germany

i have been kicking around in germany for a couple of weeks. the party atmosphere of the first week dissipated quickly when germany lost to spain in the final. i was actually a little bit disappointed after visiting munich and berlin - sprawling metropolises with lots of different suburbs and galleries and gardens and palaces to explore, but it just feels like ive seen it all before. instead, i appreciated dresden and nuremberg a lot more. we stayed at a cute hostel on a artsy street in dresden, that managed to be bustling and laidback at the same time. dresden old town was compact and filled with grand old buildings with blackened walls reminding everyone of the allied firebombing of 1945, and the rustkammer there had the best collection of arms and armour that ive come across (better than the kremlin and the met in new york. nuremberg was more romanesque than gothic, which was a nice change, and the dokumentation centrum set in the old nazi rally grounds was excellent. frankfurt and hamburg were also nice towns to spend a few days in, guzzling down excellent beers by the water, watching the world float by on the waves.

racism: when people treat you differently because of something you have no choice about, something you cant change, it makes you feel very vulnerable. the rest of the day changes for you, all of a sudden you are on the look out. every comment, every glance, seems to be suspicious or even hostile. its a very unpleasant state of being. when the trigger event stem from children, its so much more hurtful in its innocent cruelty. i suppose lots of countries have mostly homogeneous populations, if you look chinese or japanese, they assume you are. even when i assure them im from australia, they look incredulous and fall back on 'but you dont look australian'. no, i dont look like paul hogan, but then again, most australians dont. but they wouldnt know anything about that. and its not just germans that are guilty of racial stereotyping or tactless behaviour towards foreigners. lots of other people ive met on my travels are also just as clueless.

hungary

i have just stayed at the best hostel ever. i'll admit my first impressions were apprehensive. walking through a non-descript door, up four flights of stairs in the dark, knocking on an unmarked door, then practically falling over some long-haired freak smoking on a bean bag in the living room did not fill my heart with confidence. the long-haired dude turned out to be the owner of the place. evan hails from florida, via berlin, and had been running hostels for a few years. his latest hostel was basically his house, with an open-plan living area (lounge, kitchen, dining) downstairs and two dorms with ensuites up the rickety spiral staricase. but the place was majorly chill. we smoked inside and drank beer talked shit and played poker (i ended my five days there 3000 forints up - yo!), cooked snacks on the stove and watched the football, all in the company of similarly chilled-out people (a real mixed pot: english, irish, americans, mexicans, canadians, finns, norwegians, australians) it was very easy to just hang out and never venture outside except to go next door for more beers and fags... the dorms werent super-massive (im staying at a 40 bed dorm in munich next = whoa) and the bathrooms were squeaky clean. the kitchen was fully equiped and the internet was free. and there were no snorers in my room. what else can one ask for from a hostel?

but i did head outside for a bit, even though the weather was very ordinary. budapest is a charming city. not as beautiful as vienna (vienna was so good that i decided to head back there for another three nights afterwards) but the disintegrating old buildings and the constant flow of the danube contained an energetic, friendly population that made it, well, not better or worse, but different from prague and vienna and st petersburg and all the other great cities i've visited in the last few months.

shearing sheep

it was time. it was a tad uncomfortable at the belarussian border, being scrutinised by two massive dudes for ten minutes, because i look nothing like my passport photo. i could see them thinking: how can we get him to bribe us? in the end, they let us get back to sleep at 2am.

we walked into the hairdressing school. we didnt speak czech and they knew nary a word of english. what could possiblz go wrong? for forty czech crowns (less than three bucks) i got a short brunette with a nose stud, and gal got a tall blonde. my student got to tick off hair-trimming, beard-cutting and using the clipper - what a model customer i am! it was a bit lumpy, but in a week, you won´t be able to tell anyway.

prague was gorgeous and full of energy. i loved it.

europe at last!

just as we overdosed on temples and shrines in japan and korea, over the last week it feels like all we have seen are castles and cathedrals. there was of course st basilś and the kremlinś cathedral square in moscow, followed by the church on the spilled blood and the winter palace in saint petersburg. in kyiv we ran into the saints sophia, michael and andrew, as well as the caves monastery (unfortunately we were too late to go exploring underground, indiana jones style). warsaw has also been a blur of churches and castles and little squares surround by houses painted different colours of the rainbow. as we have worked our way across, the number of icons and the use of gold gilding has diminished and pews and stained glass windows have started to appear. now, rather than experiencing the dazzling richness and beauty of god, i am contemplating the vast emptiness and silent simplicity of his house.

speaking of indiana jones, the ads for his latest adventure have been plastered across every available surface in the last four cities. either heś very popular here in europe, or george lucas is getting his moneyś worth from his marketing monkeys.

after the hermitage, i have not felt compelled to visit every museum within a ten kilometre radius - i know itś shocking! for the time being itś great just to wander around the little cobblestoned lanes and leafy courtyards and watch the endless stream of beautiful women walk past me, amidst all the glory of spring.

mongolia

time is such a strange creature. the last two months, when i reflect on the events of each day, feel like an eternity; and yet, it's a surprise to realise that a quarter of my year off has elapsed already. there is still so much to do and see. thinking about the immediate future is both thrilling and overwhelming. so these days i try not to brood too much, which is rather easy actually, as so much shit is happening every day, even when we're stuck on the train or in a ger camp in the middle of nowhere.

four days in mongolia is barely enough to get an appreciation of this vast, mostly empty land of rolling grassy hills and jutting jagged rocks. we spent a little time in ulaan baator, the chaotic capital in which a third of the country's people reside. next to funky modern skyscrapers still under construction are dirt tracks lined by gers. a statue of lenin leaning forward, urging the people on towards revolution, overlooking trendy boutiques of burberry, gucci and kookai. it was yet another city of contradictions, like beijing on a smaller, more human, more immediate scale. but my favourite part of the mongolian experience was in the ger camp, 70 kilometres from ub, where we went on long hikes over the hills and rocks, tasted traditional mongolian cooking, rode the small mongolian horses, watched the sunrise over distant steppes. the fresh air, open sky and expansive panoramas stangely reminded me of the western districts of victoria, of home...