Okay, lets talk holidays. I've just done a Contiki, and it was excellent. Including every second in great detail seems like hard work, so I'll give you the abridged version, jumping right into the first day because the meetup beforehand was mostly paperwork. However that night I did get to meet a giant Australian policeman with eyelashes that naturally looked like they had makeup on despite him never applying it ( like the guy from lost*) that comparison is really rammed home by the fact that he's Australian and called Lach (pronounced lock.) He had friends with him as well, specifically a tall Australian with a swimmer's body, and a petite south African girl who seemed docile at the first night but really came into her element when she got to know everyone. Other people who made the trip so Iconic include my tour guide Susie, the bus driver/party master Dave, a big black guy with a southern accent who I learned was an emergency response nurse when not getting absolutely plastered, and an Australian girl who resembled a younger, less manic Harley Quinn. I also really like the origin story of the brand, the whole "he had a mini bus and lied" thing, I wonder if its real.
*http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Richard_Alpert
After the never ending bus journey and the ferry across to Europe, We arrived in Amsterdam where we were lead into a hostel that looked like a location in resident evil. It was a narrow path that never seemed to end filled with doors that jutted out and hollow pillars dotted around, our room was particularly poor as it smelt faintly of sweat, but we weren't in there long enough to complain. Then Susie mentioned it … we were seeing a sex show. The playlist should have given it away.
This was exactly what it sounded like, I thought I'd misheard here, maybe it was a joke about how New Zealanders can't pronounce their "I"s and we were going to a show at six. Nope. Full sex show. The theatre itself was in the red light district and it seemed rather normal … for a sex theatre. Nothing incriminating to the untrained eye until the curtains opened, that night I learned that A) a cigar is NEVER just a cigar … it was usually being smoked through the wrong hole, B) pole dancers who don’t smile aren't dusky, they are depressing, C) the one actually good poledancer was probably a superhero/spy in her former life in order to get her strength and finally D) the one real couple performing was obviously having a better time than the others, I actually "aaahhhh"-ed them like they high school sweethearts at a dance because they kissed before having what looked like healthy – if not energetic - sex.
Amsterdam was a paradox to me, because the alleys looked quaint and the people looked peaceful, yet the quaint cottages were filled with weed smoke. There were little café's you'd take your grandmother to lunch in next to women staring disinterestedly in sexy clothing at the masses. They didn’t dance or flirt like I was expecting them to, one of them was texting, just casually checking her phone whilst standing in the "wonder woman" hands on hips pose in a demi-lovato-style piece of sex wear. I danced afterwards in the recommended nightclub, mingled, and my problems began to melt away. I also discovered that if I play up my naivety - not lying exactly just advertising the newness of the situation – then the more seasoned party-ers would buy me drinks, and although I rejected them at first, I surrendered after a while. It also dawned on me when exploring a coffee shop that it smelt distinctly like an old friend of mine who I had assumed just had bad Body odour.
The next morning we went to a clog and cheesemaking shop. The woman making the cheese despite being dressed in traditional gear and being an older woman, was hilarious, and the man who demonstrated clogmaking was both very charming, witty, and cooler than me. I'm not kidding when I say that I want charisma to that level, I want to be able to make wooden shoes seem tempting, even for a second. We went for a quaint bike ride with dutch "granny bikes" that require you to back-peddle in order to stop.
That night we went to a couple of nightclubs. The first of which was very tiny and made me feel uncomfortable, it was grungy in a way that made me think more of abandoned buildings than of anywhere safe. The second bar however made up for it completely. It was a bar that specialised in weird and wonderful shots. I had a caramel shot that was lit on fire by blowtorch, as well as an oreo one. The most interesting of the shots however was the headbanger, which consisted of the trendy bartender pouring spirits straight into the customer's mouth whilst they rested their head on a pillow on the bar, then with a spec of Tabasco sauce he would close the mouth of the drinker and shake their heads like a cocktail shaker, with the same intensity as you would making a drink. I opted out of that drink, however I might look up a DIY version with less Tabasco.
Berlin was also interesting, the city being entranced with art varying from the magnificent to the mediocre depending on where you look. Ugly buildings sprouted around, industrial things hiding surprisingly modern things inside them. The hostel itself was magnificent, with a swanky bar inside and air conditioning in the bedrooms. Inside the bar one of my friends bought a jug of beer, the next one bought a boot. When I say a boot, I'm talking literally a wellington made of glass in which two pints (I think, maybe more) sat quietly. This eventually became a pissing contest and the nurse (Darrian) fully took the challenge. There was a Quatre of the jug left full of beer, and he managed to finish it off in a smug 2 and a half minutes with the goal being four.
After seeing the berlin wall I committed to an early night, knowing that the jagerbomb life wasn’t sustainable for the full week. I indulged in a warm, unrushed, uninterrupted shower that had escaped me in Amsterdam and settled after a few YouTube videos to a night of sleep before going to bed before midnight. However the best laid plans of mice and men often go aglae, and the way they went so wrong was in the form one one of my room mates, will, who thought an entire jug of long island iced tea would be a good life choice. I heard retching, followed by the light switching on, and my other room mate encouraging will to take a shower and lay on his side in the most Australian way possible, with heavily affectionate use of the C word.
The next night was equally interesting, with a night of light clubbing within a sweaty sestpool of tourists – which was to be expected considering the distance from the club to the hostel … literally over the road. Anyway after a few shots, a bit of dancing in/around a cage, and rocking out to various songs I called it a night, passing out in stale clothing for the night … until we had a visitor at four in the morning. There was a knock at the door and a woman stood there, short, brown, with big hair and a grin that was meant to convey a good mood but seemed to resemble an animal baring its fangs. She was dropping off a room mate who had drank enough to need assistance, and after she arrived she perched the spare bunk and started chatting with the guys. The topics varied dramatically, but seemed to revolve around our various dating preferences (e.g. ever been with a foreigner? , white dudes don’t have enough lip for me, do you shave downstairs? Etc) for multiple hours. It ended with her giving me a pep talk about how I should just ask out one of the girls I'd been flirting with and that her new goal was to get me laid, which is not what I expected to hear at 4AM. We decided to have a quick power nap before catching up on the coach.
We also pre-drinked in a bar that the tour guide – a british woman – had described as having "panic at the disco vibes" … she was not wrong. It was like a set, like circa 2009 Brendon Urie had designed a bar purely for the sake of the eerie red carnival pirate aesthetic.
Prague was generally uneventful except for a small blip, in which we were almost arrested for not having lights on our tour bikes. As in the prague police had so little crime to deal with that bike lights were an arrestable offense … it was so petty and we were let off with a warning.
We had a traditional night consisting of too much activity, yet more pork and dumplings – which had been a staple of berlin as well – and ridiculous traditional dancing in ridiculous traditional clothing. I did however swear to myself that I will find something that makes me as sincerely happy as the man dancing was. His eyes seemed to glow like torchlight and his grin was 100% natural, but I was falling asleep. It wasn’t the dancing itself, it was the congregation of the late nights, the early mornings, the exhausting energy of the room, and the table I was on. I fell asleep on the spot yet in some stupid state decided I could go another night. Luckily for me Imogen, a friend from the trip, talked me away from such as idiotic idea. I did however, miss the large group of people, I decided to wing it and try to walk back, which failed spectacularly. I was in a strange city alone, but I was near a landmark hotel, so I logged into uber on their wifi and hired a dirt cheap taxi (£5! I didn’t know £5 taxis existed) to take me home. The cab had great music, lana del rei and Linkin Park – it was my first run in with their music, but I had heard about the singer dying recently – the music was surprisingly good.
We stopped off at a building filled with bones en route to Vienna, it was dramatic and furnished with nothing but human parts. There was a skeleton chandelier and a mound of skulls, I was expecting it to be more unnerving, but I guess we've seen skeletons since Scooby Doo, the earliest kind of corpse we see. It took most of my control not to make the most of the atmosphere and do a full on evil laugh in the centre of the room, a full on classic "MAWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" featuring head shaking and hand gestures.
Vienna was the final location for me and a small group of others. Unfortunately for us the lucky sods on the bus were doing a 25 day tour of Europe, meaning that they were going to get the full package whilst I will be bored at home cyberstalking them and getting severe FOMO. Luckily for me, we were going somewhere without alcohol, so I wouldn’t need to nurse a hangover in the airport. We were going to a 24 hour theme park!
Luckily for me all the people who were travelling with me weren't adrenaline junkies, meaning that I wasn’t about to be coerced onto anything that was above my paygrade. We hunted for candy floss (which the knock off Harley Quinn referred to as "fairy floss") and I was convinced onto a set of high swings by a girl called Taylor, Lach and Alex tagged along in another swing for the experience, with Lach being genuinely unnerved despite being a police cop. The swing was both the best and the worst at the same time, it rose slowly and gradually, no extreme speed, but the feeling that I was going to drop something and have it plummet to the ground kept gathering constantly. I felt like my phone was going to slip from my pocket despite it being in taylor's handbag the whole time, I hummed to myself and focussed on starring forward and on the pretty lights that illuminated the arcade in bright, hot, carnival colours. This was followed by one more drink at the bar with a gaggle of friends from the coach, who chatted until midnight and then went to bed for an uneventful sleep.
The airplane home was smooth, and I was picked up by my uncle, who saved me from yet more grim public transport. The strangest thing about the trip was how quickly my problems melted away, either the thoughts vanished, or I didn’t care enough anymore. My brain was free from the traffic that usually clogged it up, it was so freeing. I want that kind of calm in the real life.
