And so, having been bullied by a twelve-year-old the previous evening, we now rejoin our two heroes as they breakfast on the terrace of their hostel, trying to summon up the courage to step outside once more, into whatever new adventures await.
Continue readingTravel
Morocco | Weird Screaming Fat Kid
We woke up early in the morning, mercifully un-hungover somehow, and had one final breakfast on the terrace, served by peaceful Jamal.
Continue readingMorocco | Freakin’ Out The Locals
Marrakesh feels like a sensory overload test – something MI6 would put you through if you applied to join the Secret Service, as a means of gauging how well you hold up under torture pressure.
Morocco | No Mood For Snakes
Sam and I spent our first morning in Morocco breakfasting on the roof terrace. The view wasn’t exactly grand, but it was certainly alien: stacks of rooftops, all at different heights, all unfinished. Each building was the same: rising sturdily from the clamour of the streets below, only to peter out suddenly, as if the builders had lost interest the minute they thought nobody would see their work. Each terrace adjacent to our own very lovely one was a jumble of breeze blocks and empty paint cans and broomsticks, with stray cats prowling the rubble.
Continue readingMorocco | Wally the Happy Vaccinator
Things got off to a dumb start. I arrived in London on the afternoon of Thursday the 25th of August, and I had an arseload of things to do before we flew out to Morocco the next day. Firstly, I had to go and get my travel vaccinations – two jabs at two different clinics. Yellow fever and typhoid. The typhoid was fine, but the doctor warned me that I might feel a little bit achy and woozy and fluey for the next few days after my yellow fever vaccine, as it is in fact a living version of the virus they inject into you.
Continue readingMorocco | In Which A Lot of Things Go Wrong In Quick Succession, Just For A Change
After finishing up in Budapest, I spent three weeks back in the UK. I had a big plan laid out, and it was a good one: I was going to visit one of my best and oldest friends, Sam, for a holiday weekend in Brighton, along with his girlfriend and a bunch of their friends. Then I was going to spend a week visiting family in Leeds, and then I was going to head to France and find a Workaway or HelpX on a farm somewhere, and stay there for two to three months to improve my French and try to enjoy some more of the farm life that I loved so much in Australia. After that – well, I hadn’t planned any further, but I was confident something would come up along the way. Amerique du Sud, peut etre.
Continue readingHungary | Out On The (Gou) Lash
Okay so as I write this I’m on a train going through the desert somewhere in Morocco, and Budapest was a month ago. Buuut I don’t want to not write about it because it was a lot of fun, so I will remember what I can and wang it together into a nice summary.
Continue readingHungary | In Which, Once Again, I Get All Flustered And Fail To Handle Even Very Simple Problems
Checking out of my hostel in the hot hot morning, I shook hands with the two friendly guys that ran the place, humped my dusty rucksack up on my back, and made my way across the city to the bus station. It took me some 45 minutes, and by the time I arrived I’d sweated clean through my shirt and nearly been bonneted by half a dozen cars and buses.
Continue readingSerbia | Why Is Everybody I Meet A Nutter
Jack and I left Sarajevo the morning after our grand day out, and took a bus several hours north, to a town called Tuzla. Neither of us particularly wanted to go Tuzla, but a one-night stopover there split what would have been an 9-hour bus ride to Belgrade into two bus rides of only four hours or so.
Continue readingBosnia | World Serpent
Jack snores like a maniac. I shared a room with him all the way through Bosnia, and each morning he’d wake up, stretch, and say something like “Dude, I had the best night’s sleep ever, I slept like a baby”, and I’d look at him and say “Hmmm”. I figured out a way to stop his snoring, eventually: whenever he began to honk and wheeze, I would take my plastic water bottle and thwack it against the wall. The sound was enough to wake him, but wasn’t enough for him to remember why he’d woken up. Then he’d shrug and fart and roll over, and I’d have a peaceful thirty minutes before the snoring began anew.
Continue reading