England: Exeter

I spent a short time in Exeter, a lovely city in the south of England, as I had another job interview with the University there. With the exception of the period leading up to an including the job interview I spent my time thoroughly sloshed or tramping through cathedrals.

 Exeter Cathedral it is huge; and took 350 years to build.

Probably my must memorable moment was playing pool and darts with a Serbian, who had been a member of a Serbian SWAT team before a back injury left him unfit for work, in a dodgy pub on the canal. It was particularly memorable as some dipshit decided he did not like me an challenged me to a game of pool with a £50 bet because I did not like ONE of the songs he put on the jukebox. Previous to this I had being complimenting him on his music taste because he had played good music. Being a gentleman I politely refused as I did not think it would be fair to take the poor chaps money and I was worried he might think I was hustling him as he had only seen me play left-handed (the serbian was not very good).

 Not a pool hall - but happens to be the longest uninterrupted vaulted ceiling in England. I guess that is impressive, but make anything obscure enough and it will the best of its kind. I was interested in the Astronomical clock that they also had inside.

Anyway, this twat thoroughly beat his girlfriend at pool, and then went on to beat some young kids who had wandered in the entire time crapping on about his superiority over everyone. It was after my 1000th pint of beer that I decided someone needed to shut his trap so firmly asked if he still wanted that game of pool. After he grinned and cockily insisted he would pay for the game I stumbled over to the table, calmly picked up the cue with my right hand and showed the man a thing or two about the game of 8-ball.

If he was smart, this is where he would have started praying.

Like most hacks, once he realised he was going to lose (i.e. after my first visit to the table) he resorted to yelling abuse in my ear while I was taking my shot. By the end of the game even his girlfriend had told to sit and shut up because he was embarrassing himself. After winning the table I gave it to the youngsters. Ah, yes the memories of Exeter.

Overlooking Exeter...from a shopping mall carpark.

They also have gorillas plastered around everywhere. It is some tourist thing where your supposed to find them all...but I had pubs to visit. 

 Baiky went Gorilla hunting though.

England: Leeds

This is where my trip kinda gets confusing. I visit England (actually I pretty much just visit Michelle), then I return to Malta, then I'm back to England, then off on travels again and then back to England. This is Leeds. Enjoy!

 Amsterdam! In the airport-I had a long stop over, just right for a few Henikens. The more observant of you (I'm looking at the Piestche, the Friend brothers and Goof here) may have noticed the sign in the background reads Casino...in the Airport. Genius!

Essentially I had a job interview in London, so I stayed in Leeds for a week with Michelle and decided that I did not want the job (so I just didn't go to the interview). I did not take many photos, but is was a good to see Michelle again. We did some touristy stuff like visit the Corn Exchange (jousting), visited an armoury and museum (jousting), drank warm British Ales (jousting), and ate at a world buffet (kinda like every cuisine ever to be in existence). All pretty fun stuff.

Warm British ales, with Michelle. As usual Baiky takes all the beer and the women.

Oh, and did I mention we saw the semi finals of the county jousting competition!

In a word: Awesome.

So, how does a jousting competition work? I'll break it down for you. People (yes, real people) put on a clothing made out of steel, jump on a horse with a long pointy pole and, then do their very best to impale the opposition. Admittedly, I did not know what to expect when I bought the ticket, but I did not expect it to be real.

In two words: really awesome.

It started with some 'squires' practicing their horsemanship skills by trying to impale innocent lettuces on the ground, and cut them on half on poles, and other fun stuff.

My camera was getting sleepy...So this squire has a sword and trying to cut a lettuce on a pole in twain. These guys are like knights in practice. Not surprisingly it takes a lot of to be allowed to be part of the main event.

Unfortunately, my photos of knights trying to kill each other did not come out, but that's okay - now you have to come over to see it for yourself.

In all honesty that's about all I did in Leeds. I was kinda tired after working at EF and sick of being a tourist. I actually left my camera at home on purpose most times we went out. I am sure I'll be back, given I only live a few hours from there now...

Greece - Corfu island

After I had arrived in Malta I had a few spare weeks before I started work. I decided that Malta was not quite exotic enough and so packed my meagre belongings and waltzed on over to Greece for two weeks. Specifically, I decided to stay on Corfu island. One of the Russian tour guides (you may remember Olga from Kazan) had told me she would be over there on a work vacation, and, as she is in the tourism business, I decided that she would probably know the best places to visit - so visit I did!

This is a town in Corfu, with the exception of the capital the entire Island was like this!

My plan was to no more than laze around on the beach drinking beer, which is pretty much what I did. In between bouldering around ocean-facing cliffs, walking up mountains and driving around the island (I hired a car) I visited the many pubs and cocktail bars around the Ipsos bay area.

Ipsos Bay - I stayed here for two weeks.

It is a lovely place and very cheap. I did not find the food anything special but it was decent enough. The weather and landscape is beautiful and the Mediterranean was as clear (and cold) as could be. Most importantly I found a cafe/bar owned, and frequented, by British Ex-pats. It was named Sally's Bar and not one second I spent there was wasted! I spent most of my evenings there with the bar tender, Rob (Groove), drinking his potently fabulous shots. I even convinced him to play the Eurovision final (much to the disgust of his customers). Most importantly, they held a weekly darts competition that was super fun. I also found a pub near my hotel that let me play for free against the staff.

A view from Mt Pantokratoras towards Abania - yup, you can see Albania from the east coast of Corfu.

In the second week Grimesy arrived (he was visiting his Gran in Germany). We hired a car and wandered the isalnd. Driving was a laugh - the streets are very narrow, locals drive too fast, and we had to drive on the right side of the road. Cool places we visited included the summits of the two highest mountains, the capitals city (and its castles), the Corfu brewery, and many beaches.

The roads were not only narrow, but also broken. This was not unusual and somewhat scary to walk on

Ipsos, were we stayed, is known as a lovers/honeymoon destination and the room Grimesy and I booked had two single beds - but pushed together. Each evening we would separate the beds, but the cleaning staff obviously had a different opinion of our relationship, so they would push them back together again!

From the summit of Mount Pantokratoras back towards Ipsos.

All in all it was a great trip - getting to see Olga and Grimesy as well as relaxing on the beach. I just wish I had more photos but unfortunately they were all on my stolen iPad. The photos here a courtesy of Grimesy.

Thanks Grimesy!

Interlude #5: Hamrun Festa

I was in Malta, but without a doubt, one of the main highlights was the Hamrun Festa (Hamrun is a town). I am still not exactly sure what it represents, but it is held in August, on the 'Feast of St Gaetan'. Broadly speaking, the citizens of Hamrun support either the red band or blue band and they are huge rivals of each other. Once again I do not know what these bands represent, however I got the impression they were might have been political groups. I did ask multiple times but no one gave a clear answer...

Pictured: politics in Malta. You can just see the blue band in the background.

Either way, early in the morning everyone on Hamrun starts drinking, they march around with marching bands, yell at each other sing songs, and then drink some more! All in all it is considered the most exciting of the Maltese festas due to the massive rivalry between the bands and the vast quantities of alcohol consumed. Fights are not uncommon and I was warned by many locals not to go.

A marching band

So why did I go? I hear you ask. Well, it is simple really - my father was born in Hamrun, so I had to represent the family; I was invited by a resident of Hamrun (JJ - an awesome fire-twirler we used for EF events); and JJ's partner is HUGE and he vowed to protect me.

My newest friends, I was safe as long as I did not lose the vodka. You can see the densely packed crowd. It was like that for whole streets, everyone drunk and it was about 11am.

The day started at about 10 am where I met JJ's friends. They handed me a bottle of vodka and a cup and we were off. Before I knew it I was surrounded by hundreds of people decked in red marching and singing and waving flags. I clutched onto the vodka for dear life, knowing that as long as I had that my new found friends would never leave me. Eventually we ran into a police line. Across the square the Blue band were similarly held back and then the insults and chanting started. It was all in Maltese but I was taught a few sounds to make so I obliged. At one stage some fisticuffs started out near me and we got involved (it was fun).

Damn straight we won the fight - admittedly I spent most the time hiding behind this guy...

After a some time the police let us through and the Red band invaded the square and proceeded to scream at a building for ages (I do not know why). I was hefted onto some guys shoulders and continued to wave my arms and sing in a foreign language. The I was put down and hefted some strange lady onto my shoulders.

So, to make things clear, a very large mass of people yelled at this building for a loooong time.

This was followed by marching through the streets of Hamrun with the band. Everywhere we went red confetti was been thrown from the upper story windows of the houses making a weird red/snow screen on the street. Families opened portable bars on the street (I swear I was served by, like, 10 year olds) and we drank more - the vodka was long gone by this time. Finally we made back to where we started and entered some outdoor bar for more vodka/whiskey/beer.

Two things made this event super awesome, both, not surprisingly, revolved around JJ.

1. At one stage JJ came and grabbed me from the crowd of revellers and took me the house where my father was born!!!
2. After the event was done and I had managed to get lost I wandered back to JJ's house to say good bye and was fed the best roast I have ever had. Yup, sorry mum and nan, that crown is gone.

Dad's home!

To think this day could not get better when I finally returned to the EF hotel after drinking for hours and hours in the extremely hot Maltese sun I was invited by Clint and Marco to a wine tasting festival in Valletta. for 12 euro you get entry and a glass ad then you wander around the area (in this case the lovely Upper Barracka Gardens) tasting all the wine. Whilst there we ran into more and more people and out little group  grew and grew into a pretty good EF party. 

Before we indulged in wine...

Also, on the way home - for some reason I walked - I found a pub with a pool table and a bunch of old timers having some very competitive games. So I indulged in some more beer and a few games of pool. I think they were surprised someone as sloshed as me nearly won a few times (they were quite good).

...after we had indulged in wine.

All in all a pretty solid Sunday.

 As usual I have to bail Baiky out of trouble.

Education First Malta

While in Malta I worked for about three months with Education First as an Activities Manager. Before applying for the job I had never heard of the company, but apparently they run programs in Brisbane too. In a nutshell, over summer Education First run a fully supervised English teaching program for school aged students wishing to improve their English. Each week day they spend a couple of hours in English lessons, for the rest of the time they participate in organised activities. 

A cruise to Comino island with Philip (local leader), Charlie (Scandinavian international leader), and Matt (fellow activity manager and all round awesome bloke). And yes, we had to wear pink.

Each group of students has one local leader to show them around and one leader from their country to assist with language and cultural issues. My job was to book all their activities, and to organise and manage the evening and weekend activities. It was cool.

Intensely booking events in the office - nah, probably checking the Ashes scores.

The two most awesome things for me was that I had moved to a new country and BAM! Instant friends. The other awesome thing was the amount of friends I made from all over Europe. I have already visited a couple in my travels and I hope to be able to visit more. I was put up in a hotel with all the other managers and the international leaders, so it was kinda like Fenner all of again, except more intense.  Some idea of the nationalities I worked with – Maltese (obviously), Italians, French, Spanish, Swiss, Austrian, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, German, Danish, Canadian, Irish, English, + more.

Six People (includng the photographer), and six nationalities. This was my first night out.

The events I organised consisted of parties and discos all over Malta (including an old movie set for Popeye -  apparently it’s a terrible movie), 

I got to be the foam guy at one of the foam parties! I also had to DJ a couple of times - I don't think I was all that good, but a couple students wanted my playlist.

cruises to the different islands (see Gozo and Comino in previous post), visits to cultural and historical sites, and activities like Go-Karting and sporting events (my AFL ball came out at these as there was nowhere else I could kick. I’m pretty certain that the students thought I was an idiot literally running around by myself, throwing dummies, and kicking to nobody).

Baiky and I do a line of coke at the first disco.

It was hard work, generally 8-10 hours a day five days a week plus another five or so on either Saturday or Sunday. But, pretty much every night was a party if you were so inclined. As I was also applying for jobs while I was there I spent some nights in, but other times…well…other times there was cheap beer, cheap shots, cheap whiskey, cheap vodka, and cheap hangovers. Luckily water was cheap too. It was fun, anyone from Fenner who has SR or FRC experience I recommend giving it a go. Head up to Brisbane and lead a group for a week or two, it is a good way to get a paid holiday. 

Yup, we worked waaaaaay too hard. Staff members chillin' by the pool in the aftenoon.

Also, there is currently an Activity Manager job in Malta for next year – three months, free accom, free food, and, taking the cost of living into account, the pay is decent enough. 

 The activities team at the Summer after-party

Malta

This post has been really hard to write, Malta is so small yet there is heaps of cool stuff there. I also lived there for four months so that is a lot of stuff to cram into a small article.

Of course I added cannons. What you see ahead is are the fortifications built around the coastal towns. I lot of Maltese cities and building look just like this. Also, if you have seen WWZ and remember the scenes in 'Israel' - yup, that was shot in Malta.

Malta is made up of three small islands, Malta, Comino, and Gozo. I worked on Malta, (unsurprisingly) the largest of the three and lived in Sliema, which is essentially where all tourists work and live over the summer. Luckily for me as my job was a essentially a tourist events manager I got to visit all islands multiple times. The weather was great all sunshine and hotness, which, coming from Australia, was nothing new. A few of my colleagues and most tourists who had travelled from Europe found it somewhat more difficult to handle. I laughed at the many counts of heat stroke I witnessed. In hindsight I probably should have assisted.

Azure Window on the island of Gozo.

Malta is known for many things - great swimming in their beaches, the summer nightlife, its amazing history, and churches (dear god are there a lot of churches). Oh yes, and Festas - particularly the Hamrun Festa - but more on that later.

There will be plenty of Hamrun Festa photos later, for now feast your eyes on Gozo, taken from the Citadella in Victoria (the capital of Gozo).

The beaches are funny, pretty much all of them are rock beaches. I mentioned this in my Odessa post, but I did not realise this was the usual form that beaches take and how lucky we are in Australia. Well, maybe not lucky, you see, rock beaches have many awesome advantages. Firstly, without any sand/grit/dirt, the water is super clear, and secondly, you can happily walk/swim/lay on the beach without getting every crevice of your body filled with sand.

The Blue Lagoon on Comino. Great water and awesome caves. Baiky spent many a time here.

Drinking in Malta is also funny. You see, as much as responsible service of alcohol is shitty when all you want is another beer, I have since found that having a sober professional taking responsibility for the amount of alcohol ingested preferable to leaving me to my own devices. Similarly, it always sucks when a pub closes at 4am and all you want is another beer. However, I have now learnt that it can be really hard to keep track of time when inebriated in a nightclub and if it doesn't close how am I to know when to go home? 

It can also be hard not to wander off the massive cliffs of Malta. This was taken on Comino.

So, the party area of Malta, Paceville, is more disgusting than the Gold Coast, with people throwing up in the streets early in the evening. Very young people seem to hang around the area as ID checking is also optional. The sun came up before most nightclubs closed. I preferred the Sliema scene, but maybe I'm just getting old. Oh, and a pint costs about $3 (and can be found cheaper) and a bottle of vodka about $35.

I have decided not to incriminate myself here - instead here is a photo of a massive fountain at the entrance to Valletta.

Malta's history is really interesting due to its strategic location in the Mediterranean. It has been ruled by a crapload of different nations including Phoneticians, Romans, Normans, French, and the British. It was also ruled for two centuries by the Knights of St John after the Spanish didn't know what to do with it in the 16th century. It was involved in two great sieges, one in the 16th century when 40 000 Ottomans attacked 7000 Maltese and during WWII when they refused to surrender to the Axis despite been starved for two years. King George awarded the entire country the George Cross after the war.

The George Cross. They have two on display, the real one and a replica. One is in their war museum and the other in the Lascaris war rooms - the rooms from which the Allies rallied the defence of Malta and planned the invasion of Italy.

The final aspect of Malta is its rich religious heritage. Starting with having multiple prehistoric, megalithic temples (one of which is the oldest known underground temple c.3000 BC) of which I believe seven are world heritage listed. 

Inside the catacombs if St Paul in Mdina. St Paul was shipwrecked in Malta. The catacombs were originally developed as tombs but I think they were also used during in WWII as protection from the Axis bombing raids.

Also, as the Knights of St John enjoyed many years of prosperity and non-fighting (after scaring the rest of the world by defeating the Ottomans before upgrading the islands fortifications) they spent most if their wealth on churches and cathedrals. I believe I read or heard somewhere that Malta has the either the most churches capita or per country size. Either way just walking around any town you will be amazed by the impressive and opulent places of worship.

Inside St Johns Co-Cathedral in Valletta. Not only is it beautiful but it is home to many paintings by Caravaggio who fled to Malta after being exiled from Italy or Naples or something. He painted many works in Malta, but was imprisoned in Malta for been a bad person.

I have since left, although I wanted to stay until summer but could not find work, I can not wait to get back. Still so much to do and friends to catch up with. 

 Started with cannons and ending with knights - it was my kinda place. This is from the Armory in Valletta - thus far the best armory I have visited in my travels.

 Not quite a knight, but here I am preparing for a run around Comino. It was about 40 degrees - yay Malta.

Interlude #4 ANZAC Day Ceremony

ANZAC Day at ANZAC cove. This was, without a doubt, one of the most amazing things I have ever done and it came as an afterthought simply because my VodkaTrain tour finished in mid-April. ANZAC cove was a four hour bus ride from Istanbul, and we were regaled with Turkish history and the movie Anchorman. We stopped off at a nearby town for lunch and to wait for the gates to the cove to. There were tons of buses full of excited Aussies and Kiwis, so, not surprisingly, an international cricket match started off.

Still has larger boundaries than the West Indies grounds.

We turned up to the Cove entrance to discover a massive line of people waiting to get. We met many a bogane kicking footies and wearing national flags like capes. A few people were even wearing Collingwood tops - I vowed to stay away from them the following day so I could watch the ANZAC day footy match (Essendon vs Collingwood) without the result been spoiled.

This line went around TWO corners - and we were in the middle. 

As the dawn service start at...well...dawn the event actually begins on the evening of the 24th. There are large grassy areas in which people can lay down and sleep until the service starts. However, the large grassy areas are not quite large enough for everyone. Those who don't fit end up having to spend the night on plastic chairs, hence the line of people waiting to get in (we waited for a couple of hours).

I was separated from the rest of my tour group in a bid to find somewhere to sleep. Unfortunately I found a Collingwood supporter to sleep next to instead.

Throughout the night they had speeches, a military orchestra playing songs, and documentaries on the wars on massive screens. They also played live footage of speeches from Julia Gillard and the NZ Prime Minister from their respective Dawn Services. This would have been about 11pm or midnight given the 6 or 7 hour time difference. Ms Gillard was at Townsville and I enjoyed her address. I can't remember the details but she essentially thanked all the Australians for putting in the effort to go to go Turkey  to honour our soldiers - made me feel special for being there. I only got a few hours sleep but was never really all that bored.

ANZAC Cove the next morning. Baiky flirts with danger by sitting on the fence to the 'forbidden zone''.

With the rising sun the service began. Most was pretty standard of a usual dawn service with a few notable exceptions:

1. When they said the soldiers had to advance upon cliff faces manned by Turkish machine gunners you could turn around and see the cliffs. Due to my stolen iPad I do not have those photos, but yup, it was an unlikely assault (note the Australian penchant for understatement).
2. Three high school students gave speeches - I can't remember if they were Aussie, Kiwi, or a combination - but they had won public speaking competitions. They did well, I would have pooed myself in fear if I had to speak at such an occasion.
3. Their was a speech given by a Turkish official - this was pretty much the first time I heard the Turkish side of the story. I won't ruin it for you much, but I recommend you read up on the Turks in WWI, especially General Attaturk...who later became the countries leader...and reformed said country...all after pretty much being the reason behind Turkey holding off the Allies. He also instigated the current friendly relation between Australia and Turkey. The photo below is the communique (or an excerpt of) he gave to to the nations involved in the Turkish invasion. He the let us visit the cove every year to commemorate our soldiers.

The talk by the Turkish representative also quoted this. Very moving. I might have cried but I was too busy wondering of Essendon had won or not.

After the dawn service at ANZAC cove there were two more services, one for Aussies and one for Kiwis, at different locations I went to the Aussie one. It was a bit of a hike, but we got to experience the terrain the Allies were trying to capture - except we had roads and there was a distinct lack of imminent death.

Many cemeteries for Allied soldiers were on route. One of them had Simpson (but not his donkey). I never saw the grave, but I imagine there were too mnay people crowded around it anyway.

As I didn't sleep too well the night before I spent most of the Aussie service trying to not fall asleep. I remember that the MC was hilarious. He had a tough job keeping the thousands of Aussies entertained for an hour or so before the ceremony began. The ceremony was more speeches and the tradiotional laying of the wreaths. It was cool to see that even some schools and universities had sent representatives. I should have told ANU I would be there so I could have scored a seat in the VIP section. Oh, and I think the bloke who won the most recent VC was there too. They had some war heros up front either giving awards or laying wreaths (it was a long time ago, I have forgotten some details) was HUGE and I recognised the name.

The location of the Aussie Ceremony.

Afterwards I made my up to the NZ ceremony, but I didn't get there in time. On the way my tour buddies and I went bush to follow the trenches (yes, they were still there -  and they were shallow. Scary stuff). Baiky took brief refuge in a bunker. It was quite hard finding one without a thousand tourists, but we went pretty far bush in the end.

We also fond some bunkers that were prepared for WWII. They were never used though as this area was not involved. Alas, these photos are also lost to a thief who will never appreciate them.

After the NZ service we waited for a bus, which was one of the last to leave the site. It was at about this time that I suspected that Essendon had won the ANZAC day game. You see, the previous day waiting in line I saw a lot of Collingwood jumpers. These were conspicuously absent after the dawn service. What I did see though were a few Essendon jumpers. Aha, I said - another game ruined in advance.

From the NZ ceremony site - It was a long hike up a big hill. 

Our tour guide had ice creams or iceypoles for us I believe, which was cool because it was very hot by this stage. Then we bussed back to Instanbul and hit the piss, again. Oh, and guess what movie we watched in the way back - Gallipoli.

Click on the photo and have a quick gander at this. When the Allies arrived and the Turks saw they were outnumbered Attaturk (at the time his name was Kamal) rallied the troops with these famous words. He was one of the only few to survive but the actions of him and his troops kept us out of Turkey.