Bohemian Rhapsody

First of all, an apology is in order.

*Ahem* To the handful of people that actually care about my trip and read my writing, I am terribly sorry.  When I got to England, I settled into something of a routine, and for some reason, I never felt inspired to write.  I can’t believe I went from giving you guys eight posts in my first two months away to having written none since September.  Though my trip ended then, I have still not completed this blog like I had intended to.  So, while I’m no longer 8900 miles from home, I am going to finish my travel blog in the coming weeks with three pieces.  This one will cover the rest of our trip in mainland Europe, mainly our time in Prague and Munich, but also briefly mentioning Brussels and Amsterdam rd. 2.  The following post will be my attempt at some sort of retroactive festival coverage for the Roskilde 2012 event in Denmark this summer.  Over 130,000 people were in attendance, and it was the most mental week of my life, stay tuned.  Finally, I will bring the journey to an end and write some words on my summer spent working in Cornwall, in the southwest of England.  While my travel journal will be completed at that point, I hope to leave this page open as an outlet for creative writing, which I am starting to get back into.  So when the stories have all finished, and though I will not be able to travel again for years, fear not, for your favourite amateur blogger will occasionally grace this website with some word vomit.  For now though, a Bohemian Rhapsody is about to unfold….

Me with a statue inspired by a specific
piece of literature from Franz Kafka

Leaving Berlin behind us, Hillary and I headed for the Czech Republic, our gateway to Eastern Europe.  It is too bad that none of my three trips to Europe have been such that I could have explored this region more, because Eastern Europe is definitely in my backpacking future.  It’s cheaper and dirtier than the glories of France, Spain, Italy, etc. but therein lays its character.  On this trip, due to time and budget constraints, we weren’t able to do much exploring of Eastern Europe, and being that we were to fly from Amsterdam, it wasn’t even practical to go there at all.  So we compromised, and visited Prague, which could be considered Eastern Europe, but only just.  The city was every bit as beautiful as I was led to believe, with a large river dividing it in two.  On the one side you could see rolling hills and beautiful, expansive buildings, likely churches or castles, of the Old Town.  One the other you could get lost in the Mala Strana, or “Lesser Town”, with its winding streets and marvel at the gothic architecture, the damage and subsequent restoration caused by World War II, the historical landmarks and homages to geniuses such as Franz Kafka.

Not counting the gorgeous Charles Bridge, which connects the old town to the Mala Strana, Prague is not a city of internationally recognized landmarks.  The bridge itself is worth mentioning though, as a walk along it is easily the most entertaining five-minute stroll you are likely to have in Prague. The construction is beautiful and distinctly “old world” through my Canadian eyes, and it offers breathtaking views of the river and city. There were dozens of amateur painters, caricaturists, musicians, and merchants. This truly felt like the centre of the city for our intents and purposes, and it is a definite highlight of my overall experience so far in Europe. We did a walking tour of the city, which was very interesting and informative, and enjoyed the pedestrian friendly city squares and shopping areas.  The IIHF Hockey World Cup was also on during our time in Prague, and I’ve got to say, few groups of people are as passionate about their hockey as the Czechs.  It was nice to be able to watch a full 60 minutes of hockey with people that cared again, as it had been 12 months since I was able to enjoy that luxury last. I also watched both Manchester City’s and Manchester United’s final league games in the lobby of our hostel/hotel and it was a sports memory I will not soon forget.  I won’t re-live the details here, but anyone who is a fan of English football will know that that was an historic day, the likes of which professional football might not see again for a very, very long time.  It is worth mentioning here that the hostel we stayed at in Prague was, without a doubt, the nicest hostel I have seen to this day.  It was the same price as any other piece of shit we could have paid for, but this place was lush.  The rooms were cleaned every day, the beds were disgustingly comfortable, the bathroom was 5-star, I could go on.  If anyone is planning a trip to Prague, hit me up for a recommendation on good, budget accommodation, because this blows any other hostel (and most other hotels actually) out of the water. The only negative thing I could say, and this wasn't really the hostel's fault, was that Hillary had something like 300 Euros stolen from her purse while I was meant to be watching it in the rec room of our lobby. I, admittedly, should have been paying closer attention, but I figured that we were far enough into the hotel that we wouldn't have to worry about locals coming in from the street and ripping tourists off.  This is just something to note about being in Prague I suppose, and I can’t blame our hostel too much for it.

But of course we did not come to Prague to marvel at how comfortable beds can be (omg so comfortable), no, we came to do what class?  Yes, Mark, there at the back.  Speak up please Mark. That’s right Mark, we came to Prague to get fucking wasted!!! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gorgeous city, but we were primarily there to move it move it, and as luck would have it, hey my birthday! A night of extreme hedonism occurred on the 14^th of May, 2012, and it is a night that I can barely remember. It started with a pub crawl, which we paid for, and we had two hours of unlimited booze at some tourist-trap dive in central Prague.  Now, imagine you’re back in high school and then read that sentence again.  I know right? Things quickly got messy.  I met some pretty cool people, one girl from Chicago, a couple of Brazilian guys, some people from Wales (I think???), and lots more, but things started to get hazy right around the time they all learned that it was my birthday.  Soon, the two hours of free drinking was coming to a close (and I hadn’t even puked yet!!!! Go Adrian!!!). Here is what I remember of the rest of the night:

-We left the bar and began being obnoxious and English on the streets of Prague.

-I sprinted in a random direction for a few seconds.

-I had a lie down, probably feeling that I had earned a rest.

-I followed a group of people into our next bar.

-The bartender greeted us with our welcome shots (paid for).

-That is all.

Hillary taking care of her little brother

I then woke up in hostel room at 10:30 the next morning, the taste of Osama Bin Laden’s asshole in my mouth, and the intense angry glare of my sister burning a hole through my already aching skull. Here is what actually happened the rest of the night:

-I got drunk.

-I got really really drunk.

-I got really really REALLY drunk, to the point that I blacked out (something that has only happened one other time in my life, ahhhh Ecuador, good times).

-I began trying to ditch Hillary (comparatively sober) at any given moment.

-We left the second bar early, saying that we were going to get a cab with our new friend and go elsewhere.

-Instead, I sprinted in a random direction.

-Hillary couldn’t catch up and lost me, we had no phones, and she had no idea where our hostel was.

-By the time Hillary found her way back, I was passed out in my bed, fully clothed (no idea how I got there).

I am a horrible human being.  Now the cherry on the top of all this was that, in my pocket, there was a package of some sort of plant.  It smelled of pine needles and looked like vine.  It was wrapped neatly in cling-wrap and was in my back pocket.  I do not remember acquiring the strange substance, but my hunch is that, somewhere along my stumble back to the hostel, I tried to acquire some weed.  Some locals saw me and decided to take my money and trick me into thinking I had paid for some trippy shit when really they had just grabbed some leaves and wrapped them up. Part of me wanted to just eat one and see what would have happened, and I wanted to keep them with me, but we were to be crossing a border and this definitely was not worth it, so I left the “drugs” in our room when we checked out. After much apologizing and pre-planning for future nights out, Hillary and I moved on and hopped on a bus headed for Munich.

I had picked Munich as our destination for these five days in May because the city was hosting the final of the UEFA Champion’s League.  Hometown heroes FC Bayern had qualified for the match (one of my favourite football clubs since I was a kid), but so had the evil west-Londoners Chelsea – a true classic was almost certainly in the stars.  The city's prices had effectively doubled for the influx of tourists, and budget accommodation was almost impossible to find on short notice. I tried using my couchsurfing profile, but seeing as I had never hosted anyone, my profile looked weak, and I’m sure Munich based couch-surfers were overflowing with requests from safe, viable options. We settled on a quiet dorm-style hostel in Groebenzell (quite far from the city centre) for the first two nights, but were forced to shell out a couple hundred Euro a night for the two nights surrounding the game. At least we got to stay in a decent place for once: an upscale bed-and-breakfast with a private bathroom (finally) and a full complimentary breakfast (if you are a backpacker reading these words, you know what this means: TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE) in a very posh looking suburb north of the city. For the final night, we stayed at a hostel in the city centre, as prices were coming down and availability was returning.  We tried to keep all this moving around out of our heads and enjoyed the buzz of the city as best we could.  Everywhere you went, people were bubbling with excitement over the big game.  Many shops on the main drag had options for fans to choose their favourite team by picking red or blue (balloons, ice-cream, scarves, the list goes on), and at night, there would be film projections set to music on the side of four story buildings along the main shopping drag, highlighting the two team’s respective runs to the final.  We soaked up the atmosphere, and also walked around the city marveling at the very visible scars of decades of gripping world history.  We enjoyed the odd beer hall, but spent most of our time in the beautiful public parks or else checking out various monuments or otherwise historical sites.  The history that has unfolded in Munich, specifically in the 1930s and 40s, to me is very interesting, and it’s always so surreal to stand on the same ground that something so world-changing happened on. Now I suppose here is where I need to get to the game, but (spoiler alert) it was painful, so I’m going to try to be brief.

Our view of the screen

Those behind us had
to get a bit more creative...

On the day of the game, Hillary and I spent a while trying to figure out where we were going to watch it. Any pub would have been past capacity by noon, and we didn't want to get tickets to watch the game on a gigantic screen like the one at the Olympic Park.  We eventually decided to try to track down the public viewing screen in Englischer Garten – the city’s largest and most beautiful park. When we finally found the beer garden and screen, we discovered that the fenced off section had filled up long ago, and it would be very hard to see the screen from where we currently were.  We did some snooping, and eventually found an area that, if we could steal some chairs from the beer garden (done and done), we could see the screen through the fence.  We settled in, began getting familiar with the like-minded people around us, and got to drinking.  One thing I really, really love about Bavaria is that they don’t fuck around.  If you want a beer, you get a litre, that’s just how it is.  Are you a pussy?  Fine, have a half litre (still a pint), pussy. After four or five separate occasions of waiting in the queue for beer, meeting sexy Swedish women on the third such occasion for some reason, I was sufficiently plastered, and the game was well on its way.  Bayern Munich was seen by virtually every football fan or analyst to be the superior team, and they were playing on home turf as well.  They outplayed Chelsea for nearly the entire game, but couldn’t score until the 83rd minute.  But score they did, via Thomas Muller, and it all seemed to be playing out like a perfect fairy tale. Then, *shudders*, Didier Drogba happened. On virtually their only half-decent chance of the entire game, Chelsea swung a corner kick on to the head of the African superstar at the near post, and he drilled it into the back of the net. 88th minute equalizer. Extra time. Fuck. Now, Arjen Robben (one of my favourites) COULD HAVE FUCKING WON THE GAME if he had just converted his penalty kick (that’s right, a PK in extra time, would you like that gift-wrapped??), but the stupid Dutch asshole screwed the pooch.  Penalty shootout.  Fuck.  Well, no, not fuck.  Germans rule in shootouts and the English always choke, right?  RIGHT?  Well, yeah, this is usually the case, but blah blah blah I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT Schweinsteiger missed, Didier Drogba stepped up and converted the winning kick, and the entire crowd groaned.  Off in the distance, I heard some drunken Englishmen breaking beer glasses and beginning to go wild.  Fuck this, back to the hotel. What could have been a maddening night of celebration of their local team’s successes (that I could have partaken in!!!) turned into a depressingly early night, the shouts of obnoxious British thugs ringing early into the morning.

                                                                         

I attempted to bury the memory of that night deep in my brain, and it was easy to do, because I had a show to attend the following night! It’s not very often that you cross paths with one of your favourite musicians as a backpacker, but as luck would have it, famed lyricist and frontman of legendary Canadian indie-rockers The Weakerthans, John Samson, was playing a small club in Munich, and I of course snagged tickets.  His solo album had come out in January, and I almost wore out my iPod playing that album during my time in Muizenberg.  As a songwriter, only one other person has come close to reaching that level of pure, sincere communication that John Samson has for me, and I was so glad to finally get my chance to see him in the flesh.  It’s kind of a weird scenario when you think of it: a Canadian icon’s performance being watched by an adoring Canadian fan for the first time, in Germany, naturally. The show was magnificent, even more than I hoped it would be.  He opened with “One Great City” which, as those that follow my word-vomit will know, I hold in very high regard.  The rest of his set was a mix of cuts from his new solo album, and tracks from The Weakerthans' catalogue, including many cuts from the absolute masterpieces “Left and Leaving” and “Reconstruction Site.”  When the main set ended and the roars of encore were finally shushed by Samson’s return to stage, a strange feeling filled the air, the feeling that something special was about to unfold.  He approached the microphone and, being the polite, modest Canadian boy that we raised him to be, thanked us profusely for caring so much about his music. He then did something I have never witnessed at any of the hundreds of shows I have attended in my life: he asked the audience what they wanted him to play.  Someone would shout a song, he would think about it for a second, then, in the most nonchalant way possible, would just say “ok” and begin strumming the first chord. His band accompanied him for some numbers, but the majority of the seven-song encore was played solo.  Ocassionally someone would shout something impossible like PLAY HOSPITAL VESPERS and John would laugh, grin, and say "no I'm sorry I don't think we can do that one." When he first asked us what he should play, I immediately shouted PLEA FROM A CAT NAMED VIRTUTE, one of my all-time favourite tracks.  That shit, no lie, saved my life one time, and it’s one of the most brilliant lyrical songs of our generation.  Of course, he said “ok” and fulfilled a dream I'd had ever since first listening to Reconstruction Site while mowing my parent's lawn one summer. The real magic though, as if that wasn't good enough, was when he played the final song of the evening.  The requests were off at this point, and an uncharacteristically serious, determined look crossed his face. He unplugged his guitar, hopped down from the three-foot stage, walked into the middle of the audience, grabbed a bar stool and stood on it, and, completely acoustically, performed the most tear-jerking song known to man, and the second part of my request, Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure.  Hearing those words being sung by the master himself, mere metres between us, nothing but the sound of his voice and guitar filling the room: that was a moment I hope I never forget.  That night, John Samson changed my perception of what a live show could be. It was gloriously beautiful, personal, and heart-wrenching.  I bought a book containing all of his lyrics and poems, shook the man's hand (definitely freaking him out with over-the-top praise in the process), and left the venue heading for the U-Bahn.  It was a truly glorious show, and I can only hope I get the chance to see him perform in Canada one day (hopefully with the rest of The Weakerthans). I took several videos of the night, here are the opening two songs:

That was all the fun and games in store for us in Munich, and it was now time to begin heading back towards Amsterdam for our flight to England. We had time for one stopover, and while we could have gone off the beaten path a bit with some kitschy little town in western Germany, we picked Brussels on account of the beer (me) and the chocolate (Hillary). Our journey there was via three different trains, with connections in towns in western Germany that I had never even heard of. I know that 17 minutes waiting for a connection and starting at the skyline off in the distance, or seeing beautiful landscapes whiz by at 200 km/h doesn't really count as visiting a place, but it’s better than nothing, and I actually enjoyed our day of travel. When we arrived in Brussels and sorted out the underground transit system (pretty damn efficient actually), we quickly found our hostel. It had mixed reviews online, and it was easy to see why. It seemed like a nice place, and in theory it should have been, but there was just something “off” about it. The showers were in a disgusting unfinished basement, and the walk there (through the main eating/socializing area) makes you feel like you’re in prison. The kicker though, was that even though they advertised this place as an international hostel for backpackers, they seemed to be hosting large groups of local school-children, some of whom were very young. This made breakfast a nightmare, and gave this hostel a vibe that most legitimate budget/backpackers establishments aim to eliminate completely.  It wasn't dirty or dangerous or anything, but it was not a nice place to spend time. This didn't bug us too much, and we spent our few days there exploring the strange kitschy appeal of the city. There are many different angles one can take towards enjoying Brussels, and I like to think we covered most of them.  We saw all the main landmarks and tourist attractions quickly, but that’s not what Brussels is about.  Right outside our hostel was a large public park with a small botanical garden, various art installations  a duck pond, and tonnes of very unique views of a bustling city background juxtaposed against the lush green foreground. Most of our time in the actual city was spent doing silly things like going up to the top of rickety parking structures for panoramic views of the skyline, stumbling upon a group of teenagers freestyle rapping in French with a ghetto blaster straight from the 80s, going to a publicly funded petting-farm/animal sanctuary, taking pictures of the city's colourful graffiti, sitting on benches by a skate-park and passing the time watching the youth of the city chill out and enjoy life, trying to find authentic Belgian chocolate off the main tourist drag (where the display of variety is just an illusion, and prices are offensively high), eating way too many chips (fries) and justifying it by saying that we were in their birthplace (we were!!!), and wandering through the leafy public parks. Though our budget constrains were very tight by this point, I splashed out and dropped some modest Euro to visit a museum of musical instruments.  It was pretty cool for me to see a comprehensive look at the evolution of musical instruments over the course of human history, as I am pretty unknowledgeable about anything pre 1950s. 

An old gothic cathedreal with a modern architectural
interpretation of it across the street - classic Brussels

While it is true that I only visited the capital, I think I can safely say that, for me, and I imagine for many others as well, the main reason to visit Belgium is for their exquisite beer. Coming from North America, I am not as well-versed in all the different types of ales, lagers, or stouts like my European friends, but I like to think that I have at least acquired a decent taste, and enjoy a modest amount of knowledge regarding different types of every self-respecting man’s favourite drink. Having said that, I offer this bold claim: Belgium produces the best beer in the world (edging out Germany by a hair). The variety itself is overwhelming for a person of my previous level of experience with beers. I won’t list the types I had, because that would take a long time, but each was more delicious than the last. The Trappist Ales, mainly coming from Belgium, are simply out of this world, and would come highly recommended from anyone with a taste for beers around the world. I enjoyed many on a hot afternoon with a Belgian friend of mine, Thomas, who made the trip out from his home near Antwerp to talk local politics, music, and how one of the beers we tried smelled and tasted strongly of marijuana.  Neat!?

After gorging ourselves on chocolate and beer, Hillary and I started to head back to Amsterdam in preparation for our flight in just a few days. In less than a week, Hillary and I would both be working ridiculous hours, our extended vacations coming to a screeching halt, so these last few days back in Amsterdam needed to be hazy if you catch my drift. Our hostel this time around was not located in the centre of the downtown core, but instead it was a 15-minute tram ride away, near the Van Gogh Museum.  This was both a positive and a negative: on the one hand, it would be nice to be in a safer area, and one with a bit more space – not in the middle of a cluttered, noisy, and dirty city centre.  On the other hand, part of what made our first stint in Amsterdam so enjoyable was that we were right in the middle of all the action, and could return to or leave from our hostel whenever convenient.  Anyway, this is a minor point at most.  I won’t go into detail on the specifics of how we spent our days in Amsterdam this time around, as I'm sure you can all imagine that we mostly did more of the same. Our hunger for exploration had long been satisfied, and some small part of us was just looking forward to being settled in one place for the next few months.  We visited some coffee shops, did some shopping, enjoyed the beautiful parks, and did an informative walking tour. Nothing too special, but it was exactly what we wanted out of the city – three days of calm. I also met up with another friend of mine, this one an American who was doing a semester abroad. Over a joint or nine we wandered from Nieuwmarket to the “island” that his student housing building was located on, and discussed, what else, music. Adam had been living there since January and I, having been moving around to different areas or the world, each with drastically different levels of tolerance towards marijuana, was easily outsmoked by the Electric City himself. I spent most of the night in a fit of social paranoia as the effects of the pure Amsterdam chronic reintroduced itself to my brainspace. It was a great night though, and it made me wish that I had gotten my shit together when I was in university, and maybe I could have done a semester in such an amazing city.

With one last toke, we made our way to the airport early one brisk morning in late May, only to have our EasyJet flight delayed over ninety minutes due to a small clerical error (gotta love budget airlines) and as a result we almost missed our train from London to Truro (which we had already paid 100 Pounds for each).  It was one last day of unnecessarily stressful travel with comedically oversized bags but it was soon to all be behind us. This day was bittersweet.  Here I was, at the end of my eight month journey in many ways.  Trotting around Africa and Europe had worked up quite a bill, and it was time to earn some money. The backpacking was over, but a new adventure of sorts was on the horizon. The tiny little town of Padstow awaited – our home for the next three months.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner

When we finally managed to drag ourselves from Amsterdam, we were left with a little under a month to see as much of that area of Europe as we could, and hopefully not spend too much in the process. The full plan took a while to formulate, but we made a decision to get the train to Berlin first, and it was a good choice indeed.  Ever since my first real jaunt around Europe back in 2009, I’ve always felt that Berlin was one of my favourite places I’d seen thus far.  The way that recent history and culture collide in the former heart of both the Second World War and the Cold War (two events which basically dominated the course of 20^th century history) is astounding to see and experience.

Alexanderplatz and the
famous East Berlin landmark,
the TV tower

Our hostel was in the heart of what was formerly East Berlin, located in a leafy and quiet neighbourhood, but close to the main road, Frankfurter Allee.  Most of our use of public transport took us through Alexanderplatz, but it turned out to be more than that during our stay in Berlin.  One thing that Vancouver really lacks, in my opinion, is public space.  Stanley Park is amazing, yes, but there are few grand squares to talk about in urban BC.  While Hillary was doing some shopping, trying to replace a lost tablet charger (among other endeavours), I just hung out and enjoyed the people around me.  I watched a shoegaze-y/stoner metal band busk and try to sell CDs for a while.  I stood under a gigantic circular structure (split into the different time zones of the world) and watched a man sing Tom Petty covers as a tram rolled through the square, the number 7 I believe. Some kids behind me were trying to kickflip down a couple of stairs.

Brandenburg Gate (above)
the memorial (below)

Of course we didn’t spend all day hanging out in squares, we really explored as much of the city as we could.  The first day, we got orientated by taking a “free” walking tour (many cities in Europe offer them and they’re usually a great introduction to a city).  You’re meant to tip, but technically you don’t have to. We started at the Brandenburg Gate in the centre of Berlin, and explored outwards from there.  Personal highlights for me were the controversial memorial to the murdered Jews of the holocaust, which is essentially hundreds of concrete slates of various sizes.  They’re rather small on the outside, starting out at under a foot tall, but as you go “inside” the memorial and closer to the centre, the figures become massive, some over 15 feet high.  The reason I like this memorial so much more than most of the others I have seen, is because it is interactive, but also open to interpretation.  The message isn’t contained on a plaque of information on the outside, or a photo of a few of the millions of those killed.  Instead, it’s the feelings that the individual takes away from the experience that is the focus.  It’s a brilliantly simple idea, and the execution is spot on (in my opinion).  There are layers of controversy surrounding the monument though, the most interesting one being that the paint which coats the slates to prevent graffiti sticking to them is produced by a derivative of the company that provided the Nazis with massive quantities of the materials to make Zyklon B gas in the 1940s. Another bit of controversy results from the several million Euro paid, from the German taxpayers, for the construction of the memorial. I won’t get into all that now because we’d be here all day, but like I said: layers of controversy.

Speaking of graffiti (sort of), it’s a main reason why Berlin is such an amazing city.  I know that most people back home have a negative image in their mind when they hear this word, but Berlin is one of the capitals of the world when it comes to street-art, in all its forms. Sections of the city, especially in the formerly communist Eastern side, are covered with colourful murals and beautiful paintings. One day, we essential did a self-guided tour of all of the most colourful areas of Berlin’s underground street culture.  We started just north of the city centre at a place called Kunsthaus Tacheles.  It is a building that is inhabited with dozens of artists of all different sorts.  We wandered around and looked at paintings, sculptures, some instillations, and loads of everything in between.  I enjoyed a few of the artist’s work quite a lot, and actually bought a couple of things.  These are the sorts of things I don’t mind spending money on when I’m a tourist, because these guys are local artists just trying to get paid for doing what they love, and most of them are really good.  After exploring some of the huge bits of graffiti in the surrounding area (I Hate CBS!), and after venturing into a particularly interesting side alley filled with marvellous bits of art (the current background for this blog being my favourite piece) and independent record and comic book stores, we wandered East, through Alexanderplatz once more (god I love that place) and towards the East-Side Gallery: the largest remaining section of the Berlin Wall, a massive, foreboding structure, which was erected virtually overnight and destroyed the lives of countless thousands of Berliners. Of course, the new Berliners approach to the 21st century and the way with which they pay respect to, and learn from, their past, is always on display.  The East-Side Gallery is perhaps the most tangible example of that, as what was formerly a symbol of oppression and totalitarianism has now been covered with the work of hundreds of artists who were commissioned to fill certain spaces.   We spent maybe an hour walking around and looking at the huge variety of visual art, still essentially “street art” though.  We also went south from there to explore an area with random pieces of beautiful art almost scattered among the store fronts and sidewalks.  We stopped at a shisha bar to enjoy a hookah and a drink in the gorgeous summer Berlin weather, and watched the world pass us by.

One side of the Kuntshaus Tacheles

Someone hates CBS!

In the random side alley with cool shops and lots of graffiti

Near our hostel, in the heart of East Berlin (above and below)

"Another brick in the wall" -- at the East Side Gallery

(For any of you interested in seeing pictures of Berlin's street art, or what I saw of it, check out this album on facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100319245501461.2495096.21011192&type=3  I'm assuming every one who would be reading this is friends with me on facebook so seeing it shouldn't be a problem for any of you.  If you're a random and I don't know you, well that's weird but thanks for reading anyway!)

One night, while cooking dinner in our hostel’s shared kitchen, we met some people.  There were a couple of girls from USA and also a nice, but quiet Korean couple, among others. We noticed a couple of guitars in the corner and one of us made an off-hand remark wondering whose they were.  When the Korean couple piped up and claimed them, we were surprised.  We got to talking, and through some hilarious broken English, managed to communicate enough to figure out that they were basically touring around Europe and trying to play gigs wherever they could. They didn’t have any solid plans, but would basically just arrive in a new city, try to set up some shows, and stay for as long as they could still find shows to play, then move on to the next city.  It’s the way to live really, when you think about it.  Anyway, they offered to play us some music, and we of course accepted, curious to see what these two shy, previously quiet people could come up with.  They played us two or three of their own original songs (which were very good, the girl could sing very well and her husband was a great guitarist) before finishing with a rendition of Country Load…er…I mean ‘Road’ … that I will never forget.  It was one of those random moments in a hostel common area that makes the whole budget travelling across the world thing worth all the horror stories of messy bathrooms and loud, stinky roommates.

Other bits of the city that I enjoyed hanging around in included the main buildings of the famous Humboldt University (which can boast graduates such as Albert Einstien, Otto von Bismarck, and Heisenberg), and “museum island” which has some glorious squares and large spaces, perfect for a hot sunny day. The crowning jewel of Museum Island’s five permanent fixtures is the world famous Pergamon, which is, apparently, considered by many to be one of the best in the world.  A lack of funds and interest meant that our experience was limited to the outside of the building, but we enjoyed walking along the river and enjoying the scenery of the area anyway. On my last visit to the city, three years ago, I had stumbled upon a falafel stand that, I swear to god, made the best falafel I’ve ever had.  We hunted for it and before too long I had tracked it down.  They’ve grown since I had seen it last (it’s almost doubled in size) but the falafels were every bit as extraordinary as I had remembered.

Before we left Berlin, having since deciding that Prague was to be our next stop, we decided to do a tour of one of the nearby former concentration camps called Sachsenhausen, north of Berlin.  It was one of the first to be established in Germany during The Third Reich, and it was something that Hillary wanted to see.  They have kept a barracks more or less intact (one of dozens that filled the large compound) to show how the prisoners lived.  The guide spoke quite a bit about the internal political structure of the camp, and the way with which propaganda was used to hide the truth about this place from the citizens of the area. Among the many interesting things we saw there was the massive structure in the centre of the compound.  Because this part of Germany had been liberated by the Russians, this structure is a monument the “heroic” Russian soldiers.  There is, of course, controversy surrounding it, as it is a piece of propaganda in itself, but I don’t really want to write pages about a concentration camp. It was an interesting and informative day, not to mention gruesome and sobering, as I’m sure you can imagine a visit to a former concentration camp must be, so let’s leave it there. 

On that cheerful note, it’s time to wave goodbye to Berlin and look forward to the splendours of the Czech Republic.  It would be my first venture into Eastern Europe, and I hope to explore the area more thoroughly one day for sure. We boarded a bus from the main station in Berlin and set off on a six hour journey to Prague. What happened next can only be described, accurately mind you, as a proper Bohemian rhapsody. Stay tuned. 

From Rags to Riches

With the African experience slowing fading from sight in the rear-view mirror, it was forward towards Europe.  After eight months of cramped public transport, run-down city-centres, living off poorly stocked grocery stores, and evil death-glares by poor and angry Africans, the adjustment back into the “developed world” would be nothing if not shocking. By this point, our plans for the summer had been firmed up quite permanently.  Due to our dual-nationality status (my Dad was born in Plymouth, England), Hillary and I were able to obtain, fairly easily, British passports.  This would allow us to try and find work while in Europe which, for me (at this point), had become a necessity to even be able to afford a flight back across the Atlantic, let alone begin to tackle the quite foreboding mountain of debt I’d been accumulating since the money went dry sometime in March (I still have $2000 in traveller’s cheques sitting at home, so that will be a bit of help).  As luck would have it, old family friends of my dad and his parents own a chain of businesses in Cornwall, the south-western most area of England.  Good ol’ papa Hertzberg pulled some strings, and we both landed full-time summer jobs in Padstow.  There will be more on that later, but we still had a month to play with in Europe.  There were, however, limitations to this jaunt around the globe.  As previously mentioned, money was running tight, and moving from Africa to tourist hotbeds such as Amsterdam, Prague, and Munich, was quite difficult to adjust to.  We could no longer find a meal for a couple of bucks, we were looking at an absolute minimum of $5 any time we wanted to eat something.  Finding hostels with good kitchens and good proximity to grocery stores became very important.

Anyway, on to the action.  My flight left Nairobi on Saturday night, and arrived in Zurich early in the morning.  When I booked the ticket over a year ago, I guess I didn’t really care about future Adrian because I scheduled in a ten-hour layover in Zurich (taking a train to Amsterdam would have taken less time than what I waited in the airport).  I tried to see if I could get moved to an earlier flight, but it was a minimum fee of 200 Euro for any change.  I might have cared more if I had to wait in a dodgy African airport, like Nairobi’s or Dar es Salaam’s, but I was so happy to be in Europe at last that I hardly cared at all.  When I finally arrived in the familiar Amsterdam airport on Sunday evening, the sun was poking through the cloud and lighting the warm spring air with a beautiful orange hue.  I selected the new Japandroids album from my iPod, collected my bags from the carousel with minimum fear of my belongings being snatched from me, withdrew a large sum of cash from an ATM with no hassle from those surrounding me, walked past the designer clothing stores, and strutted out of the airport into the glorious Amsterdam evening with a grin from ear to ear.  This next month was going to be good.

As a present to Hillary and me, and in an attempt to shove the horror stories of Africa from our memories for a while, the parents had paid for us to stay in an airport hotel for three nights upon arriving in Holland.  Think about it: I had just come from staying in hostels that sometimes had power, occasionally had luke-warm water, usually had staff that would attempt to steal your things, always had uncomfortable beds and loud, smelly backpackers, and that were usually located in incredibly dangerous areas (compared to the standard I had been used to, of course), and now we were suddenly staying in a proper hotel room, with its OWN BATHROOM with HOT water, a bath AND a shower, comfortable beds (holy mother of god were they sublime), and staff that would be fired and potentially criminally charged if so much as a penny was found missing from any of the guests.  Oh and I’ve forgotten to mention to most important thing.  This hotel had, hands down, the most bitching breakfast buffet the world has ever seen.  Literally anything you could possibly want to eat or drink for breakfast was available in unlimited quantity. It was surreal.  But the cherry on top (or actually, all of what I’ve just said is the cherry, this is the ice cream and delicious hot fudge) was that I had finally returned to one of my favourite cities in Europe: the ever-glorious Amsterdam.

Welcome to Holland. Have a joint to ease the pain of the past eight months.

Now ok, some of you are probably judging me pretty hard right now, but their toleration towards cannabis is far from being the only thing going for Amsterdam.  Some of you will know that yes, I do enjoy the occasional smoke (but only on weekends and never before 8PM), and I will admit that I spent a great deal of time high as a kite, but most of my time in the city was spent exploring its beauty.  They call Amsterdam “the Venice of the North,” but really I think it should be the other way around. It’s easy, encouraged even, to get lost in the small side-streets and canals of Holland’s capital city, and as such, avoiding the unpleasant tourist tat on the main streets is as easy as “out of sight, out of mind.”  If you’d like to spend the day sight-seeing, Amsterdam has that.  If you’d like to spend the day hanging out in fantastic public parks, there’s that too.  If you’d like to learn about a huge chunk of the history of human civilization over the past millennium, well, Amsterdam’s got you covered.  And, of course, if you’d like to get fucking wasted and buy two-headed dildos well then hey, come join the party.  Honestly, Amsterdam is the place to be, for so many reasons.  We spent most of our time either in coffee shops (me) or H & M (Hillary), or else chilling in one of the city’s many stunning public parks.  Perhaps the coolest thing about the city (for me) is its integration of bike lanes into a working city.  Every proper street has bike lanes, and the traffic cycles work in bike traffic too.  This means that the drivers are that much more clever and aware, and that being a pedestrian takes on a whole other dimension.  One of the most common things to see in bike lanes near popular tourist areas is a group of tourists with their heads down, unknowingly cutting off a swerving local.  It must be frustrating as hell to live there, but I think the regulars know which areas to avoid. Hillary and I decided to chuck a modest amount of Euro and hire bikes for the day. With nowhere in particular to go, we explored the city in a random, spontaneous fashion, occasionally stopping to check out a nice coffee shop or record store.  Oh yeah I forgot to mention: Amsterdam has some of the best vinyl shopping I’ve ever seen.  I resisted the (very, very strong) temptation to treat myself to a record or twelve, mainly because there was no way I could fit them in either of my backpacks.

Being that Amsterdam is quite a popular destination for all sorts of travellers, we met new people and enjoyed the splendours of the city in company.  Of particular note were two English guys, friends since high school, one of whom was living and working in Cornwall (where I am now, weird), and one who was living in Switzerland, near Geneva.  They both had a weekend off and decided to meet up for the first time in a year, and Hillary and I were lucky enough to be in on the party.  The city was absolutely buzzing with a pre-summer kind of excitement that can’t be articulated.  Everywhere you looked friends were enjoying beers and splifs together or relaxing on patches of freshly mowed grass; it was a glorious sight. To feel like we had actually checked something significant off the Amsterdam tourist’s “must-see” list, we visited the Van Gogh museum one day.  It was a good exhibit, and contained lots of interesting information, but, with a few exceptions, I’ve never been much of a museum guy, and we were both more keen on biking around the city, stopping when something caught our eye. We don’t know if it was because we had come straight from Africa to the city of indulgence in the land of excess, but for some reason, we both loved Amsterdam and didn’t want to leave.  After six days, we finally dragged our heads out of the clouds and began to plan our next month. 

Train and bus tickets around Europe are quite expensive and, unless you can afford to be there for at least a couple of months and can afford a Eurail pass, the only thing you can do is snatch up the cheapest ticket whenever you see it.  Poor planning and a lack of funds meant that we couldn’t do an incredible amount of exploring with our month in Europe, but we settled on an itinerary of: Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Munich, Brussels, and back to Amsterdam for our flight to London. Of these five cities, only Prague would be new to me, but I loved Berlin the first time I’d been there, Munich was playing host to the Champions League final, and Brussels was a convenient stop off on the way back to Amsterdam.  So we bought all of our tickets in one go (to try to save a few Euro) and set our itinerary in stone.

So, as much as I enjoyed Amsterdam on my second visit, it was time to move on: to Berlin.  I was there in 2009 and it is one of my favourite cities in the world.  On my previous visit, I was fascinated not only by the visible scars of two world wars and ruins of the communist vs. capitalist fiasco, but by the vibrant and unique street-culture that had evolved there, not to mention the friendly and oh so sexy locals. If German wasn’t such a completely different language from those which I can claim some understanding of (English, a bit of French, and a tiny bit of Spanish), I would seriously consider moving there, perhaps permanently.  Come to think of it, I still might.

Anyway, we were finally out of Africa and back in familiar territory.  It was a strange adjustment, but most of it passed by in a surreal haze of spending and a lack of fear for my life.  I will soon be putting together a blog post that is somewhat different from what I usually do, and it will be regarding my time in Africa, including my feelings towards the issues of poverty, disease, and political corruption, as well as western and local attitudes towards these things, how they differ, and why it matters.  For now I hope you have enjoyed my brief account of my time in Amsterdam.  We returned there for a few days at the end of the month, so I will go into a bit more detail about the city itself in a later post.  Stay tuned for tales from Berlin, Prague, Munich, and Brussels, and also some musings on a continent lacking in capital but rich in culture.  

Out Of Africa

After leaving Rwanda, we had about two weeks before we needed to be in Nairobi to catch our flights to Europe. This meant going through Uganda before returning to Kenya, and it was strange being back in somewhat familiar territory.  Our bus from Kigali left early in the morning and the first couple of hours of the journey, through the rolling hills of Rwanda, with the morning dew glistening in the slowly rising sun, was a stunning departure from the country.  Any of you who have read my post about The Hairy Lemon may remember someone I mentioned named Abdel.  He was a kayaker that visited Uganda occasionally, but was living in Kigali at the time.  I wondered if maybe we would run into him, and strangely enough, he was actually on the same bus, kayak and all.  It was nice to see him and catch up.  He was heading straight to Jinja to kayak, but we were stopping in Kampala, the capital city.  The border crossing went pretty smoothly, though anything would have been better than the stress endured at that Tanzania-Rwanda border.

Upon arriving in Kampala something like 12 hours after we had left Kigali, we made our way to the hostel we had picked.  In Kampala, there seem to be basically two options for backpackers: Red Chilli’s and Kampala Backpackers.  When I was in Kampala in January, I was with Hollie and stayed with her friends who lived there, so I had not stayed in hostels.  We picked Backpackers because we’d heard several bad stories from fellow travellers about Red Chilli's, and I’ve learned that advice from fellow travellers is worth more than anything you could read in a guide-book or on hostelworld.com.  It was an alright place, the room was a little dim and the staff were a little bit sketchy, but it was a well-run hostel and nothing terrible happened there.  We had lots of fun boda-boda rides while there (the only way to get around in Kampala unless you own a car), weaving through traffic with the driver, Hillary, and me, on one bike, brought back good memories. We didn’t really do too much in Kampala besides visit some markets and half-heartedly wander around the crazy streets.  As I’ve mentioned before, we were both tiring of the mental strain of backpacking Africa, and our ambition had decreased quite a bit.

We moved on to Jinja so that I could see my friends Trina and Bhupi.  They were still living there (they returned back to their homes, Trina to NY City and Bhupi to India, in early May) and so we hung out with them for a few days at the NRE Campsite north of Jinja. It was almost exactly as I remembered it, minus one major incident. One night, we were lying in the dorm room that we had to ourselves with the light on (not really noticing because it was still light outside).  As it began to get darker, neither of us really noticed that thousands of large flying-ant like creatures were entering the room from a small hole in the window.  When it was completely dark outside, after about twenty minutes, I awoke from my little nap to find the room filled with flying bugs, like that scene from The Mummy. If you swung your arm randomly in the air, you would hit fifty of them. It was absolutely disgusting and we got out of there as quickly as we could, but had to rush back in to get our shit and move it to a different room (with no fucking cracks in the netting on the windows). Hillary was, I think, legitimately traumatized. 

Anyway, after recovering from that shit, we settled into our new room and met some people.  When Bhupi finished work (he’s a raft guide) we met up with Trina and him and had a good ol’ time in the bar, reminiscing and discussing our rapidly changing future plans.  Before too long, we managed to meet up with Hollie.  Since leaving The Hairy Lemon in January, she has been living on an island just upstream.  It is owned by perhaps the most famous kayaker in the world, Steve Fisher.  He bought it and built a small house some years back because of its proximity to some of the best big water play spots in the world.  Nowadays, he’s spending less and less time in Uganda, partially due to his island being robbed on more than one occasion.  Hollie offered to, essentially, housesit for him, and so she lives on this magnificent little island in the middle of the White Nile, kayaking every day.  I had planned on taking Hillary to The Hairy Lemon before we left for Kenya, but Hollie graciously invited us to her island to stay for a few days.  After getting a cab some 20km up a very dusty and pothole-filled road, we arrived at the ferry, which was one Ugandan man in a very leaky looking, large wooden canoe.  Trina and Bhupi, who were still living in Jinja, let us store our huge backpacks with them while we were gone so that we didn’t have to deal with carrying it to both islands, with loads of valuables and heavy things. We paid 1000 Ush for the quick ferry. Upon arriving, we found Hollie sitting on her front porch, reading a book, (probably) having a tea, next to a gorgeous view of the Nile River in the afternoon.  I immediately remembered why I had missed Uganda so much. After getting reacquainted and introducing my sister, we spent the rest of the day sipping Kahlua on the little beach at the north end of the island, and talking. The sunset was, as always, absolutely sublime.  I swear, there is nothing in the natural world that compares with watching the hot Ugandan sun slowly retire over the horizon and lighting up the beautiful White Nile. Our days there were spent in hammocks, mostly, and Hollie treated us to a very avocado-based smorgasbord of food. After being in the insane metropolitan of Kampala, staying on this peaceful island, not seeing anyone else but us three for a few days, was glorious. 

When we left, Hollie came with us as she was heading towards Kampala.  The trip back to The Hairy Lemon should, in theory, be pretty simple.  After all, it is a mere thirty seconds downstream from Steve Fisher’s island.  But, alas, this is Uganda. Our voyage consisted of four parts. First, there was the ferry over to east side of the river. Then, we arranged boda-bodas (with great negotiating skills from Hollie: “Sebo, I live here do not take me for a fool.  It is 1000 for one person so we will give you 1500 for two”) to take us a few km north to another ferry. Third, we paid 1000Ush for a ferry across to the west side of the river. Finally, we walked back south a bit, stopping to say hi to people in the area who Hollie knew (and I had heard of haha) until we got to the entrance to The Hairy Lemon, then took the ferry to the middle of the river, and Hairy Lemon island. All the while, remember, we are the centre of attention everywhere we go because this is rural Uganda and we are white people. Nothing is every quite as straight-forward as is should be, but that is some of the charm of Uganda, and Africa in general.

Well anyway, we arrived at the Lemon at about 2:00PM, and there were three other guests.  It was surreal to be back to a place that I had spent over two weeks, including Christmas and New Years, and had fallen so in love with.  It was much different this time around.  Paul (the owner) was on holiday back in South Africa, to see his family (so no frolf, sadly). With Hollie gone, Anita had taken control of most of the daily operations. But the biggest change was that it was virtually empty.  Hollie quickly talked with Anita and the rest of the staff while I said hi to them again, not certain they’d remember me.  They did however; the people who work on the island are actually really awesome, and I got to know Grace, Asid, and Anita quite well.  Hollie and I then said our goodbyes as she set off for Kampala for a few days, while Hillary and I would be leaving for Kenya in three days’ time.  Hollie, m’gog, if you’re reading this: thank you so much for everything, I never would have experienced Uganda in the way that I did without you as my guide, host, and friend.  I hope our paths meet again one day. If you ever come to North America, let me know.

So we spent a couple days on the Lemon doing what one does there: relax.  Just as before, it was great food all the time, and there was plenty of time for reading, listening to music, and just chilling out.  Since I had last been there, Paul had actually managed to complete one of his many projects, and I must say that I’m impressed.  He’s built a small wall at the top of a little waterfall on the south side of the island to create a free-flowing, natural swimming pool, complete with concrete ledges, steps, and seats.  We spent the day doing laundry there (it was perfect because the waterfall was pretty powerful with high water levels and it was great for rinsing out your clothes), but mainly just floating about drinking beer (or Coke…).  On our last day, it actually rained for most of the morning, but it had stopped by the time we were to leave. I said my final farewells to the people who keep the Lemon running smoothly, and that had become friends.  Anita kept asking me when I was coming back, but it realistically wouldn’t be for a long time, if ever. Anyway, thank you so much to Anita, Asid, Grace, Chaga, and all the rest of the staff for being such awesome friends and helping to make my time there unforgettable.

Then, it was back to Jinja via the familiar (for me) way.  Ferry over to the mainland, the most terrifying boda-boda ride of your life for fifteen minutes until you get to Nazigo, then it’s an hour long matatu ride packed to the fucking brim with people. After getting to Jinja, we picked up a few things we needed for our bus ride to Nairobi, and then had to get on one final boda-boda ride, but at least it was one we had both done before. We got back to NRE Campsite at Bujagali and began packing all our shit that we had left in Trina and Bhupi’s banda. We had one final hurrah at the NRE bar that night and I then said my final final goodbyes (there are no more after this, don’t worry) to Trina and Bhupi.  I’m fairly certain that I’ll meet up with these two again and I hope you guys are both loving life.

One. More. Bus.  That’s all we had to do, and then it was off to Europe, where getting from A to B wasn’t a gigantic clusterfuck of bullshit.  ..sorry.  OK so we got a boda-boda to the pickup point of whatever bus company we had picked (I honestly can’t remember), and were there a good thirty minutes early.  We sat and waited in front of an abandoned, destroyed coach (pretty much identical to the one we ended up boarding – except for the missing wheel).

"Connecting East Africa"-- a thousand words

As far as the actual journey, well, it was more of the same.  As the bus had come from Kampala, the only seats left were right at the back.  The border crossing was, as anticipated, bull. It was hot and unpleasant, it took way too long, we were hungry and finding suitable food was difficult, aka bus transport in Africa. One thing I will specifically mention is the border officials coming in to Kenya were corrupt as fuck.  Surprise surprise.  We knew that you could get a transit visa of up to seven days (we needed two) and avoid paying for a $50 tourist visa (good for up to ninety days), but we had to go through a whole song and dance with these assholes. After eight long months of being screwed around, this was the cherry on top, but we got our way (as was the law) and got a transit visa.

As I feared, our bus arrived after dark, and Nairobi is notoriously dangerous for backpackers after dark.  We were downtown with all our possessions, and basically grabbed the first taxi driver we could.  We got a decent rate (which I later found out was standard from our hostel to the bus stop), and got the hell out of the heart of the city.  Our hostel was, surprisingly, one of the best that I think we stayed in during our Africa trip.  It was in a nice area, had a big property so there was not much noise, it was safe and secure, and had hot water (before 10AM and after 6 I think).  It had dorms, but we stayed in a two-person semi-permanent tent, similar to the ones we stayed in on the Serengeti. With the end in sight, we relaxed a bit and tried to enjoy Nairobi as much as one can. 


We went to the top of the Kenyatta International Conference Centre which offers excellent views of the city.  After shooing away some rude Kenyans who were discretely trying to photograph us (assholes), we were greeted by an incredibly enthusiastic tour guide, Peter.  We spent the next ten minutes getting a pretty detailed but brief history of the city by pointing out things around us.  He was probably the coolest person ever, and was always making half-cheesy, but entirely awesome jokes.  He kept insisting that we had done the right thing because from the top of the tower, we could see the city by just turning on the spot, instead of trying to navigate the chaos on the ground. He never pressured us to tip, but we ended up giving him a little bit (I think he was disappointed honestly, I'm pretty sure he followed us up from the first floor when he saw mzungus were visiting).  On our way back to the hostel that evening, I was stopped by a man who asked me to help his friends and him fix their matatu.  It had gone off the side of the road and the frame was resting against the concrete, so they needed to lift the matau and get the wheel back on the pavement. It took ages and all they made me do was stand there until they were ready to lift and push it.  I think they just wanted to say that they got the mzungu to help them fix their ride. These guys were friendly and funny, so I didn't mind the hold up. That night at our hostel, I met two girls from Northern Ireland who were pretty cool. We watched some weird DVDs that they had bought on the street.  The next day, Hillary and I tried to really cram in a full day of “seeing African things” because it was our last day in Africa.  We visited the giraffe sanctuary and kissed some giraffes, before setting off for the heart of the city to find the park where you can hang out with monkeys and give them peanuts (it’s pretty legit you guys).  However, Nairobi’s ugly traffic reared its head again, and it took us forever to get from the giraffe centre (out past Karen), past Kibera (that massive slum I visited), and into the centre of town. From there, we had to scramble at the busy matatu station to find the right one to take us to the right park. By the time we actually set off, we were gridlocked in traffic once more, and it was clear that getting to the park and back to our hostel before our pre-arranged cab to the airport was next to impossible.  We jumped out of the matatu on a street choked with traffic (paying the angry conductor who said that we still had to give him money because we took up seats and he wouldn’t pick anyone else up, I’m sure he did), and went back to the matatu park, and took our last ever matatu ride in Africa, towards our hostel. We stopped for some food at Yaya Centre (y go anywhere else?) and gathered our things from the hostel.  Then it was off to the airport and goodbye to Africa, but not before getting stuck in traffic for over an hour (it had rained a bit) for good measure. Of course, by this time we were Africa experts and had planned for this, and arrived at the airport in plenty of time. Our flights left from separate terminals, so Hillary and I parted ways to meet back up in Amsterdam in 24 hours (her flight was direct, I had an eleven hour layover in Zurich…).

With one final look back at the lights on the horizon and it was goodbye to Nairobi, to Kenya, to Africa.  It was goodbye to the continent that had accommodated me during a poorly planned, spontaneous eight months. I know that I have tried (valiantly, you might say) to put my experience of Africa into words, but, as a wise man once said, “words are futile devices,” and this rings true here.  It’s a place that cannot be summarized to a friend from back home, or can truly be understood by someone who has not been there. During my eight months, I barely scratched the surface of the rich culture, incredible sights, and friendly (if sometimes intimidating) people, that Africa has to offer.  Travellers say that Africa gets under your skin, that once you go, you have to go back.  At first I didn’t believe it.  I wanted to never be stared at or called mzungu again.  But as time wore on, I realized that it’s true.  Africa is a drug, and there’s something that’s absolutely impossible to explain about it. As I set off for Europe and later England, back to the “first world,” it was a weird adjustment. I’m not sure what the next few years of my life hold, but I do hope that one day in the future I again find myself with the means to do some more globetrotting.  While there are lots of places I still need to see, many spots in Africa hold a very special place in my heart.  To everyone that I met there, whether in Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia, wherever, thank you for making the experience unforgettable: exactly what I wanted it to be. 

Coming This Summer, only at 8900miles!

Alright so here's the deal.  I realize I've been slacking hard and haven't written a post since I was in Rwanda.  I've done much since then and for the few of you guys that actually care, I'll update my blog in the next few weeks to include:

-My return to Uganda and Kenya
-Out of Africa ==> Holland, Berlin, Prague, Munich (for the Champions League Final!), Brussels, and Amsterdam again
-England.  I'm now living in Cornwall (southwest) for the rest of the summer, making some money.
-Roskilde 2012 in Denmark which I just returned from and I'm still buzzing.

Now because I'm weirdly OCD about this, I feel the need to do everything in chronological order, but just so I don't piss myself from excitement before then, here's a quick blurb about the festival.

The estimated attendance is over 100,000 and it's one of Europe's oldest and most anticipated festivals of the summer.  This year, I was drawn there by local heroes Mew, recently reformed Swedish hardcore legends Refused, the (somehow) indie-superstar Bon Iver, and many others including M83, The Shins, Jack White, Bjork, Nasum, Baroness, The Roots, Janelle Monae, A$AP Rocky, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Shlohmo.  Needless to say, it was an amazing four days of musical experiences. But Roskilde is about so much more than that.  They have an incredible "more than music" campaign.  Before the proper festival kicked off on Thursday, there were five "warm-up" days; I was there for three of them. At "Street City" Roskilde has a massive vert ramp and excellent, professional quality skate park and bowl, and all week long they put on demos and contests, not to mention the occasional hip-hop battle or dance battle. There was also "Play City" which is several small pitches for football (soccer), volleyball courts, and loads of other stuff. Then there was "Radio City" from which Roskilde Radio was broadcast live.  There was "Swim City" where you go enjoy a dip in the lake (from the festival booklet) "...provided you are not intoxicated." Also, "Cinema City" (self-explainable), and "Poor City" (which is hard to explain...).  And then there was "Dream City" which was where I was camping.  This was an area where people were provided with the means to basically build whatever they wanted to, from sculptures to large, flamboyant, wooden stages.  The campground itself was legendary and is the main draw of the festival for the locals. Many of them say they even prefer the warm-up days, and I'll definitely go into more detail on that later. On top of all these crazy things to do in the warm-up days, there are actually two stages going as well!  Pavilion Junior (the smallest of Roskilde's six stationary venues) was showcasing local Danish bands in the hopes of exposing them to a large number of potential fans.  Also, there was Apollo Countdown, which was a stage that moved around to a different camping area each day during the warm-up.  When the "proper" festival started, it was stationed near Street City.  This venue was strictly electronic music and during the warm-up days it featured exclusively Scandinavian talent.


So there's the summary, stay tuned for the incredibly over-the-top full length versions in which I'll describe how awesome Refused, Mew, Bon Iver, Jack White....etc etc etc...were.

Mew at Orange Scene

Fear not my loving fanbase, I haven't died and there's plenty more shenanigans coming. My next post will talk about going back to Uganda and Kenya (this time with Hillary) before leaving Africa after eight, um, interesting (?) months.

A Longboarder's Paradise

Alright, the bus ride from hell. We left our hotel in Dar es Salaam at 4:30 in the morning, sharing our cab with a Tanzanian family who were way too weirded out about sharing a cab with a couple of mzungus.  When we got to the bus depot, I started to get a little worried about finding the right one as it was a veritable clusterfuck and it was way too early to use my formidable Africa skills.  Abdul had thought this through though and arranged for our driver to point us in the right direction. We waded through said clusterfuck until he pointed us towards a bus.  The driver said to us “Burundi?” to which we replied “fuck no” (apparently it’s really dangerous right now, and you’re only allowed a three-day visa anyway). Thanks Mr. Driver-man, swing and a miss.  Our actual bus was two spots over though, and plainly marked ‘Kigali’ and so we got on. When we approached the luggage hold we were shouted at in rapid-fire Kiswahili and eventually understood that there was no room for our bags down there, which was confusing as there were about five people on the bus. But it’s always worrying having stuff down there, what with random thefts and so on, so we happily agreed to keep them with us.  When we sat down though, we were told that we had to pay for the privilege of keeping them up in this part of the bus.  We said no, we were fine with them being kept below and were not about to pay for a situation that had been forced on us.  In extremely broken English (and smatterings of Kiswahili) two workers said that the hold was full and demanded money from us.  We insisted that this was not our fault and that we weren’t paying jack-shit.  But, unsurprisingly, they persisted. It went on and on like this for probably about fifteen minutes, and it ended with me shouting at the guy and then proceeding to ignore him.  After a while he got tired and left us alone, but we were irate.  Africans are always trying to get money out of white people in any way that they can, like it runs through our blood or something.  Along with a number of other things, this is one of the reasons I are very ready to finally leave this continent.  It was not even 6AM, we were tired and not excited for our day and a half bus ride, and these fuckers were trying to get us to each pay an additional 30,000/= each for the privilege of keeping our bags up top, because the baggage hold was too full of cargo that had no right being on a passenger bus.  We were rightly pissed off, and our trip was off to a smashing start.

I’ll try to spare the mundane details, but here’s a brief breakdown of our 36-hour bus trip: it was hot, sweaty, bumpy, and bathroom/food stops were infrequent and not properly announced. When we did stop to get food or use toilets, we were never aware exactly how much time we had before the bus would leave without us (and there is no doubt in my mind that it would have) and the ‘toilets’ were disgusting and crowded.  We were also apparently the first white people in the world to have ever travelled from Dar to Kigali because, more than almost any other point during my eight months in Africa, people would not stop staring and gawking at us. By about 5PM I had finished the book that I had started that morning and boredom started to set in. Sleep was not a possibility as the road was so bumpy that every thirty seconds or so all the passengers would be jolted into the air as our driver sped over a pothole, not bothering to slow down. There were also speed bumps every two minutes which infuriated me to no end.  Why place speed bumps on the country’s main highway unless it’s passing by a small town or pedestrian busy area? Like many other things in East Africa, it makes no sense and there is NO reason for it. Every time we stopped to drop someone off or pick someone up, our bus was swarmed with people selling all sorts of shit, usually young children, and when their eyes met my window and got a glimpse of my white skin, they shoved and pushed each other to get at me.  I feel bad for these kids that are basically forced into spending their free time hawking random food and goods.  Regardless I wasn’t in the mood to entertain them and usually just closed my eyes and waited for the bus to start moving again.  At about 10:00PM the bus stopped in some hole-in-the-wall excuse for a town.  I estimated that we must be near the border by this point, and Abdul, who had arranged the bus for us, said that it would drive straight through the night, without stopping for us to sleep.  Still, I had the feeling that we were settling in, but when I got off and asked the driver how long I had before we left again, he said “5 minutes” so we rushed to use the toilets.  After about fifteen minutes, when no one else was back on board yet, I let my grumbling stomach convince me to go hunt down some food for Hillary and myself. As I approached the various food stands that were be frequented by hoards of bus travellers like myself, I was, predictably, swarmed by requests from various vendors to choose their respective stands.  I picked a friendly looking chap and dealt with the random jeers and behind-my-back jokes that the dozens of Tanzanians around me were laughing so heartily at.  I wanted chips, plain and simple, but while he was frying them up he convinced me to get some egg with it.  What the hell. The end product was an omelette of sorts, which he started to put on a plate before I said that I needed it to go.  So he dumped it in a plastic bag, poured some suspicious looking chilli sauce in with it, handed me two toothpicks (utensils, obviously) and sent me on my way.  I picked up a couple of sodas and, proud of my decent success, returned to the bus to show our dinner to Hillary, walking with the swagger of a Masaai warrior after a successful hunt. It was slimy and difficult to eat out of a plastic bag using toothpicks, but it was actually quite tasty. We then noticed that our driver seemed to be sleeping, and seeing as how we had been stopped for at least half an hour, we found unoccupied seats to stretch out on and attempted to get some shut-eye as well.

We slept until 6:00AM.  I was surprised and pleased with myself that I had actually managed a solid few hours of sleep because I am a really picky and light sleeper.  Without a proper bed, I’m useless (unless I’m drunk, then stick me anywhere). I was jolted awake when we flew over our first speed bump of the day (the first of many) and I started to think about the border crossing.  Getting into Rwanda as a Canadian is not as easy as it was a year ago.  Stephen Harper has made a lot of enemies across the globe during his stint as our wonderful PM, and the Canadian image is suffering greatly from it.  We had done what I was told we needed to do by applying for entry visas online three days earlier, but without a piece of paper in my hand, I was nervous.  We arrived at the border a couple of hours later and put our game faces on. Border crossings in Africa are never fun, and even less so when you’re not sure if you’ll get across successfully. The exit from Tanzania went fine, and we exchanged our money into Rwandan Francs (rather illegally, we’re fucking rebels shiiiiiit) when we found someone who would give us a half-decent rate. Then the sketchy part: entering Rwanda. When we finally made it to the front of the lineup at immigration, they glanced at our Canadian passports and asked me where our visas were.  Shit.  My heart sank.  I told them that we had applied online three days ago, and gave them the tracking numbers that the Rwandan government website had given me.  They did not look impressed, and I was genuinely afraid that we would not get in (for which I had no backup plan).  They made some phone calls and eventually told us it would be fine. We waited nervously for more confirmation, but after a nerve-racking thirty minutes, the proper forms (or something) came through and we paid our $30. (Thanks for that by the way Stephen.  It would have been free if you weren’t such an insufferable twat.)

With that stressful ordeal behind us, we rushed to meet up with our bus, worrying that everyone would be angry at us for stalling them.  Luckily for us though (sort of) they were just starting to search everyone’s bags.  We identified ours and opened them for the official to check through. They didn’t do a very thorough job though, and I was left wishing I had snuck in that kilo of cocaine I had my eye on in Dar (seriously, I could have gotten through with fucking anything; one wonders why they even bother checking if they aren’t going to do a decent job). After that was over (no body-cavity search this time, damn) we boarded our bus, happy that the end of this hellish journey was within reach.  From the border to Kigali it would be less than 3 hours.  That is, if the bus had left right away.  For the next 2 plus hours, the bus did not move. Some new passengers were joining us and they were apparently using the bus as a cheap way to transport cargo, and there was a lot of it.  Every time I looked out the window to see what the gee-dee hold up was, I saw half a dozen workers transporting huge sacks and boxes of who knows what from behind the bus to the luggage hold.  Every time I thought “there can’t possibly be any more” two guys carrying massive loads came into view.  I didn’t mind it for the first thirty minutes, was getting a bit anxious at the one hour mark, became irate after ninety minutes, and was downright furious when we had been sitting there for two hours. There was nothing we could do however, but just accept our fate of arriving in Kigali much later than anticipated.  When we eventually got going, the scenery around us changed instantly and dramatically. Rwanda is known as the “Land of a Thousand Hills” and it rings quite true.  The countryside was beautiful, and my anger towards the jackasses with forty tonnes of cargo quickly evaporated as we rolled over the lush green hills.  Another immediate change was that the roads were absolutely sublime. It was the first pothole free tarmac I had seen since South Africa.  I couldn’t help but think how awesome it would have been if I could have somehow justified bringing my longboard (obviously not even close to worth it, but Rwanda made me miss that sonofabitch). They also drive on the right side of the road in Rwanda.

My best attempt to get a picture with beautiful Kigali

I occasionally stopped daydreaming about bombing hills on my longboard and was randomly struck by sudden bursts of realization that I was in Rwanda: home of one of the most horrific genocides of the past twenty years.  While watching a group of kids wave at the bus from their parent’s road side shop, I couldn’t help but picture what this scene looked like exactly eighteen years previous, when, in some parts of the country, the roads were littered with rotting corpses that had been carelessly hacked to bits by ruthless machete-wielding morons. It also got me thinking about how strange it is that Rwanda has basically built their tourism industry from this horrific event.  I mean, sure, some people come to Rwanda to trek the mountain gorillas (though it can be done with higher success rates and more easily in Uganda), and the country is also worth seeing for the fact that it is generally considered the safest and least corrupt nation in Africa, but there’s no denying that most people come to Rwanda to see the genocide memorials and learn about the people’s reactions to it.  Hell, that’s why I convinced Hillary to bus across god-awful Tanzania.  We couldn’t afford to trek the gorillas, and didn’t have the time to visit the national parks and lakes of the country (and we were sick of animal-viewing by this point anyway).

After finally arriving at the main bus park, we were promptly escorted by a very persistent taxi-driver into his car.  He assured us that he knew where our hostel was (he didn’t, he had to phone them), and we soon realized that we had been ripped off quite a bit (5000 Rwandan Francs, about $10, when getting a moto-taxi, or boda-boda, would have cost us each 500), but after sitting on a bumpy, sweaty bus for the past 36 hours, we couldn’t possibly care less about losing out on a few bucks. We barely haggled and set off for Discover Rwanda Youth Hostel.  On the way, I noticed that there were many large groups of people marching with banners and wearing purple clothing and armbands. This turned out to be because we had arrived on the Friday at the end of the week long anniversary of the start of the genocide.  Exactly eighteen years before we had arrived, the genocide was just kicking off. It was quite a heavy introduction to the country, even if we had picked Rwanda to travel too mainly to learn about the genocide. 

Our hostel itself was fine; about average as far as the African hostel experience goes.  It was a bit pricey at about $15 per night, but Rwanda is a very expensive country by African standards.  It is actually meant to be the most expensive country on the continent, which is why we planned to spend only three days there. Our activities in Kigali were honestly nothing to write home about.  We spent the three days trying to avoid spending money, which unfortunately meant eating at the dodgy Chinese place up the road more times than we would have liked. The interesting thing about Rwanda though is how they play by the rules.  There are no corrupt officials (or at least we didn’t meet any, which we did daily on ever other stop in Africa), and nobody breaks the law. Some of you may remember my horror stories of reckless boda-boda drivers in Uganda carrying up to four people at a time and driving on the wrong side of the road through dense traffic.  Well, they have bodas in Rwanda as well (called ‘moto-taxis’), but these guys are legit.  They all carry two helmets (one for the passenger) and refuse to take more than one person.  I had heard from other backpackers about the legendary law-abiding that took place in Rwanda, but I was very sceptical.  I had spent the past six plus months avoiding cons and money-grubbers at every corner, so I was not ready for the lack of such annoyances.  Upon reading my blogs about Uganda, when Hillary came to meet me in Africa she assured me that there was no way she would be riding a boda.  I told her that they were virtually unavoidable, but she held firm to her conviction.  Turns out that I was right (as usual), but Hillary was able to ease into the experience by visiting Rwanda first. We eventually got to experience the read deal in Kampala, but that is for the next post.

We met some decently interesting people in Kigali. I talked at length about the NHL playoffs with this one guy from Nashville (this was back when both the Canucks and Predators were still in the running; shut up I don’t want to talk about it), and also shot the shit with a pretty interesting guy from Montreal.  Most of the time spent at our hostel though was devoted towards trying to avoid this older British guy who did not know the meaning of “SHUT THE FUCK UP. SHUT THE FUCK UP. SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!!” He was staying in our dorm, and for the first thirty minutes of conversation, it was bearable, pleasant even. He then began dominating the conversation, and turning every topic back towards how he’s spent the last few years living in Botswana and how this apparently makes him the fucking president of Africa. He must have been at the age where senility kicks in because after a while his stories just started to loop.  We hear about how people from Botswana are allegedly the “laziest people on Earth” no less than five times within an hour.  We heard him dominating a conversation the next morning at breakfast, repeating the exact same shit as he had spewed to us earlier and eliciting similar amounts of eye-rolling.  He seemed like an alright guy, but at the same time he was the sort of person that just makes you wish that everyone would slowly burn to death and you would never have to come in contact with another human being again.  Seriously, fuck that guy.

And now for the unpleasantness, and the reason for our trip to Rwanda. Eighteen years ago, all the horrors of colonization and forced racial separation that occurred pretty much across the map in Africa during the 19^th and 20^th centuries came to a fever pitch in Rwanda. The Belgians who had colonized the area earlier had separated the indigenous people into two groups, called Hutu and Tutsi.  The idea behind creating a distinction was complicated, but essentially it was because when the Belgians eventually left, they wanted to hand control of the country over to a group of people that could be trusted to not cock everything up. To them (and unfortunately, to a lot of colonizers) this simply meant “as un-black as possible.”  The distinction was made on the basis of many characteristics and factors, a few being height, width of nose, and how many cows a man or his family owned. (This makes me feel a bit inadequate what with my zero cows.  Sorry, this topic is gross so I’m probably gonna throw some bad jokes in here and there.) When the colonizers left and power was placed in this hands of one forged ethnic group, the other began to resent the situation, and I think rightly so. One group of people was being favoured for no real reason, and it caused a surge in ethnic tension.  This conflict of course evolved for many years in the 1980s and early 90s, but to make a long story short let’s just say that it soon got a liiiiiiitle bit out of hand. On April 6, 1994, an airplane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntarymira was shot to the ground as it was approaching Kigali’s international airport and both men were killed. The violence started immediately following this event. The repressed Tutsis began violently attacking any and all Hutus that they could find, and over the next 100 days, a messy genocide unfolded.  An estimated 1,000,000 people were hacked to bits by machetes in the streets of Rwanda, and the world did absolutely fuck all to stop it. The situation is of course much more complicated than I have made it appear in this paragraph, but for the sake of brevity, and also for the sake of not vomiting up the Subway sandwich I just ate, we’ll leave it at that.

It was an absolutely horrific event, and the scars have lasted for a long time.  The people of Rwanda have taken it upon themselves to never forget that this happened, or why it happened, and their efforts to deal with its aftermath in a positive way are inspiring.  The Kigali Genocide Memorial is free to visit, and so that’s what we did.  Upon entering the building (which was absolutely packed with people), we were immediately greeted by a 30-something woman absolutely losing her mind.  A lot of people were crying, but she was violently convulsing as if she was having a seizure.  She was being carried outside by three men who were having a hard time containing her.  I think that she was re-living some vivid, disturbing memory of 1994, but I can’t be sure.  The memorial itself is very well done, and holds no punches.  Blame is shared fairly throughout the exhibit, between the colonizers that created the artificial divide, the international community that turned a blind eye, and of course the perpetrators of the crimes themselves. After walking through the exhibits of still photos and stories written of the event, we entered a hall in which hung thousands of photos of Rwanda men, women, and children who had been killed during the slaughter.  It was a dimly lit room and the sheer number of photos was overwhelming, and emotion got the best of me.  Those that know me well might recall that I’m somewhat of a robot.  I didn’t cry when any of my grandparents died, nor when my cats died, and only a little bit when MJ died.  However, sitting in this room with the faces of thousands of people staring at me, who had been violently murdered and sometimes raped, for no reason other than that they belonged to a different artificial ethnic group, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I sat and soaked it in for a while before I had to leave.  Luckily for me, the next room contained an exhibit with real human bones and skulls that had been saved from the wreckage, and were kept by the genocide memorial society and put on display so that would-be genocide deniers could stand face to face with the hard evidence.

We thought we were finished but there was a second floor (yayyyy!) and so we marched up there, gleefully anticipating what goodies awaited us. What joy I felt when I rounded the corner to be greeted with gigantic letters reading “Children’s Room” and spent the next twenty minutes reading personal stories of various kids that had been killed.  Their methods of death were detailed very well, and were presented on handy little information boards along with their favourite foods and activities.  It was not a fun time. The final part of the exhibit was one I was not expecting.  It was a more holistic look at why genocide happens, and included analyses of several genocides of the past century.  Included were all the ones you would expect: the Nazi slaughter of Jews and other groups, the Armenian genocide, and Pol Pot’s reign of terror in Cambodia, but it also gave me some new information.  I had never heard of what occurred in Namibia in the early 20^th century, to name an example, and having just been there a month previously, it shed new light on my experience there and my feelings towards the large German population of the area.

Having finally seen all that the memorial had to offer, we solemnly left and flagged down a couple moto-taxis back to our hostel. Nothing too exciting happened in the days that followed.  We did try in vein to secure last minute permits to trek the mountain gorillas, the supposed highlight of many a trip to Africa, but it was not to be.  Said permits generally need to be arranged months in advance, and the various tourism agencies that I emailed were not responding.  At a minimum price of $500 per person though, I was not overly upset about my failure in securing the permits. It was time to start planning the last leg of our trip that would see me return to Uganda (one of my favourite countries that I've been to so far) and Kenya, if only to catch my flight from Nairobi. This meant yet another lengthy bus ride across the pothole-filled roads of Africa.  We opted for an early morning bus, and woke up one morning shortly after 4:00 AM to catch a lift to the bus station. The roads were empty, which meant higher speeds, and we were each loaded with 20 kg of crap.  It was an intense ten minute drive to say the least.  When we arrived at the bus station, and after making sure that our bags were being stored in the baggage hold and not stolen, I noticed a familiar face.  Abdel was there, kayak and all.  I had met Abdel months earlier in Uganda.  He’s been living in Rwanda for the past two years and makes occasional trips to Jinja to kayak.  It was really strange to run in to him, but it immediately got me excited for my return to The Hairy Lemon, even though it was to be brief. 

The bus to Kampala was something around twelve hours and was nothing too exciting. (After the journey was detailed in the beginning of this post, nothing is worth writing about.)  The border crossing has legendary status among Africa backpackers as being one of the longest and most painful in Africa, but it was fine. After shooting all around Southern and Eastern Africa, I was finally back in a place I knew and loved: Kampala.  This time though, I would actually have to stay in a hostel (what am I? a backpacker?) instead of Hollie’s friend’s sweet digs, but it would be fine.  Anyway there’s Rwanda for you, in all its strange glory.  My next post will be a (hopefully brief) detailing of my return to Uganda and Kenya, where this whole crazy trip started. Stay tuned and, as always, keep it classy.