Happy New Year

Just a quick post from me on the last day of the year.

This year has been really weird for me. I had the trip of a lifetime by going to Australia, got stuck in Slovakia due to the Icelandic volcano(which was fun), saw one of my best friends get married in the city where I was born and graduated from a pretty tough college course. Ofcourse, this all stands in the shade of the one event that brought a Black Cloud over 2010: my mother died. It is not until a couple of months after one of your parents dies, that you realise that a tiny part of yourself has died with them. It’s hard to explain, but that’s how it is. Despite this, I will keep a positive view of the future and have all kinds of exciting plans for 2011. I have incorporated them in my New Year’s resolutions, and my resolutions are the following:

1. 1. Visit 5 different states in the USA. I have 3 trips to America planned for this year, Los Angeles in February, Las Vegas in June or July and New York in September. That’s 3 states to begin with and as New York is in an area with lots of states in a relatively small area, I should be able to score there.

2. 2. Visit 5 different Irish counties I have never been to before. When I moved to Ireland, 4 years ago next week, I planned to visit all 32 counties in 2 or 3 years time. Well, that didn’t exactly work out as planned, because 4 years on I am still in single figures. Go see your country, Dude.

3. 3. Visit 3 new countries. I planned to visit 5 new countries this year. I got to 4, which I consider pretty good. I want to add at least 3 new ones this year. Candidates are Wales, Spain and Portugal, among others.

4. 4. Move. I have been living in this house in Dublin5 for nearly 4 years now and I feel it is time to move on. I want to live in the city centre, close to everything and want to be able to walk home from the pub rather than making for the last bus or taking a taxi.

So, those are my objectives for 2011. And with that, I wish you all a very happy 2011 and hope you all have a blast in the new year.

Cheers!

Lennard

New Year’s resolutions and the Lennard diet.

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, I thought I would talk to you about New Year's resolutions.

Last year in December, I got somewhat annoyed by some colleagues who were whining about their New Year’s resolutions and how they were so not looking forward at all to their umpteenth attempt to lose weight, drink less or save more money in the bank. This led me to observe that the reason that most people fail in realising their resolutions is because they always pick stuff like giving up smoking or drinking while they don’t want to, losing an unrealistic amount of weight or no longer eating candy or fatty food things they like.

In general, they pick things that make you feel miserable.

Being the editor of the department newsletter, I instantly smelled an interesting story in their misery and decided to draft an article about the most original New Year’s resolutions in our department. As you might have guessed, the bulk load of the replies I received involved giving up eating, drinking or pleasure altogether. I did however receive 3 interesting and original ideas that I deemed worthy of publication.

The first one that was both original and (probably) manageable, came from one of my Italian colleagues. He stated that the parents of his Japanese girlfriend had invited him over to Japan, in order to meet him and show him their beautiful country. As a result of this, and because he wanted to be polite, he had decided to learn how to speak Japanese, or at least get the basics down so he could say things like ‘Thank you’, ‘enjoy your meal’ and express other basic pleasantries. I often saw him walking around the office with a Japanese phrase book under his arm during his breaks or watched him mimic Japanese phrases that he was listening to on his iPod. Unfortunately, he left the company in June, before he went to Japan and before he could confidently report on the progress of his resolution. I guess we’ll never hear the end of that story, because besides leaving the company, he also left Ireland and moved to France.

The second New Year’s resolution was even more original and, in fact, was so original that I had never heard anyone come up with it before. This colleague of mine, a German girl, was pretty annoyed by the fact that water in Ireland is free. That’s right, you can leave your tap running 24 hours a day here on the Emerald Isle and it will not cost you a penny. This colleague stated that it was stupid that people here in the rich west would get free water while people in poor countries in Asia and Africa more often than not don’t have any drinking water at all. She therefore decided that she would set an amount she used to pay every month for her water bill in Germany and donate that to a charity that specialises in building wells in Africa in order to provide people with clean drinking water. She kept her promise and donated money to her chosen charity every month until she, too, left the company and moved back to Germany and her waterbills in October. A very original resolution for sure.

The third and final person whose New Year’s resolutions I published, was me. Not because I thought that I was so much more original than the others (though I was) but because apart from the two above, mine was the only one that did not involve quiting, giving up or cutting down on the pleasures of life. My first resolution was to visit 5 countries I had never visited before. I had an awesome time pursueing this resolution and even though I only got to 4 new countries, I am not sorry for failing this one. I had an awesome year when it comes to travelling and, in case you were taking notes, my new countries were Slovakia, Austria, Hong Kong and Australia. I will take this year’s fifth country over to next year.

My second resolution, as you might have guessed, involved my favorite pub, The Woolshed. I eat there 3 or 4 times a week. Not because I am too lazy to cook, but because I am there around diner time anyway from Friday to Monday, I really like the food and, well, with the prices of groceries here in Dublin being as high as they are, eating in a pub is only 1 or 2 euros more expensive than cooking your own food. Somewhere around Christmas, one of the bar staff joked that I had probably eaten every pizza on the menu. This stuck in my mind and I came up with the idea of eating everything on the menu over the next year. Now this may not sound like a very daunting task if you’re thinking of your average pub menu, but let me walk you through the Woolshed menu.

The Woolshed menu contains 54 items. I won’t bore you with a complete listing of everything on it, but there are 10 different pizzas, 12 items listed as ‘starters/snacks/beerfood’ (among these are chicken wings, sausages, spring rolls, chicken goujons and fries) 4 different snack platters (that, as you may have guessed, mainly consist of increasingly bigger combinations of the aforementioned snacks and beerfood) 9 sandwiches (including wraps), 7 main courses, a bunch of different hamburgers, some assorted ‘others’, 4 deserts and 3 salads.

If you take the 54 items on the menu and divide that by, say, 3 times a week that I eat there, you would assume that I would have finished my project somewhere in May. Ofcourse, it was never that easy. Some things I like so much that I have eaten them many times(pizzas come to mind). Other items were less likely to get picked on a regular basis (salads for example).If I had simply worked down the menu from item 1 to item 54, I would have encountered big dishes at points where I was not very hungry and small dishes at times that I felt that I could eat a cow and then some. So I had to pick my way through the menu, picking dishes I felt like eating at the time, while keeping an eye on the menu to ensure progress throughout the year and to make sure that I did not finish off certain categories while other categories were left untouched. To that end, I printed out the menu and put it on the wall above my desk in my bedroom. Another issue that I had to guard, was that certain items are simply to big to eat on your own. I would have to organise friends to help me eat them in order to mark them off the list. The nachos platter for example, is too big to eat on your own. And even though the menu states that the Chili nachos platter feeds 1-2 people, you can easily feed 3 adults with it. Fortunately, my sister and brother in law dropped by for my birthday and I was able to convince them to order the chili nachos to share, which was not too difficult because my sister loves those nachos. The Big Platter posed the biggest challenge. Marked on the menu as being enough for 3-5 people, this is the biggest dish on the menu and I knew I had to organise well to get this monster pile of fried food out of the way. I was thinking of a reason to invite people and celebrate something, so I could order the item and mark it off the list. As it turned out, it did not take any organising at all. On a random Saturday in early summer, I found myself surrounded by 4 friends (coincidentally all the people I had planned to invite for eating this) who were all hungry but could not quite decide on what to order. A Wile E. Coyote-style lightbulb appeared above my head and I suggested we order the Big Platter so that we would all have enough to eat without anyone having to decide on a particular dish. My plan was happily accepted by all and so I got to mark the dish I had expected to be the biggest problem in the project off the list without any effort.

As summer progressed and the World Cup started, my visits increased (though some people will say that that was not really possible) and I found myself going steadily through the menu. But during the World Cup, I found myself faced with a sub-challenge emerging on the side. Because of the World Cup festivities, special theme food that was not on the menu was sold during the matches. For a second I thought about ignoring the theme food and focussing on the regular menu, but quickly discarded this idea and went for the special items too. So apart from working through the 54 item regular menu, I also worked my way through Argentinian meat pasties, Danish Hotdogs, a Brazilian snack that sort of looked like a Scotch egg but tasted completely different and 2 or 3 other items which I don’t really remember at the moment. Oh yeah, I also ate an off-the-menu chili dog on Superbowl night and a really nice chicken curry that was not on the menu but available for a couple of weeks after me and another regular had suggested they put curry on the menu. After the World Cup finished on July 11, I went back to my day to day business and the regular menu. I had by then decided that I wanted to be finished before I went to Australia. With the arrival of September, and only 2 weeks to go until my trip to Australia, I stepped up a gear and had dinner at the Woolshed 5 days a week. With 1 week to go, I decided to go for a final push and finish the project. I had already decided to ‘save’ a pizza until the end so that it would be the last item I marked off the list. On Friday 10 September, I came up with the plan to get rid of all deserts in one go, and instead of a normal dinner, I ordered all deserts and asked for them to be served on 1 big plate. This led to jealous peaks from onlookers (mainly women, I must add) and one cheery ‘You pig’ from a laughing Kiwi bartender.

So there I was, standing at the bar, on Saturday 11 September, with my final menu item on a plate in front of me. I had ordered a Margarita pizza with Parma ham and mushrooms to finish off the project. When I took the final bite of the final slice of pizza, I felt both proud of my achievement of finishing this marathon food project and somewhat weird because there was now, literally, nothing left for me to eat. I ate it all. My declaration that I had done it, and eaten everything on the menu, got me some applause from assorted regulars and some quizzical looks from passers by, but I could now set off for Australia knowing that even if the menu was changed during my absence, the project was safely done and dusted.

I still eat at The Woolshed 3 or 4 times a week and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And even though it may not mean much to anyone, I am still quite proud of the achievement.

So to round off this story, we come full circle to the start where I was discussing people trying to lose weight. Loads of people try to lose weight by either starving themselves or by subjecting themselves to ridiculous exercise programmes that, deep down, they know they won’t be able to keep up with. As a result of not being able to achieve the projected weight loss or failing to put in many hours of excercise, people get demotivated and the New Years resolution collapses like a house of cards. Your mission is a failure, please try again next year.

The funny thing is, that there is a much easier way. To my surprise, over the last 18 months, I have lost a whopping 29 pounds in weight. Mind you, this was a year and a half in which my diet consisted mainly of things like chicken wings, pizza, hamburgers and other things generally considered to be fattening or unhealthy. On top of that, I washed it all down with about 30 pints of lager a week.

In those 18 months, not once did I feel over-excercised, miserable or demotivated because I could not meet my goals. The secret is that if you don’t have any goals, you can not fail to meet them either. Just check your weight once every 2 or 3 months and be happy with any weight you may have lost.

Interested? Here is what you do in 6 easy steps. I have called it The Lennard Diet ©

- Eat whatever you want and feel like, and eat it whenever you want it.

- Drink whatever you want, but be careful with sugarry soft drinks

- Go to the gym once or twice a week and exercise for about an hour or 75 minutes

- Check your weight once every 2 or 3 months. Weighing yourself every day or week is useless and only works demotivating.

- If you are going somewhere that is less than a 20 minute walk- WALK! You’ll be amazed how much additional exercise you get if you walk to the off license or convenience store down the street rather than taking the car to pick up a bottle of wine or a pack of cigarettes.

- Enjoy life

And with that, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Cheers,

Lennard

(Note from the editor: uploading pictures is not working at the moment, sorry about that)

Kings Cross

And so I woke up on Friday, with a morning-after Guinness head and an interesting programme for the day. First of all, I was going to go explore Kings Cross, Sydney’s red light district with plenty of drugs, booze, prostitution and back packer hostels. On my way over, I stopped by an internet cafe to print out the reservation for my next hostel where I would be moving tomorrow. I was quite happy about this, because I had not seen anybody in my first hostel have a good time at any point during the day. I was the only one who seemed to be enjoying Sydney.

Either way, Kings Cross was only about a 15 minute walk from where I was staying so I set out to have a good day. When you approach Kings Cross from the central business district, you walk over the top of a hill and when you reach the top and start walking down towards the area, you will see a big Coca Cola sign in the distance. This is sort of the light house of Kings Cross that you are aiming for. It is similar to the Foster’s sign on Picadilly Circus in London or the big screen on Times Square in New York. When you see it, you know you’re going in the right direction. Before I even got to the Coca Cola sign, I spotted a couple of interesting looking places, but I declined to go in. As I had only 2 bars to go until 500, I had to pick carefully to get an appropriately interesting bar for number 500. The first one, still before I reached the sign, was

499. O’Malley’s hotel.

This Irish pub is strategically situated on a corner at the busiest cross road in the neighbourhood. I walked in and felt right at home. A dozen clocks on the wall informed me about the time in New York, Sydney, Dublin, Glasgow and a host of other cities around the world. The usual Irish decorations were on the wall and Irish music was playing in the background. On top of that, pints of Guinness were only $ 5,50 so I sat down and ordered one. I soon found out that the girl behind the bar was new and this was here first day, so it took a while to get my pint, but hey, we all have to learn. She soon caught on to the trick though, which was just as well, because 5 minutes after I came in, a noisy bachelor party of about a dozen guys came in and started drinking like there was no tomorrow. I enjoyed the atmosphere and ordered another Guinness while trying to decide on pub number 500. I made a note of this pub as a good spot to watch the AFL final replay that would take place the next day. It seemed the right place to go.

After finishing my Guinness and then another one, I decided to get a move on, because otherwise I would have stayed there the whole day and I had other stuff to see and do.

O'Malley's, an excellent Irish Pub in Kings Cross.

Welcome to Kings Cross

I walked around the main streets of Kings Cross for some time, checking out interesting shops and bars that could possibly be interesting to visit. I checked out some restaurants and walked down Victoria Street, a street that was lined with campervans that were for sale. Prospective buyers were walking up and down the street, pointing at dents and making calculations in notebooks as to which van would be the best buy. I sat down on a fence and watched this for a while until I got thirsty again. It was time to go for number 500. Leaving the vans behind, I made my way to the other end of Victoria Street and decided that the Green Park Hotel would be number 500.

500

The Green Park Hotel.

I had seen a couple of interesting bars in this area and had nearly chosen a different one for number 500 because it had a pinball machine, but in the end decided on the Green Park Hotel. Why? I don’t know. Gutfeeling. And it looked really nice with their yellowish front, big bar in the centre of the main room and a beer garten. When I walked in, I first tried to locate the toilets and I found out that a major renovation was under way. This had the unfortunate downside that the pokie room was closed, but had the advantage that I was on site to witness the opening of the newly renovated beer garten. While the builders were putting in the last screws and installing lights, I was welcomed at the bar by yet another cheery bargirl who also informed me that happy hour was about to begin in 20 minutes. I decided to order a James Squire ale to celebrate the new beer garten and wait for happy hour. The good thing about pubs in big cities is that there is always stuff to do. Even though there were only 2 other customers in the pub (strange, it was nearly 4 PM and Friday) I found a shelf with local papers and listings magazines and spent a happy half hour alternating between reading about current affairs and talking to the girl behind the bar, who also threw in a free bowl of peanuts for me, which I though was really nice. Happy hour started and I decided to switch to Victoria Bitter, which came at the happy hour price of $2,50 if I remember well. I had a couple more VB’s, watched the official inauguration of the new and improved beer garten and then decided to head off. The Green Park Hotel had been a worthy number 500, even though it was a bit quiet.

I walked back to the main entertainment area of King’s Cross and set out to get some food. Ofcourse, my attention was diverted when I walked past a tacky bar called

501. The Vegas Hotel

If you think this sounds like it was a cheap and trashy gambling hall, then you’re absolutely right. I ordered a Victoria Bitter and sat down at one of the poker machines. The good thing about the poker machines in Australia is that you can choose to play for just 1 cent per spin, which basically allows you to play for 15 – 20 minutes on a single dollar if you’re a bit lucky. You won’t win an awful lot of money either, but then again, I was on vacation and not out to break the bank. I won some, lost some and then noticed that Friday Happy Hour had started. Happy Hour here had various aspects to it. First of all, the price of a beer went down, which always scores points in my book. Second of all, a short time later, the waitresses started distributing free meat pies. Meat pies are a staple of Australian food culture and, consequently, even cheap take out pies from corner shops make a pretty decent snack. The obvious point of giving away free food around diner time is that your punters will not be tempted to go out to get food and will stay in your establishment and drink. And, in most cases in Australia, gamble. After a second round of free pies, the waitresses started handing out free raffle tickets for a 6-times-an-hour raffle in which gift hampers, booze and meal vouchers could be won. I didn’t win anything, but I was kept busy as I was now playing the poker machine, drinking cheap beer and sorting my raffle tickets the whole time (I would get somewhere between 5 and 15 tickets per draw, which meant that new ones were contantly thrown on the ledge of the poker machine I was playing. I ordered another beer and then realised that I had been there for well over 2 hours and was still playing with my first dollar.

Apart from that, I was just having a great time. There was non stop entertainment in the form of raffles, sports on tv, gambling and cheap drinking and, well, I was just about getting to that point in a day of drinking where the sun is setting outside and you realise that you have spent the afternoon doing things you enjoy while the whole evening and night are still ahead of you. It had been a great afternoon and, as I ordered one final beer, cashed a $20,- profit from the poker machine, I tried to think of something to do to spend the night.

Cool pokie machine score

Getting my feet on the ground

After checking in to my hostel, I headed out into the city again. There was so much I wanted to do and see that I had trouble deciding where to begin. So I decided to think it over while sampling some local beers. I had noticed a pub earlier in the day with a cool name.

494. The Edinburgh Castle

Those of you who have read my stories about San Francisco might remember that there was an Edinburgh Castle there as well, and that I visited it a couple of times. This pub was in central Sydney on the corner of Pitt Street and Bathurst street. It was just about lunch time, so there was a half decent crowd, most of whom, rather than having lunch, were watching the horse racing on tv. One of the great things in Australia, is that a lot of pubs have a bookie in them. And I don’t mean next door, I mean right in the middle of the pub. The set up for this is usually a couple of flat screen tv’s with the sports action on them, and underneath them is a machine about the size of a cigarette machine. It has a touch screen and will let you select your horse, dog or team that you think will win, score first or whatever you want to bet on. You put your money in and you will get a receipt, just like you would at a normal bookie shop. If you win (and I stress IF) you put your receipt back in the machine and it will print out a voucher that you can hand in at the bar, where you will get paid in cash. Excellent system, in my humble opinion. I ordered a pint of Rechs lager, a local beer with a surfer on the pump handle, and was then told that they only served beer in schooners. This was something that I would encounter rather often in Sydney. A schooner is a strange size of beer vessel that is more or less halfway between a pot(halfpint) and a pint. The theory behind it is that is gets so warm in Australia that your beer would get luke warm before you are able to finish your pint. Either way, I got a schooner of lager and it was really nice. Due to the long bus trip and the fact that I had just had something like breakfast an hour or so earlier, I had a bag of Twisties to keep the local produce trip going. Twisties are cheesy corn snacks that are really nice with beer. I eat them regularly here in Dublin when they are available in the pub. None of the punters in the pub won anything in the horse racing even though the races follow each other even faster than they do here in Ireland.

Edinburgh Castle Pub

Cool fountain

Wanting to get a feel for the city, I made my way out after one beer, in order to do some walking around and to get the hang of the lay out of the city. Having walked around the central streets for a bit, and marvelled at the monorail that runs around central Sydney, I decided on a stop at

495. The Bavarian Beer Cafe.

It seems to be all the rage lately, to open Bavarian style beer gartens and kellers all over the world. Sometimes this works quite well and sometimes this does not work at all. The usual problem in these cases is that they make it to nice and neat. I encountered this problem in a beer keller in Glasgow last year, which had the basic ingredients for a nice beerhall, but they fucked it up by adding atmosphere lighting, ambient background music and a designer bar. A similar problem occurs here in Sydney- the place is polished to the nines, has brand new oak tables and stools and staff in outfits that you would expect to encounter on Wall Street. If you are reading this, beerhall designers of the world, here’s a tip: If you want to create a genuine Bavarian beer hall atmosphere, you need only 3 things: Beer, an old table and wooden bench to sit on and traditional German music on the stereo. Forget about polished tables, mood lighting, designer menus, staff that know 23 ways to make a Martini and, god forbid, ‘Ladies beer’. Just give me a beer and a bowl of peanuts and I’m perfectly happy. Oh yeah, and while you’re at it, if you work this way, you also don’t need to charge me 10 dollars for a beer.

Having left the Bavarian Beer cafe behind me, I checked my map to see where I would go next. I then realised that I was within reasonable walking distance of Sydney Opera House. Even though I had wanted to put off visiting the Opera House for some more time, I knew that I would not be able to do this. If you are near such an iconic site, it is impossible to walk away. The same thing happened when I was first in New York. I had the idea of visiting the Statue of Liberty somewhere midway through my stay, but after resisting temptation for a day, I was on the ferry to Liberty Island at 8 am on Monday morning. Here in Sydney, on the other side of the world, I simply could not resist. I walked to Circular Key and once I turned the corner and saw the Opera House, I got the same freeze frame experience I had when I first stood next to the Statue of Liberty. I stood frozen for 5 minutes, just looking at the building and taking in the beauty of Sydney harbour. It’s hard to explain what goes through you. You think it won’t be a big thing because you have seen it 5 million times on tv, in the papers and on post cards. But once you are actually standing next to it, it completely silences you.

Sydney Opera House

What wasn’t silent, was the National Rugby League fan event that was about to start on the square in front of the Opera House. It was Friday and the NRL final would be played in Sydney on Sunday. Like in Melbourne on the day before the AFL final, the fans were out in force to make a big party of it and here, like in Melbourne, the fans were out in force to have a great outdoor party as a prelude to the big game. A big stage had been erected in front of the Opera House and bands were playing throughout the afternoon. Fireworks went off at regular intervals, both teams arrived in Sydney harbour on boats and the fans were having a ball. And a couple of beers, so I joined in the fun.

NRL Fan Day

496. The Opera Bar.

I’m not entirely sure where this bar started and where it ends, because it is situated under a sort of swerving arch that goes nearly all the way to the steps leading up to the Opera house. For the rugby fan event, mobile bars had been set up along the waterfront and this all added to a great atmosphere. I ordered a Pure Blonde, a nice, easy-to-drink beer that I had a couple of times in Melbourne as well. I sat down on a stone bench looking out over the harbour and realised that I would happily sit there for the next 10 years. This was ofcourse the result of a largely sleep deprived overnight bus trip, the perpetual sunshine and the fact that I had been drinking since breakfast time, but for a couple of minutes that was really how I felt. I had another beer, talked for a bit with a middle aged Australian couple who were very interested in what I was doing in Sydney and if I liked Australia and then I had to drag my self away from the sunset in the Harbour because I had another place to go to.

497. The Australian Hotel

Is basically around the corner from the Opera House, but due to the large lay out of Sydney harbour it took me some 15 minutes to get there. Didn’t matter, the reward at the end was worth the walk, including the steep steps I had to climb to get there. The Australian Hotel prides itself on selling every brand of beer that is brewed in Australia. According to the menu, they serve 104 different beers, about 20 of them on draft. Like in Jack’s Bar in San Francisco, where they serve 86 beers on draft, I felt like a kid in a candy store. I spent a couple of minutes monitoring the taps and the fridges and decided to order a Vale Ale. It was very nice and I really liked this pub. I hung around for another beer and decided to go back to my hostel to put together my plan for the night.

The Australian Hotel

When I got back to the hostel, there was a bit of a dull atmosphere going on. In fact, the whole 2 days I spent at the hostel were quite dull. It looked as if the people staying there had no intent of partying or going out. They just sat in the lobby watching tv. I had picked up a 6pack of Victoria Bitter on the way home, had 2 cans and decided that I had enough of this place. So I put my remaining 4 cans in the fridge and headed back towards China town. After walking around for a bit to scout if there were any good pubs there, I came across a pub that would become one of my hangouts in Sydney.

498. Scruffy Murphy’s

Is a big chaotic Irish pub, spanning 2 floors and a casino. It is loud, crowded and there is something on every night. When I stumbled in there on Thursday night at around 10, I walked into the middle of a trivia quiz, presented by an Englishman called Andy the Pom. I ordered a Guinness, which was very modestly priced at $6,- for a pint (and I mean a real imperial pint) and played a couple of rounds in the quiz by marking my answers on the back of a beer coaster. It turned out that I had a score of 18 out of 20 for the 2 rounds that I paid attention to and ordered another Guinness. As I always like to know what is open when and where, I asked the girl behind the bar what time the pub would be closing. She gave me the answer every enthousiastic drinker wants to hear:

We Don’t.

I asked her again, just to make sure that I had heard it right and she again confirmed that the pub never closed and was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Oh Heaven. Sydney again scored several additional points on the ‘Kick Ass City’ score sheet. Having a pub down the street from your accomodation(and the accomodation that I would be moving to the next day) that is open 24 hours a day sort of takes the pressure off the planning side of things; when all else fails, you can simply go there, no matter what time it is. With this important issue sorted, I set about celebrating and continued drinking Guinness deep into the night. I also spent some time in the casino and even won some money. Ofcourse, I immediately returned my winnings to the bar and I don’t remember getting home.

The planning for the next day: King’s Cross.

Scruffy Murphy's

To Sydney

As I had booked an overnight bus to Sydney, I had plenty of time left in Melbourne to take a final tour of interesting places. The only problem was that I was experiencing what I would call a ‘bad stomach day’. This happens about once a year and the last one had been in San Francisco the previous year. It basically means that I have a sort of hangover, but rather than in my head, it’s my stomach that causes the problem; I can’t eat anything without getting sick and the only thing that my stomach will accept is water. I realised that it was one of those days when I had a donut for breakfast and couldn’t even finish it. Consequently, I took it easy the whole day and made for the bus station well in time for the bus.

At the Greyhound station, I walked up to the bay where my bus was supposed to leave and found that it was not there yet. After waiting for about 10 minutes, I decided to go for a walk and headed for the exit again, lugging both my back packs along. It was near the lockers that I met a girl who saw my bags and asked if I wanted to use her locker. She told me that she was taking the bus to Brisbane and it was about to leave and she thought it a waste of money to leave her locker unused with 20 hours of usage still left. We went over to her locker and she pulled out 4 huge bags and a suitcase. When I asked her why she was carying so much stuff around, I got an unsuspected answer: She was moving to Brisbane.

The concept of using an inter-state Greyhoundbus to move house was new to me, and to be honest, I must say I thought it was a brilliant idea. In a country as small as Holland, you can easily rent a van or car for a day and move all your stuff to the other side of the country and be back in your place of origin to return your van in time for dinner. A friend of mine moved from Enschede, on the German border, to Rotterdam, near the coast in the South West of the country, a couple of years ago and managed to clear his entire relocation within one working day. In a country as huge as Australia, this is impossible. The bustrip to Brisbane would take approximately 20 hours, which means that if you rented a van in Sydney, loaded it up first thing in the morning and then headed for Brisbane, it would still take you an entire day to get to Brisbane. You would arrive in Sydney exhausted from the long drive, even with driving duties shared between 2 or 3 drivers and then would still have to unload the van, get a night’s rest and then drive the thing back to Sydney. In total this would be a 3 day operation even in the most positive planning, and not even taking into account time spent in traffic jams, on rest breaks and for meals. The cost would be considerable. By moving to Brisbane on a bus, you can do the whole thing in one day. You don’t have to ensure the bus is returned to it’s origin, you don’t have to worry about fuel costs, getting a group of drivers together or other logistic problems. Just buy a ticket, which would probably cost somewhere around $80,- and get on the bus. Greyhound buses don’t have a maximum luggage allowance, provided that you don’t claim the entire cargo deck for yourself. Good planning, I must say. I said goodbye to the girl (I never got here name) put my back pack in the locker and tried to kill the remaining half hour by walking around, buying a bottle of water for the trip and generally feeling wrecked.

Greyhound bus to Sydney

Half an hour later, we boarded our bus. I won’t bore you any further with the details of the overnight bus trip because basically, there wasn’t much to tell you about. I got on the bus in Melbourne when it was starting to get dark and I got off in Sydney 13 hours later at around breakfast time. I spent most of the route between Melbourne and Canberra sleeping, which was made possible by a half empty bus, giving me a double seat to lay down in. In Canberra the bus was filled to the final seat, which meant the end of my luxury sleeping arrangement and spending the final 4 hours in a limbo between being asleep and being awake.

We got to Sydney Airport at around 8.30 in the morning. After unloading some people there, we made for the city centre and, while I was waking up, I saw something that made me realise I was still dreaming. On the intersection just outside the airport, one of the busiest parts on the Australian road system, a guy was pushing an airport luggage trolley with 3 or 4 bags and a surfboard on it, while riding a skateboard. Yes, you’ve read that correctly, he was driving a skateboard through a six lane traffic intersection in the morning rush hour. I cleared the sleep out of my eyes, just to make sure that he was really there, and found, to my surprise that he really was and that I had not been dreaming. Welcome to Sydney.

The bus dropped us off at Central Station and my first hostel was a 5 minute walk from there. I say my first hostel, because I had actually booked a different one from the Sunday on, because I was not exactly sure when I would be arriving in Sydney. When I decided to arrive on the Friday, I found that the hostel I had booked already, would only take booking for a minimum of 3 nights and as I only needed to, I booked 2 night in a place called the BIG hostel for my first 2 nights. The first thing that struck me, is that it wasn’t big at all. It only had 2 or 3 floors and about 20 dorms. Second of all, it seemed that it had gotten stuck somewhere in the early 1990’s. They still used actual keys to open doors, rather than swipe cards and only had 1 (yes, one) computer for access to the internet. The place had narrow hallways that were constantly blocked with plastic crates and big bags of dirty laundry(fire hazard). As I was only staying there for 2 nights and I found a bottom bunk in my dorm, I decided not to make too much of a hassle of it because I was in Sydney to see the city and not the inside of my hostel. When I arrived at the check in desk, I was told that it was too early to check in and I could come back in 2 hours time. If I wanted, I could sit in the lounge and watch tv. It was turning into a beautiful day, so the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a lounge and watch Friends reruns. My stomach had improved remarkably overnight (as it always does by the way) and I walked into the city.

I was close to the Darling harbour area, so I decided to check it out. When I walked across the bridge that gives acces to this area, I was immediately struck by how incredibly beautiful Sydney is. The harbour was fantastic and with the rising sun giving the water a silver shine, it looked like it had been transported from a fairy tale. I walked around for a bit and decided to go for a drink.

Now tell me this does not look beautiful..

493. The Watershed.

This place looked to be just opening for business (it was, after all, only 10.30 in the morning) so I walked in, checked the beers on offer and ordered a James Squire Sundown Lager. The girl behind the bar informed me that someone was still working on the lines, so they had no draft beer for the moment. I then opted for a James Squire pilsner in a bottle and while the girl was opening the bottle, a colleague came out to inform her that the lines were working again. She put away the bottle, got a glass and started pouring a beer, only to find that the lines weren’t working after all, so I was back at the bottle. I took a seat in the sunshine, got out my guidbook and enjoyed my first impressions of Sydney. Life is so much nicer if you can start the day by sitting in the sunshine, having breakfast outside, which in my case consisted of beer. After some 20 minutes, the bar girl walked up to me, carrying a glass of the draft beer I had originally ordered and put it down on the table with the compliments of the house. Sydney started a rapid ascent in my list of excellent cities. I finished my second beer and had to resist the urge to order another one and enjoy the sunshine for some more. I knew that if I had a third beer, I would want a forth and eventually would end up spending the entire day on the waterfront at Darling Harbour. I had to check in to my hostel first and I planned to get my feet on the ground in central Sydney.

So that’s what I did.