GOING-GOING BACK-BACK TO VANCOUVER-VANCOUVER...



Piloting the boat home...

the day has come my friends. the legacy will come to an end soon. after careful deliberation, i have decided not to pursure employment in ireland or england at all. i had been planning on staying here until december, but have changed my plans. most of the jobs pay half of what i could make back in vancouver, the rent and cost of living is a lot higher over here, as well as the costs for setting myself up for a period of only three months and then going home anyways.


in the end, the only logical answer was to return home. i'll finish my travels round ireland, to galway and belfast, then hop a ryanair flight to bath, then london for a tiny stop, before vancouver...


so i could be showing up on your doorstep with a case of beer and a smile any day now, singing "guess who's back...?"


i've bought my ticket, but i'm not telling YOU when it's for...just keep your eyes peeled, pargonaut, coming near you soon...

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dublin. well it's not quite what i expected, but it's dublin, nonetheless. to tell you the truth i'm a little disappointed. i started my touring off at the kilmanhaim prison, where many irish rebels during ireland's struggle for independence from britain were held and executed since the 19th century. it also housed many of the poor and starving during ireland's great potato famine of 1840-1845. women and children, some as young as 8 years old, were incarcerated here for thefts of property, for stealing a loaf of bread or shawl to keep warm.



Kilmainham Prison

from there i headed to the 'guiness storehouse'. home to the magic black stuff until 1988 (it's now brewed next door in a more modern facility). the storehouse has been transformed into an enormous museum of all things guiness, almost 7 floors of interactive exhibits. the top floor is known as 'the gravity bar' and features a 460 degree view of dublin from way up high. you're treated to a complimentary pint of guiness to be enjoyed here. my ticket is a small souvenir of a drop of guiness porter encased in a lucite plastic bubble, it will sit on my shelf and collect dust, it's cool.



Bill enjoying Guiness...

afterwards i walked past a couple of cathedrals and churches and the dublin castle. then on to the temple bar area, where the majority of irish pubs and bars are located. i expected it, at night, to be a much more inviting place, a few dark and smoky pubs, perhaps a fiddle or accordion, some frothy pints, men crowded around tables on bar stools jabbering away...but no. tample bar is a dirty party area, over-run by college kids in silly outfits eating doner kebabs or sliced pizza. they pack the bars, stand around trying to pick up drunk irish girls. the beer is over-priced, smoking indoors is banned, and there's a well dressed doorman keeping a watchful eye over the entrance "deciding" who can come in...not the irish pubs i was looking for.



Temple Bar, Fleet Street, Dublin

today, i went and saw the ancient book of kells, from the 8th century bc, held in trinity college. at least for me, the 9 euro entrance fee to see an old book under glass wasn't really worth it, but i went anyway, and saw an old book under glass. i have a tattoo of a design taken from the bool. the highlight of that particular museum, though, has to be trinity college's long room library. the two storey room, open in the middle is lined with niches and two storey high shelves filled with ancient books. there are ladders to reach the uppermost levels. the room itself is long, wood panelled and the entrance to each niche is guarded by the bust of a famous irish writer or poet. you're not allowed to touch the books or take photos, but trust me, the room was amazing.



The Long Room Library, Trinity College

the i went to the national archeological museum to see the bog body. a well preserved maybe 3000 year old body of a murdered man. he was strangled with a string of beads and left in a peat bog. the conditions of the peat preserved his skin, hair and leather cloak, along with the murder weapon.



A Bog Body...

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i'm in dublin...

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aland island, finland.

sorry there haven't been many posts in the last little while and i hope that everyone has been willing to bare with me. as some of you know, i met a girl in sarajevo months ago, linda, and we spent the two weeks after that together travelling in croatia and slovenia. things went well and after a goodbye in ljubljana we planned to meet a month and a half later at her home in finland...and that's where i am now.



Linda on the ferry...

she met me in stockholm, on the platform as i stepped off the train from copenhagen. it was good to see her after so long. from there it was straight onto the huge silja ferry, six hours across to the finnish island of aland. it was the biggest and fanciest boat i had ever been on, with a casino, sleeping cabins, several restaurants and night clubs, duty free shops and a pool. after a quick dinner of swedish meatballs and a trip to the duty free shop for a big bottle of bailey's and some smirnoff ice, we spent the rest of the trip outside on the deck watching the sunset over the sea. it's weird how late the sun stays up this far north. the sky was still orange as we closed in on midnight.



Aland, between Sweden and Finland


Aland's flag

her mom met us at the ferry terminal and we went off to her house, just a 5 minute drive out of aland's only town, mariehamn, the aland islands are a bit of anomally in finland, formerly belonging to sweden, they were annexed by finland within the last 100 years, but remain almost totally swedish, in language and culture. the aland islands have their own postal system and stamps, separate from finland, their own flag and national anthem. around 6000 smaller islands make up the aland archipelago, now all demilitarised and autonomous. the greenery reminds me of the pacific northwest, pine trees, a few deciduous here and there and a rocky coastline. they're just lacking the ominous rocky mountains and are fairly flat.



Fishing at the cabin...

i've met most of her friends, drinking and hanging out at the indigo bar or dino's just across the plaza. there's a couple of nice museums, mostly based around aland's viking and maritime history. spent a few days on a small island in a cabin, fishing, swimming and bbqing. saunas are pretty popular here and linda even has one in her house.


other than that, it's been pretty much relaxed. we've taken some small trips driving around the island, to view some of the old russian fortresses and the countryside, and to taste aland's famous pancakes, thick, made of porridge and served cold, topped with a prune jam, and damn good too.


i'm happy, we're happy. linda heads to stockholm on sunday for university and i've decided to fly on to dublin. as it goes now, i'm planning on finding work bartending or serving somewhere for the next few months, then travelling a bit more around ireland and england before heading home sometime in mid-december.


in addition, i've now finally finished my photos up until Austria and you can take a look on my gallery page:
the gallery

that includes Turkey, Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia.


the rest, from Austria until now, are still undeveloped. i've managed to rack up about 13, 36 exposure rolls, and will be working on those slowly over the next few months, hopefully finishing them before i go home.


my entire webpage has been moved to a new server, with an extra 1.8 gigs of storage space and a 20 gig traffic allowance, so i shouldn't run out for awhile...

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Nyhavn, Copenhagen

kobenhavn, denmark. it rained and it was cold and i'm jacket-less so i didn't get the most out of the city...former home to author hans christian andersen, on the sea, denmark is where scandinavia meets europe. i checked into my hostel, the copenhagen sleep-in, a giant rec center. they've turned the gym into dorm rooms by putting up cubicle walls and bunk beds. the problem is that you can hear everyone and everything else around you...and they let children into this place...so every night i was kept up by the sounds of screaming children...2am, 3am, 4am whatever, there were babies crying, or someone crinkling bags...there are like 6 toilets for 286 people, and only 12 showers. the showers are segregated, but all together in one room for boys and another for girls, like a hockey practice locker room. the hostel sucks!



The Little Mermaid

as for the city, it's nice enough. i wandered through the radhus town hall and down stroget, europe's longest pedestrian only street, past some nice buildings and parks, expensive shops packed with tourists, then along the seaside northwards to the somewhat dissapointing 'little mermaid' statue, again surrounded by tourists snapping photos.



Christiania, Copenhagen

my second day, i crossed the bridge to christianhavn island to see 'christiania', an alternative freetown populated by hippies and environmentalists. formerly an army barracks, squatters moved in in the early 70's and turned it into their own self-governed city. there are a couple of run-down buildings, some stands selling hemp products and pipes and a couple of vegetarian restaurants. i wasn't too impressed, it was falling apart, graffiti everywhere and a bunch of long haired dredlocked bums wandering around. christiania turned into a haven for drug addicts and junkies in the 80's and now the police have cracked down. there are regular patrols of huge groups of officers throughout the day. marijuana is openly sold and smoked, but there has been a community backlash against hard drug users and they have mostly all moved out. the police prescence was overwhelming, i counted at least 15 officers in a 2 block radius and over 7 paddy-wagons on the outskirts. i spent a total of 30 minutes in christiania and witnessed two drug arrests. it wasn't that great of a place. i moved on and out.


friday morning, i hopped a train across to sweden and on to stockholm, where linda met me on the platform. we hopped on a bus to the docks and on a giant ferry ship across to Åland island where she lives. i'll be here with her for the rest of august.

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berlin. a six hour train ride through most of germany landed me dang-spat in berlin. the train ride through eastern germany was a bit inspiring, golden wheat fields, the occasional farmhouse, and spotted with giant wind farms, huge white behemoth fans spinning in the wind.


i debarked at berlin's zoologischer station, a bit freaked out, it was germany afterall and for some reason i was expecting to be inundated with scary skinheads and big guys in leather jackets. nothing of the sort, i'm thankful to say. i called my friend, anna, and arranged to meet her at hakescher markt station in a few hours. i had met her and her friend hanna in laos, just off the place in luang prabang and we shared a tuktuk and hostel. they headed north, i headed east and we planned to meet up later in germany. and today was the day.


anna was at a party for a sports group, we had beers in the basement of a currently-being-renovated building, danced and listend to german pop with some of her friends. then back to her apartment in the former east berlin, near warchauserstrasse. it was a nice place, with a giant bust of karl marx sitting on the tv, her roommate likes him, for his looks...



Arbeit Macht Frei, Work Makes Freedom, Sachsenhausen

the next day, i took the s-bahn train north of berlin to oranienburg, a small town off-shoot of the big city to see 'sachsenhausen' (i can't seem to wrap my lips around german either, it's pronounced 'zak-zen-houz-en'). 'sachsenhausen' was the first concentration camp, a sort of experiment before the others were built...it was a haunting experience...30,000 people met their end their, we saw some former prison bunkers, the execution pit, the medical office and morgue, and some of the homes of the officers. it was a huge complex, encompassing some 130 acres, and makes up a third of the whole town of oranienburger, which isn't small...the audio headset tour i had included real-life, very graphic accounts from former prisoners there...




on my second day, i joined 'the berlin free tour' which works on tips. we toured the major sights and a few out-of the way ones. our tour guide took us to the site of hitler's bunker, right in the centre of the city. it's now a gravel parking lot. apparently, no one could agree on what to do with it when it was discovered, they tried to blow it up, but it has 4m thick walls and wouldn't budge. they decided to flood it with water and bury it...maybe in 50 more years they will dig it up and decide what to do with it. it hasn't been long enough since the end of the war for people to look at the situation objectively...should we preserve it as a museum for future generations...but then would that make it a pilgrimage place for neo-nazis who would lay flowers and wreaths outside...another problem is that it's just across the street from the brand new jewish holocaust memorial...either way, right now it's just a parking lot...



The Berlin Wall Falls

also saw the remaining pieces of the berlin wall, which was cool, and learned all about the history there. just before i left i checked out a helmut newton photography exhibit at his museum...i find his work a bit too stylized, he takes a lot of time to set up lighting conditions and his models pose with a number of different plots...he takes some damn interesting pictures though...




that night, anna, her roommate and i headed to a funky part of berlin for some wine. there's a restaurant there that sells empty glasses for a euro. there's a pile of bottles of white and red and you can drink all you want, all night. at the end you pay "whatever you feel is fair." intereesting, her roommate had just finished her master's degree and we were meeting up with some other people from her program...i don't think the whole wine-pay-as you like system would go down very well back home...


now i'm in kobenhavn, or copenhagen...finally in scandinavia. it's been cold and a bit rainy. i toured the city today but i'll post all about it next time...

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amsterdam. i took a train from the town of 'goes' in southern holland. my friend roy and his mom dropped me off. i spent the day in ''den haag' (the hague), a stately town where van gogh spent some of his life. it's also home to the international war crimes tribunal.



Crows Over The Wheat Field - Vincent Van Gogh

i was in amsterdam by the afternoon and checked into my hostel at the flying pig, just in time to have a few beers and a few more and then sleep. the next morning, i was up fairly early and set out on the flying pig's 'alternative city crossing tour' which took me through the city, the red light district, a few parks and past all the major sights. it started raining in the late afternoon so i headed to the van gogh museum and the rijksmuseum. the former was great, not that i like to spend that much time in art galleries, but van gogh is just cool and special. saw most of his masterpieces, except for the 'starry night', i think it's in another gallery. my favourite had to have been 'crows over the wheat field' for it's bright contrasting colours and simple subject matter and van gogh's unique painting style that makes the scene pulsate with life.



The Nightwatch - Rembrandt

the rijksmuseum contained some of the most famous work of the dutch masters including some work by rembrandt. i saw his most famous painting, 'the nightwatch', though i had never heard of it before.



Anne Frank

spent the night at a coffeeshop with some vancouver girls that i met here. the next day i headed to anne frank's house and the foam (fotographie museum). anne frank's house was truly one of the best historical museum's i've ever visited. it was moving and a bit scary to be where it all happened. i could'nt imagine living inside a secret house for two years, never being able to leave or show your face at the window, and all the while you know your friends are being sent to concentration camps and gassed. and after two years, someone ratted them out and she died of typhus in a concentration camp anyways (along with every other member of her family except her father)...



Amsterdam

and what of amsterdam itself? it's a small city...people ride bicycles everywhere, there are trams and crowds of people and thousands upon thousands of bicycles. the buidlings are stately, and line the canals dug throughout the city. most can't go over three stories high for fear of sinking into the soft clay earth. there are small red light districts around the town centre...the usual prostitutes sitting in the windows on the first floor of the houses or shops, special cafes where you can purchase and smoke an array of marijuana strains, hash-hish or other psychoactive substances, including magic mushrooms. they serve beer and coffee and are usually well stocked with fancy glow in the dark lights and posters, or decorated with weird trippy paintings and sculptures...interesting. and the sec shops...everywhere, peep shows, sex toy speciality shops, women and their masters shops, women only shops, women and their partner shops, gay shops, lesbian shops...etc. it's a liberal society and it works just fine, nobody thinks twice about the legal prostitution, it is the oldest profession in history, you know. and the drugs...well nothing really seems to go wrong with that either. in fact, i think holland could have figured something out here that a lot of other countries are still struggling to realize?



What's the big deal?

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i left paris after a week, i kept going downstairs every morning and telling them i'd stay another night...i guess paris has that effect on people, i saw pretty much everyhting in addition to drinking way too much red wine and heineken on a nightly basis....yes, paris.


i took an early morning train to tours...a little city with a nice old town and a few nice churches. there wasn't much to see there. i was done in a couple of hours and took a train to le mans, then a train to rennes and finally a bus to mont-st-michel, i was lucky enough to get the last campsite available in the small town below the abbey there.



Le Mont St-Michel, France

mont-st-michel is a medieval abbey constructed on a rocky outcropping 2 km off the northern coast of france. at high tide the road to the abbey is completely covered in water and transport can only be accomplished by boat, when the tide goes out, it's an easy walk or car ride to the abbey. about 47 people still call the mountian home and live in touristy shops or hotels around the ramparts of the former fortress.


the main reason i wanted to go is because in grade 8, at holy cross high school...my socials studies teacher, mr. kozak, gave myself and my friend jason a project. we had to complete a model kit of 'le mont st-michel' that he had purchased on a trip there a few years earlier. it was a $50 model and...well, a lot of work. i did most of it, completing about 75% of the kit before handing it off to jason who accomplished nothing. mr. kozak had promised us an A in the class if we finished it for him. we kept on pushing the due date back and back and eventually, before we knew it, it was summertime. mr. kozak gave us both an A and said we could deliver the finished model during the summer. of course, we never did, jason still has it, and well, we both got A's in grade 8 social studies anyways. so i had to see the place for myself. where is the model today? jason...



The Famous Manneken Pis Fountain, Brussels

from mont-st-michel i headed eastwards to brussels in belgium. i spent the day walking through the city, which definitely has europe's nicest medieval plaza, a cobblestone square surrounded by enchanting baroque buildings, gilded gold, copper, statues and an enormous 'stadhius'town hall. the rest of brussel was failry dirty, not what i expected, especially the are around the train station, garbage on the streets and lots of homeless people.


in the late afternoon, i hoppped on a train to the belgium town of gent and met my friend roy, whom i had met in bulgaria a few months ago. he lives about 30 mins drive outside gent in the city of sas-van-gent in the netherlands. he's notl letting me spend a single euro while i'm here, we've had big home-cooked dinners in his house...i finally got to do a real load of laundry and we sample some of belgium's over 800 types of beers nightly (and daily). it's been a nice break from all the travelling and worrying about money all the time.

i spent yesterday in antwerp and today toured around medieval gent. two days ago, we took a 6 hour (each way) drive to a city in germany near dortmund to see a cultural festival. two female members of the costa rican dance group had been billeting at roy's house the week before i arrived and so we went to germany to watch them perform. it was a nice city and a great performance, but a late late night, and we didn't make it home unitl at least 6am.


belgium/the netherlands, has been relaxing so far...i haven't had the pressure to see all the sights as fast as possible as i've put on myself in other cities...especially because i'm not paying for accomodation or food. it's really nice here, flat farmland, canals and boats, cobblestone streets, and the people are really nice. i've met all of roy's family, neighbors and friends. people get together over a pint or two (or ten) and watch tennis at the sports club, ride their bikes aorund the countryside or just watch life go by on a patio.


i'm off to amsterdam tomorrow for four days...hmmm.....

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