Afghanistan. I wonder how long i’ll last.
As always, i’m already planning the next trip. In the mean time i’m unsure of what to do with the blog. What do i write about now i’m not sleeping in hostels and eating kebabs? As i won’t be travelling for a while would it be true to the title to keep it going? Should i change the title to something more honest such as ShutUpJustTryAndGetAJob or ShutUpJustDrinkUntilYouVomitInTheStreets? Let me know what you think. I’ll leave you with some questions that have, for whatever reason, entered my head over past few months.
1. Why are e-tickets printed on paper?
2. Why are power cuts never during the day?
3. Why are you always oblivious to announcements at train or bus stations until it’s one about your journey, even if the announcement is in a language you don’t understand?
4. Why is it whenever you book a ticket the train is empty but if you don’t book one the train is packed?
5. Why is it when you’re desperate for a shit and you use a public toilet there’s never any toilet paper? Or worse still there are only two sheets left so you try and wipe your arse with toilet paper the size of a bus ticket and get shit on your fingers.
6. Why is it wherever you go in the world you always see a pair of old manky trainers tied together and thrown over a telephone line? Who started this and why did people decide to copy it?
7. Why is it wherever you go in the world you always see a child wearing an English Premier League Football shirt? How the fuck did the Manchester Utd away shirt from the 1996-97 season find its way to rural Uzbekistan?
8. Why do you always see one glove on a fencepost every winter regardless of the country you’re in?
9. Why do people who drive their car with the windows down and the music playing loud always play really shit music? It’s never The Killers or The Kings of Leon is it? It’s always Warren G or DJ Otzi.
10. Why is that six months of your life travelling through different continents and countries taking in mountains, beaches, deserts, cities, villages, friendships and dozens of journeys in cars, boats, buses, trains and planes whilst eating all foods and knocking back strange drinks seem to race by so quickly that at the end of it all you can barely remember what you just did and yet waiting thirty minutes in the cold rain for a bus can seem like a lifetime?
Thanks for reading. Have fun. See you soon.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Amsterdam
I'm almost finished. This trip, and maybe this blog, has less than a week left. Here's another weeks worth of travelling.
I was in Bollnas this time last week and the only reason to be there was to meet up with my mate Alex. It was fair to say that there was nothing for me and Alex to do in the small town of Bollnas apart from what Alex seems to have been doing for the past three years - go ten pin bowling, eat, hit on small-town Swedish girls and drink beer. It got a bit boring quite quickly. We went out to a bar, of which there are two to chose from for the whole town, and it was one of the strangest places i have ever had a drink. It contained three bars, three blackjack tables, two dartboards, a dance floor, shit music, a big screen TV and a load of people who for some reason thought that Bollnas night life rivalled that of London or Hong Kong. Somehow me (an idiot Englishman) and Alex (who's from Ethiopia) got talking to a plumber from Uruguay and a drunk Somalian mental case. In Sweden. In winter. I'm starting to miss normality.
Bollnas was the furthest north i've ever been and the frost one morning was so thick that it tricked you into thinking it had snowed during the night. The sun lazily woke up at about nine thirty, struggled in an upward direction for a few hours and then just gave up, wandered back down to the horizon and disappeared at about three in the afternoon. Me and Alex got a bus back to Stockholm and it wound through an edible scenery of trees and fields that looked as if it were covered in icing sugar.
Stockholm is a very chic place. Coffee shops look like furniture show rooms and restaurants resemble modern art galleries with a few tables thrown in the middle. We were walking around the cobbled streets and old buildings when we saw a small demonstration by Italians about Silvio Berlusconi. One of the demonstrators gave us a leaflet and Alex asked what was going on and why.
"How long has he been in power?" he asked.
"Fifteen years", the demonstrator replied.
Alex shrugged.
"Shoot him," he said blankly and walked off.
I almost died laughing. It seems you can take a man out of Africa but you can't take Africa out of the man.
And Stockholm's expensive. It was over five Euros for a beer but that didn't seem to stop me and Alex drinking Guinness, playing darts and reminiscing about life in Hong Kong. But after a few days in Bollnas you'd probably start reminiscing about time in prison. The next morning i was on a bus again and Alex was back in small town Sweden.
Twenty two hours, two buses, two ferries and a loaf of bread separated Stockholm from Dortmund. Dortmund isn't a great city. It got the arse bombed off it by the British in the Second World War meaning the whole place is filled with functional 1950s architecture and all the heavy industry that was there has recently left for other shores. I'd planned to meet Marco who was working in Seoul when i was and was now back working in Germany again. Marco lives near Dortmund in Hagen and him and his family let me sleep on a sofa in the basement for two nights and feed me at every opportunity.
I had a day Düsseldorf which sits next to the Rhine River and was once the financial capital of Germany until all the banks moved to Frankfurt for reasons that nobody seems to know. Düsseldorf is also home to one of the largest Japanese populations outside of Japan. Again, nobody seems to know why but it adds to the city which is a decent place to waste a day and drink a beer. I also went to a small city called Munster which was like Oxford but German. And then i got on another bus.
Koln is spelt Cologne in English (again, nobody really knows why) and i stayed with Stefan who i met in Uzbekistan. He and a load of German students were doing research in Tajikistan and were seeing Uzbekistan while they were there. In Koln, we swapped more central Asian stories and by coincidence i was there the night that they were doing a big presentation at the university about Tajikistan which joined the dots between Samarkand and Koln quiet neatly. I had a few drinks last night in Koln where i ordered a wheat beer which for some reason came mixed with banana juice. Apparently the good people of Koln enjoy fucking up the already wonderful German brews for reasons that, guess what, nobody seems to know. I'm starting to think that Germans aren't as we all thought they were. All the precision engineering and efficiency and beer brewing is just a ruse and they are all, in fact, clueless about everything and secretly hate beer so much that they choose to mix it with fruit juice.
I've been racing too fast through Europe which isn't ideal but better than flying over it and so today i was on another bus to Amsterdam where i arrived a few hours ago. After here it's Brussels, Oxford and then the finish line in Leeds.
Thanks for reading. Have fun.
I was in Bollnas this time last week and the only reason to be there was to meet up with my mate Alex. It was fair to say that there was nothing for me and Alex to do in the small town of Bollnas apart from what Alex seems to have been doing for the past three years - go ten pin bowling, eat, hit on small-town Swedish girls and drink beer. It got a bit boring quite quickly. We went out to a bar, of which there are two to chose from for the whole town, and it was one of the strangest places i have ever had a drink. It contained three bars, three blackjack tables, two dartboards, a dance floor, shit music, a big screen TV and a load of people who for some reason thought that Bollnas night life rivalled that of London or Hong Kong. Somehow me (an idiot Englishman) and Alex (who's from Ethiopia) got talking to a plumber from Uruguay and a drunk Somalian mental case. In Sweden. In winter. I'm starting to miss normality.
Bollnas was the furthest north i've ever been and the frost one morning was so thick that it tricked you into thinking it had snowed during the night. The sun lazily woke up at about nine thirty, struggled in an upward direction for a few hours and then just gave up, wandered back down to the horizon and disappeared at about three in the afternoon. Me and Alex got a bus back to Stockholm and it wound through an edible scenery of trees and fields that looked as if it were covered in icing sugar.
Stockholm is a very chic place. Coffee shops look like furniture show rooms and restaurants resemble modern art galleries with a few tables thrown in the middle. We were walking around the cobbled streets and old buildings when we saw a small demonstration by Italians about Silvio Berlusconi. One of the demonstrators gave us a leaflet and Alex asked what was going on and why.
"How long has he been in power?" he asked.
"Fifteen years", the demonstrator replied.
Alex shrugged.
"Shoot him," he said blankly and walked off.
I almost died laughing. It seems you can take a man out of Africa but you can't take Africa out of the man.
And Stockholm's expensive. It was over five Euros for a beer but that didn't seem to stop me and Alex drinking Guinness, playing darts and reminiscing about life in Hong Kong. But after a few days in Bollnas you'd probably start reminiscing about time in prison. The next morning i was on a bus again and Alex was back in small town Sweden.
Twenty two hours, two buses, two ferries and a loaf of bread separated Stockholm from Dortmund. Dortmund isn't a great city. It got the arse bombed off it by the British in the Second World War meaning the whole place is filled with functional 1950s architecture and all the heavy industry that was there has recently left for other shores. I'd planned to meet Marco who was working in Seoul when i was and was now back working in Germany again. Marco lives near Dortmund in Hagen and him and his family let me sleep on a sofa in the basement for two nights and feed me at every opportunity.
I had a day Düsseldorf which sits next to the Rhine River and was once the financial capital of Germany until all the banks moved to Frankfurt for reasons that nobody seems to know. Düsseldorf is also home to one of the largest Japanese populations outside of Japan. Again, nobody seems to know why but it adds to the city which is a decent place to waste a day and drink a beer. I also went to a small city called Munster which was like Oxford but German. And then i got on another bus.
Koln is spelt Cologne in English (again, nobody really knows why) and i stayed with Stefan who i met in Uzbekistan. He and a load of German students were doing research in Tajikistan and were seeing Uzbekistan while they were there. In Koln, we swapped more central Asian stories and by coincidence i was there the night that they were doing a big presentation at the university about Tajikistan which joined the dots between Samarkand and Koln quiet neatly. I had a few drinks last night in Koln where i ordered a wheat beer which for some reason came mixed with banana juice. Apparently the good people of Koln enjoy fucking up the already wonderful German brews for reasons that, guess what, nobody seems to know. I'm starting to think that Germans aren't as we all thought they were. All the precision engineering and efficiency and beer brewing is just a ruse and they are all, in fact, clueless about everything and secretly hate beer so much that they choose to mix it with fruit juice.
I've been racing too fast through Europe which isn't ideal but better than flying over it and so today i was on another bus to Amsterdam where i arrived a few hours ago. After here it's Brussels, Oxford and then the finish line in Leeds.
Thanks for reading. Have fun.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Bollnas
It's a little bit freezing cold outside. I'm in the middle of Sweden in December. Who's idea was this anyway?
Berlin somehow got better the more i was there. I spent most of the time in the eastern side of the city and in Kreuzberg which is an area adorned in graffiti (even the fire station had some) second hand shops, small record stores, street art and lots of bakeries and Turkish restaurants. There was an area called Mitte where i saw a photo exhibition and art galleries, Christmas markets, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag and bus loads of other tourists clicking cameras in the winter sun and the cold rain.
And then there was the beer. I found a delicious little microbrewery serving some of the best beer i have ever tasted which came with a side salad of relaxed bar staff, football on a big TV, tiled walls, furniture that looked as if it had been nicked from somebody's house and a big dog that sat in everybody's way as it licked its bollocks. And everything rattled slightly as trams rumbled pass outside and the rain hammered down. Somehow, it felt like home.
I met up with Anja who i met in Georgia a month or two ago. She took me on a cycle tour for the day showing me the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, more fantastic exhibitions, Currywurst (Bratwurst in curry sauce), gluhein and whizzed around on a bicycle as i followed straining to hear her barking directions and information over her shoulder at me as we dodged traffic or waited at lights in the never ending cycle lanes.
I said goodbye to Berlin and Anja and got on a bus to Copenhagen. I figured the bus would travel over land and bridges but a few hours into the journey we came to a ferry port at Rostok. Now, i have a very black and white relationship with the sea. Sometimes my stomach is like a brick for the whole journey on a boat and other times i vomit so much i almost break a rib. There's no in between and there's no telling which it will be until about five minutes into the sea journey. Fortunately my stomach stayed inside my body this time and two hours later we were in Denmark and not long after i was on a train leaving Copenhagen for a small city called Horsens in the dark and damp of a Danish winter.
I met up with Jamie, an old mate that i went to high school with but hadn't seen for ten years. It's strange how sometimes when you meet friends or family that you haven't seen for years you're somehow able to just carry on the conversation from where it left off years previously and so it was with Jamie. I stayed with him and his girlfriend, Jeanette, and we mainly spent our time drinking, eating, watching TV, playing on an X-Box and avoiding the rain. We also went to a Christmas tree farm and played tenpin bowling where we saw dozens of Danish people on Christmas parties who got shitfaced drunk, ate a load of food and were entertained by the worse band in history called The Bacons.
Horsens was a quiet place that seemed comfy and an easy place to live but also very quiet and set in a flat green agricultural landscape. Jamie described as "retired persons dream" which pretty much says it all. The train back to Copenhagen revealed more flat green farmland and more retired towns and not much else.
Copenhagen seemed like a very cool place to spend some time but i only stayed there one night and hopped on another bus to Stockholm taking in another ferry journey on the way and then an endless landscape of green trees interrupted only by the occasional farm and three kids at the back of the bus who seemed to cry and scream for no reason. In Stockholm i met Alex who i lived with when i was teaching in Hong Kong a few years ago. He's from Ethiopia and has been working in Sweden for three years and we chatted and caught up with each others lives on a bus for three hours until we arrived in Bollnas which is like Horsens only smaller and less interesting. And fucking freezing. I've just read that description back to myself and it sounds like the start of a bad joke, "There was an English man and an Ethiopian man on the back of a bus in Sweden in winter and..."
So that's my life at the moment - taking mammoth day long bus journeys into the cold arse end of Europe and freeloading my way onto long lost friends sofas and into spare rooms. I'll be doing the same for the next two weeks all the way back to Leeds. Feel free to leave some abuse below.
Berlin somehow got better the more i was there. I spent most of the time in the eastern side of the city and in Kreuzberg which is an area adorned in graffiti (even the fire station had some) second hand shops, small record stores, street art and lots of bakeries and Turkish restaurants. There was an area called Mitte where i saw a photo exhibition and art galleries, Christmas markets, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag and bus loads of other tourists clicking cameras in the winter sun and the cold rain.
And then there was the beer. I found a delicious little microbrewery serving some of the best beer i have ever tasted which came with a side salad of relaxed bar staff, football on a big TV, tiled walls, furniture that looked as if it had been nicked from somebody's house and a big dog that sat in everybody's way as it licked its bollocks. And everything rattled slightly as trams rumbled pass outside and the rain hammered down. Somehow, it felt like home.
I met up with Anja who i met in Georgia a month or two ago. She took me on a cycle tour for the day showing me the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, more fantastic exhibitions, Currywurst (Bratwurst in curry sauce), gluhein and whizzed around on a bicycle as i followed straining to hear her barking directions and information over her shoulder at me as we dodged traffic or waited at lights in the never ending cycle lanes.
I said goodbye to Berlin and Anja and got on a bus to Copenhagen. I figured the bus would travel over land and bridges but a few hours into the journey we came to a ferry port at Rostok. Now, i have a very black and white relationship with the sea. Sometimes my stomach is like a brick for the whole journey on a boat and other times i vomit so much i almost break a rib. There's no in between and there's no telling which it will be until about five minutes into the sea journey. Fortunately my stomach stayed inside my body this time and two hours later we were in Denmark and not long after i was on a train leaving Copenhagen for a small city called Horsens in the dark and damp of a Danish winter.
I met up with Jamie, an old mate that i went to high school with but hadn't seen for ten years. It's strange how sometimes when you meet friends or family that you haven't seen for years you're somehow able to just carry on the conversation from where it left off years previously and so it was with Jamie. I stayed with him and his girlfriend, Jeanette, and we mainly spent our time drinking, eating, watching TV, playing on an X-Box and avoiding the rain. We also went to a Christmas tree farm and played tenpin bowling where we saw dozens of Danish people on Christmas parties who got shitfaced drunk, ate a load of food and were entertained by the worse band in history called The Bacons.
Horsens was a quiet place that seemed comfy and an easy place to live but also very quiet and set in a flat green agricultural landscape. Jamie described as "retired persons dream" which pretty much says it all. The train back to Copenhagen revealed more flat green farmland and more retired towns and not much else.
Copenhagen seemed like a very cool place to spend some time but i only stayed there one night and hopped on another bus to Stockholm taking in another ferry journey on the way and then an endless landscape of green trees interrupted only by the occasional farm and three kids at the back of the bus who seemed to cry and scream for no reason. In Stockholm i met Alex who i lived with when i was teaching in Hong Kong a few years ago. He's from Ethiopia and has been working in Sweden for three years and we chatted and caught up with each others lives on a bus for three hours until we arrived in Bollnas which is like Horsens only smaller and less interesting. And fucking freezing. I've just read that description back to myself and it sounds like the start of a bad joke, "There was an English man and an Ethiopian man on the back of a bus in Sweden in winter and..."
So that's my life at the moment - taking mammoth day long bus journeys into the cold arse end of Europe and freeloading my way onto long lost friends sofas and into spare rooms. I'll be doing the same for the next two weeks all the way back to Leeds. Feel free to leave some abuse below.
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