France’s version of the Job Centre is called Pôle Emploi. It’s pronounced ‘poll ump-LAH’, or something like that. It seems to change every time a French person says it. It certainly changes every time I say it.
Continue readingtravel diary
Strasbourg | Cathédrale pt. 2
Coffee is my kryptonite, except it’s worse than kryptonite because at least Clark Kent doesn’t wake up every morning going ‘Oo a tell thee, a wouldn’t mind eating a nice shard of old krypto’. My relationship with coffee is a testament to the blasted duality of Dan: I love it, I love it so much, and yet it slays me. It ruins me. It gives me powerful, throat-punching acid reflux, and it kickstarts my anxiety with the rumbling force of a shifting tectonic plate. I know all of this, I experience it every single day, and yet… I just cannot say goodbye to my lovely, warm, bad-breath-making drink.
Continue readingStrasbourg | Cathédrale pt. 1
What’s the most elegant place you’ve ever had a panic attack?
Continue readingAvignon | Pompette
This weekend just gone, Jeanne and I took a train and went to visit some very good friends in the south of France. God I’m so proud of that sentence. Aren’t I classy these days?
Continue readingMelbourne: Catfish and Sealions
It’s been busy here in Melbourne, although I’m struggling to write this dairy at the moment as recently I’ve found myself worrying about what people might think of me, rather than writing anything honest or real. I don’t want to be dishonest, yet I fear to present an unsatisfying narrative – because as I have said before, contentedness doesn’t make for a particularly riveting read, and content I am. And so I generally compromise and write nothing. It’s a strange thing I find myself doing now, then: posting an article into a very public sphere, with an introductory caveat explaining how very shy I feel. An odd dichotomy indeed, but there it is. Olé! Continue reading
Australia: Shipwrecks and Acid Trips
Hello you handsome bastard. It is I, Daniel Scott Hackett, first of his name, come to teach you a lesson. And by teach you a lesson, I do of course mean tell you of each and every silly thing that has happened to or around me for the past fortnight. Continue reading
Japan: Hitchhiking the Shinkansen
After the previous day’s adventures, I woke up early for my second day of hitchhiking in Japan; it was to be one of the greatest days of my life. Continue reading
Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 10, Riga
Previous: Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 9, Riga
I woke up late, hungover, boiling hot, again. I spent a short morning scribbling on maps on my bed but didn’t hang around too long because my dorm was full of old men and the air was thick with the musk of leathery bodies slumbering and overheating and snoring and farting. Continue reading
The Berlin Diaries – Disenchantment at the Brandenburg Gate
(From the 6th of Feb. My opinions have changed somewhat since writing this; the city and I have made friends again, but what I’ve written here was true once, and so it stays.)
It’s Monday morning and I’m feeling wretched, and so the only time I can write this is right now, as my wretchedness may well be due to chemical deficiencies that will have righted themselves tomorrow. But perhaps not. Continue reading