Trawling Across England

Hello there! Ooh it's been a while hey? Naughty little Lou Lou :P

So where am I, you may be wondering? Well, it starts with Northern and ends in Ireland. I'll give you three guesses...

Last time I wrote, I was in Glasgow and about to move onto Liverpool. Well I got to Liverpool in one piece, not knowing exactly how long I would be there. I was staying with my friend Rich who I had met in the States a few years ago, working on the same summer camp. Anyhoo, he was kind enough to let me sleep on his couch for as long as I wanted and he actually lined me up with a possible job through a guy he knows who runs a nice little bar/restaurant place a walkable distance from his place. I was thinking of working there up until Christmas basically, but things didn't eventuate and so I made other plans! I was in Liverpool for about three weeks, and while I was there, I found a cool church called Hope City. There are are a few of them around the UK, one in Ghana and one about to begin in Germany. The people there were really friendly and it was nice to be able to go to the same church 3 weeks in a row, rather than flying through a different one each week (if at all!). I was invited along to one of the small groups on a Wednesday night and met some cool people. At the time, I thought I was going to be in Liverpool for several more weeks, but because the job didn't work out, there wasn't much point hanging around there when I had friends in other places that I could visit before Christmas. It's kind of a shame cause I was just starting to settle in there a bit.

While in Liverpool, Rich's sister Charlotte (who I had previously met in Melbourne) came to visit and we went to Knowley's Safari Park which was lots of fun! It's basically a drive through park with various animals hanging about, including a very cool pride of lions. We spent quite a while watching the big cats do their thing. After by-passing the baboon enclosure on the "car friendly" route, we decided to take our chances (well, Charlotte's chances, it was her car!) and take a ride through the enclosure and experience being in a vehicle covered in crazy monkeys!

I also went with Rich to check out a new apartment that he wanted to move into with his good mate Rob who had recently moved to Liverpool. The three of us were living in Rich's 1 bedroom apartment for a week and a half - very squishy! At least they won't have too much stuff to move to their new place and it's literally 2 minutes down the road.

While in the Beatles' hometown, I decided to do a Magical Mystery Tour which takes you around all the childhood homes of the fab four, as well as places like Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields. It was very educational! I met an Australian girl on the tour, so when it ended near the cavern club, we took the opportunity to go inside and have a cider and listen to some great Beatles covers in a world-famous live music venue. Very cool indeed. 


*Apologies for lack of photos of aforementioned events, those pics are all on my computer which is with my friend elsewhere at the moment - you will just have to use your imaginations...or go on Facebook*

My time in Liverpool came to a close and I was off once again - this time to Stoke, where Rich is originally from and where Charlotte and the Marsden family still live. I had visited a few years ago, so it was nice to be back at their beautiful country-style home overlooking rollling green hills. Rich drove me down cause he wanted to visit a friend who recently had a baby, so I was saved the trouble of dragging all my luggage to the train station and doing it the hard way (for once!)

Only had a couple of days at the Marsden's place but it was nice to spend some more time with Charlotte. We watched the annual plum pudding run fun they hold in the local area (all participants get a plum pudding at the end!) but it was sooooo cold and we were happy to head back to the house once the first 20 or so runners crossed the finish line. I also went to Charlotte's dance class one night and tried my best to follow along with the others. A bit rusty, but I tried my best and the girls were very gracious! We also baked a delicious carrot cake and hung around the house a bit while Charlotte was still recovering from a throat infection and general unwellness (is that a word?).

In the Marsden family home

Charlotte and Bobby

Rich &I in the Marsden kitchen

 From Stoke I took the train across to Nottingham where I have two friends, Zoe and Ciara, who I both met while volunteering in Uganda. Zoe was a fellow volunteer at Jenga and Ciara was on placement as a medical student at the Mbale Regional Hospital. We had really clicked when we met and I had her phone number, but when she returned to the UK, I realised I had her Ugandan number and I didn't know anything more about her than her first name and he fact she lived in Nottingham. I was really kicking myself for "losing" her, but lo and behold, 6 weeks after meeting her, I feel a tap on my shoulder in the Jenga office and I turn around to see Ciara standing there! She had randomly returned to get some more work experience rather than hanging around at home doing nothing (or something like that, I'm not 100% of the details!) We made sure we got each others details the second time around!


So I arrived in Nottingham on a Saturday evening and was met at the station by the lovely Zoe and we wandered into the city centre to get some dinner before hanging out a bit at her friends' house to watch X-Factor (UK) and then went to Zoe's dorm at her university. It was quite funny being almost 30 and sleeping on the floor of a college dorm alongside half a dozen 18 year olds who only just left home to begin their studies! Lucky I look young for my age and I think I got away with it ;) Also went to Zoe's church which was really cool and had some of Zoe's friends guess my age. One said 21 and another said 19. Awesome. I should be on an ad for Oil of Olay or something. After a fun weekend with Zozo, I was on to Ciara's place which was thankfully within walking distance of the city cause she had to work all day! Went to Nottingham castle, browsed some museums and shops, strolled through the Christmas markets and finally saw Twilight: Breaking Dawn with Zoe (I won't mention it was her 3rd viewing). Unfortunately, it was a teachers strike that day, so every kid and his BFF was at the cinemas and it took over 40 minutes to get to the front of the ticket queue!

So many fun red things to play with!

Me & Ciara at the Nottingham Christmas market

While in Nottingham, I also met Ciara's small group leader Cyrilin (she's Welsh) and her white Zimbambwean husband who have four little kids and run a charity called Operation Orphan that works in several countries in their "spare time", when they're not helping to run a large church and everything else! It turns out that they have a project in Uganda, and guess what town they work in? Yep, Mbale! Coincidence much? On top of that, the day I went over to hang out while Ciara was at work, another girl from their church, Sarah, had already arranged to drop in to speak to Cyrilin about her future move to Mbale with their project as a nurse and we got talking and I found out she doesn't know anyone in Mbale apart from this one local guy that manages the project on the ground, so I was able to pass along some contacts of people from Jenga and other Brits living over there that I think she will fit in with nicely.Talk about perfect timing!

My week in Nottingham soon came to a close and it was another case of just starting to get to know people then having to move on! Such is the life of a traveller I guess. I was soooo fortunate that week though to meet so many new people, be looked after amazingly well, have meals cooked for me and free gym passes handed my way! 

Nottingham Castle

Statue of Robin Hood

So back on the train and off to the east coast I went towards Grimsby, where the lovely Sarah Roddich picked me up at the station. Sarah is a friend from Melbourne who I've known for about 10 years through church, but she has since moved to NSW to do missions training, met her Irish Mr Right (Scott), got married to him in Australia, then moved to England to continue her training (and begin his!) with New Tribes Mission (NTM) after the campus in NSW couldn't offer the courses they needed. So I spent a week with all the NTM people on campus which was a great experience. I stayed in the house of a couple who work on the admin side of things there, but basically spent breakfast til late evening with Sarah & Scott on campus, going to classes with them (Bible studies with Scott and Linguistics with Sarah), cooking a little bit, getting to know some of the other students who are mainly from Germany, Holland and Norway, and basically tagging along with whatever was happening that day!

Sarah in class at NTM

Looking out over Louth from the church tower

Scott with one of his classmates, Jonny

It was really great to sit in on classes and delve into the Bible on a deeper level in terms of both intellect and personal experience. I have to admit that I don't read my Bible all that often, and when I do, I often find it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I was really encouraged to read it more and not just to read it, but to actually study it! There's so many layers and richness to the stories and writings in both the Old & NewTestament and I was really inspired to search these layers and understand what's really going on anad what God is saying through it, rather than just skimming over it for the sake of reading it cause it's something you're "supposed to do". I only went to one Linguistics class with Sarah and it was very interesting but very over the top of my head! They're basically learning how to take a foreign language that has no written form, and create a written form for it from scratch. Not an easy task! There's a really cool sense of community on campus and although people are people and of course they're not all holding hands and singing songs with unicorns and rainbows, there is a sense that they're all kinda heading in the same direction and people really enjoy being a part of each others lives.


The week that I was there was the final week of class before a 3 week break for Christmas, so once class was out on Friday, people began to take off in their cars or trains or ferries or buses, bound for their respective homes. On Saturday morning, we had an early rise and we set off by 6:30am for the lower east coast of Scotland in order to catch our 2:30pm ferry to Northern Ireland. One of the guys who works in the NTM kitchen, Andrew, is also from near Belfast, so he had organised with Scott and Sarah to travel with them. So the four of us set out in the pitch black with the moon high above us on a very frosty early morning that left the roads a bit icy. Thankfully both Scott and Sarah were very capable on the roads and we reached our destination safely and in plenty of time. At one point as we were driving through some fields around sunrise, I was prodded awake from my nap to discover we had suddenly entered a winter wonderland! There was snow everywhere! Sarah and I were very excited but to Scott and Andrew, it wasn't such a big deal! We drove out of it though and were back to green fields again. I just hope the snow arrives in time for a white Christmas!

Winter wonderland!

Here comes the sun...

So we got on the ferry and I was quite blown away by the fancy-ness of it all! I was literally expecting some old boat with hard plastic chairs on top with dirty glass windows to peer out of during the 2.5 hour trip, but thankfully my expectations had no effect on reality! The ferry was huge and brand-new looking inside: lots of comfy seats and benches to sit on, an amusment arcade, nice shops, a free mini-cinema, free interactive games (we played the dance one and I totally want an Xbox 360 now!), a day spa, cafe'sm restaurants, ipads you can play around on and lots of other cool stuff. I was actually kinda bummed that our journey wasn't longer so we could make full use of everything! There was also this cool video projection on the floor of a tropical underwater scene, and when you put your foot on it, the "water" would ripple - who comes up with this stuff?!

Sarah, Scott & Andrew on the ferry

The cool fish floor!

So now I'm in Nothern Ireland, staying this week at Scott's grandma's house and it's very cosy and lovely. It's sooooo bitterly cold here at the moment and even though it hasn't been cold enough to snow, it feels like -10 degrees! I think it's the dampness of the air or something, it just goes straight through you and I always have freezing cold feet. So next time you complain cause it gets above 35 degrees over there, just spare a thought for those of us shivering on the other side of the world! ;)

Well it's only a couple of weeks until Christmas and Sarah &I are very much hoping for some snowfall on the big day! We haven't done anything really touristy yet, but we've got a couple of weeks to get around and to be honest, I'd rather be warm inside than out exploring in this weather!! I will write again when I have some nice bits of Northern Ireland to show you! Over and out,

Lou :)

The only country where the name Kilgour doesn't raise an eyebrow...

Hello my pretty ones! I know I haven't been writing in here all that much lately, but I don't want to bore you with my touristic stories of "I saw this, then I saw that" all the time! Although, having said that, I will do a quick recap of my time since leaving Germany. How about some dot points? Sounds grand.

• Arrived at Edinburgh airport and sailed through UK customs with ease...all that stressing about deportation for nothing!
• Stayed two nights with a lovely middle-aged couple I found on 'couch surfing' (www.couchsurfing.org)
• Caught up briefly with Duncan (fellow volunteer in Uganda) for lunch at Edinburgh Uni
• Went to Aberdeen to stay with my friend Al, who I worked with on Camp USA back in 2005. Saw a few castles, ruins, cute towns, (freezing cold) beaches, a whisky distillery, reindeer, mountains, lots of pretty Autumn trees and best of all...Loch Ness!
• Ate haggis
• Bussed down to Glasgow to stay with Al's sister (and my Camp USA boss!) and her boyfriend. Had a wander around the city. Apparently Scarlet Johannsen is here at the moment...
• Caught up with Chris, a guy who worked at the golf club with me a year or so ago, and a couple of his friends for a drink or two.

Here's some visuals for you...

The View of Edinburgh from Calton Hill

The house I stayed at in Edinburgh :) Bay windows!!

Me & Duncan outside Edinburgh University

Al & I at Glamis Castle (who's read MacBeth?)

Chilly Aberdeen beach!

Me outside Royal Lochnagar whisky distillery

At Urquhart Castle overlooking the Loch Ness

Heading up Caingorn Mountain on the funicular railway

Dip & Hilary outside the cafe where we had lunch in Glasgow

Me & Chris outside Glasgow University

And that pretty much brings us to today! Happy halloween everyone. People actually go all out for it here, but from the sounds of things on Facebook, it's becoming more popular at home too! Yesterday I saw a guy dressed as Super Mario in Primark. 

Tonight I'm train bound for Liverpool, the home of The Beatles! Oh and my friend Rich, who I also know from Camp USA. Not sure how long I will stay there for but what's new hey? I am typing this in Hilary's kitchen and her pug puppy - Chuck Norris - is snoring on his little bed mat. Cute. 

Chuck Norris

 

Well, it's approaching noon and I'm still in my PJ's. Ain't life grand? I should probably start getting my stuff together and perhaps have a shower and put real clothes on. Ah, so much effort. So tonight I will bid Scotland farewell and head to the Motherland. That would be England. Maybe I'll go visit Will & Kate? Sounds like a plan.

Ok, well signing off from Glasgow and will return once I have some news from Liverpool! Ciao,

Louise :)

Moving on to the land of beer, bratwurst and blondes

Hello there. Apologies for my lack of updates lately – I’ve been a busy girl! So, I have now left the Netherlands behind after a wonderful four week stay. To my great surprise and pleasure, there was actually a late burst of summery weather during my final week in Utrecht which meant that there was plenty of casual strolls, lying in parks, cycling around town and even a trip to the beach! Okay, so it wasn’t anything near an Australian summer, but 24 degrees and sunny feels like heaven after two weeks of cold, grey drabness (I think I just invented a new word). 

I was very lucky to be able to catch up with so many friends in Utrecht and also visit Amsterdam for the day and catch up with two friends I met at summer school in Sweden back in mid 2007. Oh, some breaking news for you - at Amsterdam central station, I had my first ever wall kroket! For those of you who are thinking “huh?”, let me explain. Well, a kroket is a very Dutch stick of gooey meat stuff, crumbed and deep fried into a tasy snack and usually eaten with mustard. Mmm, lekker . At some fast food snack places like Febo and Smuller’s, they have a wall with small slots or windows in them, where you put the right money into the slot and you can open the window of your choice to retrieve your kroket…or hamburger or frikendel or whatever you have picked from the columns of tiny, treat-filled windows (Note: don’t put in a 2 euro coin for a 1.50 euro kroket. The don’t give change. Bastards.). So I bought a 1.50 euro meat kroket from Smullers for 2 euros, and Bart told me the story of how one night he was really tired and hungry, so he went to the snack wall and put in his money…and then in his tired and hunger-induced state, opened an empty window! That story made me happy and sad at the same time.

Last weekend I took the train across to Nijmegen to meet my friend Ralf, who met me at the station and showed me around town. I had visited there 4 years ago but didn’t get to see a lot of the city, so it was nice to have a good wander around and visit the bar where he used to work and so forth. It just so happened that the carnival was in town, so we checked it out that night and went on the Break Dance ride – felt like a teenager at the Croydon festival again! (only this one was faster and went for longer, woop woop) 

The next day we went to Efteling, which is an amusement park based on a fairytale/whimsical kind of theme. Think of it as a Dutch Disneyland…minus Mickey Mouse. It’s mainly for kids and a lot of the rides are more about stories, songs and entertainment rather than sheer thrills, but there were also a few rides for the older kids! The park was really busy that day for some reason, so there was a lot of lining up to be done L We had waited around 40 minutes to go on Ralf’s favourite ride – the ‘George & the dragon’ rollercoaster – and we were right at the front with only one couple in front of us when there was a technical malfunction. Boo. The people on the ride had to get out of the carriages and walk back to the exit and the Efteling mechanics tried to fix the problem. We decided to stick around and wait seeing as we had come that far, and it ended up being a good hour wait in total to finally go on the ride. I think the first bend with the big drop that makes you feel like you are going to die made it worth the wait! 

As always, there are photos on Facebook if you want the visual version of my day at Efteling…

The next day I was on the move again (don’t you just love unpacking and repacking?) and was very kindly picked up by the lovely Anna who drove me to her place in Arnhem, around 30 minutes from Nijmegen. We had a look around the city and went up the tower of the main church there which is under construction at the moment (but what isn’t in this country?). We had to look out through all the scaffolding, but still got a nice view all over the city and also had a chat with these two little old men who were super cute. I think they were excited to be talking to two people who were closer to kindergarten than a retirement village. The next day Anna took me to the open air museum in Arnhem which is going to turn 100 years old next year…it’s not that much younger than Australia! Well, the “official”, white people claiming it version anyway. It was a huge plot of land with heaps of buildings on it that were set up like they would have been hundreds of years ago. Some of them were actually from the era they represented, but some had been built more recently in the older style. There were staff there dressed in olden days attire who did demonstrations of things like wood carving, making linseed oil and brewing beer and some that would just give you a mini history lesson about the building and what like was like back then and answer all your questions. The grounds were beautiful and we had a really fun day exploring everything and chatting to all the staff who were all 60+ and loved talking to two young girls! At the end of the day, we went to this “show” called Holland Rama which was a visual journey through some of the history of the area in a theatre where the benches moved up and down on hydrolics and the theatre rotated to show different scenes/sets. I was thought it was just going to be some video on a projection screen when I first walked in, so I was pleasantly surprised that the show was far more creative and entertaining that I had expected! Anna’s financé, Bob had dinner ready for us when we got home, which was a nice chance to sit down and relax after a full day of being a tourist…ahh.

The next morning, Anna had to drive to her office near Amsterdam for a meeting, so she dropped me off at the nearby station and I said farewell and headed over  to the Dam, where I had arranged to carpool with someone from there to where Wolfgang lives, just south of Frankfurt. I had thought that maybe I would just hang at a cafe inside the station until 3pm when we were due to depart, but there wasn’t really anything around that had good seating (even Starbucks only had a couple of tall tables with chairs, what’s up with that?) or free wifi advertised, so I chucked my backpack into a locker and headed out into the city for the day. Browsed through H&M before heading to McDonalds where I bought a coffee and sat and used their free internet until about 2pm when I realised I still had to go to the post office and the supermarket, so I went off on my errands and raced back to the station lockers to collect my bag and get to the nearby pick-up point. I arrived about 5 minutes late and a little out of breath, only to find that my ride wasn’t even there yet. There was a couple standing nearby who asked me if I was waiting for the same person, Asmaa, who in my mind was a guy, but in reality was a girl! The couple were from Frankfurt and had just nipped over to the Dam for a 2 day mini break and thankfully only had basically a large handbag between them as luggage! More room for my stuff in the boot – yay! Apparently Asmaa was running late, so we waited in the chilly Amsterdam afternoon air until she showed up at 3:40pm and apologised profusely before giving us all a welcome hug. She was very cool and reminded me a lot of my friend Ceda for those of you who know her. Her parents are Moroccan but she was born and raised in Germany and she’s a bit of a free spirit, especially for a German! ;) It took us ages to get to the German border due to traffic jams and stupid 50km signs on the Dutch freeways, but eventually we crossed over and were greeted by the open road and a lack of speed limits. Listened to music and chatted a bit and eventually arrived in Frankfurt around 9:45pm to drop off the other two, before heading south. Asmaa kindly dropped me off at Wolfgang’s door and didn’t charge me any extra than going to Frankfurt. What a nice girl. I was greeted by Wolfy who had made me a little welcome sign/note that made me laugh so much that I cried. Oh that boy is hilarious.

So now I’m sitting at Wolfy’s place in Lorsch, Germany and he’s at work and it’s cold and the internet isn’t working. But it’s all good! I think I’m going to go explore this little town and see what’s out there, so auf wiedersehen to you (and you and you and you) and I will write again when I do! Thanks for reading. Mwa!

Lou :)              

PS: Apologies for the lack of photos, but I'm not on my computer at the moment!

The Land of Tulips, Cheese and Miserable Weather

Hello there – or as the Dutch would say, hallo! Greetings from Utrecht. It’s quite strange being back in this city. For those of you who don’t know, I spent 5 months here back in 2007 as an exchange semester with my studies. Not a lot has changed…a few new shops have opened up, a few have gone and my house no longer exists. In many ways, stepping out of the train at Utrecht Centraal felt like stepping back in time four years. I almost expected to bump into some of my fellow international students here, but of course, they are all long gone and back in their respective countries or wherever else they’ve ended up. It’s been great to catch up with some of the people here that I haven’t seen since 2007. 

 So I kind of reversed my original travel plans and flew to Amsterdam rather than Eindhoven last Thursday, with a shiny new emergency passport in hand (which is still completely blank, by the way!). I had planned to stay in the Dam for maybe a few days, then move on to Utrecht, but upon landing at Schipol airport, I discovered that my last chance for crashing at a friends’ place had fallen through and I had no accommodation in the city…during peak season when a bed in a hostel dorm will cost you 40 euros! So thanks to my time in Barcelona, I had Dieuwke’s number and I apologetically asked if I could stay with her in Utrecht that night (it’s about a 30min train ride away). Turns out she wasn’t in Utrecht, but at her parent’s house near the airport, but she kindly invited me to go stay with her there. Also turns out it was her Dad’s birthday and they were having a family get together to celebrate. Slight gate crashing on my behalf, but I had few other options! Took the train to the next station across where Dieuwke came and picked me up and took me to her parents house, where I was graciously and warmly welcomed. It was so nice to be in a house and a particularly cute and cosy one at that. The temperature was a good 12 degrees cooler than in Spain, so it was nice to sit and drink tea in a nice warm house, wearing non-summer attire and meeting all of Dieuwke’s aunties and uncles!

So for the past week I have been staying in Utrecht at Dieuwke’s house (my lifesaver!) and she said I am welcome to stay as long as I like, but I am sleeping on her bedroom floor and am very aware of being in her personal space, so I may share the love around, so to speak. I visited my “old” church on Sunday which was cool and I’ve caught up with most of the people I met here when I first came…Daniel, Tim, Marijn & Roald…plus met some new faces. The more the merrier! One of my good friends here, Anneleen has since moved to Groningen in the north, so at some point I will go visit her for a bit, then I guess make my way to Nijmegen to stay with Ralf, before heading over to Germany to visit the Wolf-dog. Or you can call him Wolfgang. He answers to both.

                                              This is not Wolfgang. This is Daniel. In the park.

It feels weird being somewhere familiar that is now different. Does that make any sense? Not that the city itself has changed all that much, but I guess the people have. Myself included. People keep asking what I’m doing in the Netherlands, then I have to give them a long-winded answer that can basically be summed up in the three words “I don’t know”. I’m trying to shut up the part of my brain that wants to find deeper meaning in everything and have my entire future planned and sorted out. Just enjoy the ride. Breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeathe. Ahhhh.

So yeah. No exciting news really, just me trawling about town, visiting places that I used to like to visit and eating things I used to like to eat – minus Manneke pis fries and Swirls (think Wendy's bitz for those who can think that far back). I don’t intend on returning to Oz with 10kg of “extra baggage” this time! Utrecht is a very beautiful little city and there’s certainly a nice charm about the place. The weather is rather horrific for this time of year, but really I shouldn’t have expected sunshine, lollypops and rainbows. Well, two out of three ain’t bad, hey? Speaking of rainbows, youtube search “double rainbow” and have a good laugh.

Okay well I think my (possibly) quasi-interesting ramblings are coming to a neat end, so I will leave it there and bid you all farewell until the next time I put my fingers to keys. Unless I find a piano beforehand.

Doei!

Lou :)

The Processing Process

Hola again from Barcelona…or Bathalona as the Spanish would say! Soo…I’m sitting here with my lap top and free wi-fi (woo hoo) in the lobby of my hotel, enjoying the cool breeze coming in through the open doors that lead out to the balcony and a nice view over this end of the Gothic Quarter. 

My room has one small window that faces into the rest of the building, so unless I have the fan on, it’s like a sauna in there! So I realised that all my blogging since Uganda has been all about going here and there and doing this and that, but I haven’t really put many of my thoughts into words. Maybe that’s a good thing for all of you out there? But anyway, I’m going to give a quick rundown of the last couple of days and then we’re going to journey into my mind…it’s a scary place and almost as big as Barcelona ;)  

 Yesterday I had a nice relaxing day at the beach, swimming and sunbaking with a million other tourists…and probably a few locals thrown in for good measure. Headed over to the ‘Olympic’ part of the city to see some of the sights like the stadium and the national art museum. I’m too much of a tight-ass to pay to get into anything here, so I perused a small free exhibition and on I went. More walking! Got a great view all over Barcelona from the top and had a nice chat with Chris on the mobile, thanks to my new Spanish sim card with pretty decent international call rates. Wandered through the park area with the plan to visit the castle, but stopped off to get some food and realised it was ages away and my legs were literally numb! Plonked myself down by the harbour with a peach frozen yogurt cone (my new obsession) and took in the view and people-watched for a bit while my legs recovered somewhat. 

Managed to walk back home again and get myself ready to meet one of my Dutch friends, Dieuwke, who just happened to take a 3-day mini break to Barcelona by herself this week. Good timing! We met on the famous La Rambla (basically a long street covered in tourist shops, over-priced restaurants, delicious gelati outlets and more buskers than you can poke a stick at) and wandered into the market I had stumbled across the previous day where I found massive fruit salads being sold at the end of the day for one euro! Yeah baby. We were hoping to try out one of the tapas bars there, but it seems they are only open for lunch. Thankfully I had googled some good eating places beforehand, so we walked to a nearby place that does pintxos – basically slices of baguette topped with various amazing things. 

There’s everything from prosciutto to smoked salmon to deep fried cheese croquette to tuna with mayo, red capsicum and fried leek to goats cheese with pesto and pine nuts etc etc. There was even a dessert one with lemon cream cheese, nuts, thick berry sauce and crunch little caramel wafers in it – I didn’t have one but my friend said it was amazing! You just kind of stand at the bar where all the plates of pintxos are set out and you take what you want and at the end you count up your toothpicks (there’s one in each pintxo/s) and pay accordingly. They were all 1.80 euros each at this place, which seems pretty standard in Barcelona. I had the goat cheese one, a hot (as in warm) mushroom croquette one and the one with tuna/mayo and fried leek etc. They were all delicious! We ordered a cider each with our food, expecting the usual Bulmers or whatever, but instead we got about 2 inches of some pale yellow liquid each in the bottom of a glass that tasted somewhere between a white wine and cider. Weird. After our “entree” we walked to the nearby ‘Les Quinze Nits’ (check it out http://www.lesquinzenits.com/) which is a fancy looking French restaurant on the edge of a plaza that is actually very cheap! I think the most expensive main is around 11 euros. It was my second visit and I opted for the salmon fillet with sautéed greens. Mmmm so good. We shared some sangria and at the end of the meal when we saw the dessert menu, we buckled and ordered one each! I had a cataluyan dessert which was nougat ice-cream covered in custard that had been scorched on top to become crackly like a crème brulee, surrounded in dark chocolate sauce. So healthy! Lucky I had done a lot of walking that day ;)

 Wandered around a bit with Dieuwke looking for a place that sold camera batteries for her and phone credit for me, but to no avail. Parted around 11pm with plans to meet up the next day (today) to either do a walking tour of the old town or have some more beach time before Dieuwke flew back to the (cold) Netherlands. 

So this morning I got a text saying we would meet at the metro stop near the beach and just chill there before she took her bus to the airport. We were supposed to meet at 9:30am, so I walked over and opted not to take my phone in case we both wanted to swim at the same time – never leave anything of value on the beach in Barcelona! Not the greatest idea. I got there on time and waited but she never came. I stayed til around 10am then figured she’d changed her plans, so I went to the beach and sunbaked and swam by myself for a bit. Returned to the hotel to find 6 missed calls and about 5 messages from Dieuwke saying she was running late and to meet at such and such a time instead, which was all a little bit late. I had no credit, so I couldn’t call to explain my absence, so I got some frozen yogurt (with fresh mango and muesli) and tried to find a place that sold mobile credit. Again, to no avail! Headed to Park Guell on the metro, which is a park that Gaudi designed – payed for by his rich friend Eusebi Guell! 

It’s got some cool stuff in it and from the very top you get a spectacular view all over the city (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Guell). Had a look around and almost died from heat exhaustion! Decided to walk to the Sagrada Familia but took a wrong turn and ended up going the even longer way to get there! I was pooped when I arrived, but it was a good chance to sit down and get a better look at the building…and enjoy my fresh raspberries and lemon Fanta zero! Eventually got some phone credit and apologised to Dieuwke who was probably already back in the NL by that time. Went back to the beach for a stroll and to tip my feet in the Mediterranean one last time. Walked back home, got some dinner to take away and here I am back in the hotel, fed, watered and pooped!

 The latest on my travel plans is that I will probably fly to Amsterdam tomorrow rather than Eindhoven for two reasons – a) the friend I am staying there with had his holidays this week, but they end tomorrow when I would now arrive and b) the only flights there are in the morning, before I would be able to get my passport, meaning another day/night in Barcelona and then fly on Friday morning. So Amsterdam seems the better option at the moment, and logistically it makes more sense to start at the most western point of my visits and head east into Germany to see Wolfgang, rather than zig-zagging back and forwards. I haven’t booked anything yet because I want to be sure that my passport will be in my hand tomorrow morning! Nothing like leaving things to the last minute hey?

So that’s pretty much Barcelona all wrapped up in terms of being a tourist. Now for the voyage into my mind that I promised you all. I know you’re all itching to jump aboard!

Well, at first, being stuck in Barcelona for 3 days alone seemed like a sucky situation. I know it’s not the end of the world or anything, it was just unexpected. But after having some “me” time and having a good chat with Dieuwke last night, I think I needed some down time apart from all the touristy stuff and being around people all the time to start processing things. Maybe God knew I needed a bit of unwinding time before I start gypsying my way through Europe, visiting all my friends. I know that I haven’t processed a lot of what I experienced in Africa but I think all that will come with time, it’s not something you can force. 

At the end of my time in Uganda, I knew that coming to Spain would be a bit of a shock to the system, which it was, but what I didn’t expect was how quickly this ‘western’ way of living just became so normal to me again. It took literally about a day to readjust back into the same old way of living and always being so comfortable and not really talking to strangers and all those things we do on a day to day basis. It was almost as if my time in Uganda had never happened. Not to say that I unlearnt everything or that it was all a waste of time (because that’s not true in the slightest!), but it was just scary how quickly I just fell back into what I was used to. I mean, it’s not like I went out on a shopping spree or spend hundreds of dollars on expensive hotels or anything, but those little thoughts re-entered my mind, like “oh, that girl there looks so stylish, you’re such a dag compared to her”, or “hey, those earrings are nice, I don’t have a pair in that colour, I must buy them” etc etc. Everything in our culture tells us what we should look like, what size we should be, what clothes we should wear and what soft drink we should consume. I guess being in Mbale was a welcome respite from the constant bombardment of advertising we normally get that we have become so used to that we don’t even realise how pervasive it is. Everyone walks around here, enjoying the sunshine and the good food and the gelati and all the sites and sounds and the beauty  - seemingly oblivious to the fact that the vast majority of the rest of humanity do not get to live like this. And the scary thing is, I have done the same. It troubles me how little I’ve thought about Uganda since I left. I had amazing experiences there and made some really good friends, but I feel like part of me has detached itself from the continent…maybe it’s too hard to leave too much of myself there because it’s difficult to be part of it all from a distance and I don’t know when I will be able to return.

I’m not really sure where I am at the moment. Yes, I know I’m in Barcelona, but I’m talking figuratively here! I don’t know where I’m heading and I don’t feel pulled towards anything specific at the moment. I want to enjoy my travels and these new experiences – which I am – but there’s always that bittersweetness to it. That not knowing what happens afterwards and whether you’re in the right place at the right time or if what you’re doing is meaningless in terms of the bigger picture of the universe. I think the key to being content in life is feeling like you’re doing exactly what you should be doing at that given point in time. Even if that’s just being at home with a casual hospitality job or being a mum or a cleaner or unemployed – when you have that sense of peace about it, it gives you a satisfaction that you don’t necessarily get from doing more adventurous things like travelling the world or having a high flying career. I guess I haven’t really found my “thing” yet for this stage in my life. I love travelling, I really do, but at the end of the day, if all you’re doing is taking things in without really giving out, it seems a bit hollow and selfish. Maybe I need to be more proactive in finding ways to give out while I’m moving from place to place. Any ideas anyone??

So I think I’ll leave it there. It was a bit of a short journey, but sometimes if you just keep going, you’ll never stop! So I will save you all from a lengthy spurt of incomprehensible psycho-babble ;)

Hopefully by the next time I write, I will be in another country, in the home of someone I know! Ahhh, a house. A home. What a nice thought. Until then, signing off from Spain for (hopefully!) the last time…adios!

Lou :)