Pissed off

17th August 2012 (Brussels, Belgium)

I wanted to take an express train to Paris, just one hour from Lille. The TGV, in association with Eurail, had other ideas. Apparently you need to book 24 hours in advance on a Eurail pass and you can't do it at the station, you have to call the Eurail line. I called for the 18th but was told I could only pick up the reservation from Paris Nord or Germany, or they could send it to me by post, which could take "one or two weeks".

I can't figure out what's more stupid:

• Having to book 24 hours in advance, whether or not the train is full.
• Having to book via telephone when one's hotel is 50 metres from a train station.
• Needing a physical manifestation of this reservation that mysteriously can't be emailed, faxed or sent by carrier pigeon.
• Needing to use a postal service that could take "one or two weeks" when you bloody well operate a network of fast trains.

Paris' loss was Belgium's gain, however. As I sat brooding in my room it occurred to me that Boff had been to Brussels and I had not, plus they had some kind of big deal flower thing that I would see but he would not. I hopped on a train. It was supposed to take two hours. There was some delay and it took three...

It also happened to be one of the hottest days of the summer, something in the vicinity of 35C. By the time I arrived at Bruxelles-Midi I'd run out of water and had to buy some from Carrefour.

On the train I'd pored over the map Boff had given me, so confidently headed north towards the Grand-Place (you need to say that in a French accent). Unsure at a turning, I stopped only to discover that I'd lost the map—probably in Carrefour where I'd been gratefully rehydrated. Nevertheless, I blundered in the right direction and managed to find encouraging signposts that took me to a street of Asian restaurants (Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese) at the end of which was a cafe that served me rabbit and chips with a big cold beer, probably the most delicious meal of the trip.

Then it was just a short way to a giant square surrounded by grand Belgian buildings filled with flowers. The balconies were packed so I avoided them and managed to find myself at a Dali exhibition.

It was around this time I began to feel ill, not quite nauseated, not quite headachey but really very tired all of a sudden. I'm not sure if it was the heat, the beer, the rabbit or all three. I parked myself in front of an air conditioner in the exhibition and napped for 15 minutes and then found a room with sofas for watching a Dali doco, told the attendant I had a headache and napped for another 30 minutes. The exhibition was okay but not as good as Berlin: it had a lot of Dali's commercial work including ads he did for a hosiery company, magazine articles, and some first editions of his books.

Groggily I stepped outside and found myself wandering toward the Manneken Pis. Photo of the day is a waffle shop's tribute to Brussels' favourite son with some tourists beside him for scale. Also managed to catch a large jar of Nutella in the frame—yay Nutella!

Evidence of someone else's good time

11th August 2012 (Cologne, Germany & Ghent, Belgium)

Had a bad time of it on the train. There were no sleeper cars so I set myself to sleep in a seat, which is usually very easy for me except I was surrounded by this family who then proceeded to eat pungent oniony burgers (at 3am) and pass serviettes, drinks and rubbish over me. Imagine a 4-seat arrangement in which the father and son are in A and B, I'm in C and the mother is in D. I didn't want to swap with the mother because my seat had my destination on it so I would be woken up at the appropriate time. It then turned out they were in the right seats but wrong carriage but when they departed they left their pungent oniony rubbish behind. Then someone's phone kept ringing. It's 3am dude, you're on a train—who the hell is calling you?!

So I stopped over in Cologne for a few hours. Unfortunately, the hours were 8.30-11.30am on a Saturday, which meant all the things that I might have wanted to see were open at 11am instead of 10am, i.e. not enough time to see and then catch a train.

The main hit is the Dom. Let's just say they don't hide it in some back alley; it is the first thing you see when you exit the main station and I can tell you, you don't see much else for a moment. I might have thought of it like how Sydney visitors always see the Harbour Bridge and Opera House from Circular Quay Station except that I've been to Rome and there's a much more impressive analogy with the metro station next to the Colosseum. Cologne and the Dom are somewhere in the middle.

My photo of the day shows its two towers on the left. It was one of the few things open early that I didn't actually care to see (I was really hoping to visit the chocolate museum...). Instead, I took a walk over to the other side of the river where I found evidence that Germans may sometimes have a good time.

I arrived in Ghent intact but desperately needing a shower and a nap. Boff and I took it easy in the evening just walking around the canals. I've never been in Europe in summer before so I didn't realise that when 'sunset' is at 8.38pm, it actually means it gets dark at 10pm. Slow dusk! What will they think of next?

Wash and burn

6th August 2012 (Warsaw, Poland)

I went to Warsaw to see my uni friend Danielle, who now lives in London. We've only seen each other a handful of times in a decade so this trip seemed to be an ideal way to catch up, apart from the fact Boff wasn't interested in Warsaw and decided to go to Belgium instead.

Before meeting her, though, I needed to get my laundry done, which required finding the nearest laundromat and how to get there. Turns out there are very few in Warsaw so I ended up catching the train a number of stations south to an outer suburb and still had to walk a fair way to find it. The train stopped at every station for about three minutes. There were announcements in Polish that caused a bunch of people to get off, but a lot of people stay on and some join the train so I stuck with the original plan.

When I got to the suburb, I ran into trouble because it's so far out my map didn't cover it. I managed to communicate with a newsagent who points me in the right direction. At the laundromat, the boss gets her daughter to translate for me. I've never really wanted to learn Polish before but at this point I feel not knowing the language is actually an imposition on the people. I eat my way out of this dip with 500g of raspberries costing a mere A$2...

Finally met with Dan and went into the Stare Miasto (Old Town) to have lunch. I decided once and for all to try fried camembert, which sounds like a heart attack except for the fact that I hadn't eaten properly for more than a day, so I forgive the kilojoules. We take lots of photos of the architectural and decorative features that make Warsaw a great city to explore, and find odd things everywhere, such as a bench made of pipes next to a statue of some inventor guy. Photo of the day is Dan next to a tiny car we found parked on the street.

We also eat one of those soft serve ice creams that are bigger than your head, which we conclude is probably a joke played on tourists given what it looks like to eat one.

Dinner is Indian. Yes, Indian. Very good Indian. And dessert is a plum vodka (70%) and a sea buckthorn liqueur that are both impossible to quaff because they burn going down.

Recovery

In Which Dr Witmol Starts With A Champagne, Argues About Nachos, Eats At Krispy Kreme, Shoots a Jager Bomb And Wakes Up In A Pool Of Giraffe Saliva.

Said goodbye to my editor who moves on to greener pastures with no hard feelings. Drank lots. Ate food that I shouldn't have. Ripped open my hand on the zipper of my boot (this was quite surprising to me at the time - all I could do was watch the blood drip onto the footpath with a strange sense of amazement).

Went to Gla's birthday/end of exams gathering at The Royal George (the downmarket version of The Ivy) and met a bunch of accounting types. Between bars we stopped at Krispy Kreme, the fount of all that's evil in the world, and vaguely remember losing my bag of cinnamon fun bun (their sugary version of an Easter bun) between the counter and the ice cream fridge. Rescued by Gla's friend, who I later repaid by destroying his cigarettes. I like to think of it as saving his life.

Bar 333 was loud so instead of yelling at each other we just had Jager bombs and started dancing. At some point, Bun Rescuer's friend took a photo of me and later asked me for my number, of which I gave him, and he asked me out yesterday so I mustn't have looked as trashed as I felt. Then five of us went to karaoke at Echo Point and then I used my last $20 to get a taxi home.

Not long after I fell asleep I had to wake up again because I'd been invited to a behind-the-scenes of the zoo (one of Skippy's friends works there) and had to walk to Neutral Bay to catch a bus. It was awesome!

Keeper does tours in the Australian mammals section so we started at the education centre patting snakes and lizards, then moved into the nocturnal section where we saw the zoo kitchen; the funniest part was seeing Keeper take out a plastic container full of frozen baby mice and then waving around a frozen rat. We fed the bilbies and the potoroos and then headed out to take a look at a koala, pat an echidna and a quokka. The quokka was especially adorable (right).

Then Keeper managed to get us into the Giraffe Encounters later in the afternoon but then had to start her shift. We had some time to wander around so saw the bird show (finally managed to see my condor in action) and then I split from the group to go and see the condor habitat and wander around on my own. Due to lack of sleep I kept finding all these areas devoid of animals and seriously slowed down quite a bit as the afternoon became drowsier.

By the time I arrived at the giraffe enclosure for my Encounter I was practically crawling up the hill. But after I handed over my ticket and fed the four of them carrots, I perked up significantly. There's nothing quite like having your hands covered in giraffe saliva to make you more alert. One of the giraffes, who I think went by the name of Safara (below), kept lolling her tongue around and slobbering everywhere. It was quite endearing.



Nothing else quite as interesting happened for the rest of the weekend (I turned off all the electricity in my apartment during Earth Hour, then promptly fell asleep in the couch) so that's where I'll leave you.

Tequila is not my friend

A long day yesterday and I'm still getting over it. Began with a hike to Newtown with my flatmate because we just missed the train from Central (the next was in 29 minutes). We went to see 'Tales from Earthsea', the Studio Ghibli adapatation of the Ursula Le Guin novels. It wasn't what I expected and parts of it were unusually slow. I wouldn't recommend it, but I haven't read the books yet so who's to know whether my confusion was due to plotholes or a dissatisfaction with the animation? The voice of Lord Cob was particularly impressive though.

After that I caught a train to Rhodes to visit Ikea. Some of you may know my tabletop ironing board saga. I'll happily admit that I returned a $30 ironing board to buy the $10 Ikea ironing board. I'm not going back too soon, however - the busy, chaotic and crowded nature of the place freaks me out a little. And I hate how you go in for one thing and you have to travel through a maze of slow people dawdling with trolleys in the aisle to get to the checkouts.

Managed to get home only to zip out to BQ's housewarming. It was all very gentile - she fed us well and the company was chatty. My only gripe was that because they'd all been to high school together and the majority of them were engaged/married and buying property, I felt I had nothing much to contribute to the chit-chat. Still, I had a good time and a slice of chocolate bavarian (N.B. this language technique is called a syllepsis zeugma).

Left BQ's at around 10pm to go to Jim's 21st in the city. The idea was that I'd spend about three hours at each party and then be tucked up in bed around 2am like a good little aardvark. This didn't happen.

Arrived at Jim's party around 11pm. I had a surprising amount of fun, even though my regular crew abandoned me (they'd been there for quite a while already) and all the good booze (namely vodka) had disappeared down someone else's hatch. I got by chatting to various randoms who turned up every now and again.

Later we decided that the lack of vodka sucked so Jim and I went to get a bottle (and rum because the Punk Pirate had turned up thirsty), but the midnight liquor laws prevented us from achieving this aim by a mere 20 minutes. We managed to reap some Red Bull for the Jagermeister, though.

By then I'd drunk four Jager bombs and three Kahlua jaffas and for some insane reason decided I'd like to try mixing tequila with lemonade to see if it tasted any good. Punk Pirate decided to pour tequila shots for everyone because there were wedges of lemon sitting on a plate not doing anything. So I had two slugs of tequila that I shouldn't have had...

This pretty much pushed me over the edge so I ended up crashing in one of the beds talking to Jim, Boy Lego, Punk Pirate and Beamer. Punk Pirate was particularly open. I think I found out more about him in 20 minutes than in all the time I've known him. Then I had a nap for about three hours, only to wake up to the smudge of dawn peeking over the horizon. Boy Lego had gone home by that point. I found Punk Pirate, Jim and Beamer sitting outside on the balcony chatting. Jim was sitting on Beamer's lap and seemed pretty happy about it (all that denial about having a crush on him for nothing...). Then I decided the tequila was making me feel seedy and decided to go home.

I got home at 7am, had a shower and went to bed. The tequila - and I maintain it was the tequila alone - made my head feel like someone was scraping my brain from my skull with a blunt knife. It wasn't until about 11am, after a short sleep, some Vegemite toast and a large cup of tea that I felt human again. Needless to say I was glad that the jazz picnic excursion was cancelled so I could bum around for the day.

Don't let me ever forget that tequila is not my friend.