Filling in a few gaps before we lose ourselves on the other side of the planet!

OK, back to where we left off a few days ago of our blogging.....let me think...yes, hitchhiking...the morning after our minor French misadventure with a highway curve and the resulting ride with a tow truck driver and $170 taxi ride to Limoges with our now sadly car-less driver left us happily feasting in the breakfast room of the hotel that his insurance paid for for us. It was a good thing that our driver Fabien was also well accostomed to hitchhiking himself as he now had to rely on that form of transportation to complete his journey to see his grandmother in the hospital. We continued hitchhiking ourselves through the countryside of Limousin and its tiny villages where the children peered out of the shuttered second story windows to peek at the foreigners standing with their thumbs out on the side of the road for an hour at a time until a postal truck driver, a taxi driver and a few other varieties of French drivers tested Mike's french skills and brought us over the volcanic mountains (which had not appeared on our AMA map: this tedious winding route appeared as simple to navigate as any other) to Lyon finally. Three french girls: Fredrique and Melanie, who we had met in Dublin two years ago, and Pauline who we had worked with at the pub in Cork, toured us through the secret corridors and grand murals and culinary delights of their city. Melanie took us kayaking Sunday afternoon, only telling us as we were on the lake paddling against the approaching storm that she had been a previous national kayak champion.

Only a few days and one city left in France on our loose itinerary (we had just looked at what lays between Lyon and Barcelona, but as usual we underestimated just how far out of our way it actually was) brought us to the pink city of Toulouse. Our first host, the meterologist Alice predicted the rain that held us contained in the city for a day longer than we had expected. Luckily our second host Delphine welcomed us back into her house for a second night to dry off as our hitchhiking attempts were foiled by the downpour. But we couldn't complain as her tour of the city's parks and sheesha bars and her homemade crepe meals made up for the thorough soaking. And we heard that Barcelona had had a good flooding anyways so we were happy to have kept a little distance from the coast that night.

After a brief stop in the Spanish (Catalan) border town of Figueres to see the Salvador Dali museum and eat paella, we made our way along the east coast to Primera de Mar where our Brazilian/Russian hosts Sergio and Natasha were awaiting us with gorgeous meals and some interesting opinions of being foreigners in Calalunya. We could nearly walk the rest of the way to Barcelona along the beach where our next HC host Victor was not, but he had left us keys to his delicate flat in the gothic heart of the old town! Yeah, without even meeting us! We can only hope that he received as much hospitality on his current travels around the Baltic Sea as we did in his city cause we were soaking it up! We met up with three other HCers, Cris, Kerem and Marc for rampages around Barcelona's bars and skateboarding plazas and Gaudi architecture. We were sworn to secrecy on the location of Manu Chao's new tiny bar which was as eclectic and chaotic as his music, but in truth we could never find it again even if we wanted to in the maze of dark hosed down graffitied streets and frantic stag parties parading past live statues in imaginative costumes, steep wrought-iron balcony buildings and busker's alleys, plazas with green parakeets dashing between palm trees and flamenco-fusion performances (think Another Brick in the Wall flamenco version...that sounds cheesy but it wasn't) and the Spanish nights out that really do last till dawn. Sigh.

Our next hitch brought us to Zaragoza where Elisa and Manuel the postman/biker pampered us another couple of days that really stretched Carli-Ann's spanish comprehension while we toured the Roman foundings of their quiet city. The promise was that when we came to Spain they would take us out for 'cold' beer as they were not impressed with the British room temperature ale they received at the Glasgow pub when Mike hosted them on their motorcycle tour of Scotland a few months ago. They accomplished their task with the perfect Spanish flair on a night out racing between tapas bars where there isn't time to sit down between beer and little sandwiches of chorizo or dripping sardines or calamari bits. Really, most of the bars didn't even have chairs.

Before we took the most logical route next to Madrid, we had a few days to kill before an Amparanoia gig we wanted to catch back on the Catalan coast so we hitched a couple days winding our way through the desert and mountains back south east, lost most of the time as many of the tiny mountain roads that sported more tractors than cars did not appear on our map. But the hurricane brewing on the west of the country kept us on the move a little uneasily, taking our only night in a hostal on the castle-topped mountain village of Morella. The next day was a whirl of hitching through sunny almond groves punctuated by torrential downpours where we were grateful for the thick branches of olive trees for a tiny bit of cover, a jousting match with the Spanish police who proclaimed that hitchhiking was PROHIBIDO in every single inch of Spain, tramping through the mountains to the nearest village where the old men in the solitary sidewalk cafe watched every move we made as we tried to find a bus that would take us out of this particular cop's region, and haltingly making our way hitching north along the coast, but I think we walked at least a third of it. Man, am I glad that all those ferocious dogs protecting their territory around the houses along the beaches and olive groves are well tied up...

We camped somewhere along the coast in Catalunya again only a meter from the sea, and woke up to the rain of the burnt out hurricane letting loose on our tent, and way too many ants taking refuge in the tent and all over our unsuccessfully drying clothes. The Spanish, much to our dismay, are like the French in that they are rather hesitant to welcome hitchhikers into their cars in bad weather. But eventually a Moroccan brought us almost all the way to Reus, pouring piles of recently picked figs and pomegranates into our hands. A final brief train ride threw us into the arms of our Catalan and French Canadian hosts, Gemma and Pierre who washed and dried all of our soggy clothes, sleeping bags and tent, fed us, and toured us around the old streets charged with the energy of the Reus equinox festival. Fire breathing dragons were chased through the streets by devilishly dressed children wielding deafening, spark-shooting fireworks on sticks, but the Catalan tradition of the human towers were rained out. The final part of the madness, we went to the free gig of Amparanoia, fronted by a fabulously energetic Andalucian woman, who stirred up enough racket to keep it going for two and a half hours! A bit of sleep later and we were on the train to Madrid (this train journey being one of our big indulgences - well deserved we thought!).

Our Hospitalityclub planning for Madrid was a bit delayed, so we were very pleased to receive a text message on our phone while we were on the train which invited us to the home of our final European host, Eryke. Madrid was the perfect place to spend our final week of our two year exploration of Europe, and Eryke and her thousand Madrileño friends were a true gift to us. Wine and plazas and parks and coffees and so many people to meet...If anyone ever comes across the Nowan music video called 'Imagina', the woman painted red is our Eryke.

Madrid and then our flight to the mild rains of England. Gren and Beryl welcomed us back for a fourth time to recooperate, get cleaned up and rested (well, in theory, but their new phone plan with free calls to Canada kept us up late every night catching up with family at home) and tomorrow back to London, the throngs of which we hope will not be pulsating too much as we have a north to south cycle to do with all our gear on our backs. Sunday at 4pm we leave for the other side of the world, Tuesday at 6am we arrive (don't ask me what that is in flying time) and who knows what happens next! We'll let you know when it does though! Did we mention that while everyone we know is preparing for winter, New Zealanders will be doing their spring cleaning? We thought it was quite clever of us to be escaping from winter for a whole year...

Comment ça va?

Heya, we are in Madrid, Spain, in a couple days we fly back to England and then on Oct 1 to New Zealand. We haven´t had much blog updating time so we´ll just publish this bit of our journeys in France that we began preparing a few weeks ago, hope to fill in the gaps soon though!:

Our final day in France! Mike has spent the last two weeks trying to run away from French cheese but rather unsuccessfully as the pungent odor permeates even the double glazed fromagerie windows . But aside from this minor detail our time in France has been un experience tres charmant. Mike has had ample opportunity to practice his French, since our hitchhiking lifts rarely speak more than a few words of English, but occasionally the chatting switches to Spanish. Mike is looking forward to hitch hiking in Spain when he can relax in the back seat and sleep while Carli-Ann maintains the conversation in Spanish. When the drivers ask why we are taking such a non direct route in France Mike always gets a laugh with "Nous essayons dessiner une étoile dans notre carte" (We are trying to draw a star on our map).

We spent four fabulous days in Paris with Julien, our Hospitality Club host. After doing the cliché Parisian activities (climbing the tower, eating a ten dollar crepe, and peeking through the throngs to glimpse the Mona Lisa) he took us out for some more local pastimes (like playing pool in a Cajun bar). His flat was in one of the saucier neighbourhoods so the muted clamour in the street kept us entertained, as did the pigeons that flapped in through his open window and pecked at the stinky cheese on the counter.

Hitchhiking has proved to be a delicious way to pass the time in France, and contrary to the opinions we heard so many times in England, we found the French to be incredibly hospitable! I know, I know, even the French people we revealed this to were surprised! Seven times in a period of two days our hitch hiking lifts offered us a bed to sleep in if we didn´t make it to our destination that day, and twice we took up the offer! And our hospitality club experience has been top notch as well. In Dieppe we were introduced to the concept of the lengthy multi-course French meal by our host Ludo, after checked out the museum about the Canadian contribution to WW2, and the enormous chalk cliffs, of course. In the quirky, crooked medieval streets of Rouen we were given a fantastic walking tour by Virginie and Hugues that enchanted us with the night time projection of Monet paintings on their cathedral, and were gracious enough to offer us plates with our breakfast to avoid confusing the poor North Americans.

Our second Rouen evening was passed with sipping wine at an outdoor cafe with Maeva and Kevin and their friends from his punk band, Youssof Today, and a fellow passionate HCer, Morgane. Next we went on a mission: winding our way through the Normandy countryside to locate the Canadian war cemetary near Caen where Carli-Ann´s grandma Betty´s brother is buried, and then proceeded to pass the following three days hitch hiking to Lyon, which we anticipated would take a single day. Come on, its only 433 kilometers, but we took the exceptionally long route, as everyone is quite keen to point out. But this path did take us hitch hiking on the Formula One race track at Le Mans, a night with a French family who owned a wine store, and on a close encounter with the ditch at night which left us and the driver all fine but without a vehicle to continue our journey as the frame was bent beyond repair. But the insurance paid for a taxi for us and our driver to the next town and for a night in a hotel and breakfast, so we considered ourselves lucky in a strange way.

Yesterday in Reykjavik, Today in Frankfurt, Tomorrow in Paris!

We are contentedly back on the continent again, having survived Iceland's freezing winds and naked landscapes, enjoying the good German hospitality that. we have come to love. We are staying near Frankfurt with Heiko, our flatmate in Ireland. Our other flatmate, Torsten, drove across from Nürnberg to tour us around the local castles and bring us to their own little irish pub!

Iceland proved to be yet another country simple to hitchhike around, despite everyone' s dubiousness, and our lifts were representative of Iceland itself: the population is comprised of 299 404 Icelanders, and 369 431 tourists visited in 2005. We got 5 lifts from Icelanders and 6 from tourists, and several of our lifts took us 600kms at a time! Thrudur, and Tomek and Ola, our HC hosts in the east of Iceland, sent us marching up and down dozens of waterfalls that appear to be emptying all of the planet's seas in a rush into the centre of the Earth, up and down volcanoes, over cracks where the earth has opened up in a quake (Thrudur's house was split open in a recent earthquake), past glaciers calving into icebergs floating in a lagoon with the sea lions, to hot rivers to bathe in, and to the Geysir from where all the rest get their name, which was a terrifying experience to stand next to alone in the dark as it materialized 15 meters of gushing water every 10 suspenseful minutes or so. Though we were repeatedly told otherwise, we did manage to hitchhike through Iceland's interior, which is crossed only by two gravel roads only recommended for 4x4 vehicles with those enormous wheels and satellite phones. Thrudur warned us about these strange rock formations that were trolls who had been caught out in the sunlight while viewing their land (apparently Tolkein based his trilogy on Icelandic mythology) so we didn't camp the night out there! We still think it is a lovely but bizarre little country: the tiny villages smelt of their main industry: fishing, and after showering our silver wedding rings turned black temporarily from the minerals in the naturally hot water that is piped into houses. Thankfully we managed to avoid Iceland's speciality dishes: burnt sheep's head, rotten shark, foal, puffin, soured ram's testicles (as if ram's testicles wasn't strange enough). I guess in this barren land you had to eat everything you can get your hands on! Here's three new photos of our time in Iceland (last three on the page).

We have a lift to Paris arranged for tomorrow with the great German ride-sharing agency (an institution which the rest of the world is sorely lacking), and HC hosts for the next few weeks so Bon Soir and Tchussiii!

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and Chips!

We are being blown across the volcanic landscape of Iceland, I know we should have expected it but its quite chilly here! We had an easy flight yesterday from London Stansted to Reykjavik, despite all the intensified security measures (everyone´s shoes being x-rayed, no liquids on the plane, no lighters at all) and are settled cozily with our hospitality club host, Thrudur, just outside the capital. The landscape on the bus ride to her apartment (the buildings and roads look all very Canadian) could almost be seen heaving and waving as the lava formed this island long ago, still devoid of trees and greenery, and great streams of steam shoot up into the sky in several spots on the horizon. And this was all just in our first hour on this bizarre island adorned only by stacks of stones several meters high to mark the ancient roads.

Our last couple of weeks in Britain were memorable, finally attending the Highland Games with Vivien and Dik in Aviemore near Inverness and watching the world´s strongest hurl a variety of enormously heavy objects ridiculous distances, all in various lengths of kilts. Meeting Kathryn and her English boyfriend, Adam, in Pembrokeshire National Park in Wales and exploring the beaches and cliffs. We thought it was hilarious to be one in the long parading line of beach-goers, each person equipped with at least four objects of entertainment: kites, tents, footballs, surfboards, snorkels, cricket sets. Mike finally learned how to play cricket! Although it is doubtful how much of the rules he actually understood. We hitchhiked from where Adam´s failing brakes left us in Bath towards Cornwall, unexpectedly finding ourselves in a campground in Glastonbury, and proceeded to feast happily on vegetarian food in this eccentric little town and visited the Glastonbury Abbey and climbed the Tor in the morning. Carli-Ann played Knots and Crosses (X´s and O´s) with the ten year old girl in the van on our lift to Cornwall where we stayed with our hosts, Sera and banger-racer Ian in Launceston. Sera was just going to drop us off on the highway near the cliff -scaling Tintagel Castle where King Arthur was supposed to be born, but ended up joining us and proceeding to graciously tour us through Boscastle that was destroyed in the flooding a couple years back, onto the Bodmin Moors and for lunch in a moor pub where she used to work (there really are supposed to be released jaguars and a lion roaming the moors since the 1970´s law that made it illegal to own an exotic pet without a permit), through the lovely Cornish towns and along the roads sunken into the fields to protect from the elements which made it feel as if we were on a secret mole-tunnel mission, and all the way to Land´s End! What a day, and it was only a few weeks before on Orkney that we looked south to John O´Groats on the mainland. A farmer dropped us off at his veternarian´s house who was also our next host in Devon, and with Mark´s lovely family we attended a very english community dog show and BBQ, went hiking on Dartmoor, and saw the National Firework Championships in Plymouth! Quite a day!

A few more lifts brought us next to Bristol where we met Carli-Ann´s Grandpa Ken´s family, Steve and Pip, and the bright matriarch of the family, Mrs. Sheila Whitfield who lives in a 400 year old thatched cottage in Wiltshire! They were as enthusiastic to meet more of the family from Canada as we were to meet them, and had a large family dinner and went through old family photos and the family tree (which was quite useful as I wasn´t quite sure how I fit in) and took us up in the hills at the back of their place to see the Uffington White Horse chalk figure. And they have extended their invitation to all the family back in Canada who wants to come and visit!

And as the day finally came that our British visas expired, Iceland´s discount aircarrier took us out of London to this little island where we will explore the geysers and waterfalls and volcanic activity and icebergs until the end of the month before heading back to the continent. Our photos of Iceland should be stunning, so we´ll post them as soon as we´ve got them organized!

Mae'n bwrw glaw

A couple weeks ago we went on a trip to the very north of Scotland and crossed over to the Orkeney Islands. This place is absolutely loaded with ancient ruins, many of them 5000 years old! We climbed inside one mound-tomb which had been vandalized. Not by local antisocials, but by vikings 1000 years ago. One of them carved something like "These runes were carved by Thor, the most skilled rune-carver in the west!".

After a brief but busy six months we have finished up our time in Glasgow. Again it was alot of work to get ourselves and all our gear out of the country. With a bit of ruthless binning we managed to pack up everything into a backpack and bulging bike pannier each, along with our bicycles of course. The journey from Glasgow Central took five trains and seven hours to get down to Cuddington Station in Cheshire where we were greeted by Gren and Beryl once again. After a nice evening with their family they drove us into the heart of Snodonia National Park in Northern Wales where we found a nice camp site at the foot of Wales highest mountain - which amazingly has a special train that ratchets up to the peak. We are very impressed by the amount of Welsh that is actually spoken here. Even young people working in shops are speaking Welsh togther when you walk in. When we first heard it in a cafe, I was sure the waitresses were immigrants speaking Polish, but no, we were the only foreigners in there! We stayed with our first Hospitalityclub host of the trip last night in Carmarthen where he works as a Welsh language promoter. He said it had been a while since he last spoke so much English (his second language). We are now travelling slowly towards the south of Wales where we'll meet some friends for a weekend camping. Traslate the Welsh title of this entry for a clue about how its going :)

After Wales, we'll head for Cornwall, and then to Swindon to visit some of Carli-Ann's relations. After that we fly from London to Iceland for what is gauranteed to be a unique experience!

We got the lowdown on Grandma Betty Germain from her big sister!

Hey to everyone, briefly we are fine, moved out of our old place now and into the new one that ended up being just a few blocks away. It took another full weekend of elbow grease to get the new place into shape, and another week until we figured out how to get hot water, and we still can’t get the fridge to do anything but freeze our food solid except in the very top corner, but we are only there until July 24 when we ship out of European rental life entirely, so we are making do fine.

Carli-Ann’s boss, Vivien and Dik took us last week for a drive in their van (we were a snug 17 wheeler! 2 bikes=4 wheels, 2 wheelchairs=8 wheels, and a van=4 with a spare wheel) along Hadrian’s wall, the 73 mile Roman wall built to control the northernmost border of the Empire roughly between Scotland and England. Then they took us back to the beginning to cycle it from a different perspective, to absorb some of the “breathless” views along the tail end of Britain’s backbone: the Pennine Mountain range. We camped out near the village of Twice Brewed (which appeared to us to be only a pub) which is next door to the village of Once Brewed (which was only a visitor centre now, as far as we could tell). The next day we arrived (part pushbike, thank God for that mighty tailwind even though it nearly flattened our tent, and part train) in New Herrington, Houghton Le Spring, Tyne and Wear, 10 miles north of Durham at Mike’s great Auntie Agnes’ door step above their butcher shop.

This is possibly our favourite bit of being in Europe is turning up at distant relative’s houses and seeing the family history from the Old World perspective! Auntie Agnes and her super-cyclist/rower son-in-law Joe showed us the neighbourhood where Mike’s grandma and her sisters grew up, the old light pole they used to play around, the ancient barn now converted into a pub, Shanky Banks, the hill so steep you have to walk your bike up, and we got to hear about Grandma Betty Germain in the eyes of her big sister! Priceless! Grandma, 86 year old Auntie Agnes is still standing on her kitchen table to hang her sheets up to dry!

Joe took us on a tour of Durham, the famous hill top Norman cathedral and its 325 step tower which he nearly leapt up in a single bound, and twirled us through the old winding streets with hidden nooks leading down to the river bank, and leaning old buildings with ancient rippling glass windows. And to get the classic view of the city, we went for a paddle down the River Wear in a wooden row boat with his friend Caroline, (they gave the rowing over to us just as the big paddleboat came around the bend and threatened to capsize us if we didn’t learn how to steer fast!). And then he took us up the bank to meet his friend who was in the process of carving out these wooden boats for us tourists and for the racing rowers like Joe. I think this is a lovely time to be touring Britain as the cherry trees were practically throwing their fruit into our hands, our hikes led us through mountain top wild blueberry patches, and the mock orange blossoms hung down to the water alongside the trailing weeping willows, just like in the children’s book illustrations we had always seen of Merry old England.

Another excursion we have slipped in alongside work in our final weeks in Scotland is to cycle up the “bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond”. It was mostly the midges that propelled us to continue cycling, doubling the planned distance: they can only be avoided by keeping a faster pace than their terrific swarms! (mosquitoes the minute size of fruit flies that fly into your eyes and nose and deny you the satisfaction of swatting one dead because they are too tiny and too numerous to be affected by flailing arms) But the midge tour of the Highland fault line did send us careening down Loch Gare and Loch Long, and around a bend to be hurled into the monstrous shadow of a docked British military battle ship, past a noisy military shooting range, and later through a colourful protesting peace camp. We are due next week for a visit up to the Orkney Islands off the northern tip of Scotland, and a jaunt in Wales soon too!

We are very pleased to have remembered that Carli-Ann’s friend from university, Suzanne, has settled herself happily in New Zealand, so it will be great to have someone to pester for advice before our flight (Oct 1) and a couch to surf after too! Today we are doing a test pack of our gear, as being permitted to fly over with only two pieces of checked luggage each, our bikes being one, that leaves everything else in our lives from the last two years and for the upcoming year to be squeezed into a single backpack, so this will be our tightest pack yet! Yikes!

We hope that by the time we leave the animated Glaswegian life behind us next month, a little of the colourful vocabulary and friendliness will have rubbed off on us. Everything’s “nae bodder” (no bother) and Mike’s already “jus takin da mickey out o’ ya” (teasing) and “skiving” whenever the opportunity arises (skipping out on duties/lazing about at work) and whipping out “fer a wee dram” (drink). Oh, these years about Europe will never be forgotten!

Cheers!

Börk Börk Börk!

This is the sign warning motorists about children. Notice Pipi Longstocking, and the kid riding the cat!

Hej! (one of the few words we picked up on our recent Scandinavian trip north) We just returned from our fabulous week in Sweden, finally a place where Mike looks like one of the locals (until he opens his mouth). Since the Swedes all speak such immaculate English we only absorbed a couple words of the Stockholm dialect.

Since our last update in May we have been busy with work, and attempting to squeeze as much Scottish culture out of our few days off together as possible! We have made it cycling around the isle of Arran that runs parallel across the water from the Kintyre Peninsula so that Carli-Ann can dutifully report back to her mom that she saw Paul McCartney's beloved "Mull of Kintyre". Yes, Arran and Kintyre are those strangely anatomically correct bit on the map west of Glasgow. It's known for being a miniature version of Scotland, so can we claim that we have cycled over the highland mountains? We were especially impressed that while crossing through a mountain pass at the centre of the island, just after a magical moment when the sea sparkled on the horizon both in front and behind us, we clocked in a descent on her bike spedometer at 70kms per hour! What is that over here in imperial land...43 miles per hour? Impressive and terrifying! We also hiked the final two days of the West Highland Way, and camped out the night in the ruins of a stone cottage from several hundred years ago. The sheep bleating curiously at our tent was our wake up call that morning. I think Mike will soon get a few more photos in our Scotland folder.

Our Lonely Planet travel guide 'Australia and New Zealand on a Shoestring' just arrived this morning, so we are already scouring it for material to stoke our dreams of our next adventures. All our train and plane tickets are bought: a short visit to the Orkney Islands, Wales, up up up to Iceland when we leave the UK on August 18, France and Spain, and then to New Zealand on October 1! Everyone we meet who has visited there says it is paradise...Wikipedia.org just informed us that "barring three species of bat (one now extinct), there were no non-marine mammals" until humans arrived! But tons of birds and the heaviest insect in the world, which can be as big as a mouse!

It is a good thing that we travel light and that we are mobile, because reminiscent of our final weeks in Ireland, our flat here in Glasgow was just sold and we have to move again within the week! But the letting agents say they have a place for us in the city centre, and the quality of accomodation can only improve, so there we go again. So don't send anything in the mail, we won't get it! Sigh.

And an even deeper sigh: one of our friends, hospitality club hosts and profound inspirations, Kinga Freespirit, has passed away from cerebral malaria during her solo hitch hiking journey on the final continent of her explorations, Africa. Everyone was shocked that after overcoming so many obstacles (she hitch hiked around the world for five years!) that she would be taken like this...there is not much that I can say that can express our emotions at her passing.

So, on to more upbeat topics: our trip to Sweden to celebrate our sixth anniversary! It's not the North Country Fair, but what can you do when you're in Europe.

We spent the first three nights with Carolina, our HospitalityClub host near the centre of Stockholm. She surprised us on the metro ride home when we asked what she did for a living. "This" she said. She drives the subway! She said our reactions fit the norm. The man's eyes twinkle and fill with technical questions, while the woman wants to know how cool it is to drive through tunnels. She said she feels like a "monkey in a cage" and is in a constant struggle to not close the subway doors on some unthinking metro-zombie passenger. People are always trying to squeeze through the closing doors which, closing under 30kg of force, can do some harm. We had a great few days with Carolina and her boyfriend Richard.

Our first sunny, roasting afternoon was spent on a long, squat boat motoring through locks and between the many islands that make up Stockholm. Sitting between a large lake, and the Baltic sea, central Stockholm is made up of several islands all linked by bridges. The rocky cliffs and shores were overflowing with sunbathers and swimmers resembling the unfortunate annual fate of Sweden's lemmings.

Carli-Ann was thrilled to frolick around the Junibacken: a creatively crafted museum built for children all about the characters and stories of Astrid Lindgren (author of Pippi Longstocking). Houses, shops, and a farm – all scaled down to the size of a 6 year old - were available to explore. The experience was made complete by all the Swedish children running around shouting "Hej Hej!" to catch their parents' attention. The nearby Vasa museum houses the 69m (226 ft) long Vasa warship which, on her maiden voyage in 1628, tipped over in a gust of wind and sank to the bottom of Stockholm's harbour. In 1961 the boat was pulled back out of the water almost completely intact. It is a beautiful ship covered in hundreds of sculptures. The museum was very well made too, one of those that close and kick you out before you're ready to leave!

Carolina and Richard had been planning a trip to Stockholm's Skansen zoo & open-air museum. We were pleased to join them to see the Swedish reindeer and the historical buildings at the park. Being severely arachnophobic they wanted to hold a tarantula to help overcome their fears. Amazingly, all four of us ended up holding the big hairy spider! It was very docile and we all came out unscathed.

Since Carli-Ann doesn't like beer, she was happy to see the wide variety of Swedish ciders in the Systembolaget (liquor store). Aside from the internationally famous Kopperberg Pear cider, she sampled strawberry and star fruit ciders. All alcohol sales stop at 3pm on Saturdays in Sweden, so we were forced to lug our spoils around during the day's sight-seeing. It's a rough life.

Our second (that we should be so lucky to have two hosts!) HospitalityClub hosts were Swedish/American Nicole and Lithuanian Romauld, who lived just outside of Stockholm in a rural forested cottage village. We camped out under their trees and enjoyed the rustic lifestyle along with three Lithuanian girls and an Italian also staying there. The hot weather allowed for a morning swim in the lake, just a 10 minute walk down the road.

Our last night in Stockholm was spent at an impromptu midnight-sun forest party. Our HospitalityClub host's brother is in a band and they organized the small party on the banks of the huge lake Mälaren. A portable generator supplied power for the spotlights and guitar amps, and the tolerant neighbours supplied their lenience in not phoning the police. We arrived just after the sun set at 22:10 and stayed until it rose again at 3:30.

As our travels are beginning to pick up momentum again (it feels like we just arrived in Scotland...especially confusing as the weather is the same as it was when we did arrive in January) we hope to continue our updates. And we are praying for a wireless internet connection in our new flat!

By the way, we saw plenty of Swedish chefs, but none with the same animated flair as we were hoping for!

Ciao!

Ciao!

We are just back from a very short burst of Italian culture that took us to Rome, Sorrento, and vicinity to meet Carli-Ann’s Grandma Betty and great Auntie Darlene on their tour of the Boot. It was a mostly golden week of scampering madly between the major sites that can’t be missed, such as the Vatican, the Catacombs, the Coliseum, the Mount Vesuvius’ lava covered Roman city of Pompeii, the Greek temples of Paestum… but mostly mad scampering between the crazy Italian drivers and their scooters. And this was sandwiched in between two ridiculously cheap flights that were paid for in general well-being as we spent our first and last nights sleeping in cramped seated positions in the London Stansted airport lobby.

The days in Sorrento were passed sampling as much Italian cuisine as we could possibly stuff into our selves in such a limited time, hiking to the next village between the lemon and olive terraces, escorted from asparagus plant to asparagus plant by little darting lizards, gazing at the gorgeous view over the Bay of Napoli at Mount Vesuvius (Wikipedia says it could erupt again at any time!?!) and the Isle of Capri. All this to the tune of the church bells clanging every 15 minutes day and night, and to Grandma’s 15 travel companions hooting away on their hotel balcony that looked down over the beach and the campground where our tent trembled. I don’t know what they are doing now that we have left, as Mike was their official wine bottle opener, and he uncorked at least ten our first happy hour on their balcony! Actually, a good chunk of our time in Sorrento was spent following a bouncing orange around town from its birth on a tree to its tragic and untimely death before us. Mike has created a memoir to Orange, the results of which can be viewed here. Our new photos from Italy can be viewed here (the first 7 on the page are the latest ones).

Italy is the only European country where we have never gotten away from being just tourists, which is sad, but I hope we will have other opportunities to get to know the country from a different perspective in the future. One of our fondest memories is of the four little Italian kids on the train who kept poking Mike in the belly, asking how to say different words in English, and cracking us up by slapping each other up the back of the head in waves from biggest kid to littlest kid and back up the hierarchy, just like every Italian stereotype cartoon we have ever seen. It was a lovely week with some great grandma-time. Very little relaxation however, so we are happy to have returned to this Scottish isle with seats on the toilets, and streets where the pedestrian right-to-life is enshrined in the British Highway Code. But we are back again to British prices…one of our hospitality club guests found the prices here so high that he was forced to determine his grocery store purchases by calculating the kilojoules of energy in each item and make the most economic pence per kJ choice.

Mike’s Grandma Betty just informed us in a letter that her grandma was from the tiny village of Kirkintiloch, just outside of Glasgow, so that is a cool surprise that we have some Glaswegian roots ourselves. Mike keeps proudly reporting to everyone here that his family’s from Kilt-in-a-Loch. His first day as the Head Porter at the horse track was this week, so he’ll probably have some stories after the first race of the season this weekend!

We’ll blog again when something else interesting happens!

Glasgow Loves its Traffic Cones!

We have decided that the symbol of Glasgow must be a pylon, or fluorescent orange “traffic cone”. They are all over the roads here, and as is to be expected when surplus bright objects are readily available in the streets, come Sunday morning they are also hanging in trees, on poles, and to our great delight, on the heads of various important looking statues about the city. When I was searching for the Gallery of Modern Art, no one knew what it was, but when I said “You know, the statue of the guy on the horse that always has the traffic cone on his head”, everyone could point me in his direction.

Shocking, but we still have no flatmates! We still have the whole 3 bedroom, two bathroom place to ourselves! Though we have shared it with more than a dozen hospitality club guests already, we are still savouring the sweetness of this precious and fleeting position as sole occupiers of this mouldy, old tenement flat. But it must be something special as I can hear commentary floating up through my window as the hourly double-decker bus tour of the city passes below us. Our huge, drafty windows are also a prime parade-viewing spot and we appear to be on the usual route. Mike has been awoken to the noises of the annual 5000 strong “Motorcycle Action Group Easter Egg Run”, and I was roused from sleep by the St. Patrick’s Day parade, which had more police guarding it than participants. One block up from us is a lawn bowling green that we have yet to try out, and a great skate park. It has been exhilarating to watch the spring flowers blooming in the nearby park, beginning with snow drops, then purple and white crocuses, fields of nodding daffodils, the occasional tulip and bluebell, and cherry trees all a-white with delicate blossoms. But only recently have we been discouraged to note that Alberta’s sunny temperatures are creeping up, at 20 Celsius some days, while Glasgow is still clinging to the same 9 degree cloud as when we arrived in January.

Mike’s still happily well-employed with a temp agency that gave him a blissful two month long stint at IKEA. He brought home Swedish sweets and ciders nearly everyday, and soaked up the pampered Scandinavian working conditions that included an IKEA staff radio station open to requests, and all the lingon berry juice you can drink in an 8 hour shift. A few odd placements have crept in as well, such as city council canteens, and an elderly day care cafeteria, but we are both excitedly curious to see what British experiences will be chalked out for us as he begins working at the horse races next week. I predict he will return to Canada sporting a monocle.
Carli-Ann began her week on, week off job as a Personal Care Assistant for a couple in Dumfries. It was a great first week packed with memorable “cultural” experiences. Vivien regaled me with tales of her adventures on the Paralympic swim team in Atlanta '96 and doing the London Marathon. Dick is a biker who could empathize with the mind twist of driving and thinking in opposites, who whipped us up with my bike and his scooter to Dumfries’ elaborate mountain bike trails my second day out. Her little cottage has a name as the first line of the address, they have a (wild) hedgehog living in the back garden who leapt at the chance to plow into the food bowls of their two Miniature Schnauzers resulting in me having to deflea them before bed. And I survived the 3.5 hour drive to and around (and around and around) Britain’s 5th largest city of Leeds, mostly thanks to the GPS TomTom system programmed in John Cleese’s voice. The only times I screwed up was when he kept telling me to “Bear right, beaver left” round the roundabouts, which are available for your driving convenience in mini, regular, double, and the famed quintuple “Magic Roundabout” of Swindon. Thankfully, my driving instructor had focused especially on these exciting little whirlwinds of British culture, as well as killing my habit of turning on a red light. Our zip down to Yorkshire was for Vivien’s orienteering competition, the first day of which left me totally mystified as to the method in the madness of 4000 Brits in sweat bands, cleated shoes and crumpled maps grunting and dashing madly about a 12th century Knights Templar estate crowned by a Tudor-Jacobean mansion, gaping at clusters of orange and white dangling cloth boxes being peed on by the dozens of dogs loping after their masters. After Vivien illuminated the mechanics of the sport, my appreciation increased considerably the following day.
I am happy to report that the Joys have also kept me as part of their family for a few more months as their nanny on my off weeks. Paul (5) and Neil (2) are teaching me all about Scotland, their neighbourhood of Ascot Avenue, and the peculiarities of Glaswegian and British vocabulary: when colouring a picture of them I asked what colour were his pants and to my surprise was promptly shown…pants being underwear on this side of the Atlantic. I have recently provided no less than 36 “ARTS AND CRAFTS TIME!” ideas…I’m glad Paul is creative because the sources of my inspirations have just about been depleted! Neil (2) takes me trainspotting weekly, and to my delight, I was invited to share their “elevensies” which I thought was just a Tolkien creation for “The Hobbit”…and that very same evening I walked past Pippin himself near our house! The hobbit actor, Billy Boyd is a Glaswegian, but it was very peculiar to partake in elevensies and to walk past a hobbit on the same day.Between the job in Dumfries, being a nanny, working occasionally in the dementia unit, and with seniors in supported accommodation in a few different facilities, the prints on the pads of my fingers have nearly cracked open from all the anti-bacterial hand washing procedures. But we have added 744 kilometres to my bike odometer since mid-February, and several pounds of muscle to our thighs from carrying our precious bicycles up and down from our fourth floor flat twice daily.
Carli-Ann turned 27 Nessie-hunting and we’ve added conclusive photos to our Scotland folder! My birthday trip to Loch Ness was wet and grey, as it truly should be. The dark, whipping waters of the deep loch nearly convinced you that out of the corner of your eye something might be surfacing. We were taken on a short boat tour of the loch by a researcher who has been investigating the potential for giant creatures to survive on the bottom of Loch Ness since the 1970’s. The current trend is to chock it up to sturgeon, which can live for a couple hundred years and have been caught at 8m long. Mike’s birthday was a pretty low-key affair involving sloppy “courgette cake”, and samplings of the best ales in the land, particularly the Wyre Piddle Brewery’s “Piddle in the Hole Traditional Cask Ale”. From the label:“Piddle in the Hole” is traditionally brewed cask ale which has, until now, only been available in pubs in the surrounding villages, the names of which are featured in this rhyme…Upton Snodsbury,Peopleton and Crowle,Wyre Piddle,North Piddle,And Piddle in the Hole.”Another weekend when all the Historic Scotland sites were free, we bustled about the ancient capital of Stirling for the day, saving a total of $71CAD in entrance fees. The castle is a magnificent fortress, and I was intrigued to view the years-long process of weaving a copy of the 1500’s tapestry “The Hunt of the Unicorn”. At the Bannockburn Visitor’s Centre, Mike was trying on the chain mail of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace’s time, and then was found floundering at the back of the museum after everyone else had cleared out at closing time, struggling to escape from his 30 pound metal costume. A couple weekends ago we also journeyed along the banks of the lovely silver Loch Lomond and the snow-capped Highlands to the Isle of Mull and the Isle of Iona, where a 6th century monastery is still a functioning spiritual community. We had to race the three bus loads of old folks to the graveyard where Macbeth and 48 other Scottish kings are buried. They beat us back to the ferry though, filled it up completely, and forced us to wait for the next one. Vicious. The Highland cattle grazing lazily on the wind-swept heather bogs consumed many megabytes of memory on our camera, and we have decided that they must be the inspiration for the hip hair styles of the indie Glaswegian lads. Which reminds me that Corb Lund played in Glasgow in March and we caught the show at “King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut”. We never imagined there were so many Canadians in Glasgow, but they nearly filled the bar!
Our Glasgow lads introduced us to another Glasgow institution, The SUB-Crawl. www.subcrawl.co.uk Glasgow’s 110 year old subway is a dingy orange 15 station circular route of stale air (which still beats Edmonton’s half line), known as the Clockwork Orange. With ease, one can surface from any subway station and stumble directly into a pub, so we joined 25 of Glasgow’s finest young folk for James’ birthday and made a day of it. ‘Twas a long day indeed. Mike put the photos online - click here. We can even justify in including it in our broad category of “cultural experiences” due to the education we received as we entered the blue Rangers pubs and the green Celtic pubs. Depending on which neighbourhood we surfaced in, there was no mistaking where the loyalties of many pubs and patrons resolutely stood. Here’s a website worth a laugh about Glaswegian characters: http://www.glasgowsurvival.co.uk/, check out the people section.
All this workin and playin has nearly worn us out so we figured we were just about due for a vacation. Luckily our wanderlust coincides with Carli-Ann’s Grandma Betty’s scheduled tour of Italy, so we are off to Rome on Tuesday to meet up with her! We also threw in a few days in Sorrento for good measure. And since Carli-Ann can’t seem to be able to take a day off work without a plane ticket booking to keep her to it, we just got tickets to spend a week in Stockholm, Sweden for our summer solstice anniversary in June. We thought we would head even further north. Carli-Ann is still scheming about how we could pop over to Iceland before we leave Europe, but that might be pushing it a little.
And we are also very excited because we recently had our applications for working holiday-maker visas for New Zealand approved for next year, a process which was done simply over the internet. The only extra bit was that we had to go to a private hospital to get pricey chest x-rays to prove that we don’t have tuberculosis due to our choice of travel destinations, but Mike is thrilled to have gotten to keep the x-rays, which I am sure will be framed once we settle back in to Canada. Now we just have to figure out how precisely to arrive at this little paradise that is inconveniently located on the exact opposite side of the globe from Scotland. We have quite a few possibilities, including elaborate European and Asian and South Pacific and Round-the-World ticket options which Carli-Ann keeps dreaming up to try to squeeze every last corner of the earth into our realm of experience, but it will come down to how much more of Europe we want to see before we leave, and how much of our savings we will throw at the EU before sailing off! Our dear French friend and original hospitality club host in Dublin, Caroline and her boyfriend Ben will be arriving in New Zealand around the same time, so we will have some company down there!
And we have been looking even further into the future as well with some excitement. Mike has finally decided what he wants to take at university, so he’ll be applying to the engineering department at UBC for September 2007, which will put the brakes onto our global gallivant significantly. He’s thinking of going into something with energy conservation, so hopefully our future will unfold in this new direction with as much vigour as the last few years have doled out to us. So, Vancouver it will be, keeping our fingers crossed!
But first to Rome.

Glasgow callin

Heya folks, Glasgow calling! Just a wee check-in: We are adjusting back to the swing of working as much as we can and trying to save a little money. Carli-Ann's work has been great, if not a little hectic cycling all over the city, but I've met lots of great Scottish folk. I am now working at a few places which I may have mentioned before: with a social care recruitment agency that sends me out to a care home for seniors with dementia, and also to work with seniors in supported living accomodation where I get their groceries or clean their house or do their ironing or sit and chat and have tea and cakes (alot of tea and caking) which I really enjoy. For the month of March I am also nannying for a lovely family while the mother recuperates from surgery: 2 year old and a 5 year old, both boys who are teaching me how to say words "properly". I did a few shifts in a daycare with a temp agency, but I don't know if I will continue with them or not, I'll keep them as backup for now. And on April 10, I will be starting to work with the woman in Dumfries who I first contacted from Canada, pending my reference check. I will be working as her Personal Care Assistant like I did in Ireland, which I really enjoyed. That will be working 7days on straight and 7 off, so it will be a bit intense, but then that leaves us with alot of time on days off to explore Scotland and Britain. And we can only work until the middle of August anyways, so that only is for 4.5 months. We will still live in our flat in Glasgow, but I will commute to Dumfries weekly (about 2 hours on the bus or train). The only scary thing is that the first week that I am on, I will have to drive her in her van to and around Leeds, on the left side of the road, through a thousand "roundabouts" (traffic circles) and steering from the right side of the car! But she has agreed to get me a few professional driving lessons before I start, so hopefully I will feel a bit more prepared by April. Cycling alot is getting me used to the left side of the road again.

Mike is getting alot of catering work with a different temp agency, and is getting to know the city very well via the cycle paths. He has been working in Scottish Power, for an Indian wedding, at IKEA, and on the university and college campuses around town. He says that working in a new place every few days is stimulating for the brain, like brushing your teeth with your left hand!

We went out to Dumfries near the English border last weekend for the job interview and to stay with a Couchsurfing host in a nearby village. His mom was the village post mistress, and he rode a unicycle: I love the quirkiness of our hosts and guests! We have already hosted about 6 people from Hospitality Club and Couch Surfing, and have quite a number lined up in the coming months. He took us to the village pub for a pint, and the place went dead quiet when we walked in and everyone stared at us, just like in the movies! Then he drove us to Carlisle to go bowling, and the next day we went to a castle that was hosting the Scottish Final Sled Dog Racing on its grounds. No snow or sleds, but other than that, same idea as what you would see in Canada: dogs pulling tricyclish rigs, or mountain bikes, or scooters. We are heading up to Loch Ness for some monster-scouting for Carli-Ann's birthday this weekend, and are right stoked to go to Italy for a week at the end of April to see Carli-Ann's Grandma Betty who will be there on a tour!

We still have no flatmates, which is a wonderful thing as there are two other rooms to be filled and it has been six weeks now that we have had the place to ourselves! But we are quite convinced that as soon as we really settle in, that is when a stranger will appear in our kitchen and mess up our bathroom.

Wish us luck on our monster-hunting, and to all of you really thinking of visiting us in Scotland (Heiko, Daniel, Berna, Morten, Matt), you only have till August 18 to do it!

Slainte Mhath! (Cheers, or Good Health)

Just Carli-Ann here typing away because Mike is at his first shift tonight! Yay! A couple things have come through for him job wise, as we knew they would. He is catering at an Indian wedding tonight, that also includes bagpipes. And on Monday he starts a month long job in a cafe on the college campus. Again, the whole recruitment agency thing, but as long as the jobs with them keep rolling in, we are happy! And his agent said he might have to wear a bow tie to some of his shifts! Mike plans to create one out of cardboard if the situation presents itself.

We have mostly just been keeping our noses to the grind stone on the job search and being totally available for whatever shifts come up. Carli-Ann's had a good few shifts and enjoys the places she has been placed in. We currently have our second Hospitality Club guest, a tennis player from Belgium here for a tourament. And we have a few other people lined up for the next couple weeks, so that keeps it all interesting. Finnish, New Zealander, Scot, Japanese...

Couple other interesting bits: Mike discovered Freecycle, which is a website with branches all over the world where people post whatever they want to give away. Anything from furniture to books to electronics to pets. Mike posted that we were looking for a coffee maker, and we thought we would be lucky to get a coffee press. But he got an email the next day from an old lady, and he swung by her house to pick up this big, heavy espresso/cappuccino maker! She said she never uses it, and Mike is in his glory whipping us up fancy coffees with frothed milk toppings! The only sad part will be parting with it when we have to leave Scotland. We have worked it every way we can think of and have come to the conclusion that there is no taking an espresso machine on a cycling trip.

We are absolutely thrilled to have our bikes back from their London storage over the last 6+months. Cycling, or getting lost cycling, is by far the very best way to get to know a city, and we feel so much more liberated now being able to zip around town. There is a surprisingly good network of cycle paths that go from our place all over the country, and Google Earth has been indispensible in assisting us in finding job interview locations and other essential services in our new home city. Mike was GoogleEarth-studying where he starts on Monday and how to get there, and spied something that looked suspiciously like a stone circle on an overgrown hill beside a motorway right in the busy centre of Glasgow. We cycled over the other day, and sure enough it was an impressive ring of standing stones tucked away in between a whiskey distillery and apartment towers! And none of our Glaswegian friends had ever heard of it! Check it out on Google Earth at: 55°52'14.20"N, 4°14'38.11"W. The River Clyde is visible from our fourth story flat window, as we have finally figured out what the odd looking tower just beyond it is: possibly the world's largest windvane! 440 feet high, and sinking, so the rumour goes. And cycling back from work on Wednesday, Carli-Ann discovered a mountain bike park not far from us! We tried it out today, and were well impressed. It has 3 circuits through a wooded park, each sign-posted in colours for the skill level of the biker. The difficult route has lots of...sweet jumps, but the most challenging bit was deep mud, which shows no sign of drying up in this damp climate. Every other biker appeared to be fixing a flat, so we were grateful to have survived with air pressure intact, as we had forgotten our tools and were over 5kms from home. And within visable distance of the park was an active riding stables, lawn bowling green, and a vicious rugby game going on. And we thought mountain biking was rough and dirty!

Tomorrow night we are going to a gig here, and a funny story it is too. We were in a vegan cafe/bar for lunch the other day to celebrate our successful employment, and I looked at a gig poster on the wall and recognized a name. Closer examination revealed that it was a friend of Mike's from Edmonton who is playing a gig in that very bar in four days time! We were so surprised to find a friend's name on a poster in a little bar on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean! So, we are pretty stoked to check it out! (A well-timed email got us on the guest list) www.shuylerjansen.com

And this is great too: http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html

Congrats to Lisa and Tom on the new addition to their family: a big, white, fluffy polar bear of an akita puppy named Jasper!

Slainte Mhath!

Back to the Grind

More good news to report: Carli-Ann starts work on Monday morning! She is doing relief work at two or three agencies (they love recruitment agencies over here) mostly working as a nursery nurse (which we assume means a day care worker, but will confirm that when she shows up for the shift), in a senior citizen’s home with dementia patients, perhaps some nannying, and maybe some in a program for homeless youth. So it should prove to be a varied experience if it can all be balanced, and the beauty of relief work is that we can patch together as much or as little work as desired (a lot for the next couple months hopefully!) and the agency doesn’t mind that we only have a little over 6 months here. And we are very confident that a lot of work is going to come through in the next few days for Mike through similar recruitment veins, it is just the initial waiting game that proves to be tedious. Too bad he has never driven a 7.5 ton truck or he would have been gainfully employed already!

But we have wasted no time here: we got library cards and opened up bank accounts, and went to 9 interviews between the two of us. We still have no flatmates, so we have been enjoying the luxury of having a whole house to ourselves for this precious short time.

We also did the first leg (20km) of the stunning West Highland Way hill walk last weekend, a 152 km walk from Glasgow up into the highlands, much of it running along Scotland's famously beautiful lochs. We weren’t sure what we were getting our selves into when we first headed out, whether we would be isolated in the far reaches of boggy Neverland for 9 hours of tromping until we stumbled our way back to our new city, but I am not sure it you can really call it a hike if you can stop for cappuccino and Mexican food at a pub halfway through! No fear of getting stranded on this little island!

And Carli-Ann went with a herbal medicine student friend, Anais, to join the Royal Botanist Society on a mushroom foray on the seaside near Edinburgh . It was as odd as it sounded, us and a dozen or so 65 to 70 year old botanists in funny woolen hats and special mushrooming foraging equipment (one with her walker) poking about in the woodlands and oohing over each other’s fungal finds with long biological explanations that mostly went over my head. But it made for some great memories, and I did retain a bit of the knowledge so readily shared: who knew you could keep fire in a dried puffball mushroom in your pocket until you throw it onto your tinder box to light your hearth?

And thinking that we should take advantage of our few remaining unemployed days, we made the 9 hour journey on the bus down to London on Wednesday. Of course as soon as we boarded the bus, confident in the assumption that there is no way we will be offered work before Monday, we each got a call to begin working asap. But we could postpone them a little to accommodate our final trip. We visited Kathryn for our first and then our final night, thoroughly enjoying our excursion to the Polish Club in London for perogies (a rare and almost unheard of delicacy in London) and had the “opportunity” to listen to a regional Rotary Club meeting: we were the only restaurant table in the corner of their banquet hall. We figured Ken and Grandpa John would be proud of us. And we made the absurdly difficult journey once again to Matt’s castle at Herstmonceux. Our last visit three weeks ago involved us taking 4 buses and walking for 2.5 hours through the fields to reach our destination from London . We were determined to find a more convenient course this time, and some failed hitchhiking attempts, 4 trains, a bus that wouldn’t take our Scottish pounds sterling notes and a taxi ride finally brought us to Matt, and the conclusion that it is his turn to visit us next time. But the castle residents put on a good show for us as it was “Dress Up as Your Favourite Musician Night” at the pub, and we were entertained by Freddie Mercury, several Britney Spears and Avril Lavignes, Kid Rock, Elton John, and a plethora of others, us having the honour of a Matt as Johnny Cash at our table. The next day the three of us did another lengthy hill walking excursion through the rolling green hills and marshy sheep fields of southeast England, the footpaths eluding us far too often on our 25km trek, to arrive at the seaside and to dine on the best fish and chips ever at a 16^th century pub.

And today we accomplished the purpose of our visit to London: visiting Jim and Jean again, greasing up our hands by assembling our 6 month abandoned bicycles, proving our bravery by cycling (and taking a train a bit) through the centre of London to catch our three trains that would deliver us back to Glasgow . The connections were way too tight when dealing with gear and bikes and elevators and whatnot, but we survived, each of us in one tremblingly sore-muscled piece.

So, work begins again day after tomorrow, but its all interesting when its in a new country, so we are taking in as much as we can! We'll let you know what Mike will be spending his time at as soon as we know!

Home Sweet Home! 55°51'58.67"N, 4°17'18.97"W

We found a place to live!!

This evening we moved into our new place in Glasgow. It’s in the trendy west end neighborhood of Kelvingrove. We can walk to the city centre in about 20 minutes and to the nearest pub in…well, it’s just downstairs really. We are just doing some cleaning here now (actually, Carli-Ann is while I sit here and write a blog entry J) since the place has been empty for six months. There are two other rooms that have yet to be rented. We are in an old sandstone building on the 4^th floor, and after six months of hiking up four flights of stairs with our bikes on our shoulders, we figure our thigh muscles will be quite impressive. The building is between 100 and 150 years old like many of the tenements in Glasgow, our hall is painted a brilliant Barney purple, and the kitchen is an electric mint green, with black and white checkered lino. We’re on a busy main road with lots of food options around. Within a couple blocks are a few Chinese take-aways, a Thai restaurant, a Moroccan restaurant, a Korean restaurant and several Indian restaurants. No Scottish restaurants…

Last night was “Burns Night” a Scottish celebration in ode to Robert Burns, a famous Scottish poet. Burns Night is almost like Saint Patrick’s Day in Ireland. We were staying with some friends, so we made up the traditional Burn’s Night supper – Haggis (minced lamb’s lungs, cow heart and liver, and oatmeal cooked in a sheep’s stomach: we thought we had bought the vegetarian version and were sorely disappointed to see what appeared inside), neeps (turnips) & tatties (potatoes), and whiskey of course. Unfortunately we didn’t have a bagpiper there who could “address the haggis”. Although our friend did bring out his bagpipes later and play us a tune! Would you believe that bagpipes are made of Gortex!

We also took a few days to whip over 50 odd miles to Edinburgh to see its romantic and haunted alleys and cobblestone streets, have our SWAP orientation, and go to a flamenco party with our Barcelonan HC host, Gerard, and his Irish, German and Yorkshire flat mates. When his party ended, the guys from a few windows down crawled across the window ledges to invite us to theirs, so off we crawled, an opportunity not to be missed.

We are thrilled being in Scotland, and tickled pink with all things Scottish. Our Glaswegian HC lads are pulling out all the stops to make sure that we won’t miss any important Scottish experiences in our six and a bit months here. We are so impressed the way that their hilarious banter flows like water, probably even smoother with us giggling at everything they say. They have had five other couchsurfers not including us since we arrived in their place, and I think they are single-handedly supporting the entire couchsurfing expereince in Glasgow (couchsurfing is virtually the same as Hospitality Club). We’ve been shown around all the best parts of this working class city that Kathryn had heard described at Seattle in the mid-90’s, and there are gigs literally every night. I hope we get a chance to save a little money in the coming months.

No jobs yet...we’ll let you all know as soon as we’ve found some! Oh, and you are all invited to come visit us!

Back in the UK!

We’re back in Europe, in Scotland, just in time for Robbie Burn’s Day!

After spending a wonderful, uncharacteristically warm, month back home in Canada, dashing between Calgary and Edmonton for no less than five sumptuous Christmas dinners, Carli-Ann’s mom’s lovely wedding, an inspiring journey to the Rockie Mountains for some New Year’s Eve skiing, and catching up with so many family and friends (lots has changed in the 18 months that we have been away, we met seven new babies!) we flew back to London on January 13, with only some minor turbulence over the mountains of the east coast of Greenland. Mike’s family, Jim and Jean, took as good of care of us as always while we were in London, as we spent a couple of relaxing days recovering from our jet-lag and drinking tea.

Once we were ready to hit the road again, we bussed it to Brighton, a popular English seaside city where many London families flock to during the summer. Our first sight as we got off the bus and stepped out into the dazzling gale force winds was the Pier, being circled by thousands of starlings. This is not an ordinary pier, but a monstrosity complete with a huge amusement arcade, schools of fish & chip shops, a Merry Go Round, a roller coaster, and a “Helter-Skelter” – an odd spiraling ride made famous by the Beatles song. We met up with our Hospitality Club hosts, Sophie and Josh, and received a nice tour of all the free and colourful parts their city. Sophie and Josh were not only Vegans, but also “Freegans”, which means they will eat almost anything – so long as it was a dumpster-diving treasure. We feasted on their day’s spoils, which included Marks&Spencer’s packaged “Millionaire Bars” – thick shortbread topped with rich caramel and chocolate. Their chicken regularly joined us in the kitchen to peck the floor clean of our crumbs.

Tuesday, January 17, we set out to discover Herstmonceux Castle , where Carli-Ann’s brother, Matthew, is studying for the semester in the magnificent full-on Hogwart Experience donated to his university (Queen’s in Kingston, Ontario ) by a grateful alumni. Although it was only 28 km away, it took us three buses and an hour and a half hike to find it. As we were let off the third bus in Herstmonceux village (the driver had never heard of the castle, and despite our expectations, it was not looming obviously on the hilltop as a castle should be), we followed a villager’s instructions and began to walk the alleged two miles to the castle. Spotting a moss-covered wooden arrow signpost reading “Public Footpath” pointing in our direction, we were delighted to have the chance to do some English hill-walking. This path led us through horse and sheep fields and golf courses, over streams spanned by a couple of fallen trees, and down muddy paths flanked by bramble bushes, startling up more than a few rabbits and grouse. A few times we had to choose a route from several options at unsignposted bridle path junctions, and on at least one occasion the directional signpost was laying unhelpfully on the ground. Although it was very wet, it was nice to see so much greenery and life after Alberta ’s (nearly snowless!) brown dead fields and leafless trees. After unknowingly circling around behind the castle and spying it through the forest, we managed to arrive by slipping under an electric fence, trespassing, and climbing over a couple more fences. Mike had the scenario staged in his head for when the farmer began yelling at us as we dashed through his yard: “I am Arthur, King of the Britons!” All just in time for Matthew to finish his last class of the day.

We had a great visit and stayed in a private room in the student dormitories just up the hill from the beautiful moated castle, and shared our meals in the student cafeteria with him. Matthew gave us a great historical fact laden tour of the castle: its pub, its ghosts, its secret panels and all, and the manicured walled gardens surrounding it, complete with goblin stone statues, 18 century chestnut trees, and a “Herst-Henge”. He seems to be really enjoying his time there, waking up every morning to the misty southern England rolling green hills, the program looks excellent, and he has already visited the Cliffs of Dover, the major sites in London, and is heading on up to Stonehenge in a few days. Our journey back to Brighton, then London, was much easier as we caught a lift on one of the shuttle buses that take the students to the library on the nearest campus, passing the famous ancient hillside chalk carvings of figures.

We returned to London to eat curry and cheese and onion pasties and stay a night with Carli-Ann’s friend, Kathryn, before catching a bus early the next morning to Glasgow . We were able to find a super deal online with Megabus – 50p for two tickets! (one Canadian dollar! They were actually free with just a booking charge to pay.) After nine hours on the bus (it was a very nice bus, we had our own table, well-utilized for our new laptop) we arrived for the first time in Scotland. Our host, Callum, brought us back to his crumbling flat where he lives with 3 other Scots – Ceir, Scotty and James. They are a hilarious bunch, but we can barely understand their accents and have to get them to spell out the important bits of conversation. They took us out for a traditional Scottish night “on the razamatazz” – to a teahouse for chai and live music, and then to the pub, followed by the Celtic Connections festival featuring several bands, including an Iraqi-Kurdish band with a synthesizer (don’t ask us how this fits in here!) which had all the Scots dancing. A house party complete with deep conversations with a bagpiper (he recited the Address to the Haggis for us, but I didn’t understand a word of it) finished off the night (or morning).

Tomorrow we will be heading over to Edinburgh for a few days for our work orientation, then probably back to Glasgow for the all-important Burn’s Day (although we did already sample vegetarian haggis), then down to a little town called Dumfries (tee hee) for a job interview…this might be the place where we settle, but nothing is sure yet.

Don’t forget to see where we are anytime by clicking the “Where are we now?” on the menu at the top! We learned last night how to say Cheers in Scottish Gaelic, but it has been forgotten already. But we still have eight months to immerse ourselves in all things Scottish, so I am sure we will have plenty of opportunities!

Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas! We have arrived in Calgary after a long flight, but the jet lag was much worse going to England than coming from. We are staying at Laurie and Eric's house till Tuesday, at which point we go to Edmonton, then back here for their wedding, then back to Edmonton for New Year's, then back to Calgary just before we leave to fly back to London January 12. That clocks us in at 1200 kilometers of travelling just between the two cities. How far is that by European standards, just a little less than Berlin to Belgrade, I think. I think it is programmed into our DNA to always be on the move. Alberta welcomed us with fluffy snowflakes and icy roads, but it is only -10 degrees Celsius, so it could be much worse. We are bouncing with excitement to see everyone and for Christmas, the wedding, New Year's, setting up another new life in Scotland. We might be too busy to update till we get back to the UK, so Happy New Year's to everyone too!

London’s Burning

Or at least one of its four airport’s fuel depots is, neither of which is the one we flew into this morning, or the one we fly out of on Thursday which brings us home. London seems to have the same seasonless weather as we left it four months ago: grey and slightly chilly.

Berlin never disappoints us, and this visit was no exception! We crashed at Morten’s place for a few days as we always do when we come bouncing into Berlin, but we won’t be able to do this for future visits as he is moving to Vienna, L (great to have another friendly face in that ancient capital of culture though). But luckily we found another connection, Daniel, who is a third cousin of Carli-Ann’s who we met at the German family reunion last May, one of the few other attendees under 60 years old. Two days with him and his crazy flatmates illuminated a whole other layer of our favourite city to us, and that included crawling down a dank cellar hole in the sidewalk to find an underground punk drum and bass club. It’s great when your list of thrilling places can still be topped even at the end of a trip.

We really enjoyed being in Germany around Christmas with all the warm candles glowing in every house, surveying the famous Christmas markets (the Germans can’t seem to do anything without a ferris wheel), sampling Heiko and Torsten’s personal recommendation: Gluwein, with nativity scene llamas snorting over our shoulders. Or perhaps those were the carollers. Too bad about the Tibetan duck that ruined Morten’s weekend; we knew we should have stayed away from avian products. Mike is happily playing with his world’s smallest steamboat puttering around in the sink (an 1890 Berlin invention – a tiny candle powered tin toy).

Jim and Jean, our London family, are taking good care of us in our in-between stage before we head off to Alberta’s arctic, although Jim said we might have to call the miners in to liberate some of our Irish gear from his garden shed. We’ll be back in Britain January 12, and are thinking of settling in Scotland, perhaps Glasgow, till autumn, but our minds can easily be swayed in the next few weeks. But we are stoked to have a place again soon that we can host all of the people from whom we have received such fabulous hospitality in our last year and a half flitting around Europe and beyond!

Anyone who wants to get a hold of us in Edmonton, we will be at Mike’s parents next week!

Santa Claus is Turkish!

I know, it was just as much of a surprise to us as it probably is to you! And it seems to have some rival origin legends, but Baba Noel (St. Nicholas) apparently was a bishop on the sunny south coast of Turkey who dropped dowry money down poor young girl's chimneys. We didn't expect to see much of anything Christmasy in Turkey, and apart from that info board of Santa in a bathing suit, we haven't really. But that one was a shocker. We are glad that we postponed our arrival in Turkey to miss Ramadan, because although as foreigners we would have been permitted to eat during daylight hours, it probably wouldn't have made us any friends. And it has been really interesting to notice how many women wear headscarves in different towns, a very visual reflection of how conservative or secular a community is. Although each day we have seen a few women in head to toe coverings, it is pretty rare, at least in the west where we have travelled.

We have now come full circle back to Istanbul, the gateway to the Orient. From here it is just a a few hops between our favourite cities in Europe to visit friends, and then we will come screeching back into the Alberta snow, culture-shocked and jet-lagged. It will be great.

After climbing Mount Olimpos on the south coast, we skipped around the coast a bit with some Australians to Kas, then back to Antalaya where the hospitality club did not disappoint us. We stayed with Ugur and his family in their gorgeous flat, saw his photos of his mates moose hunting up in Alaska where he had worked for the summer, went out to experience traditional Turkish folk music in the ancient harbour setting still reminiscent of Roman times, and breakfast included a back massage from his father. This is living. And don't fear, the weather did improve for us and we were basking in 26 degrees Celcius again, probably for the last time in a long while. From there it was a long hitch up from the Mediterranean coast to the Aegean coast and Izmir, with a Bulgarian truck driver who spent the six hours complaining about Turkish drivers cutting his bulky semi off like cats whisking between his legs, and the lack of controls in the Turkish restaurant industry. I won't mention what else he associated with cats. Or at least that is what we thought he was communicating to us; it was all in Turkish and we only had Berna's little dictionary to flip through incessantly and tediously. But he was so proud of us everytime we found the meaning of the word he had repeated ten times. Wish we had retained a few more of them for future conversations.

In Izmir (hometown of Homer – of the Odyssey, not Simpsons), Berna and her kind mother were waiting for us, and we arrived just in time for Tonguc's experimental electronica gig. Izmir was a really cool town establshed by Alexander the Great, and it was awesome exploring it by taking the ferry across the bay, relaxing in the afternoon with tiny cups of Turkish tea, a nargile, and a backgammon board, poking around in the bazaars where the hollering salesmen flaunt their wares on their person: modelled bathrobes or socks hanging off their ears (the tag line also rhymed in Turkish:"Come and get it, it's synthetic!"). And we saw the bicycle couriers chasing each other briefly with a knife because someone jumped the queue. Another cool HC host, Belve, took us on a great tour of Izmir’s university student life, and we met up with a bunch of his friends at an old bar for a night of travel story swapping. We do alot of that lately. Berna took us out to the ancient city of Ephesus, the best preserved classical city on the Mediterranean, and the home of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the temple of Artemis. I hope that it doesn’t actually exist anymore and it is not just that we walked past it without noticing it. Then we wound our way up the mountain to find the legendary home of the Virgin Mary. It was interesting to see that both Christians and Muslims consider it to be a holy place.

Bergama was our next stop, the ancient city of Pergamum. It is now a small farming town, and the winding cobblestone roads that we hiked up to reach the Hellenistic era Acropolis Atlar to Zeus were crammed with mini-buses squeezing past horse and donkey drawn carriages. Another night in Canakkale near Gallipoli, and that brought us to İstanbul, where we attended our first hospitality club meeting. As you can imagine, it was just an excuse for thirty some people from different countries who were all in İstanbul at that moment to get together at a bar. Along with the Turkish were a Mexican, Lithuanian, Iranian, Spanish, and probably a few others that we didn’t have time to meet. We weren’t sure where to stay in İstanbul, but after the meeting we had our choice of places, and are now crashed at Tulay’s, who has given us her whole gorgeous flat for the week for just the two of us! And we haven’t had a moment of boredom since. Between all of us visitors and the HC guides, we have been whipped around the opulent palace and harem of the sultans: Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar (which has changed alot since my mom was here in the 1970’s, I think, it now looks alot more like West Edmonton Mall than any sort of dodgy market), floated up the Bosphorus on a ferry, hopped between Asia and Europe, visited the Blue Mosque, and tomorrow we’ll see the Aya Sophia and try out a hamam: Turkish bath. Or at least Carli-Ann will.

So now as these last four months of travelling are coming to completion soon, we have reached two conclusions:

1) The world is mostly made up of good people.

2) North America greatly underutilizes pumpkins.

And our only real complaint is the air pollution which leaves our snotty tissues black. Not bad, really, for all that we have seen and learned. But we are looking forward to some fresh Rocky Mountain air!

My vision of Turkey never included snow!

OK, I know that everyone in Turkey will tell us to expect it arriving in Turkey the second half of November, and that everyone in Canada will tell us to stop whining as this is only the third snowfall we have seen in over 15 months that we have been away from Canada (make that 19 months if you are counting from when the snow melted our last spring in Canada). But we were still so surprised when we looked out our pension window in Konya, 1085 meters above sea level on the Anatolian Steppe in the middle of Turkey, and saw fat snow flakes falling on the bustling bazaar below us. The other two times we saw snow was on Christmas Day in Ireland, and on the south coast of Spain when we were trying to take a beach holiday in February.

Apart from the snow surprise, Turkey has well exceeded our expectation in every way. We are very happy with how clean everywhere has been, no tummy upsets or scams yet, everyone is so friendly (and not just the carpet salesmen). And we never imagined that we would find a country that is better for hitchhiking than Ireland, but Turkey is it! We are not exaggerating when we say that we have never had to wait more than 5 minutes for any of our eight lifts so far; that is all the way from the western border to the middle, and most of the way from the north to the south coast. And they ALL come with lunch and tea included. What a great service. We are very thankful that Berna gave us a Turkish/English dictionary, as there have been more language barriers here than in any other country so far, and that she translated some key phrases for us. Now when we think we are being asked about our travels, we pull out a notebook that says in Turkish about how we came here to visit a friend in Ankara, that we were working on Ireland, about the places we have visited on this trip, etc. Very handy.

We enjoyed being toured around by Berna and Tonguc in Ankara for a few days, and then we headed for Turkey’s top destination: the strange stone formations, cave dwellings and underground cities of Cappadocia. And we were not disappointed. The underground city was well over 2000 years old, was dug and tunneled through over 4 square kms, and 8 levels deep! And our hostel room was in a cave – what more could we ask for. Two days were passed in Konya, famous for its whirling dervishes (the yearly spectacle that will begin the day that we leave Turkey – well, there’s always next year, Mike has got his sights set east already). Hopefully we’ll post some of the great photos of Mike playing backgammon in a teahouse with an old Turkish professor practicing his english. And yesterday we arrived at Mount Olimpos, which we immediately climbed to see the natural flames burning eternally on its slopes, and we have spent the rest of our time picking oranges from the trees and stones from the Mediterranean beach, poking through the ancient city ruins covered in vines, and shivering in our bungalow, grateful that we didn’t brave the unheated treehouses. We have a couple days in Antalya, and then we will book it to Izmir to meet Berna again at her mom’s place and do some daytrips from there.

Our dreams are beginning to be about coming home for Christmas!

Welcome to Asia!

We made it to Ankara! This was our final goal when we packed up 3 months ago in Ireland.

On Saturday we got a lift to the Bulgarian/Turkish border from Georgi's dad. Although we could now see Turkish soil, there were many formalities to complete before we could step onto it. Through several police checkpoints and showing our passports to multiple guards, we left Bulgaria. We were directed in between borders to a small cashier’s office which resembled a newspaper outlet, where we needed to buy our visas to enter Turkey. We were expecting this and so had been prepared with 45 US dollars each. We gave the man our passports and the money, and as he made a tsk tsk sound he showed us the visa. It said “45USD”, but over this “60USD” had been stamped. Our remaining money, which I dumped from my wallet onto the desk was only 38 new Turkish lira (38 000 000 old Turkish lira!) which was not quite enough. He did not look impressed. We shrugged and showed him my empty wallet and a couple of guilty smiles. He handed back our passports and waved us through. This was great, although we didn’t have a cent left now – aside from 50 stotinki, which is worth 20 cents and that is in Bulgarian currency anyway.

We passed through the remaining Turkish officials and were spat into this big new country, greeted by their red crescent moon flag. There was not the bank machine we were hoping to see, or much else, only long lines of parked semi trucks and a nice wide highway leading 650 km to our destination. As we started walking, a Turkish man walked past and said cheerfully “good morning, and welcome!”, a good sign for our journey.

We performed our usual ritual – found some cardboard and made a sign (ANKARA) – and started hitchhiking. No more than 10 minutes later a semi truck had stopped about 100m past us and was trying to back up to us along the shoulder. Ekrem, the Kurdish driver, helped us get settled in his spacious, comfortable truck. He started driving, and made us cappucino in his dashboard coffee maker. We were able to communicate surprisingly well with his decent German and few words of English, and were taught some of the essentials of Turkish too. He was only going as far as İstanbul which meant we still had to travel the remaining 400km to Ankara. We had a good couple hours with Ekrem and he was very kind to us, sharing his fruit and stopping for bathroom breaks. When we came up to the edge of İstanbul (about 20km from the centre of this massive city of 12 million) he pulled into a rest area and honked at the truck beside us. "Ankara" he said as he pointed to the other truck.

Five minutes later we were loaded into the truck of Sherif, another Kurdish driver, for the remaining leg of our journey. Although Sherif had only a few words of German (even less than we did) and spoke no English, we managed to communicate for the ten hour journey! As we passed through İstanbul, the traffic on the highway became more and more congested. Cars swerved, horns blared and fists shook. It all peaked when we reached the toll booths before the Bosphorous bridge linking Europe with Asia. Inumerable cars, trucks, buses and whatever else had wheels and a horn all jockeyed for position in the “queue” to get through the tolls. Men walked through the jumble selling stacks of bread, Turkish flags, and whatever else they thought people might buy. The booth we finally pulled up to happened to have no attendant, so we couldn’t pay the toll. Sherif cursed, then drove through and pulled towards the shoulder so he could walk back to buy the ticket. A policeman was there fiercely motioning that stopping was forbidden, and Sherif was trying to motion that he didn’t pay yet and so needed to return on foot to purchase a ticket. He stopped and immediately the policeman was at the door yelling at him. After explaining didn’t work, Sherif resorted to yelling and cursing at the policeman. He got out and we watched nervously in the side mirror as they yelled at each other and made raging Turkish Yosemite Sam motions with their arms. After 10 or 15 minutes it all seemed to be settled, he paid the toll and we continued.

We crossed the immense suspension bridge, and on the other side a roadsign said “Welcome to Asia”. Everything looked pretty similar to the European side. We drove for a couple more hours, eating cookies, drinking coffee, and learning Kurdish. Then, Sherif took us to a truck stop for dinner and chay (Turkish tea served in tulip-shaped glasses, straight, sweet, or very sweet). Our first meal in Turkey! Trying to pay for our own food was impossible, as I got waved away when I took out my wallet. The remaining 200km were a bit tedious as we drove through fog, but Sherif was full of spirited conversations about Kurdish history, during which he would slow to about 50km/h. Just after midnight, after about as much hospitality as we could handle for one day, he drove us as far as he could into the suburbs of Ankara and phoned Carli-Ann’s friend Berna to come and collect us. He waited there with us until she arrived; reassured by her presence that we would be well taken care of after he left us, and concerned that he hadn't yet shown us enough hospitality.

So, we are well settled in Ankara at Berna's, Carli-Ann's Turkish classmate from the University of Alberta, and she has already toured us through one of the many massive bazaars selling dried eggplants, intestines, leeches for healing purposes, live ducks at a pet store, and skinned, baked goat heads (and probably many other nice things, but only the gross ones stuck in our memory). Her friend told us our fortunes read from our Turkish coffee grounds, and we included a photo of Carli-Ann's cup of the eagle, which means a protective person will come into our lives in the next few days. Carli-Ann was thrilled to flutter through the stalls hawking thousands of glass and metal beads, and so much exotic jewellery. Now she has to carry it in her backpack for the next month.

Our next stop will be Cappadocia, which is rumoured to be stunning, Troy, and we for sure want to visit Mount Olympus where flames burn constantly from natural gases emerging from the earth, and backpackers can camp out in tree houses! And I think we will discover many other amazing places in the next month. After all, we have had only wonderful experiences thus far, and our coffee grounds say that natural phenomenon will greatly enhance our travel experience... and that our former pet hedgehog is going to have babies. Lisa, what is going on with him there in Nanaimo?

Photos of Turkey...click here!

Hoscakalin!