Chapter 33: Biep

I’ve been back home for about a week and I haven’t done much since.

Our last weekend was pretty quiet, even though we intented to party really really hard. We just enjoyed our last chances (for now…) to eat cheap Asian food, walk around in an Ozzie metropolis and have a big stare at all those extremely good-looking Asian girls.

About New Zealand, I could write lots of stuff about people we’ve met or things we’ve seen, but I don’t have the intention of doing so. Instead I’ll just summarize some things or people worth mentioning:

Don & Lis, an older couple we spend five days in total with. They picked us up in the middle of nowhere near Omarama and offered us a place to sleep in there summerhouse and when we got back in Christchurch, we stayed four days in their residence. We had our own bedroom/shower/toilet and they cooked us dinner every night and drove us around. Thank you so much!

Rob & Sinco, two engineers and both living in Christchurch. The first one makes polystyrene model planes for scientific research and the latter one has built and raced his own solar car. We stayed spend two nights at each’s house.

Richard, an older weirdo who gave us a ride from Invercargill to Te Anau. One of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He’s been all around and knows a lot about a lot. I was too amazed to offer him a beer and to ask him if he wanted to be my tutor.

James & Gabrielle, we couchsurfed at their place in Greymouth. Gabrielle was so kind to give us her parent’s adress. We stayed at Stephen & Trina’s place in Nelson for two nights. Trina made us the delicacy of the soutern island, Whitebait (fish).

Somewhere between Blenheim and Kaikoura I drove our rental car into the dunes to get some nice pictures. Result: we got stuck in the sand for three hours and I had to get help from a farmer who pulled us out. Minor setback: we were on the nicest ocean road the soutern island has to offer, but when we eventually got out, it was already dark.

During my entire stay (25 days) I haven’t seen one attractive girl or normal guy, which makes New Zealand home to the ugliest people in the countries I’ve travelled so far. It was even worse than England…

But what they lack of attractive people, some style/fashion and interesting towns/cities, they compensate by having stunning sceneries, beautiful landscapes/nature and friendly inhabitants. It’s definitely worth visiting those isolated islands one day; just rent a camper van and cruise around for as long as you want.

The first twelve days we got around hitch hiking, but after Queenstown we hired a car for ten days and drove 2392 km with it…Jev did about 120 km of them. Most of the time, we stayed at people’s places we met via couchsurfing or just on the road. 

After five months of living non-stop with Jev, I (we/probably everyone else) am quite surprised we didn’t get into a fight and only had minor discussions (we should’ve gone left instead of right, Jev) which were easily solved by a handshake. Although I’m not really sure if I’m able to cope with him another five months. Enough is enough!

Over and out. Biep.

Virgin Territory

I know it’s been a while since I last updated and those five persons that read my blog must’ve thought this blog was dead. Not entirely.

Alright, our trip started well: good weather, motivated spirits and Jev thought he found a way to crack the Rubiscube system which gave Julia and me an ideal time to chat and to ignore our back seat passenger. He only managed to get one side at a time, before he went back to sleep again.

When in Melbourne, we experienced something entirely new (for us) called couchsurfing. Well actually, I heard of it before and Jev’s been secretly a member for the past two years but we live at such a distant place no foreigner ever wants to come and visit us, which is sad because we have a public swimming pool with slides and a lot of local crafts.

So, in Melbourne we all lost our couchsurfing virginity at Mitch and Hickey’s place, two crazy dudes who rented (or bought, not quite sure) a house, and let everyone stay who wants to stay. Which is kinda super awesome!

They have one rule: everyone who visits the place, needs an animal name. My name was mouse (for some reason, that was the first animal that came to my mind), Julia was a cobra (you don’t want to know why) and Jev was called pigeon. Jev said it was because he has a good sense of direction, but he knows why we gave him that name. You just can’t look for dinner scraps unnoticed, Jev.

Our original plan, going to Melbourne and take the ferry to Tasmania, kinda backfired when we heard the actual prices of our little endeaver: A$ 840 or € 420 to take three people and a car across, what a rip-off! So, change of plans.

Instead, we stayed a couple of days longer in Melbourne and take the long way home to Sydney, along the coast and through rural Ozzie. Since we had a good first experience with couchsurfing, we used it a couple of more times and stayed at Les (dad) and Allan’s (son with brain damage) place in Sale, who had a a huge dvd collection put at our disposal; and at David and Robyn’s place, who left us a ginormous breakfast in the morning.

I took one or two pictures.

Bad Omen

I just received some rather bad news from the home front. My older cousin Stefan got involved in a severe car crash while he was driving his 2cv (deux-chevaux). Even though he has broken several bones, was in a coma for a while and was thought to be paralized, he already regained consciousness and shows no signs of paralized body parts, but it will take a while before he’ll be fully recovered.

When I saw the pictures of his shattered car, I kind of realised what risks I had been taken when I drove (sometimes like a boosting madman) the same type of car over bad African roads with holes in it that could’ve make entire trucks dissapear or when I zigzagged between African traffic in a tin and plastic made car. All of that without a driver’s licence and with barely any traffic experience.

That’s the second time in a week I received bad news involving a car crash. First, my French roommate had to leave Sydney unexpectedly because his younger brother got killed in a car crash, and now this. I hope those are not bad omen for our trip which starts tomorrow.

The End is Near

This Friday Jev and I will head south to Melbourne and Tasmania, but we won’t be alone. Julia, our French former roommate and current friend, will join us with her Ford station wagon. It’s a ten hour drive from Sydney to Melbourne, where we plan to stay for two or three days before we take the ferry to Tasmania.

The Colonel’s Chicken

The other day, I had KFC for the first time in my life…I think I leave it with that one time.

Look Down

This post hasn’t really got something to do with my stay here in Sydney, but I can’t leave it unmentionable.

The past months I’ve been reading Arnold Karskens’ blog. He’s a Dutch reporter, specialized in conflict zones. Along with Rudi Vranckx, he’s one of the few Dutch speaking journalists I can look up to for what I’d like to do as a living some day.

I always read his blog posts and articles with some reservations because he likes to glorify himself and/or his actions/opinions, but this time he really went over the top and he lost one of his followers by doing so.

I posted this on his blog (Dutch):

Beste Arnold

Ik lees af en toe je blog omdat ik hoop er iets uit te kunnen leren. Ik koester namelijk de ambitie om reisreporter te worden, meer bepaald één die naar achtergestelde gebieden of conflictzones reist of waar toerisme (nog) niet is doorgedrongen.

Aangezien er in België (want daar woon ik) en Nederland eigenlijk maar twee personen zijn (jij en Rudi Vranckx) die min of meer mijn ambitie bereikt hebben en waar ik dus naar kan opkijken, begrijp je dan ook dat ik veel belang hecht aan wat jullie twee doen en schrijven.

Hoewel ik je schrijfsels altijd al met een korrel zout heb gelezen omdat je jezelf, je eigen mening en je eigen acties nogal graag in de schijnwerpers zet, heb ik er toch altijd enkele interessante zaken en meningen uit kunnen filteren.

Maar nu ben je te ver gegaan: deze open brief getuigt van onprofessioneel gedrag. Je brief levert geen enkele bijdrage aan de hele situatie, je maakt belachelijke incinuaties en het lijkt alsof je deze brief hebt geschreven om toch maar iets te kunnen zeggen over deze tragische gebeurtenis, ongeacht de waarde van de inhoud.

Mijn docent had gelijk toen hij zei dat je eigenlijk maar een mediageile blaaskaak bent.

Wat mij betreft, heb je voor mij afgedaan.

Basically, it means ‘go f*** yourself’.

Up The Blue Mountains

The other day Jev and I went to the Blue Mountains, a national park about 100 km east of Sydney. As lazy as we are, we booked a guided tour that included transportation to the Blue Mountains, the promise of seeing living kangaroos while having tea, lunch, a walk in the valley and the possibility of taking three rides, and a ride back on a river cruise ship.

Now, I’m not a big fan of prearranged or guided tours because I don’t like going to places where everybody goes, it’s too touristic (shops,…) and too expensive, you always have to hurry and you’re stuck with idiots who think this’ the only way to travel. But like I said, at that moment we were pretty lazy, this tour wasn’t that expensive and it might be fun so we decided to go for it.

Boy, was I wrong…

It already started before we got on the mini bus: our name wasn’t on the list. Even though the lady who booked our tickets said we’d be picked up at the spot we were standing at. But the driver made a phone call and said he’d take us with him. On the bus I noticed I was surrounded by only old people and suddenly I got struck by a blind panic; did I have to spend my whole day with a bunch of old people? I think I already paid my dues while working at the Kaasboerin.

Luckily, we switched busses soon and shortly after, only young people were sitting behind or in front of me. It was pretty early in the morning and I was starting to doze of until the guide’s voice sounded through the speakers. As soon as I heard him talking about a wheelchair accessible pathway, a shopping village and nice spots to take pictures, I knew I was going to regret this day.

We were supposed to see hopping kangaroos but we didn’t, because lately there’s been a lot of Dingo activity in the area so the kangaroos moved on. That wasn’t in the brochures. While having tea, Jev and I found out we weren’t the only ones who spoke Dutch; two older ladies who have been living in New Zealand for 22 years, but were born and raised in the Netherlands. Twenty two years later and after hearing their first four English words, you still could tell they were Dutch.

You just can’t go anywhere, how desolated or remote the place is you’re visiting, without bumping into a Dutchman.

My friend Matthias once described that fact so accurately, it still me makes me laugh when I think of it: “I was reading the newspaper, and I read about an unknown and well hidden small village somewhere in Siberia. Apparently the church roof had collapsed and four people got killed. One of the victims was a Dutchman. Will I never…”

Back on the bus, and on our way to the next stop, the driver put on a tape with all kinds of bird sounds. More specifically about one type of bird that imitates all the sounds he hears (including chainsaws) to impress the female birds, narrated by sir David Attenborough. We shrieked with laughter.

After lunch, we went to see the Three Sisters, a rock formation that consisted of three rocks that don’t ressemble three sisters. It’s a name given by the Aboriginals, but I can’t remember the story behind it. The place was crowded with tourists, taking pictures with a flashlight in broad daylight, which makes very little sense. There was also this Japanese guy in our group who had two cameras hanging around his neck and had a videocamera in his right hand, filming everything.

Is he really going to watch all that again, I wonder? It reminded me of the videos my grandma always makes when she goes on a holiday, and while she’s filming she explains what you can already see. I tried to watch some of her videos, but they give me a headache. They’re just to shaky and are too badly focused. In most cases the tapes dissapear in some closet, never to be seen again. But then again, she still travels.

For our next climax, we took a Disneyland-like ride down (made even more exciting because of Indiana Jones music) to the Blue Mountains valley. In this ‘jungle’ they constructed an elevated pathway, so you didn’t even have to wear special boots. Jev and I were expecting something like that, so we just wore our All Stars the entire day. We even regretted we hadn’t put on our flip-flops.

To end this perfect day out, we returned to Sydney on the Parramatta river by boat. Unfortunately, the sun already dissapeared so we couldn’t enjoy the view alongside the river. We could only stare at each other, an empty bar or at that Japanese guy who was still filming. He looked like the kind of guy that tapes the birth of his child instead of holding his suffering wife’s hand.

Proud dad or not, who the fudge wants to see those disgusting images again?

PS I uploaded some pictures

Signs

Fall is kickin’ in because

- leaves float in the fountains near Darling Harbour
- less people sitting in the parks because of wet grass
- when I leave work, the street lights are already turned on
- I need my duvet at night
- when I leave the shower, there’s fog on the mirror
- girls don’t wear those lovely dresses anymore
- I start to wear trousers more frequently
- the Nutella isn’t that fluid anymore
- before I leave the apartment, I check for the weather
- at Kathmandu, umbrellas are a best seller
- I long for the Belgian summer…

Patrick

Patrick  is a small cockroach and lives somewhere in my kitchen. Actually, I tried to kill him first but after several failed attempts, he proposed a peaceful cohabitation and eventually, I agreed.

He usually sits on the top of our fridge, scanning the room with his antennas for potential threats or for a possible chance for a good grub. Even though we get along quite well, we both realize our treaty will collapse at some point and we’ll be at war again.

But by then, I’ll be prepared to withstand him (I don’t care which cake he will offer me this time) and one of us will perish.

Five More Weeks to go

Two months down, two more to go. The week before we leave for our three week trip to New Zealand (25th of May), we plan another little excursion to Melbourne and while we’re there, we’ll take a ferry to Van Diemen’s Land (a.k.a. Tasmania) so Jev can go mountainbiking.

The weather is still good, but it’s getting colder so I can use those three sweaters I brought with me. Maybe I need to buy a jacket as well, because it will be freezing when we go to Kiwi land.