a quick catch up (part ein)

Trying to fit 3 months' worth of events into one blog post is pretty impossible for me.. Hell, I find it difficult fitting one day in sometimes.. So I'll have to split this one up and try miss out any unnecessary details (wish me luck)!

The Medical: I finished my medical trial. After a few incidents of accidental blood squirting and inability to find my arteries (and an uncanny ability to find my nerves instead) I survived unscathed: no scars - physical or otherwise. My nurses, Vanessa and Debbie, were very friendly and made the time go quickly during those long hours laying still, strapped to uncountable and ceaselessly beeping machines. Plus I got myself a nice fat £400 cheque at the end of it...

The Music: I managed to play a few more Open Mic nights at Whistle Binkies and got to know Alan, the sound technician, fairly well - an acquaintance that would prove to be quite helpful a little later on down the track. My guitaring skills are still a bit hit and miss at the moment but, hey, that's what practise is all about... I haven't hit Whistle's in over a month now and don't intend to do so any time soon, I'm just a little too busy plus my humble abode is now situated across town!

Some Friends: For one night only! That should be the subtitle to the evening of Saturday the 28th of February, when an old school friend, Jimmy Marin and his girlfriend Amanda popped over to see Lee and I. We checked out a very messy club called Why Not, which somehow seemed to maintain the illusion of poshness about it (probably because it's situated on "posh street" otherwise known as George Street). Free jugs of vodka/redbull greeted us at the door and I managed to embarassingly and unintentionally score a pash from the most drunk (yet still ridiculously posh) girl on the dancefloor. A night to remember.... Good or bad...

The Flat: After a few weeks of work and 2 months of couch surfing in Edinburgh I decided it was a good time to get out of Lee's hair (well, her lounge room anyway) and find myself my own accommodation. I used Gumtree to post a "Looking for" ad. Within 24 hours I had about 10 phone calls.. One of those callers was Carolyne, living in the west end and looking for someone to move into her spare room to offset some of the costs of owning a house. I checked the place out and just couldn't say no. I moved in by the weekend.
But the phone calls, texts and emails didn't stop there. For the next 2 weeks I was getting about 5 or 6 missed calls a day. I stopped checking my voicemail. Probably not such a good thing since one of the calls was from Debbie (one of the nurses from the medical trial) telling me that they were concerned that my white blood cell count was bouncing between normal levels and extremely low. To this day I still don't know the cause of this but they suggested a good multi-vitamin and healthy diet as a good way to try and regulate it. I would like to say I've taken their advice on board fully, but that would be a lie - I put it down to saving money...

Photos:

in the bathtub with some stoned friends...

Jimmy-o!

a mishap at the hospital

putting NZ on the map!

the various machines i had the pleasure of being hooked upto..

playing and philosophies

My first day of work went by quite seamlessly, except for the fact that I worked from 10am to 8pm having a break for "lunch" only at 6pm. Those of you that know me well, know that I eat.. a lot.. and so an eight hour shift with no break doesn't sit too well with me. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to take it like a man and stop my whingeing because with the number of staff on each day and the busyness of the place that is likely to be a regular occurrence.
The following day was extremely interesting for two reasons: The first was due to the hospital (described in my previous post) and the second was due to my music. John and I got ourselves a prime spot (at 12:15am) on Monday night/Tuesday morning at a pub called Whistle Binkies for their open mic. We played a selection of 80's hits. Well, not really, we were limited to three songs, and none of them from the eighties: "Summertime" by George Gershwin; "Got None" by Robert Post; and, "A Stranger" by A Perfect Circle. Also, not one of those songs was known perfectly by both of us at the same time. So there were mistakes, especially since it was my first time playing guitar live - pretty damn nerve racking. The crowd seemed to like it though, and now that we've got a taste for it I think we'll be trying to play as many open mic's as possible.
Saturday night, and Hughesy's girlfriend, Megan, was enjoying birthday celebrations back at Whistle Binkies. It was just one of those laughs-a-plenty nights where your sides hurt and your mandible feels as though it's about to fall off. Like most drunken nights, this one ended in deep philosophical discussions including what we would do in situations similar to the one portrayed in the Nazi-era movie, Sophie's Choice.
I only got a couple of hours sleep that night and somehow slept through my alarm (I never do that) and woke up at 9:30am when my shift was supposed to start at 9. Not good...

ET-3 and vasodilators

I didn't explain exactly what the clinical trial was for in my last post. The study title is, "Characterisation of the role of ETA and ETB receptors in regulating plasma ET-1 and the vasodilator response to ET-3 in man." A mouthful, yes. Pretty much what I am doing is taking 3 rounds of different medications spaced 3 weeks apart, and they do blood tests to see if the drugs are doing what they expect. One of the rounds is a placebo and the other two are already marketed drugs used for regulating blood flow in people that suffer from hypertension.
In some hypertension patients, especially with any kind of exertion, the vessels in the lungs contract making it more difficult for the heart to pump blood around the body, causing the right side of the heart to work harder. This in turn can lead to right-heart failure (heart attacks) and even death. The medications I am taking (apart from the placebo, of course) are designed to reopen or enlarge blood vessels, thereby reducing the amount of work the heart has to do and potentially saving the person's life.
The PhD student, whose nickname is Bean, running the study has found that these medications might also have positive effects on other organs (the liver or kidneys) and so is studying these effects on healthy patients - which is where I come in.
Monday was particularly intensive in that I had finished my week course of medication and they now needed to test the effects on a small test area of my body. They chose the forearm. They strapped diameter-sensitive mercury-filled bands around my forearm (to accurately test blood flow which meant I had to lie completely still for 2 hours) and pressure bands around my wrists and upper arm, inflating the wrist bands to the point that they cut off the circulation to my hands for upto 13 minutes at a time - I completely lost feeling in them during the intermittent testing over the course of the 2 hours. They then stuck (or tried to unsuccesfully a number of times) a needle in my artery to pump the ET-3 drug into my forearm. (ET-3 is a chemical that first causes a contraction of the blood vessels and then rewidens them.) During one of the unsuccessful attempts, they had already started testing when the needle was pushed out of the artery but remained in my arm - I have some damn strong arteries - so they were pumping this chemical into arm with it having nowhere to go, that was quite uncomfortable... Plus it meant they had to start again from scratch using my other arm, extending my hospital visit from 4 to 6 hours.
It wasn't long before the testing was over and I was glad to have the feeling and use of my hands back. Now I have a 2 week break and we start the whole procedure again with another medication. After the third round I get a nice little thankyou note with a few words and the number "£400." Another good thing about it is that I'm getting really used to seeing needles and my own blood coming out of my arm so to any more hospital visits I say, "Bring 'em on!"

The Start Of An Amazing Adventure!

I am now officially part of the Airag Addicts. Kevin, Lee's mate from Ghana who we met up with in Japan, introduced me to the Mongol Rally - an annual charity drive from London, UK to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in July - because he said that Lee and I were the only one's crazy enough to do it. He was right. A group of 7 of his friends (or friends of friends) from America formed a team called the Airag Addicts and needed an extra person. I jumped at the opportunity and it wasn't long before I became the 8th Addict. As well as being a crazy adventure at the time, we will be raising lots of money up until July for donating to the charity MercyCorps, along with buying the 3 cars we will need to get there, visas, food, bribes for Kazakh militants, etc. The cars will be donated to the charity once we reach Mongolia for local communities to use. I've put up a link in the right column to our site where you can see what we're getting upto, link to the various associated websites including the Mongol Rally and MercyCorps, take a squiz at our planned route and, of course, donate! Wish me luck!

letters from a guinea pig

Along with all my jobs and potential jobs over the past weeks I have taken on a slightly risky moneymaking venture in something that a lot of people would consider only as an absolute last resort, or probably would not consider at all: a medical trial. Now there was that particular case several years back in the UK where a bunch of volunteers participated in a study which went horribly wrong, causing the near-death of most of them and requiring several amputations, etc.
That study is the one often referred to when convincing someone not to take part in clinical trials. The positives are almost always overlooked, however. For one, you get paid a fair amount of money for very little effort and often very little inconvenience (as most can work somewhat around work schedules.) The other obvious positive (and the reason behind the study in the first place) is that the data obtained from your participation could actually help improve the lives of others through new or improved drug treatments for their ailments. You can choose which trials you participate in, including those that are simply measuring the effects of already tried and tested drugs on ailments other than the ones the medication is marketed for. Furthermore, once you are involved you can pull out at any time, no obligation, no questions asked.
The way I see it is that millions of people around the world are pumping an inordinate amount of drugs and pathogens into their bodies daily, knowing fully their long-term detrimental effects on their own health and the health of others, and with no possible overall positive outcome for themselves or, heaven forbid, improvement to society, but still somehow do so willingly because they are generally happy to live selfishly in the moment - or denial - without consideration to their future (whether that be 50 years, 20 years, 5 years, 1 year or 25 minutes away.) So why not do something that could also possibly (though very unlikely) have an unfavourable long-term effect on my own health but that could potentially benefit others down the track whilst admittedly serving my own selfish short-term interests in earning money for it?
I know of many people who regularly smoke, take multitudes of drugs (recreational or medicinal or both), do not exercise, eat disgusting amounts of fast food (especially here in Scotland with their even proud application of the deep frier to almost any food imaginable, including mars bars, burgers and pizzas!), etc. - and spend lots of money doing so - who would be repulsed by the idea of participating in such a study because of the risks to their health. I also know of many people who, for instance, drive recklessly, have expensive cosmetic surgeries, get surburnt, and listen to music too loud because it is not in their immediate interest to consider the negative possibilities or ramifications, yet would still object to a medical trial.
I agree that volunteering your body to science is somewhat stigmatised and considered a bit crazy, but considering the other foolish, senseless and downright stupid (coincidentally, also a definition of "crazy") things that we do, is it really that bad?

finding nemo (a.k.a. work)

It didn't take long for me to find a few opportunities for work once I reached Edinburgh again. Gumtree again being my medium of choice, I managed to track down a job running a guest house for which I was interviewed and subsequently turned down due to lack of experience (although I thought I did provide a strong case with my "housekeeping and restaurant management" experience.)
Then I came across an odd request from a man wanting a driver for a few hours a week for 3 weeks for his mother and butler whilst his mother went shopping, paying £750. Sounded like a good offer. The problem was that it was payable only by cheque. I tried proposing other less risky forms of payment - including one which involved me setting up a PayPal account - but these suggestions didn't sit well with him and he quickly found himself another candidate. Who knows, it might have been all above board but I wasn't prepared to take the risk.
I eventually managed to land myself 2 jobs: one at the café that my sister works in, Kilimanjaro Coffee; and the other as a script writer for an educational DVD series. The DVD series essentially sets out to teach the entire UK school curriculum of English and Maths from reception to year 12 (in Australian schooling terms.) I am employed to work on the maths side of things. I essentially write the entire script for each lesson (eg. multiplication or fractions) which an actor will then reproduce on screen with props and visuals. How did I land that? Gumtree again... They needed people with maths and teaching experience - my degree and my tutoring stint in London seemed to suffice (although I didn't mention that I only ended up with one student.) I start at Kilimanjaro fulltime tomorrow.

The Ed

The first weekend of my return to Edinburgh was quite action packed starting off with Dan's birthday party (Dan is one of Lee's housemate) where the requirement for entry was being dressed either as an old person - Dan was easily the winner there - or as a ned (a Scottish term for the similar category of peoples to English chavs and Aussie bogans/wiggas.)
The 25th was our official Australia Day (as it was a Sunday and it was being celebrated in Australia that evening with the time difference) and we certainly made a day of it. The 25th also corresponded to Robert Burns evening (the famous Scottish poet) and so we had a bit of a mishmash of cultures. We invited a whole bunch of Aussie and Kiwi friends around and Lee and Susie again came up with the idea for lunch: a traditional Scottish feast of haggis, neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes) along with TimTams and the Scottish equivalent, Penguins, and of course a whole bunch of Aussie music - everyone singing Farnsie's "You're The Voice" at the top of their lungs was the highlight!
Feeling insanely full of food we all painted our faces with green and yellow and pushed off in the early evening for the surprisingly quiet Oz Bar for a Pale Ale and where we could watch replays of AFL bumps, biffs and brawls and listen to the Triple J hottest 100. Good times! Especially with the fact that we had a celebrity in our midst: Hughesy! Well, not really, but this guy would have to be his long-lost twin brother or something - he looks, speaks and acts exactly like the man himself.... Funny bastard too...
The next night was the real Oz Day and the celebrations picked up considerably in the city's only Walkabout (that messy Australian bar chain in the UK), it was going off! The majority of our clan met up again and had a bit of a bum wiggle while they played that song with the lyrics, "Am I ever gonna see your face again?" to which everyone in the bar classily shouted in reply, "No way! Get fucked! Fuck off!" Hadn't heard that one in years...
A few days later I got to spend a little time again with Malin and her friend Therese when she came up from Dublin for a short trip. We ate Mexican. Shortly after, I was treated to the second snowfall I had seen on this trip so far - hard to believe since it was technically over 2/3 of the way through the "season" of winter. The meadows, an expansive park-like setting, was completely and beautifully white, the footpaths were dangerously slippery and the temperature was sub-zero, yet women still found the necessity for high heels. They are an odd breed... It has since snowed a number of times and I find it so much fun every time it does - the meadows and Arthur's peak turn white along with my clothes, people build snowmen and throw snowballs, and the photographers come out in force.
I met John by chance in Burger King while we were both there using their free wifi, we got to talking and turns out we're both quite into music. We have caught up a few times since jamming about, including the meadows in the snow (a bad idea), and are planning to take part in an open mic night some time soon. That's exciting.
More recently, Dan, his mates, and Meg (the newest South Clerk housemate) managed to convince me to come out to a house party in what is commonly known as "the caves" - part of an underground city that stretches all the way to the Edinburgh castle - on the night after Lee and Susie left for Morocco for Lee's birthday. Stopping first at The Jazz Bar, which is in fact a jazz bar, to watch a few bands we soon found this subcity fortress which is actually a flat but looks more like some sort of WWII bunker for one crazy party with DJs, all the alcohol you could ever want, holes in and graffiti on the walls and the constant struggle in order to move just 5 metres. That place was packed to the brim against some sort of fire regulation, I'm sure.

Photos:

Susie and I as neds, well, she is...

Lee as an Aussie on Aussie Day

Hughesy!

Pizza Shapes!

Fosters!

only in the UK - everything you can think of wrapped in plastic... even single eggplants (aubergines)

crazy women

partying with Meg in the caves

the castle under snow

this little house is right in the centre of the city

yup, even labourers still have to work when it's snowing

off to work through the meadows

tobogganing under Arthur's seat

The Curious Case Of Just Too Much London

London. What can I say. This is the fourth time I have come through the city of 8 million, give or take a few million, on this trip so far. And somehow I'm finding that the more I see of it, the less I like it. Don't get me wrong, it is a wonderful city in so many ways: the cultural events that never cease, the galleries and music venues that constantly find new ways of bringing the arts to life, the convenient (but expensive) tube network, the famous and lively Piccadilly Circus, Westminster, Leicester Square, South Bank, Covent Gardens, etc. But, at the risk of overgeneralising and overstating, anything outside of those areas is simply utter shit.
The monotonous "suburban areas" of, say, Clapham, Richmond and White City (just to name a few) are virtually identical in the look of the streets, in the repetitive rows of 2- and 3-storey colourless UK-style-façade housing, and in the chain stores that pollute the already dreary identity of the area - exacerbated by 52% of days in a year being overcast. Sure, there may be the odd uninspired green park nearby but the endless landscape of kebab shops, Tesco, H&M, Argos, Ladbrokes, The Carphone Warehouse, Boots, Sainsbury's, TopShop, Costcutter, William Hill bookkeepers (and the list goes on...) certainly make for a dull and tiring stroll through any of these areas. Too big. Too tedious.
I stayed with 4 people over 6 nights this time around. The first 2 were with Saskia in her tiny room in White City, the home of the BBC. I had my interview for the French job during this time and found out the next day that they wouldn't hire me because of my piercings. Turns out the guy running the estate is an ex-Army Major and does not tolerate any piercings except for normal earrings on females. A case of discrimination? Maybe, especially since I would have been working solely as a groundskeeper, but I somehow don't think I would have had a case. Meh, c'est la vie.
The next night was spent ripping it up with Tom and John at their flat on Guitar Hero. I was somewhere else the next night again, this time with the Aussie Davie whom Lee and I met in the first couple of days of our trip, nearly a year ago, on Vietnam's Mekong Delta. We enjoyed a night out with his girlfriend and a bunch of their friends for a birthday, following up with a very relaxed Saturday hanging around the house and then going on a bit of a trip to the local hardware store for some wood for a bookshelf Davie was building. The final two nights were spent with someone I hadn't seen in even longer: Lauren from NZ, who I hadn't seen since.. NZ. We caught up for some reminiscing at her flat in Clapham Junction (conveniently located near Britain's busiest train station of the same name - but oddly some distance from the nearest tube station.)
All this excitement of not getting my job and being back in London made me want to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible, so it wasn't long and I was back on an overnight bus up to Edinburgh to put some serious efforts into job hunting.

Photos:

the healthy options on offer at a roadstop en route to London

Saskia's pad, i'm squeezed in under the bed there..

a small sample of the BBC buildings in and around White City

Lauren and I

Glasgow

The day before I left Edinburgh, a Friday, I received an email from a London agency I had been in contact with since July. They wanted me to come in for an interview the following Wednesday for a job in an enormous private chateau south of Paris, owned by an Arabian prince and his family. Why would I pass up that opportunity? The quandary before me was that I had just booked tickets to see friends in Glasgow and Aberdeen over the ensuing week: Job interview and wasting my tickets, or visiting friends I might not get the chance to see again and wasting a fantastic opportunity to work in France? Tough one. I considered my options carefully over the next few days.
That last day I also checked out a nice little raw food café in the city's north called Red Sugar. Yep, everything raw, nothing cooked over 47.7°C (that's apparently when enzymes in the food start breaking down.) There appears to be a whole subculture of people enjoying this lifestyle - I had admittedly never heard of it before - and although I like the idea, I don't know if I could be a faithful follower (it would be virtually impossible whilst travelling anyway.)
I shot off early, well what felt early due to the sun not having shown itself yet but what was actually 8:30am, for the bus station. About 2 hours later I was standing in the bus terminal of Glasgow admiring the bronze sculpture of a heartwarming reunion between two lovers. I was there to visit Brian, my Scottish mate who I worked with at the Open Polytech in NZ, but first I wanted to see what the city was all about.
This metropolis of old and new is the largest city in Scotland and offers a huge array of activities including museums, art galleries and an unrivalled nightlife. They also love their clocks... After wandering around the city's main shopping areas, and having my hat blown off my head about 10 times due to the strong winds, my first stop was the place that held the most interest for me, the St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Life & Art. This is a fantastic museum showcasing, without bias, the main world religions and other minor faiths/belief systems through descriptions, artifacts, photos, paintings and personal accounts of peoples' own experiences. I think if a wider audience went to that museum it would certainly bring a greater tolerance and understanding of the differences between peoples. I gave a donation.
I walked briefly out into the heavy rain towards the beautiful cathedral around which the city was built. The Cathedral Church of St. Mungo is a masterfully constructed building from the 12th century (the date of the first stone building that replaced the early wooden church) dedicated to the patron saint of Glasgow (whose real name was actually St. Kentigern). If the name St. Mungo rings a bell, it is because the charity I worked for in London was named for this fellow by the Glaswegian who founded it several decades ago. Mungo's bones are actually buried underneath this church and it was nice seeing where he was laid to rest.
Out into the rain again I went as I walked back towards the city centre. The rain didn't subside when I reached it and so I decided to duck into the Gallery of Modern Art for my weekly art fix. I met Brian that evening and we went out with one of his mates to a pub situated next to a classy club known as Nice 'N Sleazy.
It bucketed down for the entire next day which was a write off. This was the day that I made my decision to forfeit my already-bought tickets and instead purchase a ticket back down to London. I had wanted the job in France since I first heard about it 6 months before and I knew I would regret it if I missed this chance.
I went to see the People's Palace and gardens on the day before my 13 hour trip back down south, while Brian was at work. The gardens house the world's largest terracotta fountain dedicated to the four British colonies, Canada, South Africa, India and Australia, each with their own statues of people in distinctive local dress and the queen sitting prominently atop the central column.

Photos:

in the Glasgow bus terminal

St. Mungo's Cathedral

inside

the site of a plastics factory explosion in 2004 where 7 died, near Brian's house

the largest terracotta fountain in the world (the Aussie side)

ah the Scottish

who needs it?

the Tardis: i never quite understood what a police box is...

Pasta Hut

a very common sight in Scotland - kilt shop

i was tired... Brian and I

Away in the Highlands

And then it was the new year. A whole year had passed in what seemed a blink of an eye. Ten months of travels completed. Nearly half-way through... "How did that happen?"
Day one, January 1st, turned out to be not very indicative of what this following year will hopefully hold for me - I stayed inside rugged up on the couch all day and watched 3 movies and an entire season of the British comedy The In-Betweeners, stepping outside only once to get Indian food from down the road at 9pm. Lee had worked all day. She worked the following day as well whilst Susie, her friend Annie and I went ice skating in the Winter Wonderland. I hadn't been ice skating in years and years and I just did not want to stop. Annie, on the other hand, was not quite willing to let go of the wall. Once they managed to drag me off the ice, Susie took us to see one of her friends in Portobello, a seaside suburb of Edinburgh, and we had a bit of a stroll along the beach in the middle of the Scottish winter - I couldn't help thinking that there was something not right about that....
Lee and I decided to hire a car for 3 days to see some of the Scottish countryside. We left a little later on Sunday morning than we had planned and headed north towards a university city called St. Andrews, famous for its historic connections with the game of golf. The city is also famous for its enormous, all-but-collapsed church, and a virtually unrecognisable castle ruin. It was raining and we decided to push on, especially since we were in the approximate vicinity of the shortest day of the year and we suspected our sunlight wouldn't last for long. We were right. We still had a couple of hours left of driving to reach our destination and the huge lochs we were passing already had started to blend into the mountains and sky as one big dark, yet slightly phosphorus blue-hued blur, like some sort of luminescent deep-sea creature spotted at a distance of 10 metres.
Finally we arrived. Inveraray: the small loch-side town near the west coast where my cousin and his wife had spent the majority of their 2 years abroad. And what a lovely town it is, and very typical of the old towns we were to come across along our route. Every building square and whitewashed. It was now pitch-black outside and we decided to pop into the George (the pub where they worked) for some dinner. We got to meet Donald and a few of the rest of the gang and they were extremely friendly and hospitable. Donald even bought us a round of drinks for new years. Now, we had planned on spending as little as possible on this road trip so we had brought sleeping bags and a large duvet to rug up in the car, but they wouldn't have a bar of it. They instead insisted we could just stay in one of their lovely hotel rooms. Awesome! After an early rising and a long day of driving we were buggered and so hit the sack about 10:30pm, awakening early the next morning ready to do it all again.
We packed up our bags and stepped outside about 0730hr into the dark and into the minus 4 degree temperature. The road was sleeted, our car was iced up and the windscreen washers had frozen over. As dawn broke we stood in front of the majestic Inveraray Castle, which I could imagine having been taken directly out of a fairy tale, before taking a very mountainous scenic route up north. Keeping an eye on our in-car temperature gauge, we noticed the outside temperature fluctuating throughout the day between zero and minus 8.5 degrees. That fact was evident in the lakes, rivers and waterfalls that we came across - all frozen - including huge stalactitic ice formations sheeting the carved out rock to either side of the road. Along the way we also spotted some of Scotland's rugged up hairy cows ("herry-coos") going about their business amongst a multitude of lochs and bens (lakes and peaks).
As we approached the largest city of the north, Inverness, we drove along the shore of the UK's largest and most famous lake, Loch Ness. Did we see the great beast that I have dubbed "Nelly"? We thought so.. But then realised it was just a small cutout of a marine dinosaur stuck to the car window. It was very convincing though...... honestly... After a quick visit to Inverness we made our way up to the seaside town of Ullapool by nightfall, which is the closest to the North Pole we've ever been. Again, the architecture was in the typical Scottish style and the harbour was lovely. We ate some fish and chips in the car (it was way too cold to be standing outside) before bunking down early also in the car. I woke up about 4:30am due to discomfort and the cold, and before I knew it the sun was rising and it was time for breakfast and to start heading back south again.
We decided to take an even more scenic route through the central highlands (as if it wasn't scenic enough) on more local roads. This took us through the Cairngorms National Park and the Grampian Mountains, ski fields, icy pastures, the lovely but quiet town of Braemar and then onto the town of Scone and Perth city. We decided we had to stop in Perth (1) because I've never been to Perth in Australia, and (2) because it has some stunning architecture. Then it was back onto Edinburgh, and our short but remarkable tour had come to its conclusion, with about 30 miles to spare from our 750 mile limit.

Photos:

Lee at the entrance to the church in St. Andrews

us @ the George with Donald

Inveraray castle

Inveraray town centre

and its loch, Loch Fyne

herry coos!

standing on an iced over river - the water was still flowing underneath

frozen waterfall

Nelly!

fancy a swim?

in Braemar

our car

Hogmanay

Boxing-boxing day was Saskia's last in Edinburgh before heading back to London, so we did a bit of exploring. My first real day of exploring since I had arrived 5 days earlier. The weather was very kind and the sun was very bright, although not really warming in any way. The famous Royal Mile featured quite highly on our list.
Lee had a day off on the 29th and we spent a good few hours of it walking around the highest point in Edinburgh, Arthur's Seat and the Craigs (pronounced crags). Again the weather was very kind and we could see for miles. This particular hill, I found, was pretty deceptive somehow. From Lee's street, South Clerk St, it looks as if it's about 4km away and exceedingly tall - a mountain. But it's not. It's so close to the city, about a 15 minute walk and only takes about half and hour to walk up. Very misleading.
The 29th is also an important day for the Scots in Edinburgh (or the Scotch, if you're American). It is a day celebrating the nearing of Hogmanay and is kicked off with one of the coolest torch processions I've ever seen. Lee, Rory (Lee's Scottish fellow), Susie and I took our places among the thousands gathering in the cold along the Royal Mile at about 6pm. We collected our "torches" - essentially metre-long beeswax candles - and waited for the slow wave of lit candles to arrive from the front of the pack. It took about an hour. Once they were lit by the people in front of us we started our march, bagpipes playing as we walked, an electric feeling in the air. It was all very exciting and all very pretty, a sea of torches rolling through the old streets of this beautiful city. Small kids who probably shouldn't have been holding these lit candles were sword fighting each other. As were we. The alliance took a right turn onto Princes Street and started filing past the Wonderland, people on the ferris wheel taking photos of what I imagine would have been an amazing view of the rippling effect of the thousands of moving and flickering candles beneath them.
I say "alliance" as we were all focussed on one goal: reaching the top of Carlton Hill to set a Viking ship ablaze. It has been a tradition for many years around the north of Scotland, but was only revived in Edinburgh around a decade ago. The weather was still on our side and it was getting colder. People were rugged up as they held their torches high - some with a sense of pride, others with a sense of trying not to set the woman's hair on fire in front of them. The streets had been closed off for this event and oddly although there were thousands of people crowding them, the traffic lights as they ineffectually changed from green to red and back again somehow made the streets seemed barren. A man, crazy or just entertaining - can't quite decide which - lit green flares and waved them as he ran up and back along the top of a nearby wall.
Eventually the crowd became a mush of people and we slowly made our way up the narrow path to the top of Carlton Hill. By the time we had arrived the Viking ship was already well and truly on fire, quite spectacular really as the flames engulfed the huge silhouette of an emblem of a dragon. Some speccy fireworks erupted from the Acropolis to top off the already fantastic evening. So much fun!
Two days later and the night that everyone cannot wait for, but rarely seems to enjoy, New Years Eve, came to town. The Edinburgh street party is one of the most popular NYE parties in Europe. The streets are again blocked off, stages are set up for the bands (including Glasvegas and Groove Armada this year), the fireworks are ready and waiting somewhere in the Edinburgh castle, bringing your own drinks is allowed. What more could you want? Well, dancing of course! Susie managed to score us free tickets (as she works at the council) to check out and have a crack at some traditional Ceilidh ("kay-lee") dancing. Think a thousand people and the simplicity and repetitiveness of the "hokey-pokey" - or the "hokey-cokey" as they call it in the UK, weird people - but with cool Scottish music and lots of men in skirts. Classic! We manage to get ourselves in trouble for doing the conga line in the Spiegel tent as it "could have been" distracting to the chilled out band on the stage. We were having fun, that's all I can say. A Japanese girl even joined in. That's how crazy things got, man!
Finally it was time for the old fireworks, well, there was about an hour to go but we decided to try and find ourselves a spot with a good view of the castle. It paid off. Anticipation filled the air until the fast-growing sound of thousands of people counting down from 10 to 1 took over, then all that was left was excitement. I'd say they would have to be up there with some of the most awe-inspiring, emotion-stirring and best-executed fireworks ever - though I admit I have not spent a new years in Sydney yet. Even once the fireworks had finished and the reality of the new year set in, the street party still had an hour to go (they like closing up shop early over here). Susie's friend, Kate, and I decided to go find some music as we hadn't seen a single band that evening and we unintentionally stumbled across one of the most entertaining groups around. Moishe's Bagel are born and raised in Edinburgh and their music is described as a mix of folk, jazz and Balkan. We danced the night away. Check it out.

Photos:

down the Royal Mile

part of the Edinburgh Castle

Winter Wonderland

Arthur's seat

lighting of the torches

all very exciting!

the sea of fire

that poor Viking ship!

Lee and I

Happy New Year!

Princes Street celebrations

A very Edinburgh-y Christmas

As the train pushes on, the rolling green landscape, whilst remaining relatively modest, is brought to life by sheep, rivers, fields of peat, stone walls and old-style houses that make my 150-odd year old previous residence in Adelaide seem like it was built last year. We pass a coastal town and a mysterious, fog-enshrouded island off the coast comes into view. A short while later a second train change occurs in a city that I am quite familiar with, not in the literal sense, but in that a good friend of mine that I met in New Zealand lives here. I have to walk between stations here to catch the connecting train to the country's capital. I arrive early afternoon and Lee meets me at the train station.
I had landed ready for Christmas and the famous Scottish New Year celebration of Hogmanay, a well-known 2-to-3-day festival. There was a slight problem though. From the moment I stepped foot onto the bustling Princes St from the Waverley station, a sickness was a-brewin'. I met a few of Lee's housemates, including the crack-up Aussie Susan that evening. After only having slept for a couple of hours the night before I was quite tired and was starting to feel the effects of my ailment, so I hit the sack early. The next two days were a compete write-off - I slept for most of it, a feat which I don't recall ever having achieved before and don't intend repeating. It was, in part, a conscious decision to do this as I knew that Christmas and Hogmanay were coming up and I wanted to let myself recover as much as I could - not to mention the intentional avoidance of the punishing constant change in temperature between the toasty warm inside to literally below-freezing outside. I pretty much lost my voice, a real annoyance for someone who sings all the time (yes, in the shower, too.)
This Christmas was a time spent with orphans from all over the world.... Well, Australia, New Zealand and Spain... Close enough. Lee and Susie (a.k.a. Miss Clause) planned and executed a wonderful Christmas lunch of lamb, turkey and the "Two-hour Pavlova"! This was only after we had all exchanged gifts, both from each other and packages that had been sent over by our respective mums (thanks for the snakes, mum!), which sat under the classily-decorated tree in the lounge room that had since been transformed into my room after I couldn't bear the heat of Lee's little loft at night due to my increased core temperature. That evening we tried, unsuccessfully, to find any kind of pub or bar that had more than 10 people in it. Guess Christmas night is just not a night for going out in Edinburgh.... It was still a really enjoyable day.
Boxing Day was a day for relaxing. But moreso than that, it was a day for going on rides! Over the festive period, or as Bill Bailey prefers to call it, "the Primary Gifting Period and Auxilliary Generosity Zone," Edinburgh sets up a whole bunch of rides, stalls, authentic German markets and something they call the Winter Wonderland - including an open-air ice-skating rink - all set around and overshadowed by the looming Gothic, and somewhat rocket ship-like Scott Monument, dedicated to the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. Pretty cool! Literally...
In the afternoon we (Susie, myself, Lee and her kiwi mate, Saskia) decided it would be fitting to visit the cinemas to watch "Australia," the Baz Luhrmann film about my country - who would have thought? - in the early 1940's. A few hours later we emerged into the darkness, with the sun having already well-and-truly set, and ventured to the top of Carlton hill (one of the several hills that permeate the city centre) atop which stands Scotland's attempt at replicating Greece's Acropolis - they famously, and to many embarrassingly, ran out of money and it remains in its present state only half-finished. From here you can also get quite a good view over the city, its multitude of colourful lights from the Winter Wonderland and a secondary set of ostensibly more "big league" rides on the other side of the park, and of course the city's main centrepiece, the Edinburgh Castle lit up like a massive beacon on top of its stony hill.

Photos:

Lee and Saskia making some fruit salad for Christmas day! mmmm

Miss Clause (a.k.a. Susie) doing the cleaning

wise words..

spinning around - the ferris wheel, Princes St

the Christmas markets

Scotland's embarrassment - I think it's pretty cool personally

the Scott Monument amongst modernity

Béal Feirste

As I mentioned before, laziness caused my leaving of Dublin to be postponed until early afternoon on the Saturday and thus I didn't arrive into Belfast until about 5pm. My CSer Dave met me at the bus station and took me back to his place where I met his housemate Shorty, and my couch. Pretty much from there we got ourselves some dinner from the local chippy and then got onto the drinks. That was one of the latest nights I'd had in a while, out until 7am at a groovy 3-floor club and then a house party. Phew. An eclectic group of friends made for a wonderfully vibrant night and one of their mates' "stories" of his first sexual experiences kept everyone entertained for what felt like hours, somehow.
Well, as we all know, a night late to bed usually results in a morning late to arise. Midday was my time for waking and this meant that, due to the current time of the year, I had only about 4 hours or so left of daylight. I had no specific plans for what I wanted to see and so just wandered about the pretty city centre, with it's own small version of the London Eye (as evidently can be found in a lot of UK cities), until the sun did set. In that time I managed to unknowingly fund a faction of immigrants that have been illegally obtaining and selling Ireland's equivalent of the homeless magazine, The Big Issue. It was a good read, though.
I got to chatting a fair bit with Shorty about the difference in viewpoints between the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic on the occupation by Britain. "Ireland" is divided into 32 counties, 26 in the Republic and 6 in Northern Ireland. I managed to get a fairly good idea from my time in the south that the general consensus is that they want unification - for Britain to retreat and return power of those 6 counties back to the Republic. I also got the feeling that there is still quite a deep seeded feeling of resentment towards the English in particular. On the other side of the border I understand there is a fair amount of the same sentiments, although obviously they're more diluted due to the fact that the majority of residents here are in fact UK citizens. The problems that have long plagued the north have all but subsided - the IRA are virtually unseen in these parts and the religious division between Catholics and Protestants is dwindling due largely to a decline in church attendance - though there are still some residual fears about walking through certain areas of Belfast as a Catholic, for instance.
One other thing that I noticed? The people of Ireland have a real problem with littering. So much so that the governments of both countries have had to spend a huge amount of money on advertising campaigns telling people not to throw their rubbish on the ground. Odd.
That little problem aside, I enjoyed my very short time in the country's capital, and the whole of Ireland for that matter. I plan to return at some point with a car (most likely rented) to explore the counties freely and on my own terms because I didn't really see all that much of Ireland during my 2 months there: Glendalough, Dublin and Galway in the Republic and only Belfast in the north - so much more to see.
In the morning I jumped into a taxi at 6am heading for the ferry port. My ferry back to Britain left at 7:30am on the 22nd of December and this time it was heading north-east, towards Scotland.

Photos:

Dave, Shorty and I - Merry Cut-Mas...?

Some of the Gang

I want that wok!

the city centre, very festive

Dublin.. again

When we returned to Dublin, I was hit with a very different feeling to when I first arrived in Ireland. During the roughly 2 months interval between visits, the city has turned itself into a jovial hub of activity. The Christmas decorations went up all over, especially around the shopping areas and Temple Bar, and a number of charity workers were now dressed in Santa hats and singing carols on the streets. Markets line Henry street and the number of people cramming this particular section has increased several-fold, almost as if the idea of the recession that's become very prominent in the minds of so many Irish has been dispelled for this festive season. The city, like most places throughout the world during this time of year, has put on a much happier face.
Nic, the cousin of my ex, had moved to Dublin about a month ago and he was happy to let us crash on his floor for the night. Literally a floor - no blankets, no sleeping bags, no heating, and a bloody big gap in the window made for a few interesting nights. It was Christina's last night with me before meeting up with her sister and Nic had invited us out for some drinks, but we were both feeling a little too tired for that much excitement so decided to have a quiet one and instead continue our week-long discussion/debate on all things spiritual.
The following afternoon my newly-found travel buddy left me to meet her sister in a city hotel and I went out to see Nic at his work, the Purty Kitchen, where I managed to make a man cry by mentioning the Omagh bombings, the devastating act performed by militant faction the Real IRA on the small unsuspecting Northern Ireland town in 1998 - it turned out that his family was from Omagh. I felt terrible, even though he was very drunk and despite his friend trying to convince me that he just cries at anything. Later on Nic introduced me to a bunch of his workmates and we shared a few pints and a few dance steps in a neat little red-lit club in the Temple Bar area.
Nic had a day off work and we decided to make a day of it by taking the DART to the hill-encircled beachside town of Bray, about 45 minutes south of Dublin. Unfortunately we didn't end up leaving the city until around 3pm due to the previous night's events and it wasn't long before we were watching the sunset from Bray's beach.
That evening I met up with Naomi, who I went to uni with in Adelaide but never particularly got to know, and her husband Phil - they had moved to Dublin last year as Naomi is now doing a PhD in Cryptology there, a topic quite close to my own heart. We were put in contact by a mutual friend and it turned out that we had a great night reminiscing about all sorts of childhood memories from favourite Aussie chocolates to Peter Coombe. It was also the last night I was to spend at Nic's place, although I was promoted from floor to couch which proved to be a very welcome change. I had planned on leaving the next day for Belfast but for some reason changed my mind and instead moved temporarily in with Naomi and Phil at their apartment in the Dublin University.
I realised that although I had spent the equivalent of about 5 full days in this city, I hadn't actually spent much time exploring it. This was what I got upto over the next couple of days fresh off a new couch. The University is situated about a 1 hour walk north from the city centre and I made this walk each day. A noteworthy relic in the centre is the bullet holes in the columns of the landmark post office and statues along O'Connell Street that serve as a reminder of the troubles during the 1916 Easter Rising against the British. The Trinity College holds some lovely buildings but its main attraction is undoubtedly the Book of Kells - a famously elaborate manuscript from around AD 800. At this time of year, also, there are the Christmas markets in the docklands which I briefly visited.
For my final night in Dublin, a Friday night, I went with the guys and a couple of Naomi's workmates out to a lovely pub - which they consider to be one of the best in Dublin - and again the Guinness was flowing. Funny thing is that I never particularly took to it back in Oz, but now that I'm over here Guinness is slowly becoming my favourite beer. That evening I met some interesting Anarchists and we ate expensive cheese pizza.
My intention was to leave relatively early the next morning to give me 2 full days in Belfast before the ferry across to Scotland, but my laziness and the fact that I was particularly enjoying Phil and Naomi's company meant that it wasn't until after midday that I finally walked out their door and I ended up on the 2pm bus out of Dublin.

Photos:

a Christmas tree using something like 100,000 lights..

not too sure what's going on there - Nic and I in Bray

my bed for a couple of nights...

Henry street

this is where the sun sits around midday

bullet holes in an angel

in the Trinity College

on Temple Bar

Naomi, Phil and their mate out on the piss

a tour and a half

We had been toying with the idea of hiring a car but there were two problems: Christina has a valid licence but because she is 18 wasn't eligible to hire a car, and the other issue; I have my international driving permit but... no licence - I had my replacement licence (stemming from when I lost my wallet all those months ago in Manchester) sent to Lee in Edinburgh because of my lack of fixed address. So that idea was out the window. If we were wanting to explore some of the surrounding areas of Galway (Gaillimh in Gaelic - pronounced like Gal-yiff) we could either hitchhike - not a bad idea usually, but around the areas we were going the roads are very narrow and winding - or take a bus tour. We opted for the bus tour, hesitantly.
We got to experience the contrast in quality of service between two different tour operators and it was very interesting. First of all, we were lied to by the owner of O'Neachtain Tours. Niki (our CSer) mentioned that there was a particularly good guided farm walk on the Cliffs of Moher tour. I asked this particular woman about it and she said that there were no farms out that way and I must've been thinking of their other tour. When we were on the bus, however, we did stop at a farm and everyone was able to get off the bus for the walking tour except for us and another couple. Upon enquiring/complaining to the bus driver (who was actually from a different company called Lears), he confirmed that the woman had flat-out lied to make the sale, and so he ended up driving us around the area to an old monastery and telling us all about the country's various folklore to make up for it. He was a great bloke, very informative and very friendly. Following this we stopped off at the ancient (>5000 year old) Poulnabrone tomb for a very quick photo opportunity - they are attempting to reduce degradation of the site by limiting visiting time to only 10 minutes.
Then it was onto the famous Cliffs of Moher, only the third highest cliffs in Ireland but very spectacular all the same. For the majority of the day, and especially during the drive upto the cliffs, a thick fog loomed and could even be seen rolling down the high hills towards the sea as we passed traditional thatch-roofed seaside villages. This fog was still very much present when we got off the bus. Amazingly, by a stroke of luck as if instigated by some almighty force, the fog dissipated and the snaking cliffs came into full view as we approached the cliffs' edge. Wonderful. Then, to add to the mystery or luck as it were, it all rolled back in again as we jumped back on the bus.
That evening I decided that, although we had thoroughly enjoyed the tour, the way in which we were sold the tickets needed to be called into question. I had a few words to the guy on the desk at the tour office, he agreed it was poor form and took my number for the manager... But never called... What a surprise.
We had a bit of a wander around town later on and bumped into a fellow, you know the type: a nomad, living in a caravan run on vegetable oil, handing out booklets outlining the problems with the world and the ways in which we can change, heading to Africa next year to do humanitarian work with underpriveliged Kenyans... A really nice guy, we chatted for about an hour, and Christina managed to take some inspiration for a similar African trip.
The following day we were feeling amazingly lazy and our time was thus spent indoors watching movies, including a bit of the timeless comedy known as Father Ted, which is set on a fictitious Aran Island of the west coast here.
The other tour we participated in was to the north-west of Galway (the first being to the south-west). My expectation of this tour to an area called the Connemara was that we would be visiting one of the only few remaining entirely Gaelic-speaking regions, or Gaeltachts, of Ireland. Well technically we did visit it when our driver (this time a very awkward O'Neachtain driver) dropped us off at the only English-speaking markets in the area for half and hour while he drove back to the depot to pick up a smaller bus. We then proceeded to drive straight through without any other stops until we reached the first English-speaking town outside of the region. I would have been happy if he'd even just stopped so we could see street signs in pure Gaelic (without English as can be observed in the rest of the country), but we weren't so lucky. From what I saw from the comfort of the bus it looked like a nice area although the weather was certainly against us with the rain almost not ceasing for the entire day.
Dara took us out for another Guinness session that evening and we said our goodbyes early the next afternoon.

Photos:

Christina and I in front of an early Abbey

Poulnabrone Tomb

good Samaritans - the Cliffs of Moher

you always get the best view from the edge

lovely

apparently Michael Jackson has put in a bid for this round tower castle - only about a cool €40m or so...

traditional thatch-roofed houses in the Connemara - to re-thatch costs about €40,000

boglands of the Connemara

a bit of craic with Dara

Gaillimh

The morning before I left Glendalough was cold. Not unlike any other morning of the past 6 weeks. But this time it held a different feeling. As I awoke at 7:30am following a night out in Lynhams, I looked outside at the darkness (at this time of year the sun isn't showing itself until around 8:30) and decided to go for a run. I had done this only a couple of times previously in similarly cold conditions. As I turned right out of the hostels driveway, the frosted whiteness of the entire landscape hit me. It was absolutely stunning. So serene. I turned into the ancient cemetery and the beauty continued. A solitary man capturing the view down the valley with his camera looked up and smiled at me. Winter had now officially begun.
Christina and I left early the next morning, again well before sunrise, for the bus to Dublin. It wasn't until we hit traffic that I realised I pretty much hadn't seen civilisation for the past month and a half. I was excited at the prospect of being once again part of city life. We had plans for moving on from Dublin later in the day but we decided to spend a few hours walking around. We visited Malin at Shining and spent a couple of hours wandering with her. Then it was onto another bus, this time for a duration of about 4.5 hours to Galway. I had heard from many people that Galway was a fantastic city and well worth visiting - so much more so than Dublin. I'm happy to report that it certainly lived upto the reviews.
Couchsurfing was the way forward again and we found ourselves staying with the fantastic Kiwi hostess, Niki, and her highly amusing Irish housemate, Dara. By the time we had sorted our stuff out it was past 2200hr and we were quite exhausted from the long day behind us. We had plans to see a few of the surrounding areas of Galway but felt that our first day in the city should be spent in the city. By admission of even the locals, the city itself does not hold too many "sights" to keep tourists busy. It is a lovely place but the main drawing card is the craic. There are more pubs per capita than many other places in Ireland and that is very evident with even the backstreets holding at least some sort of drinking establishment overflowing with Guinness. The local music scene is probably second to none, seeing as the city is at the heart of the county that can claim proudly the birthplace of traditional Irish music. A quarter of the city's 70,000-odd residents are students, adding to its vivaciousness.
That first day Christina and I checked out the local cemetery. Yes I know it seems like I have a weird obsession with cemeteries, but I'm finding them quite interesting here in Ireland. Ireland is the first place where the Christian cross and the Pagan circle representing the continuity of life and the sun are known to have been meshed together. This well-known trans-Religious symbol is now the most common form of headstone used in cemeteries, and the cemetery we were in was no different. Apart from the occasional more subtle memorial, the entire estate appears as a sea of these grey stone monuments to the eternally resting.
Following this we meandered through the main shopping area within city before venturing along a coastal path, passing some remnants of the city's early trading days with Spain, to a few sandy yet cold beaches where we were able to watch the sun as it neared the horizon signalling the early end of daylight for yet another day. As most people know, with the death of daylight comes another seemingly more vibrant life. Nightlife. That night Dara and his mate Alan took us to a few pubs and clubs about the place and we had a great time yelling at an ageing Santa to "show us your sack!" in one pub followed by dancing up a storm in the club Karma.

Photos:

it's Christmas time in the city...

over the harbour

a typical Irish cemetery

neat buildings

living in the middle of nowhere

The first weekend brought the first of many large young groups to the hostel. I would like to take this opportunity to say that I now officially hate groups of kids! Now, before you start to think I'm a complete bastard, let me put this into perspective for you. I live in a small double bedroom, Room 18, in the centre of the second floor. Groups of kids always book out the entire second floor (apart from my room, that is) and generally don't go to sleep before say 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. Sounds harmless but when they are running up and down the corridors, screaming, banging on doors - including mine on that first weekend, waking me up at 4:30am with someone shouting, "Trick or treat!" - it can get a bit beyond the pale sometimes. In fact at that point I got up ready to yell at whoever was outside. It was a girl, maybe 17 years old and drunk off her nut. She said that she needed sleep and I could see that she wouldn't be able to get any in her room so I offered my spare bed simply so she would stop running around. Big mistake. Not only did she confuse me for someone she knew and try quite drunkenly to seduce me - not the best thing to be doing with someone who's just been woken up at 4am - she also peed the bed and while I was out of the room in the morning, decided to cover it up by doing a bit of "cleaning", including flipping over the mattress so I wouldn't know. And when I questioned her about it, she said she had "no idea why the blanket was hanging out the window." I left it at that. I think she was a little embarrassed by this string of events, though, and ended up leaving the group early and going home. I found this out at their very well-planned Halloween party that evening at the Glendalough Hotel. Some awesome costumes, including a few smurfs and the entire Tellytubby crew. After the party everyone crowded into one of the hostel rooms and were singing traditional Irish songs at the top of their voices until at least 5am. That, I was glad to be a part of.
After the weekend, we said goodbye to Jamie as she ventured off hitchhiking around Ireland and then onto the south of Spain. And then it was just Ryan, a 22 year old Chicagoan, and I. We had a good bit of craic along with fellow workers Maria, a cute little German lass, and Elena, the voice of reason from Spain. After the roughly 2 to 3 hours of housekeeping daily, Ryan spent a fair bit of his time writing his book, and I spent a fair bit of my time proof reading it.
As for me, it didn't take long to realise that apart from a bit of walking and drinking at the pub (which I very rarely do), there is not much to keep one busy out here at Glendalough. I asked about work at the two local pubs and the organic store, but with no luck. So soon I had picked up my guitar, and I pretty much haven't put it down for the past 6 weeks. If there was any possibility of a feeling of time wasted by staying in the one sleepy town and not earning any money, it has been well and truly quashed by the fact that I've made my first substantial progress on the guitar front - having learned about 8 or so songs and written two more - and for the first time I actually feel confident playing and singing them at the same time, something I've longed for since I started singing many years ago. My fingers are actually aching from playing so much, but again I'm not complaining.
A couple more weeks passed and Ryan's plans of staying for at least a few more months changed when his girlfriend was unable to organise a visa in time to come over, so he made the decision to instead return home for a month to see her. We had some drinks for his penultimate night and it would be an understatement to say that we both felt a little hungover that next day. Soon he too had left and then it was just me.
There have a been a few lovely travellers that I have had the privilege of meeting over the time, from Dutch to French, Israeli, German, Spanish, Irish, and of course Australian. The most recent of which being 18 year old Christina from California. She left Glendalough on Monday to begin her travels around Ireland. And I left with her.

Photos:

Me as a Tellytubby, Ryan as a person at the Halloween party

the colours were amazing near the start of my time in Glendalough - by the time I left, this same scene was bare

a lovely little bridge

my mate George

this is pretty much the entire town of Glendalough

the only surviving entry archways to a monastery in the country

the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul

from St Saviour's church to the valley

Gleann dá loch

Glendalough (Gaelic: Gleann dá loch, Pronunciation: Glen-da-lock, Translation: Valley of the Two Lakes) is pretty well described by its name. It's a tiny village sporadically settled about the eastern and northern shores of two bodies of water, known as the Lower and Upper Lakes, nestled in a quiet valley within the rugged and windswept Wicklow Mountains approximately 54km south of Dublin. It was founded in the 6th century by the monk St. Kevin after he retreated into a small cave above the Upper Lake in order to achieve solitude. His solitude was short-lived, however, and it wasn't long before others had joined him and a number of churches were constructed. From that point it flourished as a monastic centre for eight centuries until it was pillaged by English soldiers in 1398, leaving behind the ruins that remain today. Bloody English!
Malin and I met my new housemates, fellow freebies Ryan and Jamie, that first evening and the following day, after a walk around the lakes, the guys took us for a hike over one of the hills for some fantastic views of the lakes, waterfalls and valley below. Not to mention the nearby monastic ruins and cemetery. All quite spectacular really. What I've discovered is that the place is serene and beautiful irrespective of the weather: sun, rain, hail, wind or snow.. That's right... Snow!
On my second day, after Malin had returned to Dublin for work, as I began my first day of housekeeping, it started to snow. For hours it snowed. The sheep in the field adjacent to the hostel grazed in it and the mountaintops were capped white. Everything became white. It was such a shock to see this in late October but I was not complaining. In fact I was thrilled - it was the first snow I had seen in a few years - and although I was wearing my flip-flops I couldn't resist heading outside for a closer look.
Ryan, Jamie and I went for a couple of great hikes in that first week and even took advantage of the remaining high-altitude snow with a snowball fight on the top of Camaderry mountain, on the northern side of the Upper Lake. Deer and goats are bountiful on these mountains and the high-pitched shriek, uncomfortably reminiscient of a small child screaming, used in communication and especially as a warning by the deer can be heard all around the area.
As if somehow prompted by the snowfall, I was able to watch the somewhat gloomy transition from autumn to winter as the foliage of vibrant reds and yellows slowly succumbed to gravity and a number of trees became bare skeletons of their former selves. This is not to say that the landscape has now become desolate or unattractive, in fact the opposite has occurred. With many trees still retaining their greenery and the remaining having turned an eerie shade of purple, not to mention their newly exposed intricacy as having complicated and twisted branch structures and as the home for many mosses and lichens, it feels as though winter has brought a new face to the environment. One prepared for the colder months.
Although the snow melted away from the mountain not long after our snowfight in that first week, I don't think I would go so far as to say that there has been a day of consistent warmness since. Oddly, I have experienced a number of mornings where the sun beaming down will prove to be warmer than the same that afternoon - although the hostel has internet, it's a little expensive and it's not wireless, so Ryan and I would generally make the trek with our laptops to the pub in the next town over, Lynhams of Laragh, to scrounge their wireless from the cold sidewalk - yes, we are cheaps bastards... On these days, it would not be until we were finishing up or walking back to the hostel that my fingers would start to sting from the cold and I would sometimes find it difficult to speak without shaking. Good times. More recently, the temperature has started dropping below zero during the day causing ice to remain on the grass and puddles to freeze over almost permanently. The white caps on the mountains have also returned.

Photos:

the cemetery with its 10th century round tower - that's the doorway a few metres from the ground on the left-side of the tower

Upper Lake

the view down the valley from Derrybawn mountain

Emo!

Snow!

many an evening was spent playing games - I suck at Monopoly but am undoubtedly the Jenga master!

another view of the valley

deer on the mountains

after the fall

it was damn cold up there.. but so good

the long trek to Glendalough

I met Malin, a Swedish girl who worked at the hostel, on this evening out and we got to talking. I found out that she had not been outside of Dublin city for about 3 months and as such was itching to do something. I mentioned the possibility of Glendalough and the plan was formulated for the next day. I had to be her wake up call at 9:30am ready for the 10 o'clock bus but after getting misdirected - by a couple of policemen, mind you - and subsequently lost we must've just missed it by a few minutes. There wasn't another bus until 6pm. What to do, what to do...
Malin had the idea to jump on the DART (rail system) and see a place called Howth on the coast. Sounded easy enough but somehow we again got lost trying to take backstreets and ended up walking aimlessly around the city for a couple of hours with all of my gear, coming across a city marathon before eventually finding the train station.
We only had a couple of hours in Howth but it seemed like it was a lovely relaxing beachside town. I imagined the streets full of holidaying families and the green parks converted into a temporary fairground over the summer months, kids licking icecreams from a takeaway while the parents looked through the window of the local arts and crafts store. Unfortunately this was not our experience. It was cold and it was windy. We rugged up with about 30 layers each and found some backstreets to explore, one of which gave us a nice view over the town's cemetery with its centuries-old collapsed-roof stone church and the ocean in the background. After a bite of lunch at the local pub we had a bit more of a wander, with just enough time to discover another old church hiding away from the town centre before we had to return to Dublin.
Well, we weren't going to miss this damn bus again so we walked straight to the bus stop on the other side of the city (we got off the train a few stops too early we realised) and the bus was waiting. We paid our €20 each (!) for the return trip and were on our way. I think we were both pretty stuffed after our long day of walking with all the extra baggage and we both fell asleep on the bus only to be woken up to the bus driver saying, "Wakey wakey, sorry to disturb your slumber but we have arrived." By this point it was around 7:30pm and it was pitch black outside. The driver pointed us down a dark road, untouched by the glow of street lamps or even moonlight, and shrouded in trees. We followed a small trail of others who had similarly been pointed in that direction thinking that they would know the way better than us - why, I do not know.. They didn't let us down though and we soon found ourselves looking at a homely looking yellow building in the middle of nowhere.
In the reception, out the corner of my eye I spotted an A4 printed sheet pointing out that I could have my accommodation and breakfast for free (including the tastiest muesli you've ever laid your tongue on) in exchange for a bit of work. I had no plans over the next week, apart from the fading possibility of getting work on a farm near Belfast, and so I thought 'why not.' And thus my time in Glendalough began.

Photos:

a church

Malin and I in a traditional Irish pub

another church

and it begins...

Baile Átha Cliath

I was welcomed to Ireland with open arms. They were my arms, waving in astonishment at the line of us still waiting for the bus to pick us up from the ferry terminal over an hour after we docked. It was about 7:30pm by the time the double decker bus decided to show up and in this time I had befriended a fellow Aussie traveller in the hope that there might be a vacancy at the hostel he was staying at. It was a Saturday night and I had once again neglected to book accommodation.
My first taste of Irishness actually came on the bus when I noticed tiny green confetti shamrocks scattered across the second level floor. Confetti is not something I would normally pay much attention to, but I thought the style of confetti in this case seemed quite fitting. We walked to the Aussie's hostel and within seconds we had discovered that I still had nowhere to sleep for that night. Good old hostels.com helped me out after putting a coin into the automated internet machine in the Busáras terminal, and it was not long before I was unknowingly walking through the city's party heart, Temple Bar, on my way to my new temporary bed. That evening I did not feel like partying though, in fact doing anything apart from sleeping after my 14-or-so hour excursion sounded quite adverse. So that's exactly what I did. Slept.
The next morning I had to again look for a place to stay as the hostel was full for that evening, so I asked an older gent who was staying in the bed next to mine. He made a few suggestions and then let me know that there really was not much to do around the city apart from drinking and visiting the Guinness storehouse. This same guy managed to unintentionally change the course of my travels for the next six weeks by casually mentioning a place that he had heard was supposed to be quite nice: a little village south of Dublin known as Glendalough. The seed had been planted and as I walked around reciting the name in my head so I would not forget it (I'm not exactly known for my great memory capacity) it didn't take long to find a new hostel, the Shining Hostel, this one a little cheaper than the previous.
The weather was strange that day. It was never warm, but it shifted a number of times between sunny clear skies, bucketing down and windy. The last two usually occurring simultaneously. Actually, what am I saying? That kind of weather is pretty much the norm out in these parts. And by "these parts," I mean the entire British Isles. Dublin is known in Irish Gaelic as Baile Átha Cliath, or just Átha Cliath (it sounds a little like a cross between or and the 'o' in stop, followed by clee-a), which refers to a fortress from back when Ireland was a bastion in medieval times. It was perhaps not too startling to find out that the city was built on and divided in two by the River Liffey. The major shopping focus is on the north side of the river with the wide O'Connell Street and pedestrianised Henry Street providing much spending opportunity and many a busking location. And there were quite a few great buskers about, including a fantastic guitarist/singer and his overexcited dog and a very talented puppeteer. O'Connell Street is also home to the city's famous landmark, the 120 metre tall Monument of Light, or 'The Spire', which is actually meant to be a massive knitting needle in dedication to the most unexpected export, the Aran sweater. Odd.
While on my way to the supermarket that afternoon, in a shopping centre on Henry Street, I came across an Israeli guy manning a small nuts stall who tried convincing me to work illegally with him selling nuts for commission. What a job. I could have even made a few euro extra by working in the beauty stall across the way straightening people's hair. Hmmm. Thanks but no thanks. He did however give me a discount on nuts and offer to practically give me a lifetime supply if he could keep my hat.
That afternoon I spent in the hostel speaking with a guy that took a little bit too much of an interest in me, if you know what I mean. Somehow we ended up eating icecream covered in banana, jam and nutella with a Swedish girl while sitting on the floor of the hostel's bathroom. Not too sure how that came about. But in the evening a big group of us (mainly Swedish) headed out to Temple Bar - which is actually an entertainment quarter as opposed to just one bar - for some Guinnesses (I guess that's the correct plural of Guinness? Not Guinnii?).

Photos:

Grafton St by night

some Irish guy

there is a large homeless presence around Dublin

The Spire and an example of the English/Gaelic street signs that can be seen all around the country

Shamrocks