Lisbon – Part 2

After dinner we went back to the hostel for a bit before the pub crawl started at 11pm. Christian (one half of the couple from Ringwood) and I played a bit more Wii and drank a few beers.

When 11pm rolled around, the fun began. :D I met a few more people coming along including 2 Portuguese girls, a couple (one who was British, the other American), 2 Spanish guys and a Brazilian guy who was in my room.

We followed Marco up to Bairro Alto and to a few bars, having a shot in each which was included in the €5 cost of the pub crawl.
We all got progressively more fucked, drinking copious amounts of beer in each bar and rocking out to traditional Portuguese music (one tonne radio anyone?) and making dickheads of ourselves.

We called it quits at about 5am I reckon, and myself, the two American girls (Berkley and Kristen) and Christian and his girlfriend walked back to the hostel.

Woke up at 11:45am the next day just in time to have a shower and check out. Handed my key back and then fell back asleep on the couch in the TV room. This was cool because I reckon most other hostels would be like “no gtfo” but these guys were cool about it.
2pm rolled around and I woke back up and saw blue sky out the window and decided I should make the most of it.

Had some food at a cafe up the road and then went up to the elevator to Bairro Alto where I took some awesome photos of Lisbon.

Saw the extensive network of trams and funicular railways they run through Lisbon, All the roads up in the high neighbourhood snaked around everywhere and pitched down into small valleys where the hills undulated, it was awesome.

Discovered a lookout that comprised of a terrace overlooking the river and a small cafe where lots of locals were hanging out. I stopped for a while and took in the view and enjoyed it.

I walked further up narrow streets checking out the houses and general layout and architecture of the city. It’s such an awesome place, everything is so tightly packed together and dense.
By this time it was about 4:30pm so I headed back to the hostel to get my gear and get a bus to the airport for my 6:50pm flight.

The common area/reception at Rossio Hostel. I can’t recommend this hostel highly enough. If you’re ever in Lisbon, definitely don’t stay anywhere else.

Had to wait about 15 minutes for a bus to the airport, and arrived at about 6pm. Checked in and passed through security pretty quickly. Arrived back at London Heathrow at about 9:30pm and endured a long queue of first time students at immigration. Overall and awesome weekend checking out a totally different side of Europe.

Lisbon – Part 1

Woke up mega early on Saturday morning (4:30am) and got a bus to Westbourne Park tube station and on to Paddington to get the Heathrow Express train to the airport. From Central London it only takes 15 minutes which is awesome, but it is £32 return.

The flight to Lisbon was fairly uneventful, departing at 7:30am and arriving at about 10:30am. Lisbon is in the same time zone as London, so the longer flight is doable because there’s no time change compared to continental Europe. I checked out the directions from the hostel and grabbed a bus after changing my cash to Euros and picking up a Lisbon Card that got me cheap/free entry to places and free public transport. When I got on the bus I saw a guy steal a camera out of this woman’s purse and he got out and got away with it, pretty brazen. More about this guy later, quite a coincidence.

I thought the bus went all the way to Praca de Rossio where the hostel was but it stopped half way and I had to work out where the fuck I was meant to go from there. An old bloke showed me where the metro was so I was able to grab a train downtown and walk the rest of the way from Baixa-Chiado to Rossio.

Checked into the hostel and met Marco who was working at the time. He showed me my room and bed and was real laid back. The hostel was awesome, it was more like staying at a good mate’s place than a hostel. They had a huge big screen and projector, awesome plush couches, a Nintendo Wii, chess boards and 3 PCs for internet usage. The kitchen was well decked out as well and everything was really clean and tidy.

Dropped off my gear in the locker and headed straight out to explore. Made my way up one of the hills to the Castelo de Jorge and explored this 12th century monster. It was awesome being able to walk around inside and on top of the walls as well.

From there I made my way back down the hill to and stopped by the Lisbon Cathedral on the way to Praca de Comercio to get a tram to Belem.
Once I arrived in Belem I felt pretty sketchy because I fell asleep on the tram and was like =\ but then I got a coffee and found these puppies and the world was right again:

Pastéis de Belém. Portuguese tart filled with egg custard and topped with cinnamon and icing sugar. Man they were tasty.
After scoffing one of these I checked out the St Jeromes Monastery and Maritime Museum. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the architecture is incredible.

After this I walked further up the river to the Belem Tower and back down to see the monument commemorating the Portuguese Discoveries in the 16th and 17th centuries.


I returned to the hostel after this, but not before picking up a few more Pasteis de Belem for Ed, Dave and Naila back in London. I also thwarted a pickpockter's attempt to pinch my map from my back pocket. There was a lot of people getting on the tram back into Lisbon and it was congested getting on. I felt a guy leaning on me from behind and felt a hand in my back pocket. I reached and grabbed it and this old guy behind me just threw his hands in the air in like a "don't shoot" kind of look. I just glared at him and thought "what can i do in this situation? I can't react really because this happens so frequently here" so I just moved to another part of the tram and sat down. I knew the old guy looked familiar, turns out it was the same guy that snatched the camera from the British woman's bag in the bus at the airport!

After getting back to the hostel, ran into a few new people. An Aussie couple that turned out to be from Ringwood and 2 American girls who had just arrived to start uni in Madrid. We had a few beers and played Golf on the Wii and then went out for dinner to an Italian restaurant after stopping by a bloke in a small stall selling Port from a hole in a wall.

Change of content direction

After a few years of maintaining this blog as a hybrid of posts relating to my job and technology interests (unified communications), DJing I did in Melbourne for 3 years (hard trance and other associated dance music genres), the occasional travel post and general updates on what I’m up to day to day, I’ve decided to take this blog in a different direction content wise. I’ve renamed it to“international deluxe” and will now isolate 100% on the travel aspect, rather than trying to spread content too thin across multiple fields of interest.

By doing this, I avoid alienating subscribers with irrelevant posts; so the people interested in hearing about my travel stories don’t have to hear about technical IT stuff and vice versa. Plus more and more of my posts are about my weekends away in Europe, so I want to focus all my creative energy into that side and build some momentum there.

All future technical posts relating to unified communications, Microsoft Office Communications Server and Exchange Server will be posted by me on the Modality Systems blog at www.modalitysystems.com/blog.

You’ll probably still get the occasional mention of trance in this blog, because I still <3 that shit.

Brussels – Part 3

Woke up Sunday morning feeling seedy once again after imbibing a copious amount of lethal Belgian beer.

I ventured outside to find that there had been a massive dumping of snow, and everything was covered in a good 6 to 12 inches.

As Brussels is the capital of the European Union, I thought it was only appropriate that I check this region of the city out whilst I was in town. I caught the metro out to Schuman and then got my bearings, snow belting down and all. The precinct was mostly deserted, being a Sunday, but it was cool nonetheless to check out the place where decisions that affect hundreds of millions of people are made.

I walked further east towards the Arc du Triumphe (I suppose it’s the Brussels version) and trawled through the snow in the park.

It was about 12:30pm and I’d arranged to meet up with the Aussie chick from last night Vanessa back in town for lunch. It was cold and snowing so I decided I’d had enough of the ‘burbs and got the metro back into the city (via a supermarket to get some water because I was majorly parched, and to wonder at all the beer you could buy).

When I arrived back in Brussels, it was belting down even harder than before. If you put your hand out it would fill with snow in little under 10 seconds.
We went back to the Paul I’d had breakfast at the day before and I got a slice of pizza and a slice of reaaaaaally decadent chocolate cake. This chick spoke fluent French so totally owned me in the ordering food department.

We finished lunch and went for a walk to a few chocolate shops near the Grand Place. We went out separate ways shortly after as she had an early flight and I wanted to check out the brewery museum.

The museum was pretty cool and the video they show you is quite informative, plus you get a free sample at the end. :D I chose the kriek this time (cherry beer) as I hadn’t had any in Brussels yet. My stomach was still a bit hit and miss so the beer didn’t go down as nicely as I’d hoped.

Following this, I ventured back to the hostel to pick up my luggage and prepare to go to Brussels Midi train station for the Eurostar back to London. After mentioning my train back to one of the guys I’d met, I heard a bloke who was on one of the computers pipe up saying “I don’t think you’ll be getting your train home tonight mate” and directed my attention to the Eurostar website.
Turns out all Eurostar services were suspended indefinitely in either direction across the English Channel, here’s where things got interesting.

I had to get home to go to work the next day, so I put into motion actions to mitigate the situation as best I could. I called my boss and informed him and then set to booking a seat on the next flight out of Brussels back to London. I couldn’t get a flight back that night so got the 07:00 on Monday morning, arriving at London Gatwick at 07:00 (GMT). The hostel I was staying in was full so I went across the road to the hotel and got a single room there and hit the sack. It was only 9:00pm but I was owned.

Woke up at 5am, checked out and got a cab to Brussels airport. The airport was much further from the city than I had expected and it ended up costing me €50. I arrived at the airport to see families and people all over the departures terminal, either asleep or waiting for more information or trying to get onto later flights after theirs had been cancelled. I looked up at the Departures board and every single flight was either delayed or cancelled. I trudged through the snow that was brown from vehicles and almost slipped over multiple times getting in. Luckily my flight was clear to go, so I quickly checked into the Brussels Airlines flight and made my way to the gate (which was an epic walk away).

I landed at Gatwick at about 7:30am and finally escaped the airport at about 8:30am after filtering through immigration with 230940932 Canadians and Americans that had just landed (it’s times like these when it’s a disadvantage having a non-EU passport – most other times it’s a godsend coming back into the UK).
Got a train back to West Hampstead which took almost 2 hours and arrived back home about 10:00am, almost 12 hours later than expected. I found out after arriving home that Gatwick airport closed 2 hours after I landed due to snow, so it made my epic escape from Brussels quite lucky in retrospect.

Brussels – Part 2

Saturday morning I woke up feeling pretty scratchy. Woke up and had a coffee downstairs and ran into the girlfriend of one of the Aussie blokes I’d been drinking with the night before. They were off that day so we had a quick chat and went our separate ways.

I ventured out and got my £200 changed into Euros down the road, then went in search of breakfast. I got a nice baguette from a Paul and did my best to order it in French (and failed, ha).
I discovered that it was –13 out, so hastily purchased a pair of gloves from the Christmas market and made my way to the Grand Place and Manneken Pis.

Across the road from Manneken Pis, I saw a hip hop shop. It was basically just all streetwear inside, but it was cool to check out anyway (and I got to practice my "bonjour” and “merci, au revoir”.

After this, I decided I wanted to go and check out the Atomium. (From wikipedia) It was designed by André Waterkeyn, it is 102-metres tall, with nine steel spheres connected so that the whole forms the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. It’s built on the site of the 1958 World’s Fair. On the way, I took a tram and the metro. Instead of the trams running above ground like they do in most cities, they run underground in Brussels.

This thing literally dominates the skyline, it is huge, and so shiny. There was snow everywhere so it added to the jaw dropping effect this massive structure has. There was a fair line to get in but it was worth it and it resulted in a fantastic view of Brussels.

After catching the metro back into Brussels, I followed the map the hostel gave me along one of the main roads to the north of the city. Because it was a weekend and the weather was pretty crazy, a lot of places were closed unfortunately, so I just wandered round taking everything in.
I returned to the hostel briefly to store the carry-on luggage I’d just bought (I needed one for the Contiki tour over NYE) and shortly after I bought my first bottle of Chimay in Belgium, from a supermarket across the road.

I walked around Brussels a bit more exploring, enjoying my incredibly strong beer. I also sampled a genuine Belgian waffle and some fries which were awesome. I think they were the best chips I’ve ever had (bar Tim and Pings in Lyttleton Tce in Bendigo of course) and the mayonaise they put on them was tops.
I checked out a few beer shops and then stopped and had a beer in one of the bars around the Grand Place, enjoying the awesome light and sound show that’s projected onto the city hall.

I ventured back to the hostel and bought a few more provisions of beer for the evening and began enjoying them. It was here where I met a few more people (one French Canadian chick living in France, an Aussie chick living in France, a couple from Wisconsin, an Irish guy) and the evening kicked off and resulted in another trip to Delirium with the Italians and this time some more South Koreans and Japanese boys and girls.

Brussels - Part 1

Knocked off work a bit earlier Friday afternoon, doubled back home and got changed and packed some clothes and headed off. Instead of getting a plane into Europe this time, I was catching the Eurostar train from St Pancras International in London to Brussels. It was about 4pm and I thought my train from St Pancras left at 5:30pm so I hightailed it on the tube and printed my ticket and saw the massive queue to check in and thought "there is no way I am going to make this train". Looked at my ticket and the departure board, turns out my train didn't leave till 6:30, so I left the queue and got a coffee and wandered around the massive station.

Checked in at about 5:30pm and went through passport control. It's still weird having all the immigration/customs type stuff in a train station. The stamp in my passport was for France, even though I was going to Belgium, I think it's because the first country the train enters from the UK is France?

Waited around until boarding and had a pint of Guinness

The train was the longest train I have ever seen. It easier had 15 or 20 carriages, it was just amazingly long. It took me about 10 minutes to walk up the platform to the carriage my seat was in.

Got settled for the 2 hour trip and started reading my book. It's good how you don't have to turn off your phone/laptop at all because it's not a plane. I fell asleep shortly after leaving London and slept all the way through the Channel Tunnel until we popped out in France. The snow was pretty thick everywhere and the train's speed was reduced because of the poor weather conditions.

The train arrived at Brussels Midi station at about 9:45pm local time and I had no idea where I was. The currency exchange was closed so I couldn't change the £200 I had withdrawn at St Pancras into Euros. I had €15 on me from a previous trip but that was it, so I had to withdraw some cash there to tide me over till the next day. I couldn't get my bearings so I just got a cab to take me to the hostel.
I checked in and dumped my stuff and thought "right, time for a Belgian beer". Some guys in the common area were drinking and I asked them where they got their Leffe's from and they replied that there was a supermarket across the road. I darted over, got some beers and returned to the hostel.
I saw a guy sitting at one of the tables with a Bliss n Eso hoodie on where lots of noises was emanating and a drinking game with cards was being played and I said "nice hoodie mate" and he replied "you're definitely from Australia then". We started talking about Aussie hip hop and I met his girlfriend and a few other Aussies that were around the table including a cool redhead chick who was a music journalist.
Shortly after, the decision was made to head out to a bar with the 3 Italian guys and the guy from South Korea.

We rolled out of the hostel and headed for Delirium Bar, home to 2800+ beers from all over the world. We got a bit lost initially but found it eventually and the boozing began.

Basel and Mulhouse - Part 3

So I woke up Sunday morning, luckily prior to check out (at 10am) and I felt quite terrible.
I lost my t-shirt somewhere, and managed to find some clothes somewhere on or around my bed to gather my bearings. I got my monkeys and parrots together and checked out and stored all my gear in the luggage store in the basement. I got a tram to a cafe called Hirscheneck, where the CS guys were having a brunch before kicking on to a spa for the afternoon. I met some of the people from the night prior and others were new. I had a good conversation with a French guy about Airbus, the Afghanistan war and rugby over coffee and meats, cheese and breads. Very cool way to spend the morning.

At about 12pm I bid adieu to the CS guys and after consulting one of the locals at brunch, headed back to the train station to see when the next train was to Mulhouse, across the border in France.

The ticket cost like 20 francs and allowed me free travel in Mulhouse on their trams - the main reason I was visiting. Last year Yarra Trams (the company that runs the trams in Melbourne) ordered new trams from Alstom in France, but they weren't going to be delivered for a few years and trams were required urgently. To alleviate this, 4 trams were sent from Mulhouse to Melbourne to take up the slack and work the route 96 line from East Brunswick to St Kilda. More info here. As a bit of a rail fan (here's where I put my gunzel hat on), I was stoked to be able to visit the city these trams came from.

I walked further into Mulhouse and just walked around exploring the place. It's amazing how you can travel just 20 minutes by train and everything changes. Language, currency, cars, etc. There were no more BMWs and Mercs, just lots of Renaults, Citroens and Peugeots, it's incredible.

I quickly rehashed what little French I knew from watching movies, TV shows (the Simpsons episode where Marge schools Homer on French before he asks her out) etc. The only way I remembered how to ask if someone spoke English, in French, was from the song Parlez Vous Francais by Art vs. Science. Thank you, Triple J.

I took one of the trams out to the north of Mulhouse because it was an easy way of seeing the rest of the town outside of the centre of it. I fell asleep briefly and then came back into the centre of town. I had lunch consisting of an egg, ham, tomato, cheese and lettuce baguette from a French bakery which was so tasty. I followed this up with my first ever croissant in France, which I was stoked about. At this time while I was eating my lunch on a park bench, two old ladies came and asked me in French if they could sit down on the bench as well. I managed to ask if they spoke English, which one of them did. She then proceeded to ask me where I was from and why I was in Mulhouse and for how long. It's interactions with local people that really put a smile on my face and are the reason I've flown half way around the world from my friends and family.

Next, I walked back towards the train station via the Christmas market in the middle of town. I got back to the train station at 4pm, making sure I left enough time to get to my flight at 7:30pm. Once I arrived at the train station I discovered that the next train back to Basel wasn't until almost 5pm, and the journey time was about 30 minutes, so I was going to be pushing it.

Once I got back to Basel I hightailed it back to the hostel, picked up my bags and doubled back to the train station to get the number 50 bus to the airport. I arrived with enough time to spare fortunately, and kicked around the EuroAirport for a while until my flight boarded. The EuroAirport is unique because it is one of the few airports in the world operated jointly by two countries. I bought some postcards for some friends back home and passed through security (which took forever because of these slow Kenyans in front of me with 23409 bags)/passport control (coming up on 3 pages full in my passport now, yay) and onto the gate for my flight back to LCY (London City Airport).

I fell asleep on the plane almost instantly but in time for the complimentary pretzel and chocolate. :D
When we touched down at LCY, it was the most aggressive deceleration I had ever experienced on landing. I suppose because the runway is so short at LCY, planes have to pull up real quick. I was literally thrown forward in my seat and the seatbelts held me in, it was that sudden.
Anyway, I got the replacement bus back to Canning Town tube station and arrived back in West Hampstead about 10pm to deliver the motherload of chocolate to Dave and Ed, who were much appreciative and provided reciprocal goods  in form of fine Mexican tequila. Another top European weekend.