Hey there, how're you doing?

So I'm back after a bit of a hiatus.

And there's plenty to report:
New house, new job, new (finally working) internet connection.

So life is looking pretty good from where I'm sitting.

I wasn't completely lazy during my forced abstinence from the internet however and even had a guest blog published on Mamamia.com.au which was fairly exciting.

 You can check it out here, you know you want to (and the rest of the site is pretty nifty too).

So how's life been from where you're sitting?

Catch my (running) disease

Every morning lately I've been lacing up my shoes and heading out into the warm morning air, pounding the pavements until my legs feel like they're ready to fall off and and my lungs are about to explode.
Then I turn around and run the one and a half kilometres back home. Hardly an impressive start but I guess it is one all the same.

In my mind I can see myself bounding along the track, feet and spirit light, as the sun rises but in reality my daily runs have become a bit of torture during which my calves had started to cramp and I can feel the pain working its way up my legs to meet the sweat trickling down my back.

Why on earth had I thought this whole get fit thing would be a good idea?

As I huff and puff along I watch the other runners on the track who are easily racing on with hardly a hitch in their breathing and find myself more than a little jealous of their easy ability. I imagine that they've really been walking until they reached the point where others could see them and then sprint onwards until they're out of sight again. Hardly true I know but we all have to console ourselves.

As the pavements slowly pass underneath my feet I find I go to extremes to keep moving; cranking up the music and picking points I have to run to, always slightly concerned that all the swearing circling through my head to keep me moving will eventually burst out of me and be screamed said out loud.

But in recent months, while I watch as the morning runs of more than one friend gradually extend into half marathons and even full marathons, I've begun to wonder if there isn't something contagious about all this running. And even on the days when I wake up with legs so stiff I have to hobble around the house I still find I want to tie up those laces and head out again, to try and move farther and faster than before.

So I guess if it is contagious, then I've caught it.
 Damn!

It's a record!

Red Robin Blue has finally reached 1500 hits, and 500 of those were in the past month!

Thanks everybody, and (hopefully) happy reading.

Can you buy nothing new?

Two years ago I stumbled across an initiative I thought was completely brilliant: The Salvation Army's Buy Nothing New Month.

As a budding greenie who already loved to spend hours sifting through op-shops on the hunt for treasures it really appealed to me. And the non-greenie part of me who almost needed another room purely to house my shoes, clothes and bags also liked it. I figured it would be slightly shameful if I was actually pushed out of my house by my own belongings.

One whole month where I couldn't buy anything new except for the essentials, but I was free to swap my goods or buy anything else I wanted second-hand.
I thought about how good I'd feel afterwards. as far as I was concerned a mere 31 days later I'd no longer be a rampant, mindless consumer but relaxed and happy (because that's, you know, logical) and also decked out in all the fantastic new op-shop gear I'd find.

In my past life as a journalist I even interviewed the Salvos Store's sustainability manager Donald Munro about the initiative who told me that the month was about seeing the value in existing items and reflected a growing movement of people switching off from shopping and tuning into life.

"We want people to stop and think 'do I really need this item?'," he said to me.
"I think from our perspective we're just trying to get people to stop and think. People forget that every item they buy is an investment of resources like water.
"We want everything instantly...but a t-shirt has more than 2000 litres of water used to produce it."

Ok, fair enough. I saw his point immediately, and after I hung up the phone I figured I could mentally add a golden halo to my new and improved image if I made it through the whole month.

That first October I set out with the best of intentions, but discovered something curious. As soon as I wasn't allowed to shop every store I passed called to me. I'd wander through the racks imagining what I would buy if I could, or as the weeks slowly passed what I would buy as soon as the hellish month was over. A weird mindset considering normally I have to drag myself to the shops with a mental list of clothing I need so I could get in and out as quickly as possible.

But that first time I did make it through the month and I did feel better for it. So much so that I'm about to take part for the third time.

But I have to say this, although the clothing stores of Oz may be safe from me for the time being, any op-shop I pass in the next 31 days had better be prepared!

http://www.buynothingnew.com.au/home/

A good investment

Recently I got an invitation to a night out that had me raising my eyebrows: one of my girlfriends had decided it was time we all manned up and had a poker night in.

My imagination went into overdrive. Pictures flashed through my head of us all sitting in a dark smoke-filled room, cigars dangling from our lips and glasses of whisky in front if us as we muttered "I'll see your three and raise you five" in raspy voices while we casually tossed a few chips onto the pile in the middle.

Clearly I have no idea how to play poker.

The Boy, and many other people actually, have valiantly attempted to teach me but there's simply no teaching someone who has the attention span of a goldfish.

Ten minutes in I normally start to feel daring and throw everything I've got onto the pile on the back of the pair of threes I'm holding. Needless to say I then spend the next few hours watching someone else amass a nice pile of chips in front of them. I call this my 'blaze of glory' act. After a few attempts at playing I'd sworn I'd never play again.

Nevertheless I agreed to go to the game intending to heckle rather than play this time however through a series of circumstances - or more accurately a friend coercing me - I wound up with a pile of chips in front of me and cards dealt out.

I also was given a new name; investment. The friend with the coercive powers had also put my 'buy in' into the kitty in the hopes of a high return. Not a wise move as far as I was concerned but then again miracles do happen.

And they did, I lasted half an hour before I went all in, expecting to be the second person to bow out of the game. Instead I won my hand, a miracle which happened more than once during the course of the night.

Round after round I bet or sat out as the fancy took me, a cheat sheet spread out in front of me still failing to illuminate what I was doing. It also didn't help that two hours in I forgot which colour chip was worth what, making my betting even more erratic. But that still didn't stop me from staying the distance and as the night wore on person after person, including The Boy, bowed out. But somehow my little pile of chips and I stayed the course until the inevitable happened and I lived up to my threat and went out in a blaze of glory and my little pile went to a new home.

But as far as I'm concerned third place is still pretty damn good. And being declared a a good investment was just icing on the cake.

Technophobe? Moi?

Stepping back out into the boiling midday sun, I paused so I could heave my chunky camera bag back up onto my shoulder and utter for the millionth time "when I get back to Oz I'm getting a grown-up phone with a camera, that way I don't have to lug this one around".

The Boy, as ever, merely nodded, in a 'yes dear' kind of way and continued to walk on to the next place we'd marked down in our dog-eared copy of the Lonely Planet.

Once upon a time I had played owner to a pretty, petite camera but discovered the hard way that hostel rooms in Brussels aren't always as secure as they seem, when early one morning my camera made a quick getaway. Cranky and camera-less The Boy and I had decided to splurge on a decent camera. But what we hadn't factored in was that a decent camera also meant a decent size and an even more decently sized bag. Hence the grumbling when it could no longer be forced into the backpack for our daily ramblings.

So true to my word, a mere 24 hours after The Boy and I landed in Oz we found ourselves in a store full of very pretty, highly technical phones. I was half-heartedly listening to the assistant as he droned on, flicking his way through page after page of deals and plans while all that was reverberating around my head was one word - pretty! And as hard as I tried I couldn't make myself pay full attention to what was being said somewhere in the space between me and the pretty phones, or to contribute to the intelligent questions The Boy miraculously kept conjuring up. Rookie mistake I know.

But a few hours later I did walk out of that store with a pretty new phone- A Samsung Galaxy to be exact- clutched feverishly in my hands. Only to discover too late I had no idea how to use it. It's pretty screen made fun water-like noises as I touched it and colourful icons promised hours of procrastination-based fun. But that world remained firmly locked away from me, and I was left with just the basics of phone calls in my grasp.

Ten years ago, when I was just a wee lass of 17, I bought my first phone; a brick-like Nokia. Sturdy, reliable and capable only of performing the essentials like phone calls and text messages it was everything I needed. I turned it on in excitement one hot February afternoon and was easily welcomed with open arms into the world of permanent contact. I loved it unreservedly.

But with this new phone I initially felt conned. Despite all its allure it had thrust me into a world I did not know. I tapped the screen hoping to connect with The Bestie and was rewarded with an off-key blip. I gathered up my courage and hesitantly tried opening an application to see what it contained, all the while trying to ignore my three-year-old nephew who was running around my legs while playing with his grandmother's smart phone, blissfully opening games and playing music like there was no tomorrow.

It was official. I had become the old-fashioned person in the room who didn't know how to use modern technology. I was also facing the fact that I may have to ask a three-year-old child to show me how to use my phone.

Embarrassed I began to open more applications, eventually working out how to send a message (cue witty repartee with the Bestie), check my email and take a photo. Exhausted I turned the screen off.

What the hell had I done?

I did grow used to my new toy, and am now enjoying the world of grown-up phones. But after discovering I can, and often am, chatting to The Bestie simultaneously on three different apps I have to wonder: whatever was wrong with a simple phone with just the basics?

And so it ends...

They say everything has to come to an end, and no matter how much I fought it so did my Year of Madness.

After crawling my way through 20 countries; more bus, plane and train trips than I could count; bike rides at dawn through a sleeping Paris, the discovery of Long Drinks in Finland, wondering at the resilience of humans in Poland, eating my weight in delicious food daily in Turkey, pub-hopping in London and generally just marvelling at the beauty of this world of ours, The Boy and I had to face the fact last week that we were wrestling our backpacks closed and hauling them across Istanbul for the very last time. And we were we going home.

Home to family and friends and all kinds of lovelies, but also home to jobs and responsibilities and generally just being grown-ups. Not an easy concept to grasp when a few hours before I had been trying (in between courses and far too many drinks) to convince The Boy that he actually did want to dance with a belly dancer as we cruised the length of the Bosphorus River.

But now, a week later, I'm writing this ensconced at the library near The Parentals' home in Oz, attempting to escape the pre-summer humidity while beginning the Job Hunt and trying to decide if the past year has in fact been real.

But it's pretty hard to argue with the incredible thong tan on my feet. A lot of hard work went into creating those beauties.

A heart full of Turkey

Bus, train, bus, plane.

My Year of Madness was drawing to a close and I was madly rushing to get my fill of each country before The Boy and I forced our backpacks shut and stumbled onto the next.

But we did grow travel weary and struggled to keep our enthusiasm up, sometimes opting for exploring the food-and-drink side of the cities rather than the historical sides. Not a bad option though when you consider that we stumbled upon this fancy little restaurant/opera room while walking around Belgrade.

Little Bay restaurant, Belgrade, Serbia

But it was Turkey which succeeded in taking my breath away.

Not quite part of Europe and not quite part of Asia I wasn't sure about what to expect but had vague notions of a country with cities rapidly sprouting up everywhere and a chaotic Asia-like speed to it with cars and scooters racing around at break-neck speeds.

Emerging from Istanbul's Ataturk airport at 9pm I definitely wasn't expecting a modern city with a tranquil atmosphere. Breathtaking monuments in the distance were lit up with a soft golden light and the crowded streets and market places flashed by as I sat with my tired head resting against the window of the tram.

But even in the Friday night buzz Istanbul was still peaceful. And this peace permeated the entire country. What's more the people were kind, friendly and helpful and the country itself was stunning.

Anzac Cove, Gallipoli

The Boy at an ANZAC cemetery

Wooden horse of Troy, Troia

Trojan amphitheatre

Afternoon at Pergamon

Library façade at Ephesus

The mineral flats of Pamukkale

Two weeks of wandering and wondering, exclaiming, exploring and dreaming and I still wasn't done with the country which was tough luck for me because I had a mighty long plane ride booked in to take me back to the land of Oz.

Sunset in Cappadocia

Exploring

Fairy chimneys, Cappadocia

View from the top

Medusa eyes

Hagia Sofia

Inside the palace harem, Istanbul

Inside Hagia Sofia

The Blue Mosque

Istanbul Grand Bazaar

Spices

The throngs outside

It's been nearly a week since I left Turkey and I'm still at a loss for words about how to describe it beyond simply amazing, and I'm already imagining about what I would do with another two months there.

But that's the beauty of travel, isn't it?

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And then there was Tallinn

"Please don't let there be an old town, please don't let there be an old town".
This mantra was circling through my mind as The Boy and I jumped off the bus in Tallinn, Estonia, weary and travel grumpy.

We've been gradually travelling east on our way back to the land of Oz, generally only deciding on the next location a day or two before we jump on a train. On a spur of the moment decision we decided to also include the Baltic States on our trip, the lure of the mysterious east winning out.
Images of immense forests, cloud topped mountains and mysterious folkorish characters were continuously playing through my mind in the trip, and I was absolutely enchanted when I arrived.

The winding streets of the beautiful, medieval cities of Vilnius and Riga were like fairyland - sure there were touristy parts but for the large part we could wander aimlessly without seeing anyone else, hunting out quaint vintage stores and art galleries as well as hidden cafes and pubs.  Like good tourists we also saw all the 'must see' sights, but in towns this small that's a matter of hours. But like all medieval towns there's the old town and new town (cheers urban sprawl!) and after a little while all the old town squares I'd seen during the past month had started to meld together, they were breathtakingly beautiful but I was desperate to see and experience something different.

Which is where Tallinn comes in. After deciding on a visit to Helsinki for a few days we made our way to Tallinn in Estonia for the ferry trip across, adding a day in to explore the city itself. Which brings me back to my little mantra. We hiked from the bus stop to our hostel, grunting at each other in communication, our enthusiasm dropping with every kilometre and it was only the need for food which drove us out of the hostel an hour later.

But Tallinn was like no other city we'd been to before. Yes it was a beautiful medieval city with gorgeous views but it was also a city where the run down industrial areas in the outskirts have been re-purposed into local eating areas, the local jail (closed in the early 2000s) has been opened to the public in the same state it was in when it shut down - if you want to see the operating table in the medical ward it's still there! - with a funky beach cafe behind it full of locals and a Russian Flea Market where the mantra seems to be if you want it, we've got it. Including apparently at one point AK-47s which had only been stopped with lead. These were only confiscated when idiotic tourists were buying them as souvenirs and taking them to the airport for the trip home. A little scary!

But that's pretty much what I loved about it. Tallinn wasn't just another beautiful city, it had an edge to it which the locals embraced rather than trying to cover it up.

And you've got to admit it, that's a pretty cool mentality in this age of ever-increasing tourism.

What do you guys think?

The jail

Street graffiti at the jail

Beach cafe in Tallinn

Inside the jail

In the Telliskivi Centre

View of the Old Town

Growing growing growing

Red Robin Blue is now on Facebook!

Check out more photos and ramblings here

Hope to see you all soon.

Excuse me, I'm an English speaker

The checkout girl was absentmindedly scanning my items while I was quietly patting myself on the back. I had managed to get through the two minute transaction without screwing up too badly when the girl turned to me and rattled off a question, bringing me back down to earth with a thud I swore could be heard across the universe.

I stared blankly at her with absolutely no idea about where to start translating what she had said.

There was an awkward two beat pause before:

"Oh, you do not speak French?" She immediately followed up with, a small laugh escaping her at the same time.

"Um, no. Sorry," I had to reply to my extreme embarrassment, quickly bagging my groceries so I could make a swift exit. It turns out she had simply asked if I had a loyalty card.

This was an all too common occurrence in my days in Paris. And eventually my vocabulary might have gotten to the point where I was able to go about my daily life in French and I was all over any questions about Australian beer. Just so long as no one asked my opinion about a book, movie or what I had done that day. But like every other English speaker in a foreign country my fall back was always sign language which was often-used and of exceptional quality by this point.

I will admit it, I was innately lazy about learning more simply because all my French lovelies were fluent in English, and in complete contradiction of all the cliches about Parisians the locals would more often than not swap to English when they heard my atrocious French accent. 

But chatting over 6am beers to two girls I had just met at a party was like another punch to the face. The conversation turned to languages; and they assumed straight away that because I was Australian I only spoke English. Fair point but not exactly what you want the first assumption to be, and equally embarrassing was their casual acceptance of this fact.

And this embarrassment has continued as The Boy and I continue our jaunts further into the east leaving behind any language we could slightly make sense of, and along with it our ability to say little more than hello and thank you. But what's worse is that as soon as our greetings have been heard we automatically get a reply in fluent English, a little humiliating when they are still in their teens and speaking what might be their third language.

So I just want to say right now on behalf of my kind everywhere.

I’m sorry but you’ll have to excuse me, I'm just an English speaker.

The only way to travel

As the heat of the August day started to wane The Boy and I hauled our backpacks on and hoisted ourselves on board an old train in a village on the edge of the Czech Republic. We were headed to Poland and had decided to save a few pennies and train it there. The train was old and noisy, the seats in the carriages were upholstered in a material straight out of the 1970s and judging by the noise the brakes made that was probably the last time they had been oiled too.

We settled down into our seats, opened the window wide so the smell of freshly mown grass could drift in, and immediately fell in love with the romance of it all. With a groan and a few too many bumps we started to move and the countryside flashing by was beautiful; fields and forests flashed by dotted here and there with tiny villages and families out enjoying the cooler afternoon. Our was only broken by the sporadic tin whistle from the train

I’ve long been a fan of train travel. Besides the obvious benefit of not spending hours on either end in an airport and then still having to push through customs at a snail pace, there’s the chance to actually see the country you’re travelling in rather than just the cities in all their touristic glory. As far as I’m concerned there’s something intrinsically romantic about train travel as well, it calls to mind the glory days of steam trains puffing across Europe, although considering there was a murder on the Orient Express there must be some downsides.

The Boy and I settled into our seats, the material hot behind our backs, for the four hour trip. But almost straight away The Boy was up and hanging out the window, camera in hand trying to snap a perfect shot of the sun sinking behind the trees, a forested area full of wildflowers or a solitary man working with a scythe in a field. Passengers came and went, seemingly amused by how enchanted The Boy and I were with our surroundings until darkness forced us to pull our heads back within the carriage and settle down. 

Its not often that I fall in love with a trip between destinations. Normally I'm grumpy from last minute packing and the rush to the station/airport all the while struggling with shoulder bruises from my too heavy backpack that I refuse to lighten, and by the time I've settled into my seat visions of where I am headed are usually dancing in front of my eyes. All the time in between daydreams is normally reserved for reading, sporadic writing or catching up on some shut eye.

But for now I think it's safe to say I'm a convert. At least until I buy tickets for a 10 hour trip.

Buda...Pest

Flying into Hungary under the cover of darkness The Boy and I had our noses pressed firmly against the plane window, eager for any glimpse of what awaited us in Budapest.

Walking out of the airport, slightly miffed about not getting a stamp in my passport, I realised I would be clueless for a while longer as the bus ride from the airport past beautiful but slightly decrepit buildings flashed by.


In my imagination Budapest is the perfect, romanticised mixture of east meets west; amazing history and beautiful architecture, big green parks and a culture completely different to anything I was used to. Walking out the door on my first morning The Boy and I realised this idea was right, but also very wrong.


Walking down Andrassy utca (street), a wide tree-lined boulevard with cafes, ritzy stores and restaurants and Heroes Square at one end both The Boy and I were drawing comparisons between Budapest, or Pest to be more accurate, and other European cities we'd been to. But wandering up side streets as we tend to do it was a revelation. In some areas a mere two streets back from the main boulevard it was like being thrown back into Soviet-era Budapest with once beautiful buildings, now crumbling and overlooking stark streets.

Once pretty now crumbling

Playing in a cement playground

But if anything these little shocks only added to the experience. Wandering around Pest every side street and alley became an experience, some filled with hidden trendy pubs, some completely empty, some opening up on parks and playgrounds. And even though it didn't match up with the pictures in my head I fell in love with Pest. It was a mix of the new and funky and the old but the scars from the past were still more than visible, (and if you don't believe me just head to Terror House, a memorial museum about the horrors committed during WWII and the Soviet era).

As a contrast walking across the famous Chain Bridge to Buda high up on the hill everything is beautiful...but fake. The streets are paved with cobblestones, the buildings look like they are straight out of the 16th century and the museums are to die for - including the National Gallery located in the former palace. But every second shop is filled with over-priced souvenirs and the prices sky rocket.

The opera house at sunset

Looking over the Danube to Buda

At the National Gallery

The view from Buda over Pest

It was almost a relief to descend the hill again and cross over to Pest and to reality again, and to sit down at a local pub for a cold beer.

After three days of just wandering, on foot and by bike, The Boy and I decided to extend our stay, to explore the Turkish Baths, the galleries and the night life and  it's this Budapest I rather than the tourist sites that still stick in my head.

And as far as I'm concerned that's the mark of a truly magnificent city.

On the road again

Two weeks ago The Boy and I had packed up our by now too many belongings, handed back the keys to the tiny apartment we called home and hit the road again.

Our mission: to drive south with two friends, S and G, and mosey about for 10 days to celebrate The Boy having a Big Boy Birthday.

The four of us jumped in a car and headed towards Bordeaux with a loose plan of how to spend our lazy days but at first it seemed as though our joint London/Paris bad weather had followed us south, clearing only long enough to walk along the Garonne river and to also celebrate Bastille Day at a street party where we discovered that there is a lot of spontaneous synchronised line dancing in Bordeaux. Unfortunately I'm not kidding, but to be honest it was a laugh to try and follow along with them. And the grey skies finally cleared long enough for The Boy, S, G and I to head out to Mouton Rothschild Vineyard, one of the ritziest in the area which is unfortunately closed for renovations for another year but that didn't stop the four of us from running around the flower-laden gardens and checking out the vineyards.

The Boy chilling out in Bordeaux

Pre-Bastille Day street party

Bare footing it at Mouton Rothschild

Sampling the produce

Beautiful Biarritz followed where we lazed about in the cold on the beach lined with hydrangeas, drank beers while watching the sun set over the water for the first time and generally reaffirmed our love for the beach which got a little out of hand by the time we drove over the border and into Barcelona. 

Beautiful Biarritz

Lighthouse walk

My first taste of beach in months

Sunset beers

Beachy sunset at Biarritz

Melting in the 35 degree heat during the long, sunlit afternoons the four of us were drawn to the beach in between Gaudi trips and tapas/sangria/beer breaks. Both The Boy and I have been to Barcelona before and love it, but it was fantastic to see it again through the new eyes of S and G. The infamous La Rambla still packed at 2am with tourists, hawkers and some of the dodgier types in society, La Sagrada Familia which I still maintain looks like a sand dribble castle, the fantastical Park Guelll and the underwater facade of Casa Batllo, even the best fresh food markets.

But for once I felt like I had all the time in the world, there was no need to rush around and see everything before I moved on and The Boy and I spoiled ourselves by wandering up secluded side streets to discover cool and quiet plazas. But the days were always topped off with a splash.

Casa Batllo

Wandering the quiet streets 

Park Guell

Beach time beers

The last stop was Avignon, a medieval city in south-east France that is still completely intact. This was a nerdy history stop for The Boy who had become fascinated with the city after learning it was home to the Popes for 100 years. Our arrival in the city was at the same time as a month-long theatre festival and the streets were a hive of activity, packed with performers and hawkers and the pale walls were covered in posters. But rather than being a distraction from the city the hustle and bustle actually made me yearn for a few free hours to sit at a cafe and people watch. But inside the Palais des Papes, the actual palace built by the French Popes in the 14th century, the noise of the streets receded and The Boy, S, G and I wandered from room to room, wing to wing. The interior of the palace was cool and quiet with white walls with the remains of a few frescoes dotted here and there but it was hard to picture it in all its former glory. 

The streets of Avignon

Inside Palais des Papes

Avignon

View from the tower

But all too quickly the road trip was over and the four of us packed our bags into the tiny car and started the long drive back to Paris and reality.

Our year of madness may be coming to a close, but for The Boy and I this is just the beginning of another long stretch of travels, and this time we're headed East.

Wish us luck!