vi ses

Welcome to the last post of Eliza Goes To Sweden! I’m sitting here with my laptop in the early hours of a Sunday morning, drinking coffee and taking in our magnificent view of the Indigo Valley. Every hill is the same shade of yellowish-grey – there’s hardly any grass left. Ian the Kangaroo was around before, grazing on our front lawn, but he’s gone now. This drought has really knocked Australia for six and change is very tangibly in the air. Every time I turn on the radio or TV or open the newspaper, climate change dominates the headlines. It makes me really hopeful and excited. I feel that Sweden has made me a greenie, but in a sense that I understand what’s going on and believe in it from the inside, rather than just being part-and-parcel of my political views.

Yesterday I arrived home from the Ginnivan Sisters’ First Inaugural Road Trip. This time it took us all the way to Canberra and back. Leah is starting uni at ANU this year, and after winning an amazing fuck-off scholarship, getting a spot in an innovative new degree AND getting accepted into Burgmann College (pretty much the place to be if you’re going to be in Canberra, judging from what I saw of it) she’s understandably over the moon! We took the journey it slow, staying one night on the banks of the Murrumbidgee in Wagga Wagga, then at the Waldorf Hotel in Canberra for a final fling.

Apparently I have a bit of a superiority complex when it comes to Canberra, being from the “prestigious” University of Melbourne and, well, Melbourne in general, which IMHO is the best city in Australia in every way. But I think I could come to love Canberra too, if I can just keep my mouth shut and limit my sarcastic comments about public servants to perhaps one a day.

Georgia and I drove back last night. Since I’ve got my full licence now, I can be the supervising driver for Georgia, who is on her learner plates. I am pleased to report that, except for a slight obsession with speed and a propensity to swear fluently at people overtaking her, Georgia is quite the competent driver, much more than her 7-hours-on-the-road would suggest.

In the first few, admittedly sleep deprived, hours on Australian shores I was stunned by the amount of fat white people. Everywhere! Wearing capri pants and pastel shirts! Kaftans! I saw one overweight person in Sweden, and then they opened their mouth and surprise surprise, they were American. Another thing that took me aback was the amount of skin on display. I know it’s one of the steamiest summers on record, I know that Australia has hotties of both sexes whose wearing of short shorts should be a national obligation, not a personal choice…but after the extreme modesty of Morocco and the wintery past months of Sweden, it was definitely something different.

I seem to be suffering a bit of reverse culture shock. When I went to Sweden, it didn’t really happen. I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t really have any preconceptions, so I was prepared for anything. Coming back to Australia is different. I know the ropes already. I’ve been looking forward to returning so I can restart my “real” life again…the one where I have to extract a ratio from forty pages of stuffy legalese, complicated and challenging essays, looking for work, trying to budget, thinking about my future career and the attendant worries of whether I’m living my life right, rampant parties, gigs, public transport, paying the bills.

My readjustment hasn’t turned out like I thought it would. It’s harder. It’s like, if you’ll allow me a hillbilly metaphor – it’s like, you’re a horse that lives in a small paddock. You know it back to front – where the gate is, where the logs are, the dams, the trees, and you feel safe and comfortable. Then you get shifted to a bigger paddock and although it’s strange at first, it quickly becomes like freedom – you can run (gallop?) as far as you want in any direction, whenever you want - everything is new and different, you don’t know where anything is, but despite of this you eventually feel like you know it and you belong there (not sure if horses have achieved this level of consciousness but, reality aside...). Then suddenly you get herded back into the smaller paddock, and you have to fit back inside it. The first few weeks you’re pacing the perimeter and pawing at the ground. Eventually you get used to it, and you settle down back to eating grass and sleeping and swimming in the dams, happily. I’m pacing, and I think I will be for a while.

On a personal front…I’ve been cocooning on the farm for the last week, hermit-style, which has suited me just fine. I’ve been catching up on six months guitar deprivation, doing a brutal cull of my home wardrobe, drinking cocktails, watching the West Wing (whose events are discussed and deconstructed at every extended family gathering I have attended thus far), reading Zadie Smith, tallying the daily number of bigoted comments in our local rag The Border Mail, thinking about stuff. Although I love them heaps and I’m really stoked about catching up, the thought of seeing my friends again is daunting. It’s all those little insecurities…will I have changed, will they have moved on, did I miss too much, etc, all compounded by the fact I’ve been a rather slack bastard on the communication front. I think slowly slowly is the key. I’m getting a new phone tomorrow which is the first step towards social re-integration.

So I better wrap it up. Thankyou to everyone who has visited my blog, whether you have found yourself here by mistake or are an avid reader (I’m sure there’s at least a few…?). I, personally, have had a great time – in total 41 posts and many hours of writing, ideas scribbled in the margins of my textbooks, great feedback and comments whether it was constructive criticism or stream-of-consciousness musings. Also, thanks to Abs for ironing out the tech and visual problems with my blog. My parting thoughts – someone once said/probably said that travel is the food of the soul. I think they were spot on. If you get the chance to travel, take it. If you get the chance to go on exchange, take it – you won’t regret a moment of it, even the ones you spend with a hangover so bad it could split bricks, cursing your own birth. So until my next adventure – the God Bless America Tour in the winter of 2007 – who knows? - love yas heaps. xox

pinch punch

Changi Airport, Singapore. Many naughty Australians have met their fate here at the hands of the security guards. Now I find myself in a similar position – senile from lack of sleep, feeling slightly worried but mostly idiotically amused that I am about to bring a bag of Moroccan mint tea through the security, a substance which, if not for its pungent scent, would pretty much resemble a 20-years-to-life packet of weed.

I left Europe as I came, through Copenhagen airport, except this time I was so desperate for a coffee that I exchanged my final 10AUD and probably lost most of it on commission. The flight so far has been pretty standard but I’m not looking forward to this final leg – the one where I try to sleep. The novelty of flying in the dark will never fade for me. Tonight the highlight was flying in low over the top of central London, straight up the Thames and seeing all the sights from above – Westminster, the Eye all lit up for Red Nose Day.

I said goodbye to Lund with a bunch of roses in one hand and the remains of my uncompromisingly culled wardrobe/life (21.9kg, to be precise) in the other. Penny, Nikki, Vale and Murray saw me off with the traditional Lund Centralen Farewell by racing the train to the end of the platform. I tried to be brave on the train, aware that by bawling I would be breaking an important Swedish social convention: that of never showing emotion on public transport. It was only when, at an altitude of 30,000 feet, somewhere over Dubai, that my emotions crept on through. The stimulus was Coldplay’s The Scientist piped through my free Qantas headphones. And even though it’s a blatant tearjerker (not to mention being written for Gwyneth Paltrow, who is insipid, undeserving and all in all a right fool) it tugged at stuff inside me and I cried confused tears for the life I was leaving behind and the one I was going back to.

Claire reckons I should write about what I’m looking forward to and what I’ll miss. When I think about going home, I think about summer on my farm. I can almost smell the mix of dry grass, eucalyptus and dust. I can almost hear the cicadas chirping and the house creaking and sighing in the heat. And I can almost taste the beer waiting for me (Australian of course, none of this European stuff) watching the sun set on the hills and the 7.00 News on the ABC. Watching the sun set after 4pm, even! What else. Seeing my friends, both my Melbourne and my Wodonga ones, and catching up on what I’ve missed. The warm embrace of my extended family. Going surfing on the coast with Leah and Georgia before we start a year of living separately. There’s too much I’ll miss from Lund to get started on that half. Perhaps later, when I’m feeling more lucid.

My row is being called. I’ll write when I get home. If you hear from me in the next few days, you know I was successful with security. If not, call my lawyer tout suite.

marrakesh express

My last night in Lund, Sweden, Europe. I'm sitting here in Murray's tastefully decorated room as he cooks up a farewell feast, sipping a longneck of german beer and reminiscing about the fun timez and crazy antics of the last couple of weeks. But i'll continue on in a linear fashion from my last post.

Our string of hilarious room mates in hostels continued in The Oki Doki hostel in Warsaw. We were sharing our room with Kevin, the recruiter from Norway who oozed positive energy and pithy inspirational one-liners (heard: "eliza, the future's so bright i need sunglasses"; "today is my favourite day - do you know why? - because it's a new day!"). We would have laughed him out of the room if it wasn't for his chiselled features, incredibly tight buttocks and his perchance for wearing leggings everywhere. Also: a girl who talked about nothing but museums: being in them, where they were, the little information labels, the opening hours, the fact she didn't eat lunch because she was so busy looking at exhibits. Great company.

In Warsaw I got my hair cut, a fun activity consisting of my one polish word "Dziekuje" and hastily drawn sketches from my notebook. I also went to the chemist. Oh, of course saw a lot of cool historical stuff, my personal favourite being the Palace of Culture and Science. It's Poland's largest building, a personal gift from Stalin and a dead ringer of the hideous communist buildings in Moscow.

After Warsaw Nikki and I headed north to the coastal village of Gdansk. We had an early train booked, but unfortunately when we awoke Nikki was shivering and feeling faint with a nasty flu bug and basically in no state to travel. She decided to take it easy in Gdansk, so I wandered around by myself being a solo traveller again. It's a really nice town, small and compact with history everywhere, and it would be blissful in the summer months. I took some sweet pics as well. We were the only people staying in the hostel so we took advantage of the eight free beds to do our washing, spread our stuff everywhere and use the internet at will, much to the annoyance of the procession of surly polish teenager girls who passed as "staff".

I said goodbye to Nikki and flew to London Stansted. Flying out over a snow-covered Poland was amazing - i've never seen snow like that from the air before. Last time I was in Stansted the queue was long and unforgiving. This time I was the only Non-EU passenger on our flight, so I went straight to the front, clutching passport in hand. Then it was a bus trip to London Stansted airport, where i was meeting Murray the next day. The 14 hours I spent at Luton Airport are ones that i will never get back and never want to repeat again in my life. Probably my worst night in europe so far - curling up on my winter coat behind the check-in desks, clutching my essentials close to my chest, teeth gritted as i listened to the security announcements every 15 minutes over the PA.

Then we were on the Ryanair Marrakesh Express to Morocco. In 3 and a bit hours we were in a different continent, and a country as different from Sweden as you could possibly get. We spent two nights in Marrakesh first up. Morocco reminded me a bit of Bangkok in its craziness. The traffic is chaos on the brink of disaster, with motorbikes, horses, bicycles and carts sharing the footpath with pedestrians. It's hard to ignore the fact that you look like a big fat western cash cow to the average person on the street - everyone wants to sell you something, whether it be carpets or orange juice or hashish. The focal point of Marrakesh is the Djeema el Fna square, a circus complete with fire dancers, storytellers, boxing matches, belly dancers and snake charmers.

The sitch is very different for women in Morocco. In the hostels of Prague and Budapest I'd heard the stories - how people buy rings and pretend they're married for the duration of the trip, unmarried couples being given shit at hotels, and the Borat-esque situation where men are asked "how much?" regarding their female companion. All in all, it wasn't that bad for Murray and me. We were conspicuous as all hell, being the whitest people in Morocco and dressed like your average students, complete with cardigans and converse shoes - but with my hand firmly on his arm I think most people got the message that I wasn't for sale. I got told that I had beautiful eyes, and that Murray was a very lucky man to have me on his arm, which did tickle me pink. Murray was very brave and competent with speaking French, which gave me the luxury to sit back and look good i.e. be a lady.

We bussed to the costal town of Essaouira in search of fine weather and perhaps the smattering of an African tan. The weather was quite tempermental and a bit on the chilly side but that didn't stop Essaouira being one of the sweetest towns I have been to, eva. Our hotel overlooked the main drag and we could watch life swish on by, complete with carts full of fresh mint, vegetable shops overflowing, hundreds of well-kept cats, fresh cow carcasses swinging in the wind and the colourful local citizens going about their business. On my final night I had a traditional hammam bath, which was a surreal experience. Firstly, you get naked. Then, the masseuse gets naked. Then you go into a darkened alcove where you are covered with black stuff, then scrubbed until your skin comes off in sheets. Then there's some more black stuff, including mud in your hair. To finish off, the masseuse throws eight buckets of water over your head. You leave with tingling skin and a spring in your step.

The Moroccans have this thing going with rooftop patios which speaks to me. In summer you can sleep on them, under the starry sky, or watch the sun set. In winter you can eat breakfast on them or have a bit of a petite smoke on the fine Moroccan hashish, as is your want. I've resolved to have one on my house, whenever I get around to building it. Australia is severly lacking in them. I will bring the change.

We came all the way from our Riad in Marrakesh back to sleepy Lund in one exhausting day, back though London again. My passport is getting a workout! In Stansted we spotted the Malmo checkin queue straight away - everyone was dressed in black and well groomed, in stark contrast to the Bratislava queue, where everyone looked like they were dressed in 1980s parachute tracksuits. I've spent the last few days either lounging around in bed, catching up with friends, or walking the hallowed streets and trying to remember everything so i won't forget it when I get back to Australia and back to real life. At the moment I'm feeling...well, honestly, a bit mellow because of the beer i've just consumed, but a mix of apprehensive and sad and excited. I will try and find an internet cafe tomorrow at Copenhagen airport and write my final thoughts before my return.

understanding warszawa

Greetings from Warsaw, capital of Poland! Nikki and I arrived here a couple of days ago. I wish I could be more precise with the date but days and dates and time in general doesn't really mean much anymore after almost 3 weeks on the road. I know that we're going to Gdansk tomorrow morning, and that happy hour at our hostel is between 7-9pm, and the rest i can take or leave! Nikki is napping at the moment and I have set out to explore the Old Town, and on the way found a cheap and cosy internet cafe, which is quite the added bonus. Now, to try and remember what we've been doing -

We stayed for four nights in The Stranger Hostel in Krakow. It was pretty sweet place, with a massive couch and really nice staff. For four consecutive nights a group of lads from Britain were falling down drunk by 8pm, which upped the fun value. But after four days the novelty wore off a bit, especially when the drunken Englishman who was sleeping above me vomited pizza and apple vodka all through his bed.

Krakow was nice town, Poland's backpacker hotspot and probably the best place for us to start our wonderful Polish adventure. We wandered around the old town area a lot. which looked quite similar to the Old Towns in Budapest, Prague, Bratislava AND vienna...it seems every single eastern european city has one! We did a day trip to Auschwitz, which was very chilling and confronting, especially seeing the rooms full of hair of the prisoners, or their suitcases with their names on them. We walked through the Jewish area, through synagogues, saw bits of the ghetto wall, and were the only patrons at an authentic Jewish resturant, where I discovered the joys of Gefilte fish. We climbed up Mound (with a D) Kosiosko and took all the obligatory mountaineer and proud explorer photos.

I completed my first non-travelling, real life activity (apart from buying stamps) of my entire trip - a doctor's appointment in the suburbs of Krakow. Getting there - a nerve-wracking 20 minute drive along the major highways and through the forests - was almost as fun as the actual appointment: an after hours, cash in hand appointment with a carrot-orange doctor who switched between German and English and was dressed entirely in white, except for his tie (pink).

So now we're in Warsaw. It seems that Warsaw isn't a city to be explored or viewed, but rather understood. In 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, 9 out of 10 buildings were destroyed by the Nazis. So almost everything is less than 50 years old, the whole city practically reconstructed. There are a lot of communist-style buildings and the skyline is full of ugly housing commission flats. In the centre of town is the Palace of Culture, a personal gift from Stalin that remains the highest and biggest building in Poland. There are developments everywhere and they reckon that Warsaw looked completely different 10 years ago, and in another 10 it will be unrecognisable. It'd be weird to live here and see the city change so rapidly in front of your eyes.

I am having much fun travelling with Nikki. We both like slow starts in the morning and making fun of Polish fashion, so every day is delightful. The weather has been pretty bad these last few days so we've been going to museums or sitting around in cafes. We've been trying to eat out one meal a day, which sometimes works, sometimes not, especially now that we've become hooked on pierogies: vietnamese dumpling-style boiled parcels filled with mushrooms, meat, cabbage or potatoes, and served with - wait for it - bacon or crackling swimming in lard. YUM.

hott new pix!

Thanks to the ingenious Nikki, my well-deserving travel partner, I have uploaded most of my travel pix to date to my flickr page. There's some clangers in there but a lot of gold too. It's all a bit of a hodgepodge so it's probably best to view them by set (on right hand side). enjoy!

bohemia like you

It's probably because I've been eavesdropping on Swedish people for the last half year in the hope of picking up the language, but I'm hearing Australian accents EVERYWHERE. In the street. In the park. On the crowded metro in rush hour. The only other people at a deserted lookout. On the stairs, in the shower. In the cathedral. Explaining their design proposal to Austrian curators in a viennese coffeehouse. In every single hostel that I have had the pleasure of being in, the Australians are by far the loudest, drunkest, and dare I say friendliest, majority. There's many opinions on why - the three month uni holiday for students, our culturally sanctioned gap year initiation period where the youngsters find themselves before taking on uni or work, the fact that Europeans don't really travel around Europe that much, or that Australians simply having the money to travel. I don't really mind it - there's always someone around you can bond with and talk about the good ole days with.

I left Vienna behind without a second glance. Although it's a beautiful city, and I do feel a bit "spoilt kid in Europe" saying it, it didn't really grab me. That being said, I didn't really take the tourist route around the town - my first stop was the Zentralbanhof, the massive cemetary where composers like Brahms lie six feet under; reading the International Herald Tribune in the window of Cafe Sperl, the most gorgeous of Vienna's coffeehouses; wandering around Sigmund Freud's old consulting rooms, and spending a lot of time on the metro wondering why all the stops sounded like "schnitzel" and "pretzel". Another thing was that my contact lenses have been playing up, resulting in me having trouble looking at anything directly and a lot of heifer-stuck-in-mud eye rolling behavior (holla to my farming peeps).

One of my highlights of Vienna was, ironically, my day trip to Bratislava. Following a night of drinking games with a bunch of fellow hostellers (Australians, of course) I found myself, hungover as the derries, standing at the Bratislava bus depot, with no money, no clue where I was, no Slovakian in my repertoire and no knowledge whatsoever about the city, except that it had a castle. A couple of gruelling hours later I found myself at the front door of the castle, feeling mightily pleased with myself re: ability to conquer adversity. And I have the Slovak Republic T-shirt, which was the ulterior motive to my trip. I have now walked along the banks of the Danube in three cities - Budapest, Vienna and Bratislava. More to come, hopefully.

I arrived in Prague yesterday and headed straight for my hostel, the Clown and Bard, "Best Hostel in the Universe" according to Brad, who went to the Czech republic just to frequent the bar here. And it's mighty fine, if a bit on the quiet side, and of course putting aside the massive hill and nine flights of stairs I have to climb to get to my dorm. Breakfast goes from 7.00-1.00pm and 2.00pm on sundays, two drinks for the price of one during happy hour, there's a guitar, a massive dog, a pizza place across the road, massive breakfast, free internet, friendly staff and Dvorak on the PA system(?).

Prague is definitely my kind of city. A hell of a lot of people think it's THEIR kind of city as well, judging by the massive crowds of tourists in every street. From the top of the cathedral the most striking thing about the view was not the skyline (which is pretty spectacular) but the camera flashes blinking every two and a bit seconds somewhere down below. Prague has the tourism thing down to an art: touters on every corner, tour groups drifting like packs of sheep, English language signs everywhere. Yesterday I got quite lost and found myself in the real Prague, which was very refreshing, if a little scary.

Today I wandered around everywhere. I climbed to the top of the Prague Castle, walked across the Charles Bridge and looked at the astronomical clock. I called my little sister Georgia for her birthday (again happy 16th sos!). On the arts and culture side, I went to a Mucha exhibition and got inspired to start drawing again. Tonight I'm going to go find some traditional Czech food (which is apparently heavy on the meat, so at least I'm getting my iron Mum). I will write soon with more wonderful adventures.

sweet wien

Onwards and upwards through Eastern Europe! I have now left behind Budapest - the city where pop songs of the late 1990s go to die - and I am writing from the back room of Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth, central Vienna, Austria. Although we didn#t know it before we said our goodbyes in Lund, Nikki and I were both planning to be in Vienna tonight. So after some frantic texting we met up at Westbanhoff station and had our tearful reunion a week earlier. She has now taken me back to her hotel and we are taking advantage of the free internet and polite waiterboys calling us 'madam'. Tomorrow we go our seperate ways, and will meet up again in a week in Poland.

The bus from Budapest to Vienna took only 3 and a bit hours at an insanely cheap student price. We drove through the Vienna Airport (or Wien Lufthaven or however they call it) and it was like coming in a full circle - about 6 months ago I flew into there from Australia, almost asleep standing up, wide-eyed and waiting on a bench for my connecting flight to Copenhagen. At the Hungary-Austria border we drove through kilometres upon kilometres of wind turbine fields, spinning gracefully and silently. All in all a pretty sweet trip.

Budapest was a great city, with a foot in both east and west europe. The weather continued to be beautiful - mild all through the day. Apparently it's going to be getting better this week. Last year the whole place was covered in snow! The Hungarian receptionist put it down to global warming. I experienced a whole manner of pleasures. Highlights included- clubbing with some Australians and a crazy Japanese bloke called Esky, breakdancing hero; walking thought the eerie Statue Park and looking at all the Lenins and wondering whether I should spend my last forints on a 'The Very Best of Communism' greatest hits CD from the ticket stall; treating myself to a delish hungarian traditional meal with goulash soup and plenty of cabbage; and lastly, spending an afternoon in the Geillert Thermal Baths, soaking up all the nutrients and watching incredibly obese (but happy looking) naked Hungarian women totter from the shower to the pool and back again.

Again I am experiencing the highs and lows of travelling solo. I'm loving it at the moment. It means I don't really have to book ahead, or plan anything, and I get to follow my whims to wherever they take me. I also tend to think a lot about a whole manner of things, sometimes useful but mostly idiotic. And I get to meet heaps of cool people in the hostels. The downside is that I keep getting placed in dorms full of canoodling couples, who spend entire evenings whispering sweet nothings in their various langauges (of love) while I try to ignore them and continue to slog slog through Frances' abandoned copy of Pride and Prejudice. I have, however, developed the perfect 'no thanks/fuck off' face ideal for the single female traveller - blank, minimal eye contact, and a general air of disinterest and disdain which pretty much prevents any strange men from striking up conversations on the metro where there is no escape.

Nikki and I have an engagement to attend to now - an English screening of The Third Man, a film set in Vienna and also number #45 of the Greatest Movies of All Time. More when I find out what this Vienna place is all about.

auf wiedersehen!