Filed under: Travel
My friend Jill, who is an avid reader of this blog, and is also a highly mediated individual 
has requested that ’since Britney got put away, I need you to up the excitement of your blog posts’. Jillymon, your wish has always been my command, so I bring you ‘Twenty- Something Blond Goes Crazy, Eats Too Many Biscuits’.
Edinburgh, Scotland.
Crazed blond ’star’, Jennifer, previously of GoChat fame, has been seen scoffing biscuits, prompting concerns about her mental and physical health. Psycologists believe that she may be comfort eating as a result of having been rejected by the BBC for a job on a show about farming in Scotland.
An un-named friend, who totally did not get paid for this interview, just really, really cares about her and wanted the world to know it (oh, and also wanted the world to know about those romps with lap- dancers, but only because he cares so darned much) says: ‘Jennifer is in a fragile state from so much rejection. She has always had a fragile ego, but being turned down by a farming show, after her dizzy GOchat heights, may have pushed her over the edge. She seldom goes out these days, and when she does, she always takes an umbrella with her.’
Reynard was not available to comment, but her cunning press hungry alter-ego, whom we will call ‘publicist’, had the following to say: ‘Miss Reynard would like to assure fans that although the BBC does not want her to work on a show about farming, her career is still going well, and while she admits to having been seen with an umbrella, we humbly assure the press that this is because it is friggin raining outside, Scotland being what it is’.
Filed under: Travel
Sometimes people ask about hostel living. All I can say is that it is a funny sort of nightmare. Funny haha, and funny strange. Basically, each day is the same: wake up to noise of other people, get coffee, moan about roommates, get lunch, do something, drink wine, go to bed, fight with your roommates in the middle of the night, wake up again. Let me take last night as an example: things were very jolly by the time we went to bed, everyone having had at least a bottle of wine. We were a loud, travelling, multi-cultural bunch, with Greeks, Aussies and South Africans all sitting round the table laughing and drinking and shouting (I think, to my shame, that we discussed Britney’s hair and lifestyle in very loud voices) and sharing opinions and wine. Hopa! Then came bed, all without hassle. The hassle only comes at about three in the morning, when two people check into the dorm, but are so drunk that the receptionist on duty has to turn on the lights, at three in the morning, and put these two to bed. Whereupon they begin to giggle. Ghaaaaa. This positive impression is improved upon this morning when someone in the eight bed dorm has set not one, but two alarms and is putting them both on snooze and letting them go off every five minutes until the whole room is yelling ‘Turn the *&$£”^ alarm off!’ This is a sure fire way to wake up just a tad grumpy. It would also be fine if it was once or twice, but since we have been in the hostel we have had the pleasure of sharing rooms with the following people:
1. Loud Australian drunk girl who insisted, loudly, that the room smelt like ‘feet and jizz’ in equal capacities.
2. Wierd sleeping guy, who arrived under cover of darkness, slept (and snored! and snored…and snored) for three days solid, waking up only once that we know of to pay for another night.
3. Irritating drunk couple, lying in the bed right next to me, coochy-cooing, laughing, and finally, snoring (just to be clear, of all the people you don’t want in the bed next to you, the snorer is number one)
4. More snoring people.
5. Italian men who seem physically unable to whisper. But feel the need to talk. Early on Saturday morning. In Italian.
6. Spanish girls who giggle in the middle of the night and finally….
7. Evil drunken alarm clock setting people of death
Kyle was threatening murder until I pointed out that 15 years behind bars was certainly one way to ensure you had a roommate.
The thing that makes everything all ok though is Michael. Michael is a permanent fixture in the hostel. He is on the dole, only knows how to cook pasta ‘Oh pasta, i love it me, yeah’ and everything he says makes Kyle giggle. Like, actually giggle. Every morning Michael wakes up, gets coffee and then he and Kyle have a post-mortem of who was in their rooms and how bad they were. Generally, Kyle will complain about one of the above variety of hideous roommates while Michael will nurse his coffee and say things like ‘Oh yeah, giggling were they? Prob’ly on drugs they were.”Oh snorers, ooh, I hate snorers me’ ‘Oh Italians them, yeah , they’re the worst they are, always jus’ shoutin’ Bella Bella’ . It really is hilarious. The new hostel manager accidentally booked out Michael’s bed on the weekend, so he bought a bottle of whisky and drank the whole thing until 6 am on Sunday morning, then had a bit of a kip in the showers. One thing about Michael- he has the ability to improvise. In addition to him, we have Gareth the skinhead gourmet chef, Jamie, the hard drinking Aussie manager who harbours a loud and vibrant hatred for Yarrick, the Polish manager, who keeps overbooking people’s beds so that they have to sleep on the kitchen floor, and a variety of other people cooking, eating, drinking and making the days go by.
I am sure that we will start to miss it as the days go by, but at the moment I second Kyle’s opinion this morning: bring on Thursday, so that when people walk into your room and turn on the light at 3am, you are legally allowed to beat them with something.
Filed under: Lifestyle
So things seemed to have come right in a way, for me and my job hunt. On Thursday afternoon I had a message left for me on the phone from a guy who works for Probe Games, wanting to speak to me about jobs. Phoned him up and it turned out that he does recruitment for all the major gaming companies in the UK and he’d found my CV on one of the other recruitment places and was lank interested in my qualifications and strange interests in render farms. After ten minutes on the phone he basically became my new best friend, vouching for me as an agent of some sort, telling me about how much more money I could be earning, and about how he could get me interviews at all the main gaming companies in Scotland. All the gaming companies, including Rockstar North. Yes, the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series. He knows someone in the production studio and said he could have my CV on his desk within the close of business that day. He recommended some changes that I should make to my CV, including more about gaming, more about the render farm stuff I’ve worked on, and some more personal experiences with gaming consoles and such. I added in some entries, tightened it up even further, and sent it off to him.
To say that I was dumbstruck would be an understatement. He, John, is my new hero. He’s given me hope in a situation that I was starting to get weary of. Until that phone call, I was under the impression that there wouldn’t be much work for me in the 3D industry, and only some programming and developing jobs in the IT industry. I wasn’t looking forward to that. Although that may still be the place that I end up, it seems as though John is adament that I will be able to get a job in the next few weeks, safely and securely in some k-rad gaming company. Aah, it’s so awesome.
Then just when you thought the day couldn’t get any better, I checked my email later on in the evening and found an email from Django Films! In quite short and simple wording it says, “Thanks for the emails and your interest in working for us. We would like for you to come for an interview for the position, on Tuesday at 5pm. See you then.” Yup. They seemed to bite at my CV. After all the effort and the begging and throwing myself at them in the staircase of their building, they seem to be interested in me. My CV clearly showed them that I am pretty perfect for the job. Seems as though the fight paid off and I have a shot at their system administrator title. The job description is as follows:
System Administrator
All–round IT systems administrator to be responsible for the day to day management, security, configuration and scaling of data storage and a modest network of workstations and a renderfarm. You should have some familiarity with a broad range of creative software packages and open source software and have good Windows and Linux LAN/WAN networking knowledge. Scripting ability is an asset for the streamlining of the creative workflow. Familiarity with working in a creative media environment is an advantage but is not essential.
I’m super keen. Super super. Going to hear from John on Monday, and hopefully I’ll have an interview at Rockstar North sometime next week or the week after. If Django offer me the position, and should it be for the right cash, I think that I’ll take it. It seems like the perfect position for me. Peeeeerfect.
Job hunting is crusty. Well, at least I have a few up on Jenbug, because the job market here is pretty open for people with IT skills. If you’re a solid programmer and want a job overseas, you could come to Edinburgh and walk into a job paying over £30,000/year. No joke. But I’m not a programmer… well, I’m qualified to be one, it’s just that I don’t *want* to be one, especially not in a job… in a cubicle… in the basement… where it smells… and theres cheese all over the place… and Spaniards.
Jenbug and I started the search yesterday, beginning with a trip to the local internet cafe to print out some of our newly constructed CV’s. You see, UK CV’s are a bit different to the ones that you have in South Africa… here, they don’t have ANY bells and whistles… it’s literally just plaintext with zero formatting. In fact, a lot of the recruitment companies push for CV’s that have been laid out and constructed in notepad, rather than “word”. People keep mentioning this “word” thing… I think it’s the equivalent to OpenOffice.org Word Processor, but probably just the unpopular version or something So we paid our £2 or something for an hour of internet access and printed out some copies, each costing a whopping 50p! It doesn’t sound like too much, but when you’re moving around dropping off CV’s and whatnot, it all adds up. Anyways, we printed out a couple each and started missioning across town in the rain. Yes, it rains here… it that irritating not-raining-but-makes-your-glasses-all-spluttered type of rain. Don’t get me wrong though, it doesn’t always rain here… people seem to have the impression that it just rains all day and night in Edinburgh, but it’s not the case. In fact, as I type, it’s a sunny day outside… it’s not warm… but it’s sunny You do, however, find yourself walking along sometimes when it just decides to rain for a bit, before sodding off and letting the sun come out for a bit. But all in all, Edinburgh’s weather is not as bad as people say it is.
Anyways.
We headed up to George Street to find a place called Django Films. Earlier on in the day, Jen had stumbled upon a job description which basically explained my consulting work back in South Africa, down to a “T”. Unfortunately, though, the job’s application cut-off date was 9 February, so online applications for it were finished. This didn’t stop me. I felt that if I could arrive there, smile a lot, convince them that I was the right person for the job, they would still take my CV into consideration. In theory it sounded easy…
In practice…
Arrive at the building, buzz upstairs to let you in. “Hello, is that Django Films…” *bzzzz* enter building doors. Walk up to the floor which Django Films is on, and push the buzzer to get let in. “Hello, is that Django Films…” *silence* …. “Yes?” … “Hi, I’ve come to enquire about a job that you advertised for.” … “Which job?” … “System Administrator?” … “Hold on…”. Suddenly you hear a click, and the door opening. Naturally, I lean forward to grab the handle and start pulling on it to open the door. There is resistance. There’s resistance because the lady behind it is positioning herself just to stick her head through the gap to talk to me. I back off. Startled, I tell her my story. She looks quite blankly at me after I stop blabbing, and I ask if there is someone that I could talk to regarding the application. Reluctantly, she says she’ll call her colleague “that is dealing with that”. She closes the door… we’re left out in the stairwell. Like, literally the stairwell. No “come in and have a seat, do you want some coffee”… nothing. So we wait a little while and the next minute another lady comes out into the stairwell and asks me what I want. I tell her the whole story. I emphasize how I’m the person for this job. I also inform her that I only just arrived in Edinburgh and that the job is literally describing my ideal position. She looks sceptical. I push on some more, more blabbering, more emphasis on renderfarms, more emphasis on “perfect for the job”. She still looks sceptical, but takes a look at my CV. After a couple seconds she says, “It would be unfair on the other applicants if I accepted this” … I pause for a few seconds, and then launch back into selling myself some more, saying things like, “I would hate for you to employ someone else who is far less suited for this than I am, just because of closing dates.” She shows some signs of interest. I capitalize. She takes the CV eventually, saying that she may or may not consider me for the position. I agree that it’s okay, and that she must just let me know if I’ll be given an interview or not. She closes the door. We leave the building. It was intense.
Although I don’t think she’ll consider me for the position, it was quite a good experience. Put on your toes, sell yourself in 2 minutes kind of thing. I hadn’t planned anything to say to them, I hadn’t even considered the fact that I would get 5 minutes to talk to someone about it. I think that benefited me in the situation though. Sometimes you over think things.
So we moved on and found a couple recruitment places, handed our CV’s over with a bit of chit-chat along the way and missioned back to the hostel to rest after a tiring morning. As I said before, there are a ton of IT recruitment places around here, but very few media/journalism based ones. Personally, I would rather be moving towards the media industry over here, but it doesn’t seem to be as abundant on first impressions, so I’ll stick to the IT for now, earn some pounds, scope the situation, then possibly move over to something else later on.
All of this was done whilst recovering from a night out with a couple Aussies who were staying in the hostel, sipping on Red Bull and Vodka’s for £2.50, and so-cheap-they-make-you-cough spirit coolers, 2 for £3. We got home around 12:30 and then talked drunken bollocks in the hostel kitchen till some time before 2am.
Good specials in Edinburgh. Good times in Edinburgh.
Filed under: Travel
Ok, so we have been away for quite some time now, silence echoing in the blogging halls. But now we are back, with stories aplenty, and surely more to come. Here are a few:
1. The Untold Story Behind Going to France
At a number of different points it looked as though our chances of getting to France were pretty slim, but they didn’t ever look as bleak as they did on the first day. We had phoned the consulate on a whim, one week before we were planning to, simply because we didn’t have anything to do. That is when we discovered that the consulate was booked up a month in advance. We hopped on a bus and hightailed to a travel agent, feeling sure that there must be something that someone could do. The travel agent told us there was no way, that they could only get visas, at the fastest, in about 14 days. Now, everybody knows that all ended well, but this is the untold story…We came out of the travel agency, and all I wanted to do was cry. Tears welled up, and then Kyle and I began to fight the usual fight we fight when I cry, which basically involves him telling me not to cry because it doesn’t achieve anything and it isn’t practical, and me getting even more overwrought and trying to explain that it does achieve something and it is practical because it will make me feel better. Basically, the short story is, we got back to my cousin Neil’s house, and both decided to deal with the disappointment in our own way. Kyle went to do stuff on the computer, and I went and stood in my cousin’s kitchen, and allocated myself ten minutes to cry. So there i was, sobbing, and I began to pray. I prayed that there could be some sort of miracle that would allow us to go. I prayed and prayed, and suddenly I felt better and I felt calm. And only a few minutes later, Kyle spoke to his friend Tam and we discovered a place that could get the visa’s within a day and a half. That day my faith got bolstered.
2.The Untold Story behind the Pain of Snowboarding
People who have ever been snowboarding know not to ask silly questions like ‘Is it fun’? or ‘ Are you good yet’? Like Cousin Neil. Cousin Neil has been snowboarding. The first question he asked us was ‘Painful, hey’? And then the next time he spoke to us he still asked ‘Still painful’? Clearly this is a man who knows stuff about snowboarding. To anyone going snowboarding, be aware that you will not have a butt, or coccyx (Kyle has dealt with this in his blog post as well). You will only have a festering ball of pain where your posterior used to be. You will intensely dislike hills, ski-lifts, snow and the French, in that order. Children who refuse to move out of your way, causing you to crash on your butt so you don’t hit them will remain constant as the single thing that you dislike the most about snowboarding. Orangina and Auntie Maggie’s suggestion to keep some chocolate in your jacket pocket to comfort you will prove to be two things that get you through the days. Sometimes you will fall over five times in a row while trying to get on the ski-lift, and then the nice man in the ski booth will help you, but it will still hurt. You will know that you should stand back and admire the majestic beauty of the mountains, and appreciate the fact that you are in the Pyrenees snowboarding, and sometimes you will manage, but then a little French child will whizz past you again.
3.The Untold Story Of Scotland
Ok, so this one really is an untold story. We are now in Scotland, Edinburgh to be precise. We are staying in a hostel with a dodgy hallway and a circular staircase that has all these wierd drawings on it proclaiming things like ‘This (the stairs) will get you healthy’ and ‘This way tae the top, and this way tae the pub’- so at least they have their priorities straight. It is a cool hostel, which is lucky because we have committed to stay here until the 1st of March, which is when we move into a beautiful flat with an Australian couple called Isje (pronounced Ee-sha) and Jack. The house hunt has been pretty hilarious, and also creepy sometimes. We saw the Aussie flat on our first night in Edinburgh, and at the time, although we could see it was cool, we didn’t fully appreciate how amazing it was. Then we spent a couple of days visiting other places. One of the places was in a snooty area called Duddingston. The flat was a five bedroom triple story luxury townhouse with 42 inch plasma screens on the walls (one in the kitchen and one in the lounge), those hectic windy staircases joining floors, and everything was chic and bleached wood and metal and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was also pretty affordable and the landlady was really nice. It seemed too good to be true…and anybody who is more than two years old knows the rest of that sentence. Basically, there was one man who took us around the house giving the running commentary that went ‘this is the kitchen, the fridges and everything…work. This is the 42 inch plasma screen. It….works. This is the washing machine, I am doing a load of washing right now. I have done a load before and been very satisfied that it works. ‘ Cool, so now we knew that everything….worked. But was there more to this utopia? Well, there was a couple living in the top room who didn’t come downstairs to meet us, and neither of their digsmates had seen their room in the two weeks of living in the house. They pretty much kept to themselves, we were told, and the only way you would know if they were awake was if you tried to change the tv channel, which, it seemed, was verboden. So now we had a house where everything worked and two 42 inch plasma screens which had to be kept on the channel desired by a phantom housemate upstairs. Anything else? Just the following conversational gambit from the Czech housemate who was cooking at the time of our arrival: ‘Well, Hitler wasn’t really such a bad man. He was very clever psycologically and socially. It’s all in the first chapter of Mein Kampf.’ Oh good. Next time I am reading Mein Kampf I am sure we can talk about it.
That was the wierdest house, but other near misses included a 53 year old man who had a great music collection and liked to hang out with people under thirty, and a med student who phoned us every 15 minutes to check that we were still coming. So it was with great relief that we secured our place with two mid twenties professionals who liked a bottle of wine or two, and had a sleeper couch perfect for weary travellers to crash on. And the best part of this house, was that everything also…worked. That’s what I call a bonus!
*gasp* And suddenly a new post appears! Yes, we finally have a broadband connection and luckily enough it’s in the hostel that we’re staying in. We have taken so much flak from all ya’ll Saffer’s for not posting new entries! Shoo. Now I feel like there’s so much pressure on me to do well… ooh, performance anxiety
I plan on laying this entire entry out like a back-to-the-future-kind episode. It’ll start with the present and work it’s way back to before France.
We’re finally in Scotland, Edinburgh. The journey has been long. We arrived yesterday afternoon, walked to our hostel (which is only about 2 minutes walk from the train station), climbed the 74 or something stairs to get to the place, dumped our bags down and headed off to meet a potential flatmate at the flatshare that they’re trying to fill. The place turned out to be really awesome, new age, nicely fitted and very central. There are a couple areas in Edinburgh that are really new and modern, and then you get the opposite end of the scale. This was in the nice and new category. It’s a 2 bedroom flat which has an aussie couple living in it, and they’re looking to let out the second room. They’re both 25, and are pretty rad people. We got on well with the girl (Eisha), but didn’t really meet the guy (Jack), but either way, we were happy with the place, and the people who we’d live with. The only drawback is the fact that it’s available only from the 1st of March. Thats two weeks time, and I don’t know if we can survive/afford to live in the hostel till then. The hostel is £8/night weekdays, and £10/night weekends. Decisions will most probably be made today when we look at a couple other places. The main decision we have to make, is whether we want to live with students or professionals. Now it’s also made difficult by the fact that something called council tax exists here in Edinburgh, and students don’t pay any of it. Well, depending on whether the property is HMO registered or something. Basically, if you’re a professional living in a student-registered house, you’ll pay the full council tax of the entire house on your own, and if you’re a student wanting to live in a professional-registered house, then they’ll have to pay council tax. I dunno. Maybe I’m a bit off with some of these details… it’s all very confusing for a bug. Either way… it’s complicated.
Edinburgh is amazing. You can’t actually explain in words the difference between places like this and London. I know, because I myself had the same perceptions, that most people think of the UK, and they think of London being the standard and everything else just varying a little bit off of that mark. It’s not the case. London is shite compared to places like this. The entire vibe of the city changes. It’s the little changes that you notice the most. It’s the dirty looks and gloomy outlook on life that most of the London population have, cussing you for being in their space (as a tourist) and making you feel ashamed of your backpack everytime you step onto a train. Edinburgh is far from this. You walk off the train, up this big flight of stairs, are suddenly hit with this amazing sense of *bleh* as you see the main street for the first time, massive old buildings with architecture that you can see took decades to design and construct, statues on every corner commemorating a whole smartie-bag full of events over the last ten, or so, centuries, the happy bustling people in the streets below, and most of all, the smiling faces of the passers-by as they realise another tourist has hit their streets with their jaws dragging along the floor. It truly is amazing. Last night we spent an hour or two doing some more searching on the net for places to look at today, whilst chilling out in the kitchen amongst some Americans, British, and a couple other nationalities, who drank wine and beer and plotted on going out. We had been travelling now for 2 days solid, so we took a walk down to Burger King, where I had two chicken burgers and chips, then stopped off at a Sainsbury’s to purchase two chocolate milkshakes, drank them, complained about walking in the wind and rain, climbed up onto our top-bunk-beds… slept.
Rewind a day.
We had to wake up at 6:30am to make sure we were up in time to: Get ready; pack our bags for the (hopefully) final time; catch the nearest bus to the nearest station; dump the stuff and leave Jen with it whilst I ran three blocks to Tam’s place to collect the bank cards that we had applied for; jump on the next train towards Vauxhall; change-over at Vauxhall and grab the next north-bound Victoria line train towards Kings-Cross station; connect to the internet in the departures area and get the directions to the hostel in Edinburgh before we leave; climb on the 9am GNER train to Glasgow, calling at Edinburgh; stuff our bags into the overhead locker and spend the rest of the journey worrying if they’ll fall off and kill the people below them; get to our pre-booked seats; unload our hand-luggage onto the table in front of us; relax for four and a half hours.
Rewind a day.
We woke up just after 8am and gathered our stuff that had been messed around the room over the last twelve days that we were staying there, and started stuffing it into our bags. We had accumulated more stuff. This was a problem, because when we left SA, we packed our bags to the max, which was a bit of a dorkish thing to do because you always end up gathering more stuff along your journey and thus have no where to put it. The bags were bursting. The bags were bursting with a lot of possibly unnecessary things, including three bottles of French wine that I had bought the day before we left. Airport security is a nightmare. It’s not joke over here. Liquids are treated as guilty until proven innocent, and the checkpoints are riddled with redundancy and thoroughness. They check everything, and then check it again. From your shoes, to your hand-luggage, to your jackets. It’s thorough, which means that you can’t take wine bottles on board with you, which means that you have to put them through with main luggage, which means that you have to slap large fragile tags on them, which means that your luggage has to be dumped on a separate carousel for fragile items, which means that you question the Europeans as to whether your luggage will in fact tail behind you, or if it will end up in Russia. It means a lot.
We said our goodbyes to “Uncle Tony” and headed off on the road with “Auntie Maggie” who drove us along the one hour long road to Pau Pyrenees airport. We checked our luggage in (10kg over weight, but I now know how helpful it is to have a good-looking girlfriend with me, who can bat her eyelids at the counter dude and apologize profusely about it, stopping him from charging us the 80 euro’s that he wanted to charge us, and letting it slide), grabbed the last fresh French baguette that we’ll have for a while, and headed to the boarding gates and found some cozy seats on the plane before taking off in the most hectic wind that I’ve felt since Port Elizabeth An 80 degree take-off tilt, and we were up in the clouds in no time… floating towards London, Stanstead. Which brings me to my next point… Arriving at a place like Stanstead, compared to Heathrow, is awesome. Theres no crazy passport control people who want to take your blood, give you a quick session of 50 questions, and anal-probe you to check for drugs. There’s just a nice lady sitting there who wants to check to see if you’re welcome there, and stamp your passport. Well, mostly harmless. She did try to make me feel bad about not having a job yet in the UK. Upon asking me if I have a job yet, and me replying, “no, I’ve only been here for a few weeks”, she said, “Actually, it’s just about a *month*”, implying that I’m a freeloader, I guess. Oh well. We don’t care for these shenanigans, and by we, I mean the people.
Rewind a couple days…
South France is radness. It’s the kind of place that you can easily retire and settle down in. It’s quiet. It has amazing bread and pastries. It has a small market place on Saturday mornings. It has baguettes that turn into cultural weapons the morning after you bought them.
Snowboarding was amazing. In total, we spent 6 days on the slopes, falling a lot for the first part, and enjoying it a little more for the second. It’s so much harder than it looks. No one must ever say that snowboarding is easy to learn… especially when you’ve only touched snow twice in your life before you start. We fell a lot in the first couple days, and when you fall, all you have to stop you is your butt. This hurts. It hurts in a way that you can’t really describe. It’s like describing the taste of a colour. It’s not possible. Both of us lost our coccyges (Yes, thats the plural of Coccyx, which, yes, is the correct spelling for the word defining your “tail bone”) somewhere on that mountain, but we came out okay. We decided that if we could merge into one person, we’d be a pretty good snowboarder, whose ideal name would, of course, be Ken Ken the snowboarder. Phneagh. By the end of it we could both turn pretty well, and go down the slopes without falling and actually look reasonably cool doing it. I’m very keen to do it again in the near future. There are ski slopes up here in Scotland, so we’ll maybe try hitting them sometime after our first paycheck.
Rewind a couple more days…
Living in a neat little French house is awesome. Having two “parental” figures to take care of you whilst you’re travelling is also really awesome. You get nice cooked dinners, countless bottles of wine at your disposal, and tasty treats every morning before you head up the mountain. We were really spoilt when we stayed there and we both owe Maggie and Tony a HUGE thank you and biggie-up for everything that they did for us whilst we were there. We not only had our own bedroom to ourselves, we had our own entire floor! From afternoons at the local hot baths, soaking up some jacuzzi time with some other random frenchmen, to dinner parties on occasion, we were given the best treatment traveling bugs could get.
Rewind a couple days… again.
Arriving in France was wicked. Tony fetched us from the airport and took us straight to their house in Bagneres de Bigorre. It’s a quaint little village, which even the footage may not do justice. We dumped our bags and headed straight for the bed to get some shuteye for a couple hours before facing humanity head on. The next morning we were taken down to the local market, where we selected all the fruit and meat that we would be requiring for the next couple days. When I say “local market” I don’t think you quite understand… we’re talking like maybe 30 or 40 stands on a Saturday morning, selling local wares that isn’t just your usual market crap, it’s all the essentials that the locals pretty much live off whilst they’re there. We bought ear-muffs… the things that we’ve decided could possibly take first prize in the “Most Important Things to Travel With to Cold Countries” competition. Later on we were driven out to the local ski shop to get fitted with some new ski pants, boots, and snowboards. Ski pants are k-rad. They have suspenders and everything… you feel invincible in them. Invincible!
Rewind two days…
Woke up at the crack of dawn. I mean, the *crack* of dawn. Jen decided on times that we needed to leave, much to my disapproval, and we walked off into the dawn towards the South Wimbledon station. Neil directed us there, paid for our single fare to get to Liverpool Street (where the Stanstead Express leaves from) and threw us on to the next northbound Northern line train. From there, you arrive at Liverpool Street, purchase the £25 return tickets that will get you to and from the Stanstead Airport (airport that all the cheap airlines fly from near London) and hop on the next outbound express train. It takes about 45 minutes and then you’ve arrived. We were still 2 hours early for our flight, which I was commenting on the entire time we were missioning towards the checking in counters. Secured our luggage and checked them onto the London to Pau Pyrenees flight. Then, you arrive at the security check point.
1 hour 45 minutes later you arrive at the boarding gates, shovel your way to the front and find an empty seat on the flight.
Rewind 1 hour 45 minutes….
The security checkpoints are madness. As I described earlier, they check you for everything and anything. They also make you bundle everything into different piles and packets, which means that when you get to the other side of the checkpoint, you have to do a checklist of all the things that you had on you going into it. Jen had to forfeit a R150 bottle of sunscreen. I left my jacket there for twenty minutes before remembering it. I lost the last key that I had to the travel locks on my main bag. Security, keh keh keh.
Fast forward two weeks, almost to the hour…
I now sit in an Edinburgh hostel, Jen on one side, reading a magazine, and two Spaniards (I think it’s Spanish) sitting on the other side, chomping away at some toast, in the local communal area of the kitchen.
It’s almost poetic.
Filed under: Travel
Hello all… we’re currently in France with Jenbug’s aunt and uncle. Sorry for the radio silence, but there’s no broadband or anything here, just good’ole dial-up. Quick update- We’ve started snowboarding lessons! Yesterday we went up to the ski slopes and had private lessons with this local guy who could barely, but just, speak English. It was incredible. Both Jenbug and I got thoroughly broken, though, and returned home in so much incredible pain. Snowboarding hurts for the first few days… let no one tell you different. Wow.
Bugunit will be back on it’s feet with regular posts as soon as possible. We promise we’re not dissappearing anytime soon…
