backpacking

Prague Day 3: I Did Something Terrible

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MEGA QUICK RECAP: On Day 1, Alfie, Dave and I were forced to sleep rough. On Day 2 we irritated some Australians.

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It was our last full day in Prague, and so far our breezy trio had seen not one jot of the city – save for the various doorways and alleyways that we shivered in trying to snap up a wink of sleep in the midst of the bellows of Storm Herfna or Heroshi or whatever it was called. Crap storm anyway. I’ve had more ferocious bouts of wind. Goodness, aren’t I rather forthcoming and jubilant today? That’s what happens when I have my first coffee in a week. Better than crack. Not that I’ve ever smoked crack. As far as I know.

ANYWAY. Continue reading →

Prague Day 2: Pissing Off Australians

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After our sleepless storm-hammered odyssey the previous evening, Dave, Alfie and I were finally allowed to crumble into our bunks at 3pm. I awoke three hours later; I was overtired and couldn’t sleep for nauseating nightmare flashes. It was dark and we’d missed the whole day, and we didn’t have the will or the strength to venture out again that evening in search of a party. Being homeless in a foreign city during a storm tends to quench your thirst for adventure a little. Continue reading →

Prague Day 1: Sleeping Rough (or, What Happens When You Rely On Dave To Book Your Hostel)

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Dave had been prodding me in the ribs and asking about Prague for a couple of weeks. Petra and Leslie were driving down there for one night over the bank holiday weekend, and he wanted to road trip down with them. I wasn’t super keen – seemed like a long way to go for one night. However, a week or so ago I went for a beer with Hannah, and she mentioned she was heading down as well on the same weekend. Well, this was starting to sound more like a party. I told Dave next day and we booked a coach to Prague on the Saturday. We would dick about for a couple of nights, and Leslie and Petra would meet us on the Monday.

I was originally going to end that introduction with the tired old hook, ‘what could go wrong?’, however if you know me or have read anything at all on this site, you’ll know that really, that question is redundant. Of course everything went wrong. Of fucking course it did. Continue reading →

Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 7.5, Venice After Dark

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Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 7, Venice by Sunlight

It’s 11pm and my last night in Venice has been spent in the hostel bar, after a lonesome meal by the canal on a candlelit terrace, where the waiter felt sorry for me and gave me free wine, with a wink. I was extremely humbled and grateful until the bill came and I found I’d been given free wine but charged 4 euros for a glass of tap water. Bastardo.

I was hoping to meet the Toronto girls from yesterday and chill, but they’ve gone to the opera. I had a look at tickets and they were around 40 each, so no. Instead, I sat myself at a central table in the hostel bar and nursed a beer, my eyes roving around the bar for a friendly face. A group of Spaniards in animated chatter, no; a rabble of droopy eyed Englishmen all attempting to charm the same one American girl, no; a middle aged Chinese couple knotted up in each other on the sofa, no. So that’s the kind of evening it was to be, then. I began to unpack my bag with a sigh, reaching for Kafka, my most loyal friend of late; a twisted, morbid companion, but a companion nonetheless.

‘How’s it going, mate?’ Continue reading →

Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 3, Paris

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Drink, Play, Loathe – Day 2, Paris

Woke up at 3am because Aish, one of the Canadian girls, was talking in her sleep. Her mumbles continued for some time, then grew into tossing and turning, then thrashing, until at 4am she swung her legs over the bunk, dropped onto the floor, and sleep-sprinted out of the room in her knickers. Her friend Sarah jumped up and grabbed her, then must have remembered not to wake a sleepwalker, and simply followed her out of the dorm. I shrugged and fell back asleep. Continue reading →

Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 1, Paris

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It’s just after 7pm, and it’s been a strange sort of day. I feel like I’ve done a huge amount, and yet due to my exhaustion none of it feels real. I’ve been dreaming.

After waking in Berlin at 4am, I landed in France at 8.30 this morning and got the train into Paris. I got very confused and lost in the station, and finally arrived at my hostel around 10.45, and tried to check in. The girl looked at me like I was a half wit. Check in isn’t until 2, of course. I took my backpack and slunk off into the city. I decided the Louvre would be first. Continue reading →

Drink, Play, Loathe: The Trip

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“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” 

― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

So, I’ve been on a trip of Europe, and kept a diary all the while. If travelling is anything at all, it is unpredictable, and the trip I expected to have was, as is usually the case, radically different to the reality. Modern life is a series of spinning plates, and the more you age, the better you become at keeping them spinning. I am young, and youth is wonderful, but the trade off of so much freedom is that fairly regularly, largely due to my own gross incompetence at being alive, my plates come crashing down around me all at once, and I am left lying bruised and stupid beneath a heap of porcelain. Continue reading →