radball

I want to start a West End radball team.
Just got to find one of those fancy bikes.

Spain

Barcelona, Igualada, Montserrat, Sitges, Madrid, Cercidilla, Torla, and the Ordesa Valley in Monte Perdido National Park.
Flying home tonight.

Get some culture up ya!

Michael Ondaatje discusses his latest book Divisidero at the Village Voice bookstore in St Germain on Thursday night. I went there today and bought Absurdistan. Hmm. I'll miss it by a day, just like Rock en Seine. Hmm.
Other than that, I window shopped on Rue St Honore, unashamedly singing out loud to my mp3 player. Steve Malkmus and Franz Ferdinand: 'It's always better on holiday, that's why we only work when we need the money.' I went into the Campers bouteque. It's somewhere next to a 4000 euro watch shop (there's only about 26 on that street) I've been wearing mine everyday for three months and they're starting to look it. They were playing Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? Cool. If I decide on a career change, a checkout chick in this store woud be a serious contender right now.

week bouldering

i'm back in paris for a few days before i fly to barcelona.
i spent a week camping near milly a foret, 90 km south east of paris and bouldering in fontainbleau forest, where there are circuits of climbs that you can do, following maps and painted signs around, like a gym session/orienteering course. people started climbing there 120 yrs ago to train for the alps but as bouldering became a sport in its own right, bleau became a mecca for intn'l climbers. great fun.
here's a link to my favourite climb: http://bleau.info/95.2/3699.html. the one that got away. i so had it!! but i was borrowing someone's crashmat and after i fell off the last move about six times in a row, they were getting kinda tetchy and wanted to go play somewhere else.
if you climb (and care) note the last move is a right hand sloper. i grabbed that the first time, but the british lads i was climbing with gave me bad beta(!) and told me to cross hands and reach for the crimper on the left instead. i didn't tick it and i'll blame them.
i've been in contact with ziggy, and we'll be in barcelona at the same time. we've organised to go to the salvidor dali museum together. it'll be a trip seeing him out of context. everytime i've seen him has either been with an anglegrinder in his hand in red hill or a glass of plonk in a gallery in new farm!
i put a few more pics up, but i didn't really take too many in fontainebleau. reason being, while i think rocks are sexy, they aren't really that photogenic, so just go to bleau.info and superimpose my face (john malkovic stlye) on the climbers you see there.
apart from the climbing, i met some cool peeps at the campsite, including some spaniards who live in Igualada, near Barcelona and Montserrat. They're gonna take me to a private climbing gym (you can only go by invitation. remember steve in 90210 trying to go to a rave: 'can i buy an egg?') and introduce me to some firemen who's work schedule means they've got the time to take me climbing at montserrat. gotta love loca knowedge. i want to climb this: http://www.bergefelsundeis.de/Spanien/Parets.html
Cavall Bernat.
We'll see.
Me and the Spaniards got into a fight with the local white trash who live in the trailer park. This pykie guy (track suit, gold hoop earing, 500ml can of Amsterdam moonshine in hand) stumbles over, gesticulating and shouting and insisting we follow him. I was scared of getting my head bashed in so Carles, Sira and I follow him to his van where we meet his good wife. at first i thought she had the biggest cameltoe i'd ever seen and then i realised it was her stomach.
anyway, we were accused of stealing some plastic outdoor furniture. they'd stolen the spaniards' tevas in retaliation. putting my south korean hostage negotiation skills to good use (ie, wiping the smirk off my face long enough to make sure it wasn't caved in), i stood by along with all the neighbours, while Sira (who was the only one of us who's french was good enough to understand slurred dialect) rescued her sandles.

Fontainebleua

Well, had a nice day yesterday after all that. I went to Bastille and St Germain but all the galleries are shut during August for the annual hoidays. I was gonna go to Rock en Seine for the last day but the line up was crap except for Bjork.
Train to Fontainebleau today. The Germans don't get in til Thursday night, so it'll be fun exporing by mysef for a few days.
Booked the Dream Hostel in Barcelona for my first few nights on Cam's recommendation.

Shitty Day

Man!
I left Bad Bergzabern for Paris today on the train; Had to transfer at Widden. As I was loading my bike on the train, on of my bags ...the one zith my passport etc in it? fell off onto the platform and then the doors shut before I could get it. I pulled the emergency brake!!! cool! but nothing hqppened. I had a one and a half hour return trip back to the same station. Luckily some maintenance workers were looking after the bag and I got on the next train to start over. But this one was a local and stopped at every stop instead of just straight to bumsville whereever the fuck it was I had to be. Long story short I got to Paris hours later than I wanted, lived thru hell thinking I;d lost my passport and 400bucks worth of gear, got in a fight zith the french conductoron the tgv cos of my hopelessly invalid tickets; mqnqged to slate a lot of it home to die bahn the german train ppl. and got my fine reduced from 45 to 20 euro after a heated trilingual fight in front of a bunch of commuters all thinking when is this arrgant tourist fucker gonna shut the fuck up and pay soMe money.

so i got to paris and the key is not where lolita said it would be so im buying 500ml heinekins from the corner store and sitting in the grimiest internet cafe in paris. sunset over sacre cour looked nice on the way here even if the keyboard is black and sticky.

tool finishes rocking the seine qbout midnight so ill go knock on lols door again about 1am.

Rock en Seine

Man, the line up tomorrow rocks! I'm gonna miss it by A DAY!!! Why!!!!
http://www.rockenseine.com/index_va.php#programmation

Castles Forest and Rocks

...usually all three at once. I climbed a cliff yesterday where you handjam to a cave which you crawl into, and it becomes a chimney. Then you walk up about 10 steps that have been there for 800 years and which used to be the only access to the castle that sat on top of that particular outcrop. Then you layback a corner to the top. I've never done a climb like that before! There was another one on that cliff where you have to climb through a medieval window then up another staircase. Cool!

Apart from climbing, I took Rudi's topos and did some mountainbiking - some single tracks and trails. Stopped and did some bouldering too.

Visited to castles. Saw some torture devices, catapults (which used to hurl 100 and 200kg cannonballs 200 metres, as well as diseased rotting animal carcasses and human cadavers), went down into the dungeon. Heard about the inevitable ghost of the 'white woman' who committed suicide by jumping off the top for some reason.

I'm here till the weekend then making tracks for Fontainebleau! Can't wait. I've also booked Ryanair tickets to Barcelona and back to Paris travelling 05.09 and 20.09. Climbing at Montserrat just north of Barcelona and up to the north coast - Bilbao and San Sebastian. That reminds me, Ziggy Libucha is gonna be in Spain about that time...

pfalz

wow, whistlestop tour of hamburg where i went to the rappabahn and a 30th birthday party where the theme was "who wants to be a millionaire". i didn't understand a thing, but there was impressive sound effects, a powerpoint presentation for the questions, a german equivalent to eddie (the b'day boy's best friend) and copious booze and trashy german pop.

five days cycling. i thought i'd need a map but i just followed the rhine south. if i got lost i just headed east til i hit water and then turned right and kept going. at one stage, 1.30am friday night, i was riding down a donkey track, lit by my headtorch, with cornfields on one side and cars whizzing past on the autobahn at 160km-h about 10m on the left. no map. i took a detour, which was then closed and ended up totally lost! i got acosted by two security guards that night. one looking after a chuch and the other looking after a waste water plant.
the rhine is a mix of beautiful country, winelands, castles, beautiful 2000 yr old towns, crappy industrial sites, lots of cyclists (mean age - 62...which at least made me one of the fastest most hardcore of this elite group of athletes).

now i'm in bad bergzabern, climbing in the pfalz with rudi and wolfi.

dreams and asperations: leading "gross verschneidung" clean; getting my hands on an east german army tracksuit at a suplus store - think brown gotcha/adidas with the german flag colors running up the seams on the arms and legs. awesome.

Bochum and Hamburg

Spent a few days in Utrecht. Pretty cool. I ticked off RKB´s recommended sights - uni architecture, grift park, lombok, and some others. I had a chat with the aussie girl who runs the local crumpler store. that brand is huge here. good to see. Took the train to Ede and rode out to the Kroller Muller Museum in the national park. Awesome ride through purple wildflowers and pine forests. Saw some van goghs and some other great paintings, mostly by dutchies.

Drove with Tim to Ochum - hit the autobahn and he eased it up to 160km/h. I was shit scared!
his brother and his girlfriend are also staying for the weekend. we went to a bbq at tim´s uni and i met some of his mates, watched a game of soccer on the big screen and had free beers and sausages. welcome to germany! going to a mate´s 30th birtday in hamburg tonight.

latest in shopping technology

i''ve been staying with d. the lest few days. i had not seen her for 11 years so we had some catching up to do. staying at her parents place (they're in a caribbean).
went to a supermarket today with a diy check out where you scan your groceries yourself and put them through a conveyor belt and pay by credit card. no checkout operator - i've never seen that before!
utrecht tomorrow. T is in Germany til Tuesday so I'll camp or something then stay with him. He works in U four days a week and spends Friday and the weekend at Bochum so most likely I'll drive there for the weekend with him before heading for the Pfalz by bike.
In the next few days I want to try to get the rest of my itinery sorted - Berlin, London and Istanbul? We'll see.

on the road again

amsterdam was cool fun, man! i'm gonna miss this place. we went to the red light district last night and it was kinda whacky. some of those girls have quite aggressive marketing techniques! i took a photo of the full moon above two church spires and in the foreground is a punter looking into a red neon framed doorway. i think it looks better in my minds eye than in the photo itself, because i'm pretty bumbly when it comes to f-stops and aperatures.

we also road thru the centrum which is full of tourists and had a beer on the roof of one of the highrisers (eleven floors). so that was my big touristy day. went to the rijkmuseum and looked at rembrants too. beautiful big old pictures...

apart from that we've been going to the local climbing gym with some spanish friends of the singles board at the gym; riding to different parts of town usually trying to stay away from stoned american college boys...that kinda stuf.

riding to bloemendaal (wallpaper*s guide to a'dam rates it, so it must be a swanky seaside town) thru haarlem and then onto leiden, utrecht and germany.

City of Bikes

So today was a day full of bikes. I bought a touring bike! Panniers, racks, pump, puncture kit - I got the lot. I was tossing up whether to rent or buy. In the end I bought cos I can either sell it all before I go and get (some of) my money back or bring my new toys home, which is what I'd prefer to do.

I'm gonna spend another week of so here and then ride to Leiden (where Daphe lives), Utrecht (where Robyn studied) and then (either with a pitstop in Amsterdam first or directly) to Dusseldorf and Pflaz (Palatinate) to see Tim Merforth and some German climbers. Berlin is the ultimate goal, but some of that trip will be on the train, cos its a long way!!

Ash and I also went to the "My Bike" festival and Streetlab fashion show which were on in Westerpark. We set up a slackline. Pics are up.

Ash's brother, his wife and two month old baby came to dinner - flatbean cabonara, strawberry and rocket salad, creme broules.

Mitch Hedburg

Ben and Kurt recommend Mitch Hedburg:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bESBs3Lg7M&mode=related&search=

the rest of my time in france

Finally, you may be saying, if you care and if you are still out there there is a new post on this crap travellogue...well sorry, i've been in the mountains, ok, and not the kind where there is no access to civilisation let alone email and blogs etc, the kind where there is an internet cafe but it cost about 10 euro a minute to use it.

so i looked around marseille for a bike shop to buy a velo d'occasion (2nd hand) cos i was going to ride to spain or tuscany or something. but there was only one velo shop in town, seriously and i tried to find the markets my landlord at the hotel that smelled like poo told me about (in Bougainville, which is at the end of the line) but i didn't find it. the hippie at the bike community/collective who was trying to save the world from cars was no use cos he had a huge pile of old wheels but only a granny shopping bike and a bambino's trike (oops that's italian and we're not there yet) to sell me.

so i abandoned plan b and hung out in marseille with ben. we saw Boulevarde de la Morte, in Kurt Russells says, "Je m'appelle "Mike le Stuntman". Tu est Papillion, n'est pas? Je sais une poeme, que je voudrais dire pous toi! Pappillion, Paillion tu est tres jolie!! Danser pour moi!"

and we saw a gypsie band at a cool little bar and danced around with some drunk french people. ben had just spent a week and a jango rheinhardt (sp?) festival near paris and carts a gypsie guitar around the place so he was stoked, as was i, sipping pastis and shaking it.

our hotel smelled too much and marseille was too dirty (if you read the lonely planet guide to that city it actually rates the trash, which gets caught in the wind and twirls around in eddies as a tourist attraction - its supposed to be whimsical of something) so we jumped a train to avignon where there was a theatre festival in progress. its a cool old place with walls and palaces and an old bridge that everyone who learned french in primary school would have sung about. i sang about it while i was there but i only knew one line, which got a bit frustrating.

we camped and it was great cos all the performers - actors and circus peeps and musicians were all there too. the town was covered in billboards and there were people in costumes everywhere handing out flyers to get the punters into their shows. every second bar or shop had been turned into a playhouse. there were performances in the streets - juggles and people dressed in medieval stuff playing lutes and singing, acrobats and mimes and clowns.

i left ben there and jumped the train to st cyr sur mer, a small beach side place east of marseille to catch up with the doctors - gez and frawphy from pete and my namibian adventures. jo and hilary who i'd met in bris vegas and their whole crew (the charlottes, adilla (sp?), stu and neil) were staying in a villa for a week and i joined up with them and seriously did nothing for a week except drink, read books play cards and board games (articulate - with high stakes!) and swim in the pool. everyone brought a pile of paperbacks and peeps would just lie in the sun by the pool and devour them, reading two or three books a day. i've never seen anything like it! Jo would finish one and go, "Hmm, that was good, not as good as her first one, but good." and Hilary would say, "Yeah I thought it was good too. Try this one, its good too." and then Jo would go two hours later, "Yeah, that was good. What else is good."

We only left the house to go to reastaurants and cocktail lounges and maybe to the beach or the bottleshop. that was cool. kinda weird at first when you meet up with friends that you haven't seen for four years but had a great time and just pissed myself the whole time.

gez had been working for mediciens sans frontiers in somalia last year and this year is a researcher at oxford, working on a malaria vaccine. everyone else was a doctor of some distription except me and stu who is also a bum. he's just left the RAF and was telling us about the legendary schlack stack in the faulklands.

so then what happened? i got an a sleeper to verona with a kid from san diago who had just been to romania cos they're really into water polo there.

verona was pretty - i looked at some old buildings.

i went to the mountains.

marseille

So orpierre and verdon were cool. ash n me, we climbed some rocks and ate some cheese. then i went to nice (dont rate it cos it was hot) i learned that an open gravelly drain will pass for a beach in this country. i watched a crap b grade tna movie set in cannes where this guy falls off a yacht and is stung to death by jelly fish, then the next day i went swimming at eze (near monaco) and go attacked by jellyfish (called madussa) that stung my neck arms and leg (welts r gone now) i had to navigate back 50m to shore thru a hord of the f*ckers and the whole time i was laughing cos i couldnt believe i was trapped in this french movie!!! now im in marseille eating a lot of cous cous for 5 euro in algerian restaurants and thinking about climbing the calanques but theyre shut cos of high wind and fire danger. ps im getting a bit sick of lugging climbing gear round on the off chance that ill find someone to clim with and im thinking seriously about plan b which involves posting my gear to lolita in paris buying an old purgeot 10 speed and hitting the road in my bikepants!

One night in Paris

Bags will arrive at Lol's in the next few hours. We're going to Carlos' Spanish mates' place to watch the last game of the Spanish football comp this arvy. Apparently it's in the roughest part of town. Joy.
Wine and tapas party here last night was great fun. See flickr. Caught up with Martin Lloyd, Fergus Smith, Michelle Bradfield and her friends Michelle and Jackie from Cambridge. Went out somewhere called "Le Bar" which doesn't help me try to track it down the next day, but it was near the Jardin du Luxembourg. Small black cave full of oriental artefacts and chill indie lounge. Cocktails - It's nice to be in smoky bars!

j'ai arrive au paris

i made it to paris, but my bag got lost somewhere between london and paris. they say it'll be delivered where i'm staying withing 24 hrs. here's hoping. i kinda didn't care or make a fuss at the airport cos hey what difference is it gonna make and also cos i was so exhausted. it was a 30 hr trip. from sydney to bangkok then to heathrow, i sat next to this anxious brittish guy who kept moving and putting his elbows all over my space. he kept bumping my light on or turning the volume up on my tv or just shaking his leg, elvis style. man!

my carryon's big and i've got some spare clothes so i'm only gonna get pissed if it holds up my trip south.

it's just gone 4pm local time. i was gonna go out and explore lolita's neighbourhood but a lightening storm just started up, so i'm having a cuppa and chillaxing for a bit instead.

wedding

Just went to R and A's wedding in Toowong. Lovely. Beautiful little church; short but pretty ceremony.

Thought I'd put this blog together before my travels to Europe - June to September '07 (I bought a ticket to Paris flying 14 June). Likewise the the myspace and flikr set linked at right. I'm limited to the number of daily uploads so I'm adding my favs starting with the oldest.