Stockholm to Belgrade - Gumball rally (part 2)

Stockholm (Sweden) 17-18 AUG

Stockholm to Belgrade (Serbia) 19-20 AUG

Waking from the coma that was induced by the white lines of the highways in the Swedish back country, Big V and I managed to combine enough of our faculties to start the engine of our vehicle and direct it into the centre of Stockholm. I'd been fortunate to have made my way to these neck of the woods four years earlier when a good friend of mine, Jay, was co-habitating with his Swedish girlfriend in the suburb of Nacka Strand, so I 'kind of' had an idea of the direction we were heading. Utilising our fantastic Serbian GPS guidance system for a while and then deciding to go 'off the grid' due our serial distrust of its actual geographical and logistical aptitude, we made our way to the high island of Gamla Stan - the Old Town of Stockholm,  where Big V's education in all things Swedish would begin. Although 'strangely' he was already well versed in all aspects of the 'blond ambition' that was amazingly pervasive on the good 'ole streets of the 'holmes. 'Ahh Sweden, to the world you will provide blondes - God made it so and saw that it was goooood!'.

It's a hostel!!! - Stockholm - Sweden

Looking out onto the Baltic - Stockholm - Sweden

So now, what about a little bit of background on where this place is and how it came to be. They call Stockholm 'The city that floats on water' and no doubt this appears to be a particularly apt description. Located at the confluence of the Baltic Sea and Lake Malaren, the city is spread across a number of islands, districts and 'green zones' that give the impression of loosely connected minature towns/cities that interlock to make the whole that is the Swedish capital. From an historical perspective it is said that Swedish history can be traced back some 14,000 years to when the think blanket of ice that covered the continent subsided and nomadic tribes of hunters and fisherman followed the receding ice cap northwards and decided to settle. Various tribes settled around Lake Malaren approximately 5000 years ago but it wasn't until approximately (850-1050 AD) that these tribes, who were able to dominate their neighbours via their sea faring exploits, inclusive of dominating the 'poxy Danes', heralded in the Viking era. The area from which Big V and I were kicking off our sightseeing excursion, Gamla Stan, was basically where the town of Stockholm was founded back in 1252 due to its strategic position at the eye of the watery whirlpool that is the Baltic to the east and Lake Malaren to the west. These days Gamla Stan still carries the old style bohemian vibe and period stamp of the 15th and 16th century , cobbled streets, winding lanes, mansions, palaces and soaring spires. It's a fantastic place to loose yourself in for a few hours especially with the aid of a few kind ales to motivate you along to future successes, although with that said, the prices are 'very Scandinavian' and you may quite easily find yourself with tears in your eyes the next morning after reviewing your bank statements.

Still Stockholm - noticing the pattern?

An ode to King Gustav III

Obviously Stockholm has a lot going for it. At a glance you can easily recognise that it has to be one of the most naturally beautiful cities going around. It has a harbour that is only outstripped by a handful of other places, i.e., (Sydney, Rio & San Fran), has a boot load of monuments, museums, restaurants, bars, etc, and has bunch of citizens that makes you realise quite quickly where the 'good looking gene' is centralised. On the down side, if there is one, the Summer or 'sunny season' is relatively short and once you make it into mid Winter, well your turn around time on the sun dipping under the horizon and reappearing can be in the vicinity of 20hrs! Also as a people the Swedes are quite conservative, can appear to be a little distant and cold but do have a decent social and moral compass...and no, if you're wondering, this is not my assessment over just the two days that I spent in Stockholm but rather it's a judgment that runs in tandem with my previous excursion, discussions I've had and various bits and pieces of anecdotal evidence. If you have a complaint regarding my assessment please send to: Idontgiveatoss@reallyIdont.com.au

Katarinahissen in Slussen - has an elevator up to a platform with some great views of the city

The greater part of the next day or was spent exploring the scattered series of sheltered water filled bays and islands that make this place so interesting. A lot of the exploration, for better or worse, was a direct consequence of our GPS taking us on 'geographic burnouts' of the town. Once we'd looped a few islands, somehow seen the same place travelling in both directions and covered nearly 100kms we kind of realised that we'd be sold the 'You're on Candid Camera' GPS model! As tears welled up in our eyes at the slow dawning realisation that our lives would be lived out in perpetual motion on the pheriphery of Stockholm we somehow made the 'right' turn in all the confusion of our incidental sightseeing and ended up in Slussen, directly across from the island of Gamla Stan, the home of our main man and  contact in Stockholm, Nebojsa .....now follow me here... he (Nebojsa) is the son of the friend we were staying with, who is actually my aunt's friend, who in turn is Big V's mother...(got me?)...Alright, so the specifics don't matter so much as the end result, which was the target being successfully isolated, searched out and found! So by the time I'd made my way to the island of Kungsholmen and organised a postal vote at the Australian embassy in the 'Never Ending Story' of an election we were able to make it back into Slussen for what we intended to be a quiet and comfortable afternoon before heading for Belgrade the next day. Now as I've said many a time before however, the best laid plans and the best intentions can unravel quite quickly and fall into a burning heap when those infamous words of 'why don't we just go for one' are spoken. For better or worse on this occasion these words were uttered to me in Serbian, rather than by me, so can I really be held accountable for what followed? Being 'forced' to drink by Nebojsa we were guided through Slussen and further afield on the island of Sodermalm, a place that once was the working class district of Stockholm but one that is now more bohemian in style, filled with art galleries, clothing boutiques, restaurants and bars...those damn bars, DAMN YOU! As the twilight of another Scandanavian evening drew us closely into her arms the three of us chatted for virtually hours, we ended up having three defacto dinners, one a typical Swedish hangover style meal called tunnbrodsrulle (frankfurts, mash potatoes, gherkins and seafood sauce all wrapped in a tortilla), and hence by the time midnight knocked on our door and the restaurant that we'd tumbled into was closing up it was time to make it home for a short sleep, some 8hrs after we had originally intended!

Tunnbrodsrulle - 'get that into 'ya'

 Stockholm to Belgrade 19-20 AUG - the Gumball Rally return leg

As my alarm sprung me to attention at 3:30am and I sat upright in my bed I quizzed myself as to where that dry whiskey taste in my mouth had originated? Hunching over my bag and feeling the slow onset of that familiar giddy throb at the back of my skull it didn't take me long to figure out as to where I'd been led astray. Waking Big V at 4am I saw the pain of realisation on his face when he came to terms with his 'accomplishments' of the previous evening and also the knowledge that today was potentially going to be EPIC. This was to be the launch point of the Gumball return and one where we'd see ourselves slice Europe in half with some legendary motoring antics, a chapter that quite obviously was preparing itself to become a standout in the Janic-Elisher book of legendary feats.

'Cloud trees' - early morning mist - south of Stockholm

Busting through the gates of Stockholm at somewhere close to 5am we were away motoring down the E4 in the coolish mist of another Swedish day. As per our day of arrival, the Summer weather was having a bit of a laugh on this morning and we were getting heavy 5 min downpours followed by a 30 min 'cooling off' period and then  it was back onto engaging the waterworks. Seriously, the weather had that manic-depressive element to it and making the near 700km journey just to get out of Sweden at the conservative tempo of 120kms per hour meant that it would be somewhere close to 11am when we'd be breaching the border with everyone's little 'secret pleasure', Denmark. Sure to form, we were through Malmo and onto the Oresund bridge on the low side of high noon but this is where our pace setting came to somewhat of a halt. I'm not sure what the deal was on this day but every Dane and their pansy poodle was out on their main roads making their way to who knows where for who knows what reason. I did do some research in the days that followed but wasn't able to find a Danish cheese festival large enough that would have comfortably accommodated for this anomaly. If that wasn't enough, it also appeared  that it was the one day of the year that the Danes had factored in to fulfill their obligations to the EU and conduct extensive roadworks. The run through this treasure trove of pastries, cheeses and strangely tanned cyclists was arduous, hence by the time we had sighted Flensburg and were into the Bundes-republik of Deutschland the reins were let loose and we upped the ante on the speedo to sit comfortably between 180-190kph. Ahh, 'the art of movement' through Germany, a sweet waltz that requires timing, a sense of space, determination and a half freakin' decent motor vehicle that will at least allow you to rent the inside lane in the time frames where someone isn't pulling 250kph + in order to get to their bratwurst eating contest in Stuttgart.

Windpower - Denmark

'The green light' - you're in Germany - pedal down, off you go!

The Big V and I treated Germany somewhat like an actual rally. Stops were only to be required for fuel, outside of that the pedal was firmly pressed down and as navigator I'd been given the task of calling the shots as to what was coming up, where we needed to go and where we needed to be. Aiming for Hamburg initially we made it down most of the way before I took us high and wide above the breaches of Hamburg and onto the E26 heading east to Berlin. Then skirting around Berlin on the E55 which is basically acts as a ring road around the city, we exited on the south side and headed straight to the border adjacent to Dresden. From memory I think we were in and out of Germany in something like 5.5hrs, it just like a McDonalds drive through, with that courteous 'thankyou, please come again' attitude. I have to hand it to Germany, it's the world capital of practicality and efficiency, it just works.

Somewhere west of Berlin on the E26

This however was the point in the journey were things became a little surreal. We had entered the twilight zone whilst silently slipping into the Czech Republic and from here on out we transcended through various spheres of truncated reality as we guided our vehicle closer to the boundaries of the EU.

From here on out everything was hazy, including the photography!

Firstly, after having been none too kind to the Danes as to the state of their road network, I know felt the need to apologise to them profusely as they weren't playing in anywhere near the same league as the Czech Republic when it came to the shambles and ordinary state of their roads. Entering via Dresden you'd imagine that the equivalent of 'Highway 1', the main line to their capital Prague, would get you there quite directly and successfully. Some 50-60kms over the border however the road narrowed into a two lane, third grade, pot hole filled bumper car ride of an excursion that traced routes through hillside villages to what felt like the middle of nowhere. I would have been more assured of finding my way via the rabbit fence to Tibooburra than trying to navagate us to Prague on this stretch. In fact we did at one point end up at some type of roundabout on this 'main arterial' with no sign posts other than a wooden Prague pointer sign laying on the side of the road to what we suspected was the correct way. Just like a 'choose your own adventure' story, sometimes you need to go with instincts and gut feel, thankfully the consensus on this call was correct and we rounded Prague sometime after midnight, approximately 20hrs removed from our starting point of Stockholm.

Motoring our way between Prague and Brno I started to feel the onset of extreme tiredness. The hallucination faery came to visit me in those moments where my visibility of the road turned into just a haze and for some reason I thought I could see large white rabbits darting across the road. We were some 22hrs into this ride from Stockholm and here I was conjuring up fictitious bunnies darting across the highway. At the same time I was trying to remain as alert as possible as Big V had been in the saddle for all that time and I couldn't imagine that he was in any better state than I was in, although he still looked ok. As my head rocked back and forth in what would looked like a pathetic Stevie Wonder impersonation, I saw V's eyes drop below the horizon and remain closed for what to me felt like and uncomfortably long time. Addressing him in my 'stern' younger brother voice I told him that if it happened again we were pulling over. By the time we had entered the Slovak Republic and were on the outskirts of Bratislava I had a moderate flipout and asked him to stop as I swear I saw him 'clock off'again, he tells me that he was simply looking at the dash but after close to 24hrs I don't know how anyone could register that type of data with their eyes wide shut. Thankfully my histrionics made an impact and we camped out for 90 mins so as to recollect the wits that we'd left somewhere out on the lonely roads of the Czech Republic.

As you can see, Slovakia was taken at speed!

Commencing our second morning on the wild plains of Hungary the final sector to the EU frontier, i.e., the border of Hungary and Serbia, felt relatively pedestrian. Border hopping for the sixth time in 27hrs we now entered home territory and were lined up for a direct assault on Belgrade. For some reason once I hit the Serbian border I couldn't stay awake at all and I must have looked like a mental patient as my head pounded constantly against the head rest as I tried as best I could to remain awake. Somewhere on 28+ hrs after leaving Stockholm our vehicle pulled up at a familiar residence, we exited our travel capsule victorious, having split the European continent in two. We'd covered somewhere over 3000kms+, equivalent to driving the distance of Sydney to Melbourne, Melbourne to Sydney, Sydney to Melbourne and then a partial return, in a little over a day. Slightly nuts? certainly...but don't blame us, that Serbian blood entitles one to be a little crazy! Experiment completed and case closed, it CAN be done, we're proof of that!

The flash got me with a golden preemptive strike - Bratislava - Slovakia

Berlin to Stockholm - Gumball rally (part 1)

Berlin to Stockholm

16 AUG - 18 AUG

Back in the Summer of 2009...(oops, hold it right there, did I just go a little 'Bryan Adams-esque' on myself there?) - Lets strike that from the record and how about I just go with the Summer before last, my cousin, Big V , (I call him that because he's significantly taller than me, although that's no real achievement, and his name is Vladimir, I'm sure you're intelligent enough to figure out the rest), made his way to Australia for a few months. During his stay we decided to head south over the new years period, taking in the epic administrative and bureaucratic highlight of Canberra, the capital that just keeps on giving (mostly nightmares of the insanely banal), the much suprising emerald coast down near Bega/Eden, Melbourne ofcourse and then onto one of the top ten drives on the planet, the Great Ocean Road. As you probably know, 'one' may well be the loneliest number but when it comes to two in a vehicle over the course of several days and cabin fever suddenly strikes at the heart of every best intention, well sometimes you're able to find fault in the most solid of foundations, please see Jordan-Elisher circa 2002. Thankfully at the end of the journey there were no reprisals, there was no hate mail, no swearing or cursing of one another's mother, which between you and me would have just been plain weird because of that sister relationship thing! It was all just cool and it ended up being a great experience.

Hamburg on the run

Tearing up the bitumen of the south-east we strolled in and out of many topics of conversation such as whether the EU was a social and political experiment that was just waiting to implode, the genius that is Jim Jarmusch, whether ninety mile beach is what it proclaims itself to be (Wikipedia it's arse if you're interested), and Big V's interest and love in the diversity of terrain of our continent and some of its incomrprehensible distances. For me, eh, Australia is home but I don't quite get the same sense of wonder or pleasure in driving the 1000kms between cities and then walking into an identical K-mart or chatting with a guy in the same language and with the same accent of the place that I'd left 10hrs earlier. The mentality, the culture and the attitude remains the same. I guess being stuck on the world's largest island tends to do that. Europe ofcourse is a vastly different proposition, whicn in turn strangely reminds me of a quote by Ronald Reagan when he returned on from a 'foreign affairs' exercise to South America back in the early 80's, it went something like, 'You'd be surprised at their attitude down there, they're all different countries!'. Now apart from Ronnie believing in alien life forms, his wife running the country with the aid of clairvoyants, and Arthur Laffer selling him the 'benefits' of supply-side economics, I 'get' the dumbass quote for its simplicity however. In Europe you can move 30-40kms, encounter a new language, new mentality and have whole gammut of culinary treats ready to go. So when Big V sent me a message via facebook a few weeks back and suggested that he'd pick me up from Berlin and that we'd drive the 1500+ kms up to Stockholm all I could say was, 'Oh yeah, ROADTRIP my man!'.

 

Border hop - into Denmark

The Great Belt bridge - between the islands of Zealand and Funen - Denmark

The challenge of taking on this type of drive is right up my alley. If something is a little difficult to do or is a bit out of the way to reach then sign me up for that wacky adventure and I like the fact that Big V has the same sort of mindset when it comes to these things. V's perspective might be a little different from mine however in the fact that for many years Serbia had been under sanctions and it's only been in recent times that it's citizens have been allowed to travel the EU freely without having to encounter the nightmare of filling out 50 page visa applications for the countries they were wanting to enter. Never the less, when V turned up just after midday at Berlin's Tegel airport it was high fives all round and then onto the business of sorting ourselves a course onto the E26 and pointing ourselves north to Sweden via Denmark.

Heading west out of Berlin and making the most of the opportunities that German autobahn's present, we were gliding along like a 747, pushing the pace somewhere close to the 160kph mark. Still, when you're moving along at 160+ and then get taken at speed by a by a guy called Helmut on his way to a pretzel appreciation convention, well, you've got to ask yourself questions. I'm not sure what those questions maybe, although perhaps I'd first go with why I nominated a dude call Helmut to be pushing 240kph+ in his Volkswagon Golf? Sometimes the sums just don't add up to what the total should be. With that said the German motorways are a lesson in what the world should be and what Pepsi Max has been pushing for the last decade, 'a world without limits'. Cutting through what appeared to be the boring city of Hamburg and then heading north via Neumunser and Flensburg, we covered the near 600km run in something like 4hrs and a few listens of Powderfinger's live Vulture St album. I tell you, after not really having listened to any music for nearly two months and constantly being in the midst of flashbacks to the Mohammed bros of Chefchaouen belting out 'Berber hits of the 70's' on their two stringed violin and tamborine, this CD was like an auditory orgasm. I owe my cousin big time for having racked that album from me last year!

You know it

The Drogden tunnel, setting you up for Oresund bridge - Denmark

....and then...and then my friends we hit Denmark. Than land of the 'nice Germans'. Now really, what the hell has Denmark ever offered anybody other than a few finalists in the Miss Universe contest, the Laudrup brothers and some funky currency called kroons which kind of remind you of silver doughnuts. Via road there's really only one way to get in and  out of Denmark and that's to take the E45 up the guts, turn right halfway up this great state and then make your way to Copenhagen. I wonder how our little hometown girl Princess Mary travels when she's galavanting across her new homeland? For Big V and myself we were kind of dismayed at the average state of roads across this little multi-islanded state. Having to limit yourself to between 110-120kph when you'd just broken every speed limit in 98% of the countries around the world was kind of disappointing but on the plus side, do these guys know how to build a bridge or what? The Oresund bridge connects Denmark and Sweden between the Danish capital city of Copenhagen and the major Swedish industrial city of Malmo. In term of function the bridge connects the highway network of both countries allows Sweden to be connected by road to both Central and Western Europe quite directly. This cable-stayed bridge is quite an engineering feet, nearly 8kms in total length (7,845m), it runs from the artificially built Danish island of Peberholm and covers approximately two thirds odf the distance between the countries. The remaining distance is completed under Drogden Strait on the Danish side, with the Drogden tunnel picking up from where the Oresund bridge drops you off. There about 4kms of tunnel on the Danish that takes you some 270m below the strait and leaves you virtually on the doorstep of Copenhagen. Quite an intruiging run when you consider the country skipping involved.

Oresund bridge - Denmark/Sweden

Oresund bridge - Denmark/Sweden

Pulling into Malmo (Sweden) somewhere after 10pm we were getting onto making the critical decision of whether we should bunker down for the night or whether we'd go for broke and try to make the Berlin to Stockholm run in one stretch. Eyeing off the 700kms+ from Malmo to Stockholm my cousin made the call that I kind of secretly hoped/knew was coming, 'lets go for Stockholm!' - 'I love the way you think big brother, lets do it'. Off we set into the middle of a dark Swedish night with fits and spurts of fog attacking us quite a distance up the coastline. By the time we made a turn inland and lined up with Jonkoping (a few kms up the road from Huskvarna) we had entered a new day and my cousin had been in the hotseat for well over 12hrs. I'm not sure what his physical condition or mental state was but the Swedish roads were having an hypnotic effect on me, so much that I found myself smacking my head against the head rest for the next two hours as I drifted in and out of sleep. I felt like a vegetable for having ridden shotgun for so long and there was nothing I could do to keep myself awake. Thankfully somewhere about 3am Big V came to his senses also and we parked our vehicle for a few hours rest somewhere close to Norrkoping.

'Somewhere in Sweden' - moose and deer abound!

Our 'digs' in Stockholm

Big V on the pier, post recovery

In what turned out to be a relatively mediocre dawn we started up again sometime after 5am and made up the remaining distance to Stockholm in somewhere close to 2.5hrs. The weather for the final stint was kind of odd with rain coming down in 3-4min spurts, stopping for 30-45 mins and then starting up for another 3-4 mins, kind of like an 80yr old man with a handful of viagra. Thankfully we made it to our destination without a problem and by the time we had located the residence of my aunt's friend who was kind enough to be putting us up for the next few days all we good really do on arrival was smile, say thankyou for the hospitality in advance and crash out on the beds that she pointed us to. Nodding off at somewhere between 9-10am my cousin, barring the two fitful hours of sleep in the Swedish wilderness surrounded by wild moose and deer, had been motoring for 22hrs. He had already started snoring as he was falling from a prone position onto his bed, and as for me, well I was thinking that he had just enough 'Serbian craziness' in him to try and convince me of taking the return leg from Stockholm to Belgrade in one hit...but that was going to be a discussion for another day.

Berlin - Ich bin choice bro

Berlin (Germany)

14 AUG - 16 AUG

I had a bad time getting to Berlin, I mean there were several elements that just didn't work in my favour when I flew the 'bastard cousin' of Aeroflot, Air Baltic,to the capital of the German republic. My air travel anxiety and lack of sleep from the Russian 'hippy, groovy, cool cat' techno club from several floors below my hostel might have be the logical place to begin this entry, but alas, the roots of this sojourn were surprisingly already well founded several decades in the past. To figure out what the hell it is that I'm talking about you're going to have to indulge me in a little bit of historical back tracking and in some elements that make react physically in a most unpleasant fashion.

A few months ago I sent a message to my friend Dina who now resides in Berlin. The crux of the message was, 'hey, I'll be travelling through the Baltics sometime in August, now make a pitch and sell me Berlin!'. For the life of me I don't remember the content of her response barring a couple pinch hit words that caught my attention from the outset, 'most debaucherous'. Aha, one of the 'most debaucherous' places in Europe apparently, and there were many an online list that I found in my research that echoed that same sentiment, it was therefore a relatively easy decision for me at that point, SOLD!, ticket bought ...although you see, having friends in foreign lands when you spend most of your time on the other side of the planet often has an accompanying story, and so too does this. So you're going to have to follow me a little further.

Berlin Telecomms Tower

Berlin - Germany

Back in 2006 I was having what could only be regarded as a fairly ordinary year I recall my boss spinning in his seat one day and pointedly saying, 'H, why don't you go travelling for a while, get your mind off things'. In that precise moment I wasn't sure what the right response was. I mean I know that wear my heart on my sleeve and that when it comes to emotions I'm fairly transparent but when you get called out so blatantly, well, all you can do assess the advice and take it for what it is. Several weeks later I was on a plane to Sweden, up on the edge of the Artic Circle with a great mate of mine, carving up the Swedish slopes and having a blast. It was the right thing to do at the right time...anyway, this is all leading me in to where THIS story actually begins. A few weeks after hitting the piste in Sweden I found myself back in my second home of Belgrade. Doing the calculations with my cousin just a few days ago we estimated that over my lifespan to date I'd spent approximately 2yrs of my existence here. Whilst still being an outsider here the place feels very much like home and with family around you, well, there's not much more that a typical Cancerian like me could ask for. In any case on one of those bleak Winter days in Belgrade my mum rocks into my room and says the following, 'We're going to see an old high school friend of mine,please come along!'. What you'll notice about the 'please come along' statement is that it's more of a command than a request. My response to that 'command' was, 'What the hell am I going to do there? I'm going to be bored out of my mind! Thanks but no thanks!'. Now for some reason my mum was uncomfortabl persistent, almost getting to the point where she was saying 'You will be going', and at the same time nearly pushing me to the point where I was going to throw out unecessary expletives - something that I NEVER do with my parents, but you get an idea of the sort of tension that was in air. Her final 'selling point' to me was this, 'They have a niece and nephew around your age, you'll be able to speak with them'....'Oh f***, really? Man that sounds TOPS! Can't wait to be bored out of my mind by people that I'll totally not be able to relate to. Sounds like a fantastic way to spend an afternoon. SUPER'! In the end my mum ends up winning the battle and I mentally prepare myself for hours of physical entrapment and mental torture.

Pretzel envy - 'you've got a huge one mate!' - 'but so does your wife!?'

Berlin - Germany

Walking down the street I'm quietly berating myself for being so soft. I listen to my mum drivelling along the way how about her 'high school friend' was perhaps actually a high school boyfriend of sorts, and all of a sudden I have that sickening feeling in my stomach, my mind mentally leaps to a place where it should not ever go. Now I have to trangess through the anguish of imagining my mum and some random older guy having 'made out', or worse', some 45+ yrs ago. Oh yeah, things were looking 'mighty fine'. We walk through the gate and stand at the door. Soon enough it opens and we're met by a couple that are roughly the same age as my parents. We take a seat in something akin to a sitting room and the conversation ensues. A moment later the inevitable happens, the introduction of 'the children' to one another. I sitthere and think, 'God, please make this freakin' easy on me, really, I'm not asking for a hell of a lot, especially not in my current state'. A girl walks in, introduces herself and says something to me, I don't remember what it was but I distinctly recall a pronounced Kiwi accent - 'aha, now this occurrence is a little out of leftfield!'. From this point I'm intruiged and a little invested. We trade some banter, I regress into my usual sarcastic/wit filled test pattern and get matched on each count with an equally shrewd response....'Alright young lady, you're kind of cool and I like your style'. We go on like this for a little while and I find Dina (D) to be many things, a bright spark, full of purpose, a person with great sense of humour and if I'm being brutally honesty, yeah, easy on the eye. A while later we all sit down for lunch and then the game of family one upsmanship begins. I'm not sure who opened fire first, whether it was my mum or D's aunt but it kind of went something like this, 'Do you know that Henry has a degree in business'...'Oh really, well Dina has a degree in psychology'...'Oh,as a matter of fact, Henry has completed his masters in blah'....'Well Dina has completed her masters in blah'...'Henry is just finishing his JD '...'Well Dina is moving to Prague to complete her Phd in blah!'. Man, it was hilarious, it really was. We both looked at each other in the midst of this game of verbal battle ship and kind of rolled our eyes at both the hilarity and how typically Serbian this kind of garbage was, but that ofcourse is another story. In any case it was an odd way to meet considering the troubles that we both went to in order to dodge the afternoon but I'm glad it worked out as D is one cool cat. So it was, 4 years after meeting her for the first time I was now on my way to the capital to hang out with D and her best friend Silver for a few days.

Memorial for the murder of European Jews - Berlin - Germany

Now, getting back to my escape from Riga. The hostel that I was staying at was comfortable enough but it sat a few storeys above a Russian nightclub whose penchant for brutally bad techno made the quest for sleep a necessary voyage into my untapped depths of meditation a necessity, something which I'd unfortunately not quite mastered as yet. As my mind skipped through thoughts, sorted out answers to some cheap and humble questions of life, and also demanded sleep, time skipped on by and when the Italian contingent returned from their Friday night exploits early on Saturday, well, it was already time for me to get going without so much as a real rate of return on my investment. I moved bregrudingly, jumped my ride to the airport at 5am and hoped that the Riga to Berlin transfer would be seamless. Ofcourse coming on the back of Friday the 13th it seemed that the hangover had lasted and I was going to be dealt the final blow under a blanket or rain and storm clouds. 'Freakin' storm clouds!', the death knell for an anxious flyer!

Brandenburg Gate - Berlin - Germany

Brandenburg Gate - Berlin - Germany

From my basic understanding of the standard operating environment at Riga International, Air Baltic in parallel with the Rigan Airport Authority go out of their way to make the flight boarding process of their patrons as miserable and difficult as possible. The queues for Air Baltic with their Soviet style length and their lack of satisfactory explanations as to what was happening at any stage of the process automatically had you, as in me, mentally second guessing my basic flight information.'My flight is on Saturday, right?', 'It is out of Riga, right?, 'I can't be so much of a dumbass that I booked myself out of a totally different place, could I?'. Waiting for nearly two hours to make it to check-in the crowd around me were all at their wits end with the lack of information and torturous progress through the boarding rigmorale. Not only had I not slept andnot only had the onboarding process been a lesson in futility but then, when I saw the machine that was going to lift me some 10kms above the ground and 'apparently' hit mach 0.9 somewhere above Latvia, well lets just say that my heart did not fill with the joy and goo-ish warmly sentiment that you normally reserve for bunnies and marshmallows. This piece of shit DC-10 looked as though it had been lent out by Aeroflot (Russian for 'We'll try and get you there') to Air Baltic on the proviso that it's 'mechanical issues' be resolved in time. As the pilot throttled up at the top of the runway and I went through my standard panic ritual of asking why I'd put myself in this situation once again, the French pilot of Air Baltic, (who sounded like he'd already been onto his sixth shot of Absolut), pointed us skyward and we were away. From this point on this bloody aircraft did everything it could to make the 1hr 35 min journey to Berlin as mind fucking as possible. The weather enroute was a disaster and we bounced across the top of Northern Europe in the same manner that you'd skip a stone across a pond, although as we all well know, in the end that freakin' stone sinks like a brick. Through dark rain clouds the plane dropped in and out of pockets of turbulence and it was more than audible when the pilot decided to throttle up or down in order to get through the worst of what we found ourselves in. When we finally made our approach into Berlin Tegel airport we could see nothing of the ground until we were about 100mtrs above the deck as the fog had kindly decided to blanket the city on this fine day. We touched down with a bounce and I cursed whatever almighty power it is that decided in their infinite wisdom to impart me with the travel bug! If I ever get to see you supreme being we're going to have words about that little oddity!

Rocking up to D's place on Karl-Marx-Straße this Saturday morning I was greeted with a friendly smile and the banter that I expected. Even though I hadn't seen her for four years and in reality didn't know her all that well it all felt pretty cool and very cruisy. I guess with some people you're just able to take up from where you left off and with D that's certainly was the case.Later that morning 'Choice Bro' tours hit full stride as D took myself and her friend Silver on a 'masterful' sightseeing tour of the centre of Berlin. Aside from the Kiwi commentary that accompanied our sightseeing mission it was a fair attempt to take two newbies around parts of the city that our tour guide may very well have seen a hundred times before, but eh, friends, sometimes that's the type of crap you sign up for when you enter the kingdom of 'friendom'.

That looks like one cool cat - clouds above Berlin

A sleeping E.T. perhaps?

It's strange place Berlin, I mean I'm making my assessment on having been there for just two days but it didn't have that same romantic feel that you might find in say a Paris, Rome or Vienna. It has a fantastic layout, ordered, but it felt a little bleak, although that might have just been the rain talking. Quite often it takes a sunny day to bring out the good vibes of a town, so perhaps I'll let that notion slide. I've heard Berlin described as kind of grungy, edgy and a little gritty. With a now 21 year east-west reunification and the type of nightlife that this place is famous for, yeah, I guess it's style kind of makes sense. It's the type of place that I'm sure would get under your skin and draw you into its arms in time and perhaps the type of place where if you'd established a great social network then you'd have a ball. For a daytripper however it was just a capital city, notorious for its position in history but not somewhere that you (I) could immediately hold dear. There's a little part of me that feels sorry not giving this place the time and dedication that it deserves but for this one dance, and in this time, there are plenty more willing maidens on the horizon, so onwards it must be.

D and Silver with their 'Escape from Berlin' sale - '1 Euro, anything for 1 Euro' -

Mauerpark - Berlin

The next few days were great value. From the few drunken candlelit evenings that the three of us spent talking jibberish until the early hours to the 1Euro yard sale in Mauerpark that D was offering on her 'Escape from Berlin' clothing sale, it was all relaxed, chilled and good fun - although I wish I had given myself the opportunity to take on karoake in the park on the Sunday, for an undercover extrovert such as myself singing in front of 1000+ people would have been a rush. Still, once the new week commenced and the clock had ticked us over to Monday morning it was time for me to continue on with my life of transients. The dawn of Monday now meant that I had a cousin to catch who was at that moment making his way for an airport rendevous with me at Berlin Schoenefeld, and as for D, well she'd done the slightly crazy thing and decided in good conscience to sign up for an expedition to South America? What now????? So I'll be catching you on SEP 23 sunshine, it's going to be 'choice bro!'

Starlight starbright

Now that's a karaoke crowd!  Mauerpark - Berlin

Riga - Latvian night moves

Riga (Latvia)

11 AUG - 14 AUG

Busting out of Tallinn at midday on the 11th I headed south on a 4hr journey into Latvia and onto it's capital Riga. Strangely, after being 'on tour' for some six weeks now, I was getting a little tired of hitting new places and convincing myself that I had to see the 'highlights'. This time all I wanted to do was get to a place and just let it wash over me, and if I didn't catch the 'most important' sights , then so be it, I wasn't going to let it become a major issue.

Clocking into Riga

Cheers and beers in Riga

I'd been advised prior to making it into Riga that the Old Town was similar to Tallinn in construct in that fact that it was bar, after cafe, after bar, and for that there was just no stopping the influence that it may have on you. Walking around the old town on arrival I started to get a sense of what they were saying, it was Wednesday afternoon and this place was buzzing with people. Yes, admittedly mostly tourists, and admittedly we were still in the midst of a European Summer, so perhaps it shouldn't have been as surprising as it first appeared but I couldn't help but think that a Sydney Summer felt very, very different to this. I somehow feel that Sydney and it's residents don't make the most of their opportunities during the Summer months. There's no vibe, no buzz, just an acceptance that aesthetically we're a damn good looking city and that should be satisfaction enough - slightly pretentious of us, no!?

Riga - Latvia

Daugava river - Riga - Latvia

Walking down around the north end of town I dropped into Shot Bar in search of an Happy Hour margarita only to be advised by the girl at the bar that 'kick-off' was still another 20 mins away. 'No problems lady, I'll be back', and with a kind of half smile and a little raise of the eyes she shot me back a look that smacked of sarcasm as she coupled it with a spoken response, 'I'm sure you will'. This ofcourse stopped me in my tracks. Well, just for that little display of attitude young miss I will be back and I'll 'happy hour myself until kingdom come!'. So once the bell struck 4pm I strolled back in to prove my word was as strong as oak, and yeah, maybe to check out the little bird that caught my attention with her dose of sarcasm and cutsie looks.

Freedom monument

Freedom monument - Riga - Latvia

Two margaritas to the good and an interesting conversation in tow I found Inga to be just my style of girl. Cool to speak to, a great laugh, more then well versed in English and with a cheeky/flirtatious grin, she threw out the challenge to make it back to the bar for the 1am-2am happy hour. A challenge hey, since when do I back down on any of those? 'Oh yeah, you are ON sista!'.

So, what about Riga hey? What does it hold for the wandering spirit?

Very much in the same vein as Tallinn, the old town of Riga has an old 18th century style of charm. Cobblestone streets, stone buildings, hidden alleys and open squares, this place is a hive of activity during the Summer months. I had heard stories of tourists trying to make their way down from Tallinn via Riga into Lithuania only to see their minds and wallets succumb to the charm and atmosphere of city whose cafe and bar culture are what can be considered to be a legal form of entrapment. Something that I was to find out for myself in the early hours of the next day. Betweeen now and then however I did my usual 'walk until you drop' routine, meaning that every corner or any achievable place thatcan be made on foot within my designated hours of walking comfort are scouted out and absorbed from a typical 'outsiders' perspective.

Rounding out midnight and ending up back at the Shot Bar just before 1am I took up residence in a darkened corner of this packed dive and waited for the witching hour. As I sat quietly and pondered my last few weeks of movement I traded smiles with Inga on a few occasions as she worked the bar and the outside terrace. Sitting there for 10 or so mins she dropped by to my table with a couple of shots in tow, a more than welcome freebie and more than welcome addition of company to the Latvian real estate that I'd rented for the time being. We chatted for a while before the buzz of the bar drew her back into the fold. Not sure what it was but I just found her to be really engaging and yeah, particularly cute.

Once the evil of a 1am-2am happy hour was off and running I siddled up against the bar and went for broke. This my friends was an unravelling of the 'reality fabric' that usually accompanies most of my night moves. From this point out I entered into a type of surreal vortex of manufactured thoughts and sounds. From having additional shots at the bar with Inga and organising to catch up with her the next day at the bar she part owns, to the random Italian guys that for some reason were dosing me up on pyrotechnical B-52's, to the barmen that laughed in a type of sinister but sympathetic manner each time I tried to light the bar on fire with my 'disco inferno straws' discarded from the B-52's, the early hours of this Latvian dawn were sowing the seeds of what would become my epic journey home.

Start of my 'Latvian nightmoves' - the 4hr journey home - why I took this shot, I have no idea but this was the beginning of the end!

Somewhere between 3am & 4am I bid farewell to the Shot Bar and promised Inga that I'd catch her that afternoon, 'I'll see you then Henry'...hey, how the hell did she know my name? Forgetting ofcourse that I'd written it down and perhaps told her 10 times within the last hour. This moment was the trigger for my bungy jump into the abyss as for the next 3hrs I do not have the faintest idea of where I went or what I did. In a sober world the walk back to the hostel would have been a comfortable 10 mins but in a post apocalyptic Latvian dream such as this, it took me 4hrs. Some of the vaguest fragments that come to mind was some Japanese guy telling me that I couldn't sit on the curb as the Rigan dream police would be sure to pick me up. Then there was the three circles that I ran or rather stumbled in a desolate carpark where my final resting spot was amidst gravel, dirty and the early morning beams of an Eastern European sunrise. There were calls by randoms who for some reason had noticed me, 'Hey, isn't that the Australian guy from the bar?', and then there were the kind requests of assistance, 'Hey, do you need some help?', to which my now tried and true response was 'No mate, I'm all good!'. You've got to ask yourself, in what scenario does a person with torn jeans, a shirt soaked in dirt and the inability to stand on his two feet ever NOT need assistance? Still, I must have been convincing enough as these good Samaritans decided to leave me to my own devices.

As the new light of day became the clearness of a new morning I remember thinking that it was virtually going to take a miracle, in the state that I was in, to find the place that I was staying. Stumbling onto another new street in the dawn of this new day I stopped, looked up and sighted the Belgian Beer Cafe! Home to many a successful evening back in my hometown, this I now recognised as a beacon of potential success as it was one of the landmarks that I'd pinned to my subconscience as a logistical signpost to my digs...and so it was, that sometime after 7am, some 4hrs after leaving the Shot Bar, that I managed to find my bed and crash out for most of the day.

Stirring to semi-consciousness sometime around 3pm I had a run of horror thoughts that entered my head within a 30 min period that I was unable to shake and for which the necessary accounting could only take place once I visited my belongings. Thoughts such as 'Where is my passport?', 'Where is my camera?', 'Why the hell is my left knee throbbing', 'Why am I mentally strruggling to spell my name?', all compounded to present a motsa ball of confusion and anxiety. Struggling through my belongings with that aweful anxious ferver I drew blanks against the wallet, camera and even passport. All that was coming to mind was me hitting the deck a few hours earlier and that accompanying sickening feeling that I'd either left these critical items behind or that somehow I'd been fleeced by some opportunist. Searching my mind for some last ditch probability that I had actually been sensible in my drunken stupor and left all these items in a logical place, I located the keys of my locker, turned open the door and found the space to bare - 'Oh f***!!!!'.....'OH F***!!!!!', where the hell do I go from here!? Trying to calm myself down the best I could, I unzipped a most unlikely pocket in my main luggage only to find all said items safely intact! 'Dude, you had just well and truly played yourself'. So, ofcourse, what is the next move that a man makes once he's dodged sizeable bullet? He heads for his back pocket, right? ...and why pray tell? Because that my friends is where I would locate the address details for Inga's bar and where I'd be heading to in the next few minutes once I picked up my basket of wits off the floor.

Thankfully her bar was located 5 mins walk from where I was staying. The map that I'd been given was thankfully accurate, although I couldn't quite figure out why I'd been provided with a 4pm arrival time as the bar didn't even look open. Walking in however I saw that Inga was just getting the place together for that evening and that it would be a few hours yet before the place opened, sweet. So we chatted for ages, listened to some of her favourite bands (Tool, Dream Theater,etc), had a drink or two, and that was unfortunately that. Even though I asked her out for lunch the next day, quite tactfully I thought, on several occassions, I was successfully dodged with some airy non-commitment. So Inga, as I know you'll read this, you OWE me lunch and a tour of the town the next time I make it back to your neighbourhood !