Sunday 18 November 2012

So Alicate, Spain. The party that should never have finished :(

well,
as it went on tues the 30th Oct i got in a small jet plane and flew from Edinburgh to Alicante, Spain.

now for this i was a bit unsure of everything.
money was tight, i was going on my own
the hostel scene looked a little bit weird (bear in mind i have lived in hostels for over 3 years now)

now let me tell you this.

Alicante is by far my FAVOURITE PLACE in Europe so far.
the trophy was last held by Holland and has held it since the day i landed in Europe way back on the 2nd of June.

But as will all things, newer things must come.

so it started out with me getting lost. a lot.

getting lost in the airport while absolutely busting for a piss
getting lost outside the airport trying to find where the bus i needed to take to the city left from
getting lost while on said bus cause i have no idea when i need to get off haha.

there was a lot of getting lost

but man, was it worth it.
i will admit that initially i had only booked 3 nights in my hostel just in case i decided to check out another city, or the hostel was shite and i could then move.
 when i woke up after the first night, i extended all the way through.

i have lived in hostels for the last 3 years due to jobs and travelling, X Hostel Alicante is by Far my favourite in Europe and equal first in the world ( Toddy's no one can beat you but i have found your european counterpart)

i may have spent a fair whack of money in Alicante and i may have drunk a slight bit too much...... slightly

but by damn it was worth it.

from Halloween and countless tequila shots, to walking around the old town in a massive snap thunder/lightning/rain storm to finally seeing a somewhat decent beach and walking around a massive castle that shows some of the most amazing city scenery i've ever seen.

Alicante had everything i needed without ever leaving the city.
to be fair i had booked a few tour things outside the city but due to bad weather means were cancelled. :( just means i have to go back i suppose. :D

so all in all,
aside from walking around a fair part of the city and seeing the sights, of which i did get some fucking amazing photos from which are coming, i used the trip to spain as a reprieve of sorts.
after working 4 months straight in the boring little pub in Leith, i needed a getaway so Alicante provided me with that. whilst i didnt get to do everything i wished i had, i was able to do everything that i needed to.

to be fair though the following photos arent as good as i would like them to be. these are straight from the camera, i spent a few hours going through them and editing colors and lighting and whatnot, but picaso wont let me upload the edited ones.
im thinking it might be seeing the copyright watermark i put on them, so for now i will put the normal ones up. if i can figure it out i will put the edited ones up later.

there are a lot more photos of me, but they werent on my camera as were taken out when clubbing and i wasnt taking my DSLR out to the clubs haha. when they are uploaded i will flog a few of them haha.

I was told that X Hostel is the only one in the world to have over 120 people to have a X tattoo'ed somewhere on them....... the mind wonders...

to all the X hostel people i met. both customers and the workers, my time in alicante would not have been the same, to name a few
Simona, Hanna, Danica, Michael, Rachel, Sherrinlee, Emma, Claire, Tobias, Arriana, Sara, Fede, Armin, the Belgian lads, Jamie thank you for the time of my life, im coming back to alicante for sure so those of you still there cant wait to see you..
those that arent there anymore i hope to meet up sometime down the road.



On the Castle Roof Looking inland (oceans behind me)

Halloween party LMFAO IN THE HOUSE

The X Hostel Halloween get ups

Random St

My Favorite Italians Sara, Fede, Arianna

Few of Us from the Hostel.
Arianna, Me, Sara, Fede, Armin

Overlooking Old town

Pondering whilst wearing Fedes Sunnies

I Got a Cannon Between my Legs :P

Posers

See the bull fighters arena?

Masonry and Arch

Danica during a random drinking poker session

nice tiled roof

this awesome walkway from the castle to the old town

more randomness





Monday 8 October 2012

Well, a turn of events has changed everything...

So it seems that my "holiday" has been put on hold over the last few weeks(months).

When I left Australia I was full of ideas of what I hoped to achieve over here in Europe, some of these being traveling around the different countries seeing what new places I can discover, seeing people I hadn't seen for ages and meeting and greeting new people.

Working in a really quiet pub has given me time to ponder the things I'm doing, the choices I'm making and I've come up with a few little niggles in life that have me wondering what if.

I was recently in quite a lot of pain for a period of about 4 weeks.
It started when I had fallen over at work running up the stairs during a particularly busy shift and I landed on my wrist bruising the bone.

After this healed (5 days later) I started developing pains all over my body, but mostly contained to the knees, shoulders and ankles. A few looks on the net I was putting this down to malnutrition however after changing my diet to eating properly, taking multivitamins it was still occurring to the point where to sleep I need to take sleeping pills and 400mg of ibuprofen every night.

Finally got around to seeing a physio for this and found out that my pelvis was out of line which was making everything work in ways they aren't used to hence the pain, and to top it off I've damaged the cartilage in my knee.

So after the last 3 weeks of ibuprofen and sleeping tablets, I'm pain free although it scares me slightly to say I still can't sleep without the sleeping tablets.

One good thing though that came about from my needing to go to the physio over here, is that it made me find my travel documents.
All the time I have been over here, I was under the impression the flights that were booked for my return to aus, was that they were booked for return in may 2013.

Turns out I fly back on the 28th of February not may, good thing I looked it up as I wouldn't have bothered looking till it got closer to may and by then the flight would have long ago departed.

So as with my original plans of just pushing the flights back to a later date, I have been doing a lot of thinking.
Do I contact my travel agent and get a price on pushing back the flights or do I use the original ticket.

As much as I have loved Europe, I'm planning at this time to be back in aus on the original flights.
This is for a few reasons.

1. The minimum wage over here is absolute shite.
2. I have had many many jobs over the past few years, some I really enjoyed, some I abhorently hated. Although I really enjoy working in the pub, I have only ever truly loved one job in my life, and that's guiding.  I have tried to apply for guiding jobs over here but they apparently don't like what they saw as I was never picked for the positions.
3. Being away from Australia has given me the outside perspective that everyone who visits says its amazing, beautiful, dangerous and awe inspiring. I knew it to be so when I lived there, and visiting other parts of the world is just as amazing at times, but it's given me the perspective I needed to realize that no matter what happens, Australia will always be home.
Be it in Brisbane with some of my best mates (you know who you are) or in the central desert with the countless flies and red sand where my love of tourism is able to really let go.

So long and short of it, I'm coming home at the end of feb. I will be landing in Brisbane on the 3rd I think it is, and at this point in time im planning on staying there for a short while, and then head back to Adelaide to start the rest of my life in the desert.

In other news, come the 30th October I'm on 2 weeks holiday :D 2 weeks in alicante, Spain should be a nice reprive from the past 3 months of working in the pub.

Then it's a few more weeks working in the guilty lily here in Edinburgh till it closes at the end of November where I'm transferring to the cocktail bar we have at west end.

Christmas time in africa with the family and then I'm planning on doing the loony doonk here in Edinburgh and then going on a final 2 months travels around eastern Europe before flying back to aus.

Sorry for having so much time between posts, but honestly there hasn't been much of late to write about as all that's been happening was work.

Will put some photos up when I am back at the house with my laptop wheat at this point in time it's just me in the pub on the iPad.

Greets to all,

Ross

Tuesday 18 September 2012

Apologies to one, apologies to all

Ok it's been over s month since I last put up s post,

So as I'm quiet in the pub I figure I may as well do something haha.

I have been enjoying my life here in Edinburgh so far, but I haven't really done much, it's basically been all work and no play, there have been a few moments when I get out on the town with mates, but nothing really to report .

I have however booked flights yesterday for a holiday at the end of October :D

Flying to alicante in Spain for a 2 week holiday, can't wait.

Sorry it's not much of a post but to be honest since I moved into the flat I haven't really done much.

Will put some pictures up over the next few days when I get a chance and im on the laptop not on the iPad.

Cheers :)

Saturday 28 July 2012

WTF HAVE I DONE???????? :S

well aside from leaving it nearly 2 weeks from the last post, i have actually done quite a bit.

after the last real post which was written in a slightly panic induced state of mind, i posted up stating that i had bought tickets to Edinburgh, Scotland.

well i have since caught that train to Edinburgh.

Edinburgh for me is a pretty awesome place, aside from anywhere else in scotland really, how many places can you walk down the street and pass some guy walking along in a kilt and not having a care in the world, and further more to everyone else walking by its normal.

Where else in the world can you walk down the street and hear bagpipes playing, or see a castle in the middle of the city.

(the castle thing probably a few places)

and finally, where else have i been employed within the UK and actually liked it.

thats the big one for me.
i have a job that i like and i work with some pretty awesome people (and we stock bundy rum in 2/3 of our pubs :D at 2.40 a drink, so much cheaper over here)

So.

Within Edinburgh i have still had some bad times, but the good far outweigh the bad. so lets start with them


I have had the best weather in Edinburgh since arriving in the UK. no shit, everyone says this summers been really weird weatherwise which is more then likely true, but for Edinburgh its cool cause it means instead of rain 24/7 its only rain 20/5 haha.

The people, they're all so helpful and nice.
and the accent. i love the scottish accent, although there have been a few things where i have had to jokingly ask for them to dial down the accent a few times haha.

Work, the owner of the bar has 3 bars/pubs around the city, im working at 2 of them currently which is awesome. One is a regular old boys pub, so every afternoon the locals come pouring in and are just great fun and helpful.

the other place is in the city center and is a cocktail bar which is brilliant except i dont really know how to make cocktails yet. Its a lot busier then the first one which is cool but i quite like the quieter one as its got more of a personal feel to it.



a few of the bads though so far has really been isolated to 2 things.

The edinburgh festival and flathunting.

now these 2 are actually linked. normally flathuntings not so hard to do in Edinburgh, however arriving less then 2 weeks before the Edinburgh Festival makes it so as everyone who has a spare room usually ends up renting it out to festival go-ers for princely sums of up to 500+ pounds a week.

so trying to find a flat or sharehouse for more like 300 a month has proved to be damn near impossible at times, especially when the backpackers hostels are also in on the gig and go from 100 to 230 pounds a week for a dorm room.

230 pounds a week for a 14 bed dorm, its extortion its insane its highway robbery.
but for the 5 weeks of festival, the city goes from around 450,000 people to over 900,000 so i suppose the supply and demand dictates the price goes up quite a large sum, its just a pain in the ass for people like me looking to stay for over the 5 weeks of festival.

i did however find a place.

moved in yesterday after nearly losing it with the landlord but all seems to be good now. the only thing im a bit niggly with is that its a 12 month lease.
so although i have no qualms about staying in edinburgh for 12 months, especially with the amount of work i have available to me, is that if something came up and i had to or wanted to leave then i either have to pay out the remainder of my lease or keep paying it off and use it as a storage or something.
i dunno really,


the good thing about this flat though.

its got a lock on the front door and on my room door (sharehouse), the busses from here are close and go straight past work (1 bus to the cocktail bar 2 busses to the old boys one) and its also cheap.

like, CHEAP. ~220 pounds a month all inclusive.

Didnt have any sheets or duvet or anything though so picked them up today and now am set for well 12 months i spose. 

My Room

Still My Room






I have also done last Tuesday (24th July 2012)a few of the tours around Edinburgh.
Both run by the Sandemans group who did a excellent tour. One was the Free day walking tour which was about 3-4hours long walking around the city learning about some of the history and the other was Tuesday night doing the ghost tour which was awesome.

Edinburgh has a really bloody history, from burning and drowning witches to drawing and quartering living people for treason and murder.



heres some pics for those that are living on the edge of their seat through me.......



Edinburgh Castle

Sunset from the top of Calton Hill
Me and Flo (canada)

Just sleeping in someones tomb


Crazy Canuck

Fun in the Hostel

Hostel Life

Hostel Life again

More Hostel Life

I was actually sober for this pic

and now i have to go get ready for work,


will continue posting as things happen

Monday 16 July 2012

WOO FUCKING HOO!!!!!

well as much as it pains me to write this, im leaving the brilliant town of rugby.

after applying for approx 100 resumes over the last week, i finally got a call back.
the only thing is, its in Edinburgh, Scotland.

so booked a train ticket and a week in a hostel tonight and i get on the train tomorrow


Tuesday 10 July 2012

So my seemingly favourite place to write a blog post

Is by noting the most common locations and methods is on a train, whilst using the iPad.

I'm beginning to wonder why this is, could it be because of the rhythmic rocking of the carriages over the tracks, could it be that whenever I look up there's nothing but blurring greenery going past the window? I don't know to be honest but I just know from past posts that I have made a fair few posts from the trains of 2 different continents.

Ok so now to the brunt of the matter,
Money.

The root of all evil.

You either have it or you don't,
You either have enough or you don't.

Right now I'm I'm the latter of both above statements.

I don't have much left and what I do have isn't enough, so I have been searching through the town of Rugby for a job, I think I've handed out close to 10 resumes a day.

Nadda.

I have even gone further abroad looking for work, which is actually the reason for my being on a train at this point in time.
I'm currently returning from a job interview which was held just on the outskirts of the smallish town of redditch which is south of Birmingham.

All going well I will be getting a phone call from the company on thursday hopefully.
The company is similar to sizzlers in Australia but with a bar.

And theyre hiring for bar staff.

The isn't view seemed to go pretty good, the assistant manager liked me so she said she will pass on her thoughts to the manager when he gets in tomorrow.


Hmmm

Conundrums.

If I don't get money soon I have at best 3 weeks of doing nothing left. Then it's call the parents and get them to pay the changing fees for my return flight and back to aus I come.

Which is not really a desirable outcome at this point in time.
This job at redditch is s permanent full time position, so decent steady money.

Anyway thought I would out up a quick update of the situation so far.

all going well the trips still on, all filing I'll be back in aus within the next few months.

Friday 6 July 2012

best game in the world....

Well im here in rugby, Warwickshire which is the hometown of rugby if you hadn't already guessd that.

Its a pretty cool little town, probably not much bigger population wise to say coober pedy in SA or beenleigh in QLD.

Been here  since weds trying to find a job but alas to this point in time I haven't had much luck so far. A few places have looked promising but nothing has come back yet.

will keep you posted, in thinking of going to the bell Ellis museum of rugby later and tomorrow is a fancy dress party with mates, they are going as Mario so in thinking of either Bowser or Peter griffin hHa, hilarity ensues

Anyway wish me luck and will keep you posted

Sunday 1 July 2012

My thoughts on England 2 weeks in.....

Depressing.

Utterly depressing haha, but aside from the mood dampening weather, it's not been too bad I must admit.

Work on the farm has been of a nature that I must admit I haven't gotten used to yet, it's hard physically exerting and at times complicated but that hasn't really bothered me too much, what has bothered me is the way my body is reacting to the country air.

The farm I'm working on is a proper working farm, it's all crops, and the harvest season starting in a month or so means that at this time the air is full of dust, and left over husks from last years season as we are cleaning out all the grain stores.
As such this is making my hay fever go nuts. Absolute bonkers.

So although the money is really quite good, and although ive only been there a week, Wednesday I'm done on the farm,

Having hay fever all day every day because of work is just no fun at all and when thes another 3 months left till I would be finished I just couldn't deal with it.

Does anyone know of any jobs going anywhere that isn't on a farm?



So yeh the farm job didn't work out, but all is not lost, im currently in the town of Winchester where I'm about to meet up with some very dear friends of mine I haven't seen for close to 4 years, Marie an Sharron :D

I met these two ladies when I was in the backpackers hostel in cairns way back in january 2009, they both sorta became the adoptive parent figures for me up there so I'm quite keen to see them again.



Sorry it's not much of a post but I haven't really gotten up to much since the last one. Ive worked and that's about it, I think once you'd take out my lunch breaks I'm up to 70 something hours worked in the last week.

Will post up again when I have worked something out.

Thursday 21 June 2012

I seem to have left it 9 days since the last post... god help us all

Ok so i sit here in the common room of my hostel in london contemplating what im actually gonna write about...  cause theres a lot.

after the last relevant post i put up i told myself i wouldnt leave it 7 days to post again and yet here we are 9 days later with only a map and a sob story inbetween.


so the last post left us on the morning of my 21st. (12th June 2012).
now this day was a pretty cool one, although not much was actually achieved haha.

in short, we spent the morning driving out to a large empty field that my friend Bastiaan used to visit alot.

the reason for this is simple. RC GLIDERS!!!!!!!!! :D

now i used to fly RC helicopters quite a bit so i thought i would be alright.... BARP, not the case.

all in all we probably spent a hour or two flying the plane around, bastiaan showing me how and me failing haha. different controls on the remote for a plane, i kept inadvertently putting the air brake on and then trying to pull it up before it nose dived into the wet grassy ground.

the day was ended when one of the 2 planes we took nose dived into the ground and broke on of the struts in the secondary wing. (guess who was flying that one....... moi) i felt horrible.
Bastiaan calmed me however by saying he had all the stuff at home to fix it. So i felt better but still bad.

the 2nd plane we took, was actually the one we were going to fly first but when we left Bastiaans house we had checked that all the parts we needed were in the car, body, wings, rc etc. we just didnt check the wings we had were for the correct body. *facepalm*

so once the first plane was damaged we had to cal it quits.

Me being badass (at flying)
Bastiaan showing how its done

on the LH wing are 2 little grips, you hold these, spin like a discus thrower and then launch the plane into the sky


final resting place. the nose piece is 3" into the ground.....

So as much fun as fixed wing flight is, i seem to find it easier to fly a 6 axis helicopter. I think i will stick to them.

another thing that we did on that fateful day was rockclimbing.
now i used to do this quite a bit way back in grade 10 (6 years ago) but then since then i have probably done it 3 times.

so you can assume correctly that i was pretty damn eager to have a crack at it again.

at the climing place, they have a range of graded walls from ~2 up to 7+
i started with the 3's, did them easy as piss.
tried the 4's, now these ones were pretty easy to start out with, but the biggest issue for me was the overhangs, so your climbing up a wall and then all of a sudden the wall starts leaning out away from where you started, so your entire body weight is on your fingers and toes.

i am actually quite impressed with myself, i was able to do one of the 4's but then after that could only get half way up before i started to lose the strength in my fingers and arms so i sat out for a while and just watched.

one major difference i noticed between australian climbing walls and ones in the Netherlands, is that in australia when you are the belayer, your attached to the person up on the wall, but also to the ground, so any weight differences there may be are nullified.

in the netherlands this is not so.
so we teamed up with one of Bastiaans mates and when i was climbing Bastiaan would belay and Rob would be tied to Bas haha.

towards the end of the night we were mucking around and thought it would be cool to see what happened when i climbed to the top of a wall with Bas and rob beneath me and see what happened when i get to the top and just let go haha. we also got this on video, although in the video i didnt go to the top cause i was shattered from having done it about 4 times before we thought of recording it haha.


L-R   Rob, Bastiaan, Ross

Me at the top of the wall

~half way through dropping to the bottom you can see Bas is getting lifted

Free climbing

So this brings an end to the day of my birth.
It also brings an end to my time with Bastiaan for the next day i was to catch a train to Beilen up near Assen (think motoGP)

The following day i was to go to a friend of mines up in Beilen in the north east of Holland, now the only thing is, she wasnt home yet. She was coming home from london that day on the train so after finding out what station she was going to have to do a transfer at i just met her there, a big thanks to Bastiaan for taking me around and showing me the sights and then for taking me to the train to meet up with Suzanne.

after meeting suzanne at the train we went back to her place where we got ready to go to the pub.
now Beilen isnt that big a town so when holland was versing germany in the european championships that night it seemed like the entire town was in the small pub.

Suzanne introduced me to her little group of friends, who were all around my age actually which was nice.

throughout the game rounds were bought and consequently drunk and this process was repeated.... apparently a bit too much as i found out the next morning when i woke up back at the apartment with no memory of getting there.

apparently there was another 8-9 drinks that i dont remember before i ended up getting carried home haha. and the girls i was out with were still going.
can you say SHAME!!!!! i can and i am haha.

now before you start blowing me off as a lightweight, i have a few points i would like to make before you judge,

i quit tour guiding over 4 months previous, so that meant i havent been drinking for over 4 months cause now i was no longer getting mates rates i couldnt afford it so i was outta practice.
i had a slight cold so was taking meds before it turned into the dreaded manflu, the package was in dutch so i couldnt read it but apparently those meds were not meant to be mixed with booze, and finally we didnt have anything to eat for dinner.

so a recap,

outta practice, on meds, no dinner.

thats my excuse and by god am i sticking to it.
i now have to go back to beilen though and show the girls up haha.

so after the nights pleasantries which i cannot for the life of me remember, thursday was spent vegetating on the couch haha.

which going by all accounts was a pretty common place to be for most people that day so it wasnt just me.


the following day was a friday.

this is the day that i caught up with one of my ex passengers that i hadnt seen for the longest.
today i went from Beilen to Breda, which is essentially eastern holland to western so across the country. and it only took ~4 hours haha.

So it was here in Breda that i saw Tom.
Tom was a dutch kid that was on my very first ever tour. which i still consider to be one of my favourite groups. not cause it was the first but the group was just brilliant every single aspect of it was great.

so i was pretty eager to catch up with tom.

so theres not really that much in Breda to be honest haha, walking around with tom we had a beer at a pub and walked around for a while. At one point tom yelled out "TWINGO" and then punched me. i was trying to figure out what was happening and apparently my confusion showed so he explained the game.

if you know of punch buggie then its the same, except whenever you see a renault Twingo, you punch instead of a VW bug.

so needless to say i was quite pleased when i saw the next twingo and then tom called it quits haha.

a big thanks to Tom and his parents. although we didnt really do anything it was really nice to just sit back in a family setting and be included. made me think of home.

i was slightly annoyed though at that nights soccer game, it was sweden vs england. I was backing sweden to win 3-2.

until the last 20 mins it was even looking good haha. but then england came through and the final score was 3-2 but not in my favour. bugger.

the next 2 days went pretty quickly, it began with saying bye to tom and his family, and getting back on the train to Amsterdam.
It was the night of my birthday party. of course i was gonna have a good time. however after the previous wednesday it wasnt gonna be a massive one.


it was a brilliant night out to be honest drinks with a few good mates.
Big thanks to Bastiaan, Elias, Martijn, Jelle, Danielle, Sophie and Eline for coming out.
Eline, Danni, Ross, Sophie

Eline, Elias, Sophie, Ross, Danni

Very happy and slightly drunk Ross
Sunday afternoon i caught up with 2 passengers that were on my very last tour with heading Bush, Fons and Steph.

i had received a phone call from fons saying he was going to be in Amsterdam on sunday afternoon.
so in true spirit of the dutch, we went to a pub to watch the game against portugal.

i was wearing all the orange gear i had, socks, jocks and a scarf but alas holland lost the game
it was awesome catching up with fons and especially with steph cause shes actually from switzerland and fons never told me she was coming so it was a pleasant surprise.

Fons

Steph

Steph Decided my Dutch gear and sunny's suited her better.
A swiss chick wearing dutch colors.



The next day, monday i caught a train to London.
now some may wonder why i went the train route instead of the flights.
long story short i would rather pay less money and sit on a train for 6 hours then pay double to get the plane.

plus i dont mind the trains. its more comfortable for lengths of time then a plane is, the train also stopped closer to where i am currently living so it was a bit easier albeit longer.




So london.....

Its a pretty cool city, but i will say right now it hasnt grown on me.
So far i have seen Big ben, Trafalgar Square, Oxford st, the London Aquarium, and the London Dungeon and although they were all pretty cool i must say the city is too busy and big for me personally.

i havent quit on it yet though, theres still a heap i want to see but im waiting for better weather (london eye etc)

Jelly Fish at the Aquarium

Lion fish (i think)

Massive turtle

London Eye in the afternoon

Trafalgar Square Monument

London eye and Big Ben

Big Beg

Big Ben

Double Decker bus


As i think i have said previously i prefer seeing places as a local, i will do the touristy things but i want to see a place as a local and that takes a combination of either knowing locals and going where they go, or just being in a spot for a while and pacing it out yourself.

so london is going to get a bit more attention then what its currently received.

a few of my highlights so far though have been catching up with mates,
First was Lauren, myself and Lauren went to school together way back in primary school. She left the school in grade 5 when we were 10 but through the magic that is facebook since resumed contact.

the others so far have been pete and then Sheryl.
Both of these people i met when i did my stint in a Cairns backpackers hostel as part of my isolation.
both helped me out so much through that period without realizing, it was quite awesome to see them again.

I know that the above is written badly, but its my fault for leaving it so long between posts and doing so much