Previously: Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 1, Paris
Well, I woke up this morning ugly and dishevelled and so hot I actually panicked and thought something had gone gravely wrong internally. Ran into the bathroom for an emergency guzzle of tap water and dry heaved at the sight of my wild haired, eye bagged, bloodshot reflection. I’ve got to learn to take better care of my body. Christ. Continue reading
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
“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
Thursday I braved the snow and lashing winds and headed down to the Bürgeramt in Wedding. ‘What is the Bürgeramt, Dan?’ I hear you plead. The Bürgeramt, my friend, is a frightfully dull bureaucratic building, an official government site where you have to sort out all your throat-slittingly boring paperwork, registrations, documentation, whatever. After three months living in the city, I have finally moved into a flat where I am able to register – which is a crucial part of moving here, as it allows me to get a bank account, get health insurance, get paid, you name it. The German word for this kind of registration is Anmeldung, a term which now boils my blood every time I hear it. Continue reading
Now that is a good title. Sounds like a band name, right?!
Okay, play this while you read the opening paragraph for ambiance:
Okay, okay. ‘Death or Glory’ is a bit self important, as far as titles go. It’s just a cool sounding phrase, alright? I’m sorry. An alternate title could be ‘Owt or Nowt’, which is a joke you either will or will not get, depending on whether you are from Northern England.
*****
Surely not. Surely not. It’s too soon to say but… my god, it looks as though everything might actually… work out okay?!
Continue readingOi. You. You with the eyebrows. Yeah, you.
You’re reading a travelling blog, aren’t you? T’would be futile to protest otherwise, my friend. Well, since you are here, perusing my site, I do believe it is safe to assume that you have at least a passing interest in travelling. Hey, me too! OMG we have so much in common.
I’ve been grounded here in rainy England for a while due to the fact that I have that tedious and tiresome constraint called a job. But I’ve found a way to feel free, to learn and live, albeit vicariously through others, and that is through an oft maligned practise called reading. Reading is cool.
Wait, come back!
Reading is cool, and if you sneer at those three words you can go and boil your head, oaf. If you’ve time to sit here and read me insulting you, you great mucky Philistine, you can bloody well sit and read a book. A book, I’ve found, offers the same level of worldview-altering, mind-expanding goodness that travelling does. I wouldn’t advocate one over the other, though. In fact they go together pretty well, like cookies and milk, or a bottle of wine and another bottle of wine.
So, because I’ve spent a, for lack of a better word, fuckload of time searching for decent books to read this year, I’ve decided to gift you, dear sweet reader, with the list of books I’ve read these past twelve months. These books have a similar theme – that is, they’re pretty view-altering. You’ll read these and find yourself thinking a little differently. Whether their words stay glowing within you forever or haunt your dreams for a week, these are books that are worth every second you invest in them.
A tale of a big tough man and a bigger tougher fish.
Jack Kerouac races around North America and Mexico with the incorrigible Neal Cassady stealing cars and raving to jazz and falling in and out of love and being generally brilliant.
Jack Kerouac explores Buddhism with his friend Gary Snyder, climbs a few mountains, meditates a lot, has wild parties, reads poetry, partakes in a few orgies and whatnot, all in the name of the search for enlightenment.
He’s my favourite author, okay?
Jack Kerouac roams from North America to Mexico via New Orleans, crosses the ocean, meditates in Tangiers, crosses French countryside to Paris, and finally arrives in London.
Hunter S. Thompson and his attorney head to Vegas to write an article for Rolling Stone on a motorbike race, spend their budget instead on an absolute fuck ton of drugs and get very wild and very, very weird. Bad craziness!
Ernesto Guevara, before he was Che, was a 23 year old Argentinian doctor who just wanted to see the world, drink wine and get laid. And that’s essentially what he did on this nine month tour of South America by motorbike – until he witnessed the abject poverty that was rampant in Chile and Peru, and took the first steps on his journey as a revolutionary.
Fifteen short stories tracing the lives of priests, nuns, maids, undertakers, alcoholics, politicians, sailors, schoolboys, fathers, daughters, mothers and sons, all set in early twentieth century Dublin. Sounds bleak as hell and, not gunna lie, it is, but it’s spectacularly vivid.
Anne Frank was a 15 year old Jewish girl killed in the Holocaust in 1945. She was also a fantastic writer, an incredibly complex and inspiring person, and her diary is the most stomach-punchingly heavy testament to the horrors of racism and hatred I’ve ever read. Read her diary and you’ll feel like her friend. You’ll understand and relate to this fierce, brave and intelligent girl. This book should be mandatory reading for every single person in the world.
Siddhartha is a young religious man who sets out to find enlightenment in fourth century India. He finds it in various forms, though never exactly where he’s looking for it.. Everyone will take something different away from this book, but everyone will take something away. It’s stunning.
Holden Caulfield is a 17 year old school kid who hates everything and everyone and speaks in a unique youthful vernacular that was considered outrageous at the time and got this book banned everywhere. Caulfield is frustrated and disappointed and shocked by the goddamn ‘phony’ adults he sees all around him. Booted out of goddamn school, he runs away to New York. We have all been Holden Caulfield at some point in our goddamn lives, I really mean it.
Between the 13th and 15th February, 1945, Allied forces bombed the German city of Dresden into dust, killing some 25,000 civilians in one night. Kurt Vonnegut was an American soldier held captive in the city at the time, and witnessed the destruction. This book tells the tale with a science fiction spin, through the eyes of accidental time traveller Billy Pilgrim. Okay, I’ve made it sound shit. It’s good. Harrowing and deeply unsettling, but good. Hmm. Good might not be the word. Important.
Next up, I want to read:
Not too sure of the story, but from what I’ve read about it, it gives amazingly vivid descriptions of India, which makes me giddy with excitement because I’m dying to travel to India this year or next.
To be honest, there are as many books I want to read as there are countries I want to visit. Hmm. Every book and every country in the world. That should keep me occupied for the time being, at least.
I still remember the first backpackers I ever saw. It was the first stop of my big world trip, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Arriving at the hostel after our flight, exhausted already by the sticky heat and boisterous Vietnamese city life, my friend and I spotted 15 or so bedraggled western backpackers lounging in the foyer. Even at a glance, it was plain to see they weren’t normal tourists. I wanted to say hi, but I was too shy.
I’ve an announcement to make, which will no doubt to bring shock and disbelief to the scores of people who read this website, namely my parents and the occasional random Argentinian man who accidentally stumbles across this site while searching for porn. I wish to inform all three of you that, on the 4th of October this year, I will be moving to Berlin. Continue reading
Well, I’ve found my happy place.
In May I visited Berlin. Flying into Tegel airport (which is shit), I bumbled my way into the city to meet my friend, Michelle, at Leinestraße. I’d not seen her in a year. She’s a little sassy French girl with delightfully tussled hair who parties harder than anyone I’ve met. Her appetite for dancing is never ending. She’s cool. Continue reading
