Well the last two days have been fun. Yesterday morning there was a protest down the street with thousands of people, many of the guys were wearing balaclavas and holding metal poles and sticks looking for fights. The riot police were out, horses everywhere and lots of loud drumming, shouting and fireworks. Then this morning Tali fell down the marble stairs of our hostel Bridget Jones style and now has an epic bruise on her bum. The last two nights there have been fun parties and we met some cool people - a few aussies, pommies and a trio of irish girls. Tonight the guys are dressing up as girls and going to a lesbian bar but I think we might skip that… I really want to see Gran Torino. Clint Eastwood is testament to the fact that to be a super intimidating nutter, you don’t have to be big or even be able to fight. You just have to have that glare and squinty eyes. He kills people for fun, like Chuck Norris back in the day.

Anyway, from madrid we got the bus to Barcelona and I spent most of the trip reading The Pillars of the Earth which is one of my favourite books of the trip. Tali can’t read on buses and her ipod was dead so she basically harassed me the whole way. After hours on the bus we finally stopped at a petrol station which had a big restaurant attached. We got off the bus and ordered two roast dinners and waited excitedly with our knife and fork poised in the air.

Just as the waiter brings over our huge roast dinners the bus driver walked past us after buying cigarettes. His eyes opened wide and he started gibbering away in Spanish and waving his arms in the air like a lunatic. All we picked up was ‘dos minutos’ meaning the bus leaves in 2 minutes. We had only stopped for a toilet break and everyone was waiting on the bus for us while we were ordering food. So I put down my knife and fork and started shovelling the meat in my mouth and scoffing the potatos. We inhaled our food in dos minutos and ran back to the bus where everyone was waiting for us and the bus driver was scowling.

Anyway, from madrid we got the bus to Barcelona and I spent most of the trip reading The Pillars of the Earth which is one of my favourite books of the trip. Tali can’t read on buses and her ipod was dead so she basically harassed me the whole way. After hours on the bus we finally stopped at a petrol station which had a big restaurant attached. We got off the bus and ordered two roast dinners and waited excitedly with our knife and fork poised in the air.

Just as the waiter brings over our huge roast dinners the bus driver walked past us after buying cigarettes. His eyes opened wide and he started gibbering away in Spanish and waving his arms in the air like a lunatic. All we picked up was ‘dos minutos’ meaning the bus leaves in 2 minutes. We had only stopped for a toilet break and everyone was waiting on the bus for us while we were ordering food. So I put down my knife and fork and started shovelling the meat in my mouth and scoffing the potatos. We inhaled our food in dos minutos and ran back to the bus where everyone was waiting for us and the bus driver was scowling.

We arrived in barcelona at 1am and once again hadn’t booked anything. We walked down some back alley and it was full of dodgy characters trying to sell us drugs and cans of beer. It would have been fine normally but walking with a backpack and dragging Tali’s bag along a coblestone street that late is asking for trouble. So we ended up staying in a semi expensive hotel so we wouldn’t have to keep walking around.

Barcelona is a wicked city and one of our favourite places. It is really ecclectic and the club scene is heaps less restrictive than Sydney eg you don’t have to be wearing a collared shirt or look like a private school jock to get in. Although it is almost the opposite of Sydney eg if you aren’t alternative then people will judge you. Anyway, we went to one of the big clubs called Apollo and rocked up not knowing what to expect. The place was full of randoms dressed in Halloween gear and heaps of metalheads. There was a folk metal band playing and they were all dressed as zombies playing a bizarre mix of folk with banjos crossed with screaming metal. At the front was a moshpit full of vampires and werewolves and all other kinds of costumes so we were like wtf! It was an awesome vibe with a cool crosection of people and we joined in on the madness. As the night went on the music changed from house to dirty 80’s classics to 90’s rock anthems and we were stoked by the end.

A few nights later we went and saw The Presets at another big club called Razzamataz and they were awesome as well. The place was full of aussies and the night ended up being loose. The rest of Barcelona was spent sight seeing doing things like Gaudi, some museums and I can’t really remember what else. We caught up with my cousin who is studying there and she and her friend took us for some tapas and then to a bar with over 100 types of shots. We had some flaming ones on the bar which was fun and it was cool catching up with her again.

We didn’t meet many people in Barcelona or Spain in general. One night we hung out with a Frenchie who didn’t speak english, two guys from the Ukraine or Russia, and a slutty Irish girl who was incredibly annoying. In fact we’ve had quite a few of those nights where you sit down for a beer with some people and they turn out to be freaks. Anyway the Ukraine guy seemed fine at first but then he started going on about his dad who was 150kg and 6 foot 6 with white hair to his bum, a white beard to his belly button and was in the Ukrainian army for 30 years. He was going on about how if you don’t drink vodka straight you aren’t a man, and how him and his mate were tortured in the army. Things like lining you up against a wall and fly kicking you into it to toughen you up. He thought this was a good thing and made his country strong. 

He also said when people step on his toes at concerts he knocks them out. He said in the Ukraine that’s just how it is - if someone looks at your girl, you beat the shit out of them with your bottle of vodka (spoken in heavy Russian accent and menacing voice). He was a big guy and he wasn’t kidding so I was pretty keen to leave the conversation although Tali thought the whole thing was hilarious. He offered us some strange Ukrainian raw fish which I desperately didn’t want but I was essentially forced to eat out of fear. I don’t know where the hell the Ukraine is but I’m never going there.

I don’t think anyone really cares about hearing how beautiful the Vatican is or how enormous the Colosseum is. In a conversation with someone it might be cool to hear about but who seriously cares enough to read paragraphs about architecture. So I won’t bore you with a detailed account of our day to day activities. Instead I’ll focus on some of the funny situations we got ourselves into. For the R rated stuff it’ll have to be offline

So anyway, here is a story from Spain:

We arrived in Spain after one month in Italy (which was definitely the highlight of the trip). We got super lucky with the weather and it was low to mid 20’s every day which was uncharacteristic for October. From Italy we went to Spain and we flew into Madrid expecting similar kinds of weather. We touched down about 11pm and hadn’t thought to book any accomodation (an organisational problem we have never quite resolved) and it was freezing. It would have been about 8 degrees with a fierce wind blowing and I was in shorts and Tali was wearing a thin jumper.

We hadn’t bothered to look up anything about Spain so we just rocked up in Madrid with no idea where to go so after getting a train to the centre we started trudging around in the freezing cold and ended up in a filthy den of sin. On the second night the guy in the room next to us (old and fat) hired a prostitute and for the next 30 minutes spoke in a deep Spanish voice, like some Antonio Banderas nightmare. The prostitute screamed and shouted the whole time in such an exaggerated way that we were lying on our backs in silence staring at the roof, dumbfounded. At one point it sounded like there was an exorcism going on and she was roaring in a deep satanic voice and I thought our paper thin wall was going to cave in. By this point it was 2 or 3am and we were incredibly pissed off. But the room was so cheap we sucked it up for a few more days.

We didn’t do much in Madrid, just a lot of shopping for Tali and endless tapas. There are meant to be some good museums there but after Italy we were cultured out. If I ever see a renaissance painting again I’m going to destroy it. Tali and I both love theme parks - the rides, the fairy floss and all the dudes dressed up as cartoon characters, so we decided to go to Movie World. We got on a train about midday and after a few hours we arrived and everyone was dressed up for Halloween and the rides were all huge.
 
At the end of the day we went into a haunted/horror house with real people dressed up and as you walk through they jump out at you. We thought we were going on the batman ride (bad Spanish) and Tali was very unimpressed. The actors could smell Tali’s fear and picked on her the whole way through. This one girl dressed as a zombie bride/dead woman with a stake in her head came walking towards us with her hair covering her face. Just as she walked past us she lifted her face and hands and screamed in Tali’s face. Tali screamed at the top of her lungs right back at her (bloodcurdling) and fell into me and two other random guys, grabbing onto my shirt and another guy’s shirt with a vice grip and trembling. The actor got such a scare from Tali’s scream that she jumped back about 5 metres and then scurried off to change her undies. 
 
 
 
 

I hadn’t logged into the blog for a while so I decided to check out some older posts from early in the trip. I found a few that I forgot to publish so here is one of them:

Well sensibilities flew out the window the moment Tali touched down in India. My little sidekick and partner in crime. The only person I know who is a bigger idiot than I and capable of creating hilarious stories within days of arriving.

She arrived with a suitcase strategically packed like a game of tetris. Once the clothes come out I knew they were never going to fit back in. Already I’m carrying a hooded jumper for her. Then we go to a shopping centre and she buys a stuffed toy - an elephant - who buys a stuffed toy when they are backpacking for 6 months and already have no room???

Our hotel looks good on the outside but it has a severe electrical problem and the power is constantly cutting out. No air con. No fan. No light. We’re on the top level and the temperature is in the high 30’s even in the middle of the night. We discovered the extent of the heat at 2am this morning when we both awoke in a pit of sweat burning up in a furnace. Shane was next door and also woke up and together we stormed down 5 flights of stairs (Shane in his underpants) to get the power back on. There’s a generator but they hadn’t bothered to turn it on. The man on duty was asleep and tried to ignore us when we asked him to go outside and turn the power back on. Shane who is not known for either patience or politeness in these kinds of situations shines his torch in the man’s eyes and starts jabbing him until the guy eventually rolls off the couch.

The next morning we’re sitting on the rooftop of our hotel. It’s an open air restaurant which looks straight at the Taj Mahal. Imagine sitting at a table in the morning, sipping a coffee and looking at one of the most beautiful structures with the sun hanging high in the background - truly incredible. So we’re sitting at a table, the restaurant is packed with people, mid afternoon enjoying a late lunch. Tali suddenly screams at the top of her lungs and jerks her legs from under the table. The entire restaurant flinches from the scream and everyone turns to look at us. Tali apologises and mutters she thought something was under the table. She had her ipod sitting on the table and one earphone had fallen off and swung into her knee. And then she says to me “I thought my earphone was a monkey” causing the 3 people next to us to laugh hysterically and me to go bright red.

Earlier Tali had opened our door to the balcony and a big monkey had run across the railing. This had also caused an ear splitting reaction and left her on edge.