Homelessfuk.com

Portugal was a great county. I loved every bit of it. From the relaxed atmosphere, to the friendly and helpful locals. The city of Lisbon was wonderful, and the beautiful coast lines and beaches were at times heavenly. The cuisine on offer everywhere was great and the prices seemed so much more reasonable than those in Spain or the rest of Wester Europe.

I need to go back and explore more of Portugal as all I made time for was a stop in the Capital, Lisbon, and then relaxation time in the resort town of Lagos. I’m sure the rest of Portugal deserves to be explored as well, but from what I saw, Portugal had a lot of things going for it.

Lisbon was a top place. The city was busy but had an easy feel about it. The tram lines that link some parts of the city were amazing. Tiny little rickety things, I wonder how many of them fall off their tracks? The people seemed nice and the night life there was good too..

Lagos was a great escape. It was basically a beach town with excessive amounts of bars, and cheap restaurants that served great tapas and things. The surrounding towns around Lagos had the first surf I’d seen for quite some time and it was worth the wait. I spent most of my time in Lagos sleeping in and getting drunk - very hard to take.

So Portugal is a great destination for anyone wishing to have a low stress / high fun European holiday. I’ll definitely be back.

To check out my Photos from Portugal, click here.

From Prague I headed to Krakow with a small posse of Irish and English lads I met in the Czech Republic. I almost missed my train to start, so after piss-bolting for about a kilometer, I started the journey rather sweaty, and with no water or beer to rehydrate me.

Poland was not on my list of places to see this year, but after meeting a bartender from Krakow in the Greek Islands and hearing some incredible first hand stories of grandparents in Auschwitz, I thought I should see it for myself, and after hearing almost every single person I’d spoken with in Western Europe rave about Krakow I was surely destined to visit.

The quality and enjoyment factor of Krakow was accentuated by the people I met and the hostel I stayed at for the majority of my time. The first night I ended up in a dodgy hostel which was not a good start. For the first half of the day there I ended up sleeping in the luggage storage room, as there was no way they were going to let me check in before 1pm and I desperately needed rest from the over night train ride. The next day I gladly checked out and met up with my friends from Prague who were staying in a new hostel called (oddly) Hostel Giraffe. This place was fantastic, and once it gets a little better known on the backpacker scene, it will be hard to get accommodation there without booking ahead. The staff were great, the other guests were great, and the place itself was great. All new, clean and funky, for less money than the shitty hostel I stayed in for the first night and with much better services. It was even attitude free from the owners and staff! It’s amazing how much these things affect your quality of stay.

The problem for me was, with three Irish guys, two English lads, and me, an Australian together, we did little apart from drink excessively. First thing most days were breakfast beers, followed in the late afternoon (which was just after waking up mind you) by Vodka and Black Russians.. It got worse from there.. Each morning the drinking stopped sometime around 8am to find some sleep, before doing it all again..

Apart from drinking excessively I managed to see the Auschwitz Death camps. These were possibly some of the most depressing places on earth. Thankfully we found a night club called Prozac that night to help relieve the depression a little =). I also went to a salt mine in Krakow which, strangely, was kinda fun.. The workers obviously had plenty of time (not mining salt) as they had carved statues of all sorts everywhere (totally out of salt mind you). There was even a grand chapel carved out of salt 130 meters underground. The stairs on the way down were over 50 flights, and the dizziness factor from turning in one direction so many times was not pleasant. The guide constantly encouraged us to lick the walls, as EVERYTHING was made from salt. Bloody fantastic. I wanted to go hustle up a bag of slugs and release them deep underground to see how far they got., but the idea stopped there.

The locals in Krakow were friendly too and many attempts at lengthy conversations were had in the streets. I had an especially hard time with the Polish language. The hostel barman tried to give me some language lessons but trying to learn Polish, in a bar, at 5am..? Not overly successful.

A friend and I took great pleasure one day in buying replica BB guns from a street vendor for around 10 Euro each and spent the entire day shooting stuff. As they are illegal back home for each of us, we took great pleasure in this and you should have seen the grins resulting. Unfortunately I had a flight to catch later that day, so it was a short lived venture.

Poland is definitely worth a look-see when you’re next in the general area.

for my photos from Poland, click here.

Prague was a much talked about destination for me and it was also a pleasant step up from Austria. I’m not saying i didn’t enjoy Austria, but for me it was a little slow and I ended up feeling boredom creep into most days. No such thing in Prague. Of course, the company you’re with really makes a difference, but from the over night train I caught in, it was different and strangely exciting. In the morning after a decent nights sleep, peering out of my sleeper cabin, I noticed a group of people standing on the railway tracks up ahead. As the train slowed to a crawl, I was shocked and strangely surprised to see one of the most mangled bodies lying in almost full exposure i think i have ever seen. Looked much like something you would find on www.rotten.com. It was totally disgusting, and I didn’t have my camera out..

After arriving and getting settled in my hostel for a short while, I went out to ‘Czech’ (sorry - couldn’t help myself) out Prague’s beautiful architecture for which it has quite a reputation for. After a few days of wandering aimlessly in short doses, it was clear that this reputation was accurate. Walking around the old town was an absolute pleasure.

After seeing a million churches and a million galleries, you start to get a little blasé about them all, but I found a torture museum which was amazing - Amazing to see how cruel the human race can be. And I also found one of the most incredible galleries I think I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. It was an exhibition of Mucha, who was in my opinion one of the most incredible artists for his sensual style and detail. Go check his work out when you get a chance, and no the web site does not do it justice.

Prague was also a good place for a drink, and some of the Czech beer was fantastic. I spent a big part of my time trialing the various ales and not to mention the Absinthe (please don’t mention the Absinthe.. Oww my head..).

I missed out on venturing to some of the other towns in The Czech Republic and will have to come back to see some of them later.. The whole area of Western Europe is amazing and it was an absolute pleasure to discover it.

For Photos of the Czech Republic, click here.

Austria was great. Clean. Sophisticated and generally ‘nice’. I think I had higher expectations for Vienna than I perhaps should have, but it was still a very nice city. Coming from Italy, I had some serious issues with confusing Vienna and Venice. They are very different destinations, and when you try and buy a train ticket, with a minimal of Italian communication skills to Venice, Austria, you get mixed results. Actually at the very best you get rather short answers, and if I could understand what the ‘nice’ ticket sales person was actually saying, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been overly pleasant. After the cue built up quite considerably behind me, a cueee corrected my brain-lapse and suggested I try to go to Vienna in Austria instead.

So after a few days milling around Vienna, I headed to Innsbruck and Tirol where ‘normally’ without global warming, you could ski all year round on a glacier..! I made it to the Glacier and yes, you could still ski, but the one run that was open was not worth the effort involved and so I took some time hiking around on the Glacier in the remaining snow and the surrounding mountains. Innsbruck was a beautiful city, and I will have to come back in winter one day to test out the snow and the legendary skiing (when there is more than one run open that is..).

For photos from Austria, click here.

At first Italy didn’t especially click for me, but with time, my fondness for it really grew and now in just over three weeks there, I’d rate it as one of my favourite places in the world. Being in Italy for the World Cup when they won was more than anyone could have asked for. I was in two minds about leaving Germany the day before the World Cup started, but I think I ended up getting more atmosphere and experience actually being in countries as they played. Italy was no exception and the people there are totally fanatical about the game which added to the excitement incredibly. As Italy progressed in the tournament, their fanaticism grew.. I witnessed more than one fight over football discussions in the streets and even got to see a fist-fight turn to glass bottles.. Now THAT’S what sport is REALLY about..!!

Coming to Italy, I had no idea that they might take home the cup. Nor did i care especially after they beat Australia in the last seconds of their match together. In my opinion, Australia played a much better game, except for the fact that they lost. But my grudge eventually subsided and i warmed to the fanatical locals and eventually became an avid supporter. When Italy made it to the finals, I ended up in a small hatchback car with a total of 11 people in, or on it.. The Final was even more amazing to be part of, as the streets of Italy were set on fire (not literally, well actually in some places..) and the atmosphere was equal if not totally surpassing that of NYE 1999. Totally crazy, and I’m surprised I came away with no injuries.., Although I would LOVE to know the number of people injured and the total number of cars and property damaged (or totally destroyed).

There was a lot more that just World Cup Fever that made Italy a very special place. From what I saw, Italy would be a fantastic place to live. My Favourite city was Firenze (Florence) because of it’s incredible vibe, the great people and amazing architecture. But out of the cities the country side was absolutely beautiful and some of the coast, including the Cinque Terre, was to die for. I stumbled across some other fantastic coastal areas too where locals go to holiday and ended up jumping off some stupidly big cliffs., I still hurt. I had a great photo from the big cliff I jumped off, but somehow I lost about 200 photos along the way =( so unless you were there, you’re just going to have to take my word for it.. The buildings in Italy were some of the biggest I’ve ever seen and you can tell there was once an incredible wealth present. Either that, or they were really trying to impress someone.

In the three weeks, I managed to see a big part of Italy. Starting in Rome, I made my way south through Naples & Pompei, all the way down to Sicily, where our train actually went on a boat..! Very cool.. One day I want to be in a car on a truck, that goes on a train, that goes on a plane, that goes on a boat, but for now I’ll be happy with that. After Sicily, I made my way back up to Florence, Venice and then my last stop was the Cinque Terre.

Leaving Italy, I had an incredibly confusing time trying to buy my train ticket out due to a mix up in my brain between the cities of Venice and Vienna. - You try buying a ticket to Venice in Austria and see what kind of reaction you get..

I’d highly recommend a trip to Italy for anyone, and when you decide you’re going to stay, make sure you’ve checked out Florence before deciding where you’ll finally settle.

For photos of Italy, click here..

From Holland we flew into Athens to check out some of the historic Greek sites and to serve as a launching point to head to the Greek Islands. It was great to see some of the ruins Greece had around as the first tastes of history in my memory all revolved around Greece, their myths and ancient civilization. Athens was also great if you wanted to buy loads of genuine fake sunglasses. Every 40 meters street vendors displayed between 50 to 500 pairs of quality fake glasses for around 5 Euro each.. Think i ended up with 3-4 pairs to start (I now have one left from various incidences - easy come, easy go).

So after a late night in Athens, and an early start the next day, we missed our first ferry to the Islands by about 30 seconds.. The monstrous ferry was just leaving the port as we arrived. It was an expensive mistake. We found the next ferry and bought more tickets, and finally we were on our way.. The ferries in the Greek Islands are HUGE.. Almost luxury ocean-liner size, nothing like what i thought a ferry should be, but it was a pleasant surprise and made for a comfortable trip. We headed for the island group ‘the Cyclades’ - but there are so many options.. I may just have to come back one day to explore the rest..

The first island we visited was Mycanos. It was a little more expensive than the other islands, but we got a great deal on our accommodation in the end as we were upgraded to a new resort apartment which wasn’t yet open. It was fittingly named the ‘Perfect View Hotel’.. Really great. Mycanos was nice, but i expected more from all the hype I’d heard previously.

The best part of it was Paradise Beach, and the Tropicana bar, which turned into a massive topless beach party as the sun went down.. Free shots, great music, dancing on the bars.. Naked people enjoying themselves everywhere.. The ‘M.C.’ for the party was sporting an Elephant G-string. His err.. em.., trunk, was swung at anyone walking past, and the unlucky ones received a slap on the head or the cheek.

There was also one really great club on the island called Cavo Paridiso. It was built on a cliff, open aired, and had a massive pool in the center of it which filled with clothed and naked people as the night progressed. The rest of the island, I felt, was not as great as it could have been and soon we left to compare it with another..

The next stop was Ios. Ios did serious damage to my liver but it was a total blast..!! It’s one of those places that is very hard to leave. We ended up eventually leaving when the hostel threw us out, about 3 or 4 days late. Our entire time there involved lying on the beach, afternoon naps, and heading out around midnight to drink ourselves stupid - till around 11am. The latest I was out was sometime around 1pm. But who’s counting? The sleep-in till 9.30pm was much needed before building up the courage to do it all again that night.

After Ios, we made our way to the much discussed Santorini which was, by far, the most beautiful island from the few we saw. It consisted of an active volcanic crater in the center and a broken ring of land surrounding it with some of the most amazing cliffs with views you could only dream about. Santorini was a much more relaxed island than Mycanos or Ios and my liver really appreciated the break. We hired a car for 15 Euros (which was ridiculously in-expensive =), and I managed to see pretty much the whole island in the day. There are some amazing spots you could find on Santorini to sit and watch incredible sunsets, and there was a winery called ‘Santos Wines’ perched right on the cliff overlooking the entire island in all of its glory, it was an incredible spot. Sitting, admiring the view, tasting cheeses and great wines.. - I just couldn’t take it any more.

My enquiry about work in the Greek islands was short lived. The 20 Euros a day income quickly changed my mind. Sure it’s a great lifestyle, but there was no way I was going to survive even an hour on 20 Euro a day..

Even though it was probably time, I was sad to leave the Greek Islands.. I had the option to take 26 hours of ferries to get to my next destination, Italy, or fly. No surprise, the plane won..

for photos from the Greek Islands, click here..

Holland was a beautiful country with a relaxed and sophisticated atmosphere. I can’t say I remember a lot of our first stop, Amsterdam, except being lost for most of the time there.. Those bloody streets are just so confusing and hard to navigate, especially with all those special cafes around. -

Amsterdam was quite an experience. The Hostel we booked into at the last minuet turned out to be the one that everyone warned us NOT to go to. There were posters out the front of this place warning that “clean people are ruining the world”, and “we will boost your immune system”. Oh dear. Within the 35 minuets it took to check in, we saw 4 different people hobbling around on crutches - making for a scary start to the country so to clear our minds of the dodgy first impressions, we quickly dumped our stuff and headed out to have a look-see around.

After a breakfast Heineken or two, we miraculously managed to find some of the good stuff Amsterdam had to offer, such as the Hemp museum, the Sex museum, the Torture museum and later the Red light district for a look around. - Just a look around mind you..

A few days later, we took a field trip to another town called Rotterdam. Rotterdam is Hollands largest shipping port, but we knew it from years ago for the unique ear-bleeding music produced there. By chance, we arrived when the Volvo Ocean race was in town and the world famous Dj Tiësto was playing a free concert on the harbour to help celebrate. It was a great gig with fireworks and bellowing balls of fire spitting from barges in front of the crowded foreshores.. Chatting to some locals, it was clear there was a strong rivalry between the Rotterdam locals and the tourist mecca of Amsterdam.

After Amsterdam, I needed to clear the haze from my head and what better place to do that than the Greek islands…

For photos from Amsterdam, Click here..!!

Laundry.. the stylish way..

Ever get stuck without clean (ok, or wearable) socks and undergarments..? I know I have - several times this year. In these tricky circumstances, you have limited choice.. You can find a friend of similar size, and borrow theirs (preferably without them knowing). You can ‘Go Commando’ and deal with the extra related chaffing.. Or you can do the sensible thing and WASH..

For this edition of the Travel survival guide, I’ll show you the correct method to cook your socks & underwear, to make sure they are safe to wear once again.

You will need a kitchen with cook top and clean pots (around 2-4L). You will also need something to stir the potent mixture with, I’ve chosen a wooden ladle here because I’ve found it works really well with dirty smelly cotton.

Firstly, fill the cook pot with water, mineral water for best results - I used Evian, as that was readily available where I was at the time, but you can use what ever you can get locally. Bring the water to a savage boil, and add soap to taste. Taste again to be sure of the mixture.

Next add your dirty dirty socks and underwear to the boiling water, taking extra care not to touch them with your bare skin.

Leave to simmer, stirring occasionally, until you can smell the freshness of soap in the air. This indicates they are ready.

Remove your clean socks & underwear from the broth, and discard of the boiling water carelessly (we threw ours out our 6th story window..).

Hang to dry, noting that colours are highly likely to run - if there is any colour left, that is.

If you need your garments in a hurry, try using the microwave to speed up the drying process.. And there you have it, fresh boiled socks.. Voilà..!

..With a savage hang-over and about 35 minuets sleep after catching the wrong train from Paris, My two good friends and I arrived in Berlin to a beautiful sunny morning (which was short lived, before the rain set in..). The first impressions of Berlin were excellent.. Firstly, the taxi we shared from the train station was a Mercedes..! It was a luxury a backpacker doesn’t regularly have. I just hope I didn’t stain the leather with the stench of alcohol seeping from my every pore..

The Hostel we chose was fittingly named ‘Helter Skelter’, and it lived up to it’s name with crazy guests and crazier staff. We arrived a day earlier than expected due to out train mishaps, but were still greeted with breakfast beers whilst waiting for our room to be hosed out from the previous occupants.

After half a days sleep to catch up, I set out to have a look around. Berlin seemed to be in an ever changing state, with most of the landmarks covered in scaffolding. The excessive scaffolding was not great for photos, neither to get an idea of how things actually look, and with the World Cup starting in a few days time, there were messy concert stages being erected every couple of blocks. The whole place was crazy with the lead up.

We took a few walking tours around the city, including one for the history of the Nazi party.. This was particularly dull as all we saw for most of the tour was car parks and photos of what used to be in place.. The tour guide was constantly saying “Now try to imagine…” - I didn’t pay to see car parks.

Berlin bustled with interesting bars and places to drink. We found one place we named the “Crack Den” because it looked like how you would imagine a crack den would look - only much more fun. Finding the place you wandered through a dimly lit park with graffiti on the neighbouring building walls, striped down cars, and people pissing on every tree.. To get into the building, you entered via a dodgy unmarked door, which opened to a staircase of five or six flights of stairs. Every single bit of wall on the way up, the entire way, was covered in about ten layers of graffiti, fliers and various anti political propaganda. Right at the top of the derelict, abandoned looking building, a missing door revealed a bar that overlooked the dodgy park and over a good part of the area. There was a projector being shone onto an opposing building displaying weird visuals and old movie bits. The screen was probably about 40m wide..! The bar was just a bar, thankfully there was no problem with crack junkies, just chilled out people from all over, relaxing in a unique environment with cheep drinks and good music. - I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere.

Berlin was a nice city to experience in its current state, but we left the day before World Cup started to escape the craziness and the inflation related to the mass influx of people. There was no way we were going to be able to see a match live due to the demand for legitimate tickets, and I’m kind of glad i turned down the $570US Australia vs Brazil illegitimate ticket I was going to buy on the Internet as apparently tickets are matched to your ID. All throughout Europe, it was guaranteed to be World Cup fever, so it wasn’t like we were missing out..

For my photos of Berlin click here.

I was nervous heading to Paris. And it wasn’t because of the fact that I had condoms stuffed with 5kg of crack cocaine slowly decomposing in my stomach*.. No, it was because the French are renowned for their intolerance of the “non-French speaker” in their own country.. I knew a few words, like Croissant, and Baguette.. and Frogs Legs, but not nearly enough to get by on. So before I left, I brushed up on my skills with a French phrase book that cost a total of $1.99. It wasn’t very helpful, and neither were about 50% of the French population I approached.. The other 50% were really great people, willing to help out the non-French speaking scum to great lengths..

Still travelling with my two troublesome mates from Sydney, we eventually found our way around Paris, seeing most of the famous landmarks.. We contemplated at length on building the Ifle Tower ‘mark 2′ right next to the real Ifle Tower, only four times the size. For this venture we were going to need full financial support from a rich Arab or Texan, in exchange we were going to give them full advertising rights for both the North and South faces - so long as they named it the “The Tower of Arabia” or “The Texan Tower” or something like that.. I’m glad most of these ideas go no where fast..

We had grand schemes to help improve the country aesthetically, but there was nothing we could do about the weather. It was actually colder in Paris than London, and we were even luck enough to get hail whilst walking the streets on our first day. Again, not what I expected from summer. Anywhere.

While in Paris we made it to the Famous Moulin Rouge Show, and if you check out the Video section of this site, you might see some of what goes on there.. You’re not aloud to video or take photos during the show, so these were done kind of slyly..

Next stop was Berlin, but things had been too easy for us for too long.. For some reason, even with three reasonably intelligent people in our party, we still managed to fuck up our journey to Berlin. Somehow, we managed to get on the train a day early, and after a brief argument with the correct ticket holders (there was going to be blood), we negotiated with the conductor to let us on anyway. We didn’t need the sleeping cabin we paid extra for anyway, as we spent the entire night in the bar carriage. And after drinking the train dry, it was easy to pass out for the few minuets left of the journey in the busy corridors..

Overall, Paris was a beautiful city - still had military types roaming around with sub-machine guns in full view in certain areas, which is never cool, but after South America, I’m less shocked each and every time - we’re very lucky back in Oz to not have that.

(*oh, and it was a joke about the crack.., just in case some of you didn’t get it..)..

See my photos from Paris here..