Interlaken-Milan

As I haven't really posted anything substantial since St Patrick's day, I suppose I ought to let you all know what I have been up to in the last few weeks. Well, I can't really remember. Maybe if I just start writing it will come back to me. I sort of fell into a routine for a couple weeks there. Work, cook, run, sleep. Go out with coworkers Friday nights and flatmates Saturday night. Then I just started going out all the time. I would look tired all the time so everyone thought I was, when I really wasn't. It is still well cold here. Infact, I think it is colder here than in the TC, go figure. Maybe the Atlantic current has shut down, everyone run for the hills! Long story short, I was in a bit of a lull, not doing anything spectacular, saving my money. Fun huh? I had my various wanderings around London but not much out of the ordinary: markets, pubs and new parts of London.

Last Thursday(6th April) my dad was in town so I met him at bricklane for some Curry and a few pints, and then it was off to the Swan, a pub on Hyde park for another pint as well as being the place I had my first proper Fish and Chips about 11 years ago. Nice to have another visitor, especially one that knows London just about better than I. No tourist crap, just curry and pints. Went home around whatever time to pack, iron out my passport so it looked more presentable to immigration controllers around Europe and kill time til I once again caught my 3:30 train to Luton airport (remember Amsterdam?). I met Adam and JP in Interlaken (look at a map) this weekend (8th April) to go skydiving! I flew into Milan and took the train from there. I had enough time to walk to the Duomo (biggest Gothic Cathedral in Europe) look at it for a minute or two and turn right around to catch my train. I couldn't even find gelato! The train ride was absolutely amazing as it was a bright and beautiful day. It took me past Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, this lake that has Islands where extremely large palace-like houses sit. They appear to be floating on water because the house is as big as the island itself. Posh. After what seemed like forever in a dark tunnel I emerged in Switzerland with the alps towering above me. No wonder rail in Switzerland is so bloody expensive: a gorgeous ride, trains that are never late and tracks that plow through the alps like the autobahn plows through Germany.

I was the first to arrive in Interlaken so I checked in at the hostel and met Adam shortly after. After travelling along for three weeks he had loads to talk about; I let him go for a while because after being in so many different language environments where you have to keep everything to yourself, it all comes out at once to the first person you see. I am the same way. We walked out into the country and watched the sun set over the mountains. After a crappy dinner and a wonderful nights sleep, as I hadn't slept since Wednesday night and it was now Friday night, we managed to get out of bed before our noon taxi took us to the airfield. Fourteen hours of planes trains and buses make for an exhausting trip.

Training for the dive consisted of lying on our stomachs and getting our hands, feet and legs in the right place. That was it. Flight suit and harness on, 12 of us were shoved into a tiny little airplane and away we went. At one point I figured we would be high enough, but were only half way to 15,000 feet. Adam was the first to jump. His camera man monkeyed around the outside of the airplane so he could follow him out. It was nuts. Adam disappeared. 7 seconds later the Frenchman disappeared. 7 seconds later I followed suit (I am seriously having an adrenaline rush and big smile just writing about it!) and another 7 seconds, JP was last to dive. My dive partner (Roland, from Thun, CH - just up the road) decided it would be fun to barrel roll, flip and spin as we left the plane. I was able to see for a second the plane from which we jumped. The first chute comes out immediately and slows us down to 120mph. Arched back, knees bent and hands out. Sit back and enjoy the scenery! What a fucking rush! The sky was bright and blue, the mountains had snow capped peaks and the valleys were green below. Everything looked so tiny!. I could see Adam below me. It's just getting past the initial plunge, then it is weightlessness. A minute or so later I tucked in and the parachute deployed. Loosened up the harness so that it acted as a seat and we took a roller coaster ride down to the ground. The whole experience was much less violent than I expected. Now I want to do it again, because I know what to expect this time. Well I suppose we will have to save it for the Keys in a few years. We three have plans to meet up and go diving every so often now. I spent a lot of money that weekend but every penny was worth it!

We hung out with the skydiver chaps til about 6 oclock that night and took another beautiful taxi ride over the mountain back to Interlaken. Dinner was to be much better than the crap grocery store food we had the previous night. We started with a traditional cheese fondue in one restaurant, and moved to an Italian joint and all had a big load of pasta, foreshadowing Adam and I's arrival in Milan.

Taking the train from Interlaken was a bit odd. The entire journey to the Italian border was quite nice. After we came out of the tunnel on the Italian side, it was crap and only turned to shit as we rolled into Milan. All of northern Italy looked like a dump in the crummy and dreary weather. Hardly the best first impression to have when arriving in a new city and country for the first time. After getting completely lost (yeah, I admit I get lost in Europe. I get lost 4 blocks from my house in Brent!) on the metro and its many (read, three) lines we found our hostel in a rather, well, I dunno section of Milan. For 10 Euro a night we didn't care, I have a few pictures but forgot to save the check-in sheet we received. There were some rules and procedures and the intro went something like this:

If you are racist, homophobic, sexist, a nazi, politician policia or associated with military in any way. We do not want you here.

It went on to list things about buying stuff for the kitchen to share, and alerted us there would be bands and hippies all night long outside in the courtyard. We came in knowing that this place puts up hobos in its extra beds. It was actually pretty nice, but for some reason there were a lot of shoes hanging from a giant pole outside our bathroom window.

A beeline was made for the gelato stand and for the next 24 hours Adam and I splurged on pizzas, pasta and more gelato. Did the usual sightseeing and had the hardest time finding dinner anywhere before 19h30, which caused a bit of a problem because I had to be on a coach back to the airport by at least 20H30. After delicious pasta carbonara and wine, we hit up some gelato and watched it rain. I didn't feel like walking to the train station in the rain so said fuck it and sat there some more. I finally got off my butt and realised I would most likely end up missing my plane but walked through the rain in hopes of finding a coach to Bergamo. After the 20 or so minute walk I looked at the coach schedule that I had tickets for. Next bus, not for another 45 minutes. I was sure to miss my plane. I saw another company that also went to the airport I flew out of and looked at their schedule. The next one for them didn't leave for hours! But there was a driver standing outside his coach with passengers on it, so I babbled at him in broken Italian and that, along with a nice old man who helped translate a bit, got me on the coach and we were off within five minutes. I have no idea how this happened because there wasn't even supposed to be a bus going to the airport at that time!!! It ended up not mattering if I'd have been late or not as my flight was well delayed (I'm now avoiding Ryan Air at all costs as I've always had a better experience with Easy Jet). After being drenched for the entire flight back to London -we had to walk out to the plane on the tarmac in torrential rainfall- I finally got home at about 2 that morning.

Up five hours later to get to work. What a fantastic weekend!

And the first sentence of this post is a bit misleading; I started righting this quite a while ago and wrote all the other posts before I even finished this. Cheers to you for still reading!

Attn: Cullen

Lorsung, where are you?

Oh No!

So it turns out that the flat situation is worse than I imagined yesterday (see below post). Ony my way home from work last night I met Rhitik at the station who was on the phone with our landlord and we found out what happened. I live in the top part of our house. The float valve water storage tank for the flat below broke, causing massive flooding from the room to the ground floor (think an engine being flooded to due stuck float valves in the carbs, a common problem with my old motorcycle and the reason it was constantly in pieces in my driveway!) with inches of water. And after we just got a nice new bathroom floor! Last night I discovered all of my tea was ruined, the paper towels I bought were drenched, but fortunately most everything else was spared. The electrics work again, except the bathroom light. Shower by candle light now I guess. Long story short, we have a months notice to move out. Our landlord is renovating our flat because pretty much everything needs replacement: floorboards, electrics, carpet, paint, plumbing. Just when I was getting settled too, well I got settled a while ago, but I hate moving. Nowhere in London will I find a flat for that cheap, in as good, safe and quiet a neighbourhood, and still get me to work in 30 minutes on public transport. And looking for places to live is a pain in the ass. Bugger.

I guess this a post where I bitch, but I think I deserve to at least do that.

Weekend Roundup

Now it's back to working full 5-day work weeks after not having done so for almost a month (sweet!). Last week there was bank holiday Monday, and I can't remember if the same thing happens in the US, but having multiple extra long weekend and short work weeks have been quite nice. Regardless I was still knackered Friday night and was asleep before midnight. That was probably for the best as I went up to Cambridge on Saturday. I caught a train from Liverpool St. station and found out on the train that halfway to Cambridge I would have to switch over to rail replacement bus services. This means that I had to take a coach to all the wee little towns that the trains stops at before reaching the end of the line. I was supposed to arrive at about 11:00, instead I rolled in at half 12. 5 hours of commuting for the entire trip! That is how much I spent in the town itself. Either way I toured some nice English country side and came to the conclusion that Britain is a very lumpy island. The Midwest is flat, Britain is lumpy.

The train station is a bit outside the city and I had read that it is a "hike" into the city center. After recalling my hilarious Prague story (the one where Jess and Stasia hate me forever), I figured no train station to city-centre walk could be quite like that, so I set off on foot. I don't know what people were talking about. It took less than 20 minutes to get there. I was starving by that point and went to the "backs" which are basically the quads of all the colleges between the buildings and the river Cam. It was an absolutely gorgeous day in all of southern England: sunny and shorts weather. I sat for a couple of hours, eating and people and punt watching. Punts are these long wooden boats you can rent or in which you can be taken for a cruise by a professional punter. The people who decided to rent them on their own struggled up and down the river. Sometimes they were struggling on top of the boat, sometimes they were struggling to get back in the boat =) At one point a punt managed to turn sideways underneath a bridge wherethen another punt rammed into it at full steam (punts are propelled by poles, not steam engines). It was funny to watch everyone flap their arms and yell. I took a picture, smiled and started my wanderings around town; I had had enough lounging in the sun.

Quick story though. On the other side of the Cam there was a bloke yelling at people (the ones who had no idea what they were doing) as they went by on punts, criticizing them. He was shouting loudly and laughing at them. But afterall they were going backwards and didn't realise it. He was wearing a backwards baseball cap, Oakleys, thong sandals "california" shorts and a jersey (maybe it was a polo with a popped collar). No wonder so many people "hate Americans." I'm surprised he didn't have a hemp necklace.

Cambridge is actually a somewhat difficult place to walk around, especially now during term time. Everything is blocked off to keep people like me out of the buildings and off the grounds. I paid to get into Kings College, and once I had seen that, I figured I had seen the rest by default. I walked around the rest of the city, avoiding the highstreet shops as much as possible, lounged for a while in another park, hunted down some flapjacks, checked out the markets and finally headed back to London. All in all I really enjoyed Cambridge. Quite a pleasant city (the beautiful weather helped a lot!) though I imagine the students get well pissed off at everyone barging in on them at term time, or any time I guess and because of that the school set up a very noticeable barrier around them.

Since all of the Aussies were out of the house for the weekend, Rhitik, Mario and I threw a little flat party. I got home around 8 and Rhitik and Mario were both gone. 2 hours later I was gone. My friends Sarah and JP came up and a lot of Rhitik's friends from work were there so we had a nice turn out. Off to the pub for a few hours and home via the kebab shop (this is probably the most typical london thing to do). A good time and late night were had by all.

Sunday was a terrible day in terms of weather, so I didn't feel bad about not going to Ultimate, once again. It has to have been 2 months now since I last played. That needs to change! I've been running and training hard for the last 6 weeks and have been trying to get ready for the summer season but it wont matter if I don't know how to throw a disc. Anywho, I sat around and watched football all day (my typical Sunday activity) and headed to my friend JP's house for dinner. He made a lovely green curry, I brought wine, and there were cakes afterwards. It was very international too! 3 from the US, JP from Canada, and we had Finland, Italy and Croatia to boot. I love meeting all these internationals. I'ts like college all over again but instead of asking "What's your major", it's "Where are you from, what are you doing" etc. London sparks up great conversations from those two little questions.

I came home to a house that had somehow fallen apart in the 5 hours I had been gone. There was a note on the door about how the kitchen and bathroom flooded, none of the electrics worked in either (except the fridge, thankfully), the carpet was soaked, can't use the toilet, etc. After everything had just fixed a couple weeks ago! Rhitik and I could not figure out what had happened because it looked like a tornado went through those two rooms, and only half the lights in the house were working. Incidentally, Rhitik and I were both gone while all of this happened and Scott and Ang had both come back from Amsterdam. I dunno. My landlord is supposed to have come over today (Monday), so hopefully I can take showers and use the toilet and cook when I go home. Otherwise I might as well just camp out in the park, it might be more comfortable than my bed.

Pet Peeves

The following is a list of things that bother, anger, upset and/or frustrate me:

Not using turn signals whilst driving. Dragging one's feet on the ground. Slow moving bureaucracies. Bad architecture. People who say this: 'Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values and we have to be careful about what values our children are taught,' said one Republican board member. Whining. People who talk all the time, and mostly about themselves. People who touch my computer monitor with their grubby, grimy fingers. "Seagull managers." The fact that the gas in my stove constantly blows out whilst baking/ovening. My writing ability. Groups of young English girls. Middlemen. When I overcook meat. Just about everything that relates to suburbs. Fried chicken restaurants all over London. Starbucks all over London. Cigarettes and smoking (and thus, most Italians, with the French and English close behind). Running to the station to catch a cancelled train. Cancelled trains in general. Chantelle Houghton. Tabloids. Planned economies and unrestricted capitalism. Nazis. Stress. Poor restaurant service. Bad beer. West End clubs. The Hiccups. Napping for far longer than intended, like last night, then waking at the time one ought to go to bed. Sitting in traffic. Crickett. Highly entropic societies.

So there you have it. Mind you, it is not a complete list, so it may be updated as the pet peeves keep occuring. I thought of one the other night but now I can't remember it. Oh, there is another one: not being able to remember something.

It's True

Comfy socks are key for a great day.

Hi

I'm alive and well. More to follow, don't know when as I am completely knackered. Once I post up you will know why!