Tales From a Female Traveller

I fucking hate the new blogger!

posted by Lucyspeak @ 7:40 am 0 comments

The Marathon of Seeing Marathon

Those of you who know me well will be well aware of my fascination with History, so much so that I am actually able to call myself an Historian thanks to my credentials, so visiting Greece, for me, is something I have always wanted to experience. When I was little I used to fantasise about expeditions and digs and adventure among the columns, in fact, I had these dreams with Italy and Egypt as well. I’d daydream for hours about holding something so old in my hands that the last people to touch it were the very people that planted the seeds for what we know as civilisation. So Greece is a place I have always dreamed about visiting. In my second year of University I took Terry Ryan’s class on Sparta and classes on Greek History before and after the Battle of Marathon and I was so taken with the subject of Marathon that I chose to complete one of my essays on the topic alone. I can still remember sitting on my bedroom floor with every book that I could find that even mentioned Marathon in passing spread out in front of me, pouring through the information like it was oxygen and when Liz Baynham showed slides of her trip to Greece to class one day I almost keeled over with admiration and respect. I so looked up to my lecturers and I wanted to travel as much as they had if only to broaden what little knowledge I had on life.

When my time finally came and I was setting foot on Greek soil it was almost surreal and whilst the idea to visit Marathon didn’t come about until after I’d been in Greece for a while it was still an idea that seemed so great… at last… I would be getting to plant my feet on the same ground that was home to one of the most pivotal battles in history…. But not before I saw other areas of Greece first. Athens however was where I met my good friends Janna and Justin. It was a beautiful moment, me needing to shave, Justin offering his girlfriend’s razor to help a gal out… I find though that situations like these always have you meeting people you will keep in your life forever (RE: Olle and Cherrie in Spain) and the three of us got along so we decided to see Crete together (another important site I would gave given my left arm to see) and ended up having a great time.

So after I arrived back from Crete Janna, Justin and I decided we’d take a trip to Marathon and see where the Greeks sent the Persians running for their lives. For those of you who might not be aware, the Battle of Marathon is one of those decisive moments in history that people will forever talk about. You’ve often heard of people philosophise about what the world would be like now had Germany won the war, or if the A Bomb had never been dropped and the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) is one of those “what if” topics. The Persian forces, whom outnumbered the Greeks about 10 to 1, were gaining on Hellas and if they weren’t stopped, Athens would be raised and Greece would be lost. The Athenians sent a messenger to Sparta for help; Theidipides was his name because they could not foresee themselves winning such an outnumbered battle. But the Spartans could not come because they were in the middle of a sacred religious festival… they would help after it had ended but this would be way too late, the Athenian Hoplites would be crushed and all of Greece may well be lost. They had no other choice but to go it alone without reinforcements from Sparta. And so the battle ensued. Miraculously, the Athenians managed to triumph against the Persians and send them packing and when the Spartans finally arrived with help that was too late, all they could do was praise the Athenians (even if in a condescending way) on what a good job they had done, combed their hair a little and go back to their isolated city state. I actually like to think about what might have happened that day if the Persians had one. Maybe there would have been no Alexander the Great to fuse eastern and western cultures, and maybe we would all be writing in Arabic instead of English, which to me is a very interesting notion and even Christianity might not have developed in the way it has. History, you might say, would have been completely different, and as a result, I might not have even been sitting here writing this. So the importance of this battle to the very cradle of our civilisation as we know it is so great that I was overwhelmed with excitement at being given the opportunity to see where Archaeologists think it took place.

So all revved up and ready to smell the history the three of us hopped on a bus that left from near Victoria Station and settled in for what we thought would be a great day. It actually took quite a whole to find the right bus though because we kept getting the run around from every person we asked. It was like one huge communal joke in Greece to see how confused they could make the independent traveller, so it was a tiring experience just finding the bus! The journey to Marathon was fine though, but because there wasn’t even a hint of the town in Lonely Planet’s Europe on a Shoestring and due to the fact that none of us actually did any research on the town’s travel infrastructure, just navigating the tiny but widespread town seemed a feat even Herakles would huff at and we had so much we wanted to do. Justin wanted to see the huge marble dam, I wanted to visit the battlefield and the museum and Janna was just happy to do whatever, so we decided to pay a visit to the Marathon Museum, what a better way to start off in Marathon than learning about why the great race gets its name and all the different places, and distances it has been run.

The Olympic Marathon gets its name from the messenger the Athenians sent to the Spartans to ask for their assistance, which was a pretty risky business to begin with. The Spartans pretty much kept to themselves and were considered by the Athenians to be nothing more than barbarians. They did not consider themselves Greek, nor a part of mainland Greece, they were a war state unto themselves and their whole society was based around the soldiers’ life. From the age of 7 boys began training as soldiers and were taken from their homes and placed in barracks. They were encouraged to steal and pillage and only received punishment if they were caught and every Spartan male was forced to be sent out on his own with nothing but the one cloak on his back (which he had to keep for life) and his weapon and wits to keep him alive. Only when he proved himself as a soldier could he rejoin society, a sort of coming of age ceremony. Sparta was a place where it was survive or die, so for the Athenians to ask them for help, even though they were the toughest soldiers around, would have been massive, after all, the whole of Greece was at stake, and whether they liked it or not, Spartans were Greek. So when the Athenians sent their messenger they knew there would be a good chance the Spartans would say no, and say no they did… so all the way back Theidipides ran to the Athenians to tell them the Spartans would not be coming until after the full moon, and just as he did so, legend says he dropped dead on the spot, completing his journey of 42.195 kilometres. This, mind you, would have been no easy task for there were no time keepers, there were no water stations nor were there people cheering him on. This was done over very rough and rocky terrain in the harshest of conditions and most likely barefoot if not wearing sandals, so the enormity of the task he undertook is unspeakable in terms of the Marathon that is run today and when we found out about the museum we thought it the most fitting way to start exploring the town.

The exhibition at the Museum started with Sydney 2000 (the best games ever) and goes all the way back to the beginning and even has a section about Roberta Gibb and how they refused to let her cross the finish line for the second time and how she got in her car and headed home in protest. She was lucky though, another woman wasn’t even allowed to run the race at all so the next day with two other time keepers she ran her own marathon unofficially, along the same route the race the day before had taken. Overall it was a really rewarding exhibit and considering what it took to actually GET to Marathon itself, I’m glad that we stumbled across it, but it was still only the beginning of what we had planned to do. After we had finished walking through exhibit the curator told us that we should head to the corner to catch the bus to the Archaeological Museum which she said was 7 kilometres outside of town and we thought that fitting in another museum and seeing actual relics would be quite fitting. So while we waited at the bus stop a ticket lady told us to wait with her and pay 1.10 euros for the bus which would take us the rest of the way to the museum. This however, did not happen and we were told to get off just down the road from where we had actually boarded the bus. Confused as we were, we hopped off and shortly afterwards we realised we had been duped and were in the middle of nowhere! Janna and I were quite annoyed that the museum was 7 kilometres one way and the battlefield was another 7 kilometres in the opposite direction. So with about 15 kilometres between them and after failed attempts at flagging down a taxi and even trying to hitchhike for 3.8 seconds, we decided to abandon all hope of ever seeing anything but the highway in Marathon and try to flag a bus back to Athens. But nothing seemed to be coming our way in the form of a bus so we decided to walk along the highway for a bit and we came upon a service station where we were told that we could definitely walk to the battlefield but if we did, by the time we arrived it would be closed. I was utterly shattered. All we could do at that point was laugh and as we headed to the nearby bus stop it occurred to us how wasted the day had been and how ridiculous it was that there was no travel service available to see one of Ancient Histories most important sites, for who knows what would have happened if the Persians had have been fully successful in the invasion of Greece.

Apparently, not many people visit Marathon and the town itself does not rest on the original historic site but about 10 kilometres away from it for no one actually knows the exact site of the Battle of Marathon, only that it occurred in that narrowed down area, which explains why the Lonely Planet Europe on a Shoestring has completely zero information on it. I didn’t dare look at it to see if Thermopylae was mentioned because I didn’t want to be heartbroken twice in the same hour. We must have walked along the highway for about an hour, or maybe it wasn’t that long. Justin and Janna singing and me lagging up the rear looking behind me every 10 minutes to see if I could see the bus coming. I think the joke of the day was that we travelled all the way to Marathon just to get an ice cream, because even the search for souvenirs was hopeless. They didn’t even have one post card and to this day I am still amazed that no one is interested in going to Marathon. It’s a small town with a nice little police station and a few good places to eat.. but really, there’s nothing more. I am positive that you can only reach the Battlefield itself through organised tour operators and you will probably pay through the ear for it, which sadly, is probably the reason no one wants to go and see a patch of grass in the middle of nowhere.

When we got back to Athens we headed out for dinner at the Noodle Box in Appollonus Street in Syntagma, near Parliament and got to see the changing of the guard. It had been good travelling with Janna and Justin and I knew it wouldn’t be the last time I saw them, but they had been such great travel companions and it was still sad to see them go. While they headed to Thessiloniki I made my way for another of Histories most treasured places… Sparta! If I couldn’t see Marathon, I was sure as hell going to try and see Sparta itself.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 9:04 pm 0 comments

posted by Lucyspeak @ 6:27 am 1 comments

The Travelling Wild Berries

The Travelling Wild Berries

Hey all, you should check out my friend Ingrid's blog. You'll all remember Ingrid, I travelled for a little bit with her and Eirin in Egypt and then visited Ingi in Spain. Check it out it's rather good. This is a picture of the three of us before we parted in Egypt.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 2:27 am 2 comments

AN EGYPT PICTURE!!!!

Walk like an Egyptian.......
Luxor Temple Sphinx's which used to lead right across Luxor and meet up with Karnak Temple.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 3:35 am 0 comments

The advantage of falling ill in every country I've been to

So some people might think that travelling is all about experience. The experience of different cultures, different people and different lifestyles is usually what sends people on insane journeys thousands of kilometres away from anywhere any normal person would actually want to be. I am one of those insane people. I like to travel. God only knows why when I can expect to get sick pretty much anywhere I land… but I do.

I can honestly say that I have been sick in every country I have ever been to bar one.
When I was 17 I travelled to Japan on a school language exchange and just around Christmas time when I should have been climbing some snow capped mountain with my peers I ate some kind of yellow rice bug and had to be admitted to hospital on a drip because my body decided that it didn’t like rice bugs and therefore thought everything else was a little yellow rice bug, thus rejecting anything I tried to give it. So for days on end all I brought up was mounds of rice. I can still remember the first pile of it on the landing to the stairs. I had gone to bed with Mai (the family Golden Retriever) sitting on my legs, she just wouldn’t let me be, I found it a little off putting that I couldn’t role over but I thought hey, if they dog likes me this much, just let her stay, what do you need legs for when you’re sleeping anyway, right? Within a few hours it was Mai who was waking up my host Mum to alert her to the fact that I was dying in her house. It lasted for days and my stomach felt like it was being ripped out. I think they eventually sedated me… who really knows. To this day I don’t even know what I had, they only spoke Japanese and I spoke mostly English so I put it down to the little yellow rice bugs.

Anyhoo… so that was Japan. My next time around was when I went to the states, and boy did I get sick there. I don’t think I realised I was jetlagged, in fact I’d taken all measures to make sure I didn’t GET jetlag, and I can’t really remember if it WAS jetlag or some nasty bug I caught but I was with the lovely Kait and we had gone to the mall to get something to eat on my second day in. I had ordered a salad because I was hungry but not THAT hungry if you know what I mean and thought to myself how effing big the damn thing was. We sat down at the table and I put it all together nicely with the dressing and that’s when the overwhelming nausea hit. Kait said I took one look at the salad and turned green. I don’t think I ate anything for the next three days and Kait had to force feed me nerds candy to get some energy back into my body so I could stand without feeling nauseated or light headed. I actually fell sick two or three more time whilst in the states and seeing I was there for over two months I suppose it was bound to happen.

My next experience was in Thailand. I can’t count how many times I felt I almost died in that country, especially climbing that freaking mountain and having my heart almost beat itself out of my chest… never… again… (side note: when my tour of Egypt was being planned I saw that he had included a trek up Mount Sinai and immediately said “no way” or something not so prime time friendly… actually, I believe it was close to “I am not doing another fucking trek up another bloody mountain…EVER.” and ordered him to change it to a nice trip to the desert instead… heat I can handle… treks up mountains I cannot.) So where was I… oh yes… Thailand… well it was that far back that I can’t actually remember a great deal, my feeling is that it was food related though… it normally is. I have a weak stomach. B on the other hand, has the stomach of Superman. He ate everything I did in all the same places I did and not once did he ever have any side effects. So when we got to Cambodia and the night terror ghosties made me ill I couldn’t eat for days. The very thought of food turned my stomach and once again I sought the solace of my bed. I think I slept for a day or two (it’s what I do when I’m sick) and then it was time to head south into Battambang which is where the whole Eye incident happened… and we all know about how I went half blind for a week.

Vietnam and Laos were pretty simple, just a few trips to the toilet from some dodgy food.
Dubai doesn’t really count seeing as I was only there for a few days and mostly stayed away from the food.

Egypt was another story. I honestly expected to be sicker than I was in Egypt. The night before I had to get on a Felucca and go floating down the Nile for three days I had a terrible bout of Delhi belly, so much so that I thought I might need a doctor. It was literally one of those times when a bathroom NEEDS to be close. Amazingly though I was okay the next morning and managed to make it on time to the Felucca. Now, if I had have actually known what was in store for us all on that three day journey I would have eaten a little more of what almost kept me from the trip and stayed well away!

Then there was the whole Camel meat incident. Yes, I think I actually ate camel meat. They pass it off a lot as beef in Cairo so if you ever order “beef” in Egypt and it doesn’t quiet taste right but still kinda tastes like beef enough for you to shrug your shoulders after a seconds thought and go “Ma” and eat it anyway…. Think a little longer. Come on, think about it… how many cows do to ACTUALLY see in Egypt…… eeeeeh?

Greece was a little boring. Just a cold. But that’s how all of Greece is. Bland and a little disappointing. I didn’t see Socrates, I didn’t feel like I was in The Odyssey, I didn’t feel like Helen falling in love with some Greek Adonis…. Greece was just…. Well…… Greece.
ITALY however was GREAT! Even my illness was great! How’s this to cap them all. Not only did I get food poisoning from a….wait for it…. MCDONALDS **GASPS OF SHOCK HORROR**….it HAPPENED at the VATICAN!!!! Yep. I, Lucy, am going to hell. I’m quit sure the Pope looked at the security video of me desecrating one of the toilets near the Sistine Chapel and had me barred for life, and I think he’s got an agreement with the Big G to keep me from those pearly gates if I should happen to visit any time soon.

Now let’s see what’s next… of RIGHT… London… the first time. Due to London’s FABULOUS underground train system closing of a night time if you should happen to be one of those unlucky bastards who gets a late flight from lets say.. ROME… that arrives a couple of hours after 11pm in London and don’t want to spend through your entire life savings getting a black cab to where the hell knows (because let’s face it, you don’t if it’s your first time) then you are going to be settling in for a nice and comfortable night at what is most likely Stansted Airport. The coldest, wettest, windiest, boringest (I just made that up for continuity), most far out of London airport in the freaking world. It was a hell of a night. I came from countries where it was warm to a country that was not and I had to try and sleep on the cold hard floor and it was NOT nice. So by the time the tube opened and I was able to go to the hostel I had booked in at I had developed a nasty cold which pretty much stayed with me when I went to Spain a few days later.

Spain was pretty mild as far as illnesses go as I just had the tail end of the cold I arrived to in Blighty, but I think getting robbed of my baby actually made me sicker and when I got back to London after Bastardlona I only got more sick.

Once that was over I started to get better and I was all set to go and see a friend in Paris!
The day I was supposed to leave for France however my body decides to keep me in the bathroom for most of the morning. I was so annoyed. So I left work 3 hours early to get better (side note: people with the runs shouldn’t be working with food… EVER) and went to the chemist to get a whole heap of meds including some gastro stop. After a while I started to feel well enough to get on the bus so off I headed. I thought I was okay until the first morning I woke up to the worst flu ever and ended up spending half the time I was in Paris sick in bed. So that was nice. There’s nothing like standing on top of the Eiffel Tower in the world’s most romantic city, looking out over it all and thinking of nothing but what would happen if you threw up over the edge.

I don’t think that whatever infection I had in Paris ever truly left me because there as a thing with my throat that just didn’t go away and last week it reared its ugly head. There’s still a debate about whether it is tonsillitis or strep throat but I don’t care what it was. It put me in bed for 5 days and even now that I’m up and around every single thing I attempt is so exhausting AND it seems I’m having a reaction to the Penicillin the hospital prescribed me. YAY!

SO… what has all this taught me?
Well, I’ve learnt that wherever you go you can pretty much rely on the fact that if you DO get sick you don’t always need medical insurance to help you out. (although it IS recommended, you can buy your way out of most anything like I did to skip the queue in Cambodia with my eye)
I’ve learnt that if the country you are in is relatively boring… ie… Greece…. Then whatever illness you have will be boring too.
I’ve learnt never to mess with the Vatican…. They know eeeeeeverything…… **looks over her shoulder in paranoia**
I pretty much know the state of all the health systems in most countries I’ve been to, as well as having in dept knowledge on the state of the public toilet cleanliness.
I’ve learnt that if you hate the place you are in then you will… repeat…. WILL…. Get the worst illness available to you at the time.
Always, always, ALWAYS carry some gastro stop. Always!
Re-hydration satches are GOLD!

Illness always weeds out those you can trust and those you should think twice about.
For example, Janna, whom I met with her partner Justin in Greece, was a godsend. She pretty much stayed with me and made sure I was okay and even took me to the hospital to get some help despite how much I hated her for it at the time. Thanks Janna.
So that’s what illness and travel has taught me. It’s a bitch of a way to go about things but I have a record of getting ill in 12 countries and seeing as I’m heading to Sweden for Christmas it might get bumped up to 13…….I wonder if I could make it into the Guinness World Records…

posted by Lucyspeak @ 3:19 am 0 comments

It all started in Italy and ended in Bastardlona

It's been a very long while since I actually posted to my blog I know, but I have been extremely busy and once I left Asia it was a lot harder, and a lot more expensive to connect to the internet than it previously had been. So I am updating.
I would like to relate to you the tale of my run of bad... no... terrible luck. It all started in Roma....
I loved Italy a lot, I had my birthday there which was celebrated in many ways over many days (will blog about that later) and while I was in Venice I met a man from India named Manish... we met by accident actually, as I was trying to find some accommodation back in Rome the night before I had to fly to London. I had been online for a long time and the max was about 15 minutes so when I saw he was waiting to use it I offered up the seat immediately. But he had seen how frustrated I was at the computer (I must have been muttering at it, I sometimes do that with electrical things.. they hate me, I swear) and offered to help. So he sat down next to me and we continued my frantic search for a room in Rome. Not long after that a force of nature from New York arrived. The incomparable Sandy and Di, two lovely ladies from New York, New York... and boy were they New York... or rather.. Noo yawk... within minutes they too were helping me find some accommodation and about 2 hours later I had booked back into the Camping place I had stayed at before I left Roma for Tuscany. We all decided to meet up the next day and go sight-seeing, Manish was leaving in the afternoon so we arranged to meet at the Vatican when I arrived back in Roma. My first attempt at the Vatican was terrible. I went with a woman named Mary from Perth who pretty much had to Mother me for most of the day we were out thanks to a nasty bout of food poisoning from McDonald's that developed shortly after we made it through the line INTO the Vatican... so within about 30 minutes of entry... all I saw was the nice white colour of the porcelain throne. We made it into the Cistine Chapel but I was so sick I couldn't have cared less... I just wanted out... so that's what we did, we left. Anyway, that was my first attempt at the Vatican and when Manish suggested we go together I thought it was a great idea. So we arranged to meet at 8am out the front entrance where we would then join the line.
So... I got up at 5:30 to make sure I had enough time to get the bus and train back into central Roma and check my luggage into the baggage hold at Roma Termini. That is not, however, the way things turned out. Everything was going great until the man at the baggage hold refused to take my luggage.
"No take." he says flatly.
"Why?" I enquire.
"No take." he says again and gestures that the bag is too heavy to lift.
Now I would have been okay with this had the man refusing to take my bag not been 6 foot something tall and muscly all over...
"WHAT?" I say exasperated.... "Too heavy?? I'VE been carrying it around and I'm only a 5'6" female!!"
"No take!!!" He says to me again getting annoyed.
At this point I was completely stunned and had no idea what to do. So I just left and went to the first internet cafe I could find to tell Manish I could not make it and because I didn't have a phone I could not call him and had to stand him up. (I'm SO sorry again Manish... at least I made it up to you in London.)
So anyway, I decided that seeing I was stuck with all my baggage I would just head to Campiano Airport early and check my luggage in there and then head back out, but it was a hell of a journey to get there and I left the internet cafe in a rush to make sure I made the right train.
When I arrived with my bag that was too heavy for a healthy 6 foot strong man, I pulled it off my back and onto a trolley that was lying around. The airport was surprisingly full of people considering it's brother Leonardo Da Vinci was the more busy airport so I immediately looked for a place to store my luggage and when I couldn't find it I asked information, only to find out that the crappiest airport in Roma does not HAVE a baggage hold.... so, there I was, stuck in the tiniest, busiest, crappiest airport ever and that's when I realised I had left my flash drive in the computer back at Termini. I slapped myself on the head and tried to think what was on it and whether or not it was worth lugging everything back into central Roma on the off chance that it might still be there, or just give it up for lost. It was a hard decision as it had a lot of information on it that I needed but the thought of going all the way back killed me so I stayed put.
When it was time for my flight I was so relieved to be getting on it and on my way to London. It kind of felt like I was going home for some strange reason and it would prove to be that way in a matter of hours after arrival.

ARRIVING IN LONDON
The arriving part was fine, it was the waiting for the tube to open part that was awful. because I had the last flight out of Roma I arrived in London just after midnight, which meant that the underground was closed and I had to wait until 5:30am for it to open again before I could get to the hostel I was checked into. So all night, I tried to sleep in chairs, in a coffee shop, on the marble floor with no heat whatsoever... this is the second most crappiest airport I've ever been to after Campiano. Absolutely terrible. When morning came I booked myself on the Terranova bus to Liverpool Street Station and marvelled at the fact that I was on a bus going through the English countryside heading for London. I was finally here.
I worked out the train system pretty quickly and made my way to the St Christopher’s Village where I was booked into and because check in wasn't until 2 (it was 10am) I had to put my luggage in storage and find something to do. As I was heading down the stairs a guy behind me asked if I needed some help but I refused and kept going and when I saw he followed me into the luggage room I smiled and realised he was actually an Aussie. Ryan is from Perth and he is a dentist and he is responsible for helping me get acquainted with London. Within the first 10 minutues of us talking he had invited me to breakfast and over a chat session he suggested that he introduce me to the manager of the Hostel's cafe about an interview for the job I had seen on an advert back at Reception. So the next day I went for the interview and the day after that I had the job and a place to live.
So with everything going so well in London I was looking forward to seeing my friend Ingrid again in Spain. I had booked my ticket two weeks beforehand back in Roma through Ryan air and left for Stansted again a few days after arriving in London. It was an early flight out and I had to sleep in the airport again because there was no way of getting to the airport in time for check in at 4am, so once more, I slept on the cold, marble floor... all the while battling a cold I had picked up after doing the same thing ARRIVING in London. So I knew this wasn't going to be good. I couldn't sleep though and sat awake the whole time just waiting for check in to start which actually went well. It wasn't until boarding time where things went wrong. Everyone was lined up to board but there were delays so we were all told to wait. People began sitting down to make themselves comfortable and I thought I would do the same which turned out to be a BIG mistake. Within seconds of sitting down I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion and when I awoke there wasn't a soul around. There was a young man (more like a 17 y/o kid) still sitting at the boarding desk (which happened to be right next to where I was sitting) and I approached him and asked "Excuse me, has the flight to Girona boarded yet?"
To which he looks at me and says with annoyance "Yes. Boarding is closed now."
At this point I almost swallowed my own heart as it jumped up into my throat.
"Oh." I said meekly.
"We've been calling your name for over 20 minutes." he snaps at me.
"Really? I've been sitting right here all along." I said, pointing to the seat next to the boarding desk.
“Well!! We have!” he says rudely. “You’re sequence number 28 aren’t you?”
I was confused at this. In all my travels I’d never been referred to as a sequence number before and I had no idea what I was talking about.
“What do you mean?”
“SEQUENCE NUMBER.” He says to me sarcastically like I hadn’t heard him. It’s the number on the ticket.
So as I scanned my ticket for the number he was talking about and found it, I thought to myself… OHHHH, you mean the number in the botton left corner printed in the smallest case possible??? Riiiiight.. yes, I am sequence number 28 you little pre-pubescent shit.
“Oh.” I say to him. “Wait… were you calling my NAME or the sequence number??”
This must have hit some kind of understanding with him because he suddenly goes bright red, making his flushed cheeks even more purple than they were and he says quietly…. “Oh….right..”
SILENCE…..
“Has the flight left yet?” I asked.
“No.” he says.
“Is there anyway I can still get on the flight?”
“The Captain has closed the gate but I will go and ask.” And almost before he stops talking he sped off hot footed to the Captain and within seconds he was back saying that I could board. The little shit. Yeah.. my name is sequence number 28 and I am ready to board. So, you can imagine my shame as I boarded the plane and took the first available seat as everyone else watched me. Here I was thinking that I was the reason the plane was delayed and yet it sat there on the tarmac for at least another half an hour with the Captain making announcements about delays in the traffic of the airways or something. They weren’t even waiting for me nor did they offload my baggage when “sequence number 28” failed to board. Ridiculous. If you ever get a chance to fly with Ryan Air please do because they are the “best” in the world. You get HEAPS of legroom with every seat being completely booked to your ticket. Their customer service is fantastic and their communication skills are HIGHLY commendable… AND they employ 17 year old boys to run boarding!! It’s GREAT!! AND… as an added EXTRA bonus… they ONLY talk to you via loudspeaker and charmingly apply a cute little number in replace of your birth name!!! (despite the fact that he was calling me by a number, he could have actually turned to his right to see me sitting there… right next to the desk he was sitting at… and walk the two steps towards me and wake me up and ASK me if I was “sequence number 28” but noooooo…)
So anyway, the plane finally took off and I was on my way to Spain.


BASTARDLONA
I was looking forward to Barcelona and to seeing Ingrid again and we were going to have so much fun. It almost all never happened though thanks to Ryan Air, the plane was late (not to mention what happened above) which meant that all my connecting trains and buses into Barcelona were pushed back making Ingrid think I wasn’t coming. She was ready to give up and quit waiting for me when I arrived on the last train in. We headed straight back to where she was staying so I could dump my things and then we headed out so she could show me some of Barcelona. That night we went to a Spanish Restaurant where we shared a litre of Sangria and ate some traditional Spanish food. Ingrid read my palm and scarily told me about Harley and said she was still with me (which I know anyway) and we laughed at the ridiculous piano version of “Light My Fire” by The Doors. When the waiter came over to ask us if we liked the music Ingrid commented that it was a little lame. Within minuted the music had been changed and Ingrid realised that the music we were listening to was actually a man ON a piano just out of our sight. She almost died of shame that he had heard her criticise his playing and changed it accordingly to please her. It was hilarious. So after we were thoroughly stuffed we headed outside into the rain and ran all the way to the nearest tube stop and headed back to our room.
We went out the next morning to do more sightseeing and more shopping. We headed up to the top of the mountain where you can see almost all of Spain and took some great photos but the rain became to much so we decided to head back to our room. The day had been a kind of disaster and it was good to get back and have a hot shower. We were planning to go out clubbing that night and wanted to get back to shower and wash our hair. We had met up with Ingrid’s friend Rachel (a Londoner living in Barcelona) earlier and set it all up so all we had to do was have a nap and get ready. That’s when we found the note under the door. Paolo (the moron the owner had left in charge while she had gone to the south of Spain) had left a note under our door saying that he “thought” we had to leave tomorrow and could we please call him. Ingrid was confused about this as the room had been paid for up until the 14th when she was leaving for Morocco, so we looked for the Receipt and when we found it we realised he had made a mistake on the initial booking receipt and only booked her in until the 13th, not the 14th… he had stuffed up on the dates. After much thought and discussion we decided it would be best if she said she couldn’t find the booking receipt so we ignored it for a while but then Paolo arrived at about 10pm and Ingrid went down to ask him about the note. I had to stay in the room because even though the room was booked for two people, Ingrid and Eirin (she was in India) I was not Eirin (although I'm convinced he thought I was) and we thought it best I not show my face while she confronted him about him “thinking” we had to leave.
The next few hours were just awful. As I sat upstairs I had to listen to my friend have a screaming match with this asshole Paolo. He refused to let her see the hotel receipts, he wouldn’t let her speak to the manager nor would he allow her to speak with the owner or realtor. It turns out that when Ingrid and Eirin were first booked in some 5 weeks beforehand Paolo had written the wrong date on the booking and no one had picked it up until now. He had realised when he went to make a booking for someone else but had us still in the room and these other people waiting for the room we were staying in. He had completely stuffed up and double booked and because Eirin was in India with no way for us to contact her we had no proof that we were booked until the 14th. We tried to call and email Eirin so we could get her credit card receipt but it was to no avail. We were up packing until about 2am and in the morning Paolo comes to us and says..
“You can stay in a dorm tonight. But you have to move from this room.”
“And we don’t have to pay?” Ingrid orders.
“No pay.” He says back , which I heard with my own ears.
But when Ingrid went down to tell him we were ready to move to the dorm he says to her “So how would you like to pay.” Which resulted in another shouting match and a warning from Ingrid to the people checking in (most likely the people he had given our room to) not to stay there.
We left shortly after and told him he was making a huge mistake.
Thankfully, Rachel let us stay at her apartment for out last night in Barcelona so it seemed that things were going to be okay, we weren’t going to be homeless for a night.
With all the stress of that behind us Rachel, Ingrid, myself and a bunch of other girls decided that we would cook dinner, go to see The Devil Wears Prada and then head to the famous nightclub Catwalk for a night out.
Everything was going so well and I was having so much fun and I even accepted a dance with a gorgeous man from Sweden before we both commented that we hated to dance and decided to take a walk along the beach instead. We must have talked for hours because before I knew it, it was 3am and I thought I had better head back to the girls but when I sat up from laying in the sand looking at the stars I had a massive heart attack.
“OH MY GOD!!!” I exclaim with a mixture of calmness and panic in my voice.
“MY BAG! It’s GONE!!!” I cry.
Then I realised that my companions jacket was also gone, in which he had his wallet, camera and passport.
I wont go into too many details of what happened after that point but for a split second I was terrified and sickened. I couldn’t believe I had gotten myself into a situation that had left me so exposed to…. Many terrible possibilities and I was hating myself for it.
Immediately my companion rushed to the people nearby asking if anyone had seen anything, and on the second or third attempt, he had found someone who had. Two French girls who spoke perfect Spanish had seen a black man walk from where we had been sitting in the sand with a handbag and a jacket, and that’s when it hit me. I had been robbed of all my important possessions. It all added up to about $6000 Australian dollars… my camera, the lens, my video camera, my money, my identification, my credit card… all gone.. and what’s worse… all the photos that I had taken during my time in Spain. It’s still taking a while to register that everything is gone and that I basically have to start again, but with the help of some new friends I am slowly getting back on my feet. It’s been so difficult though and there is no way I could have done it had I not already landed myself a job and accommodation before I left for Spain. So many people back in London have come to my rescue and I probably will never be able to thank them enough for the help they have provided me with.
So with all that summed up (in a condensed version of the whole story believe it or not) there were only two things that I liked about Bastardlona (yes, you read right... I think it deserves the title more) and one of them was seeing Ingrid again. So there you have it folks. I am no officially a photographer without a camera. It’s like having my hands cut off and my eyes poked out. It’s so painful. I am working my ass off to save for a new one but it will take forever. Let’s hope I can do it before I get a photography job!

posted by Lucyspeak @ 3:38 am 2 comments

Farewell Kelly the Kia

Let us all bow our heads for a moment's silence to mark the passing of my trusty automobile, Kelly the Kia. She was blue, she was fast and she was my first car... oh how we'll miss you Kelly Kia... and Kenny Kia will now be lonely without you. Things will never be the same.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 9:23 pm 2 comments