Dzido Needs a Barber in Seville

¡Muchachos!

Yeah, the debate about cutting hair is just starting and we´ll see how long I last.

Sevilla has beckoned and we sit today 3.5 metres from the beautiful Alcazar Palace here and just 10 metres away from some tasty spanish wine. (Its the metric system people, get used to it!) We saw the Cathedral today too which had the craziest tomb I have ever seen before made for none other than Christopher Colombus. It was the remains of his bones put into a box, then placed in a big coffin. This coffin was then raised onto the shoulders of four, larger than life, statues modeled after what looks like noblemen or military figures. These figures are eerily life-like and stand at least 9 ft tall towering over you while carrying the coffin. Its all in the dark depths of the cathedral with some shady lighting. Very scary and imposing. Although while listening in to another tour guide who happened top speak english, Columbus actually has a tomb in 3 other cities as well and it is debated as to where hsi actual remains are. Recent forensic tests though, have proved that SOME of his remains are in the Seville tomb.

Theres a couple of pictures from past towns though that need to go up. When we were in Tarragona they had some fantastic Roman ruins throughout the city, my fav being the old aqueducts. Now for these you had to take a bus just outside of the city. This was jsut after our beach day and we didn´t realize that the aqueducts were actaully a bit of a hike, so the bus dropped us off on the side of the highway (no entrance or anything) with a path to take to the aqueductos. It was cool though, not too far, and most definetly worth it. We came out to the clearign and saw these old waterways, perfectly preserved....and then we saw that you were allowed to go on top of them!! THe pic on the top right is my stunned visage as we started the walk across. Please dont be blinded by (or notice at all) the reflection off the gross pimple on my forehead. Or Paul covering the burn on his freshly shaved head. It looks better in the small version. Anyways, our poor hygeine aside, we were stunned. What? Que? We´re allowed to do this? No one was supervising anything and there was an open gate at the top with entrance on it and people walking through. So we were allowed to venture on TOP of these aqueducts and traverse them across. They were old! and high! and NARROW!! ANyways, lots of fun, and very cool. The left picture shows me conquering the ancient ruins, like some sort of Roman General





Also taken from the past a bit is this sign (by past, i mean last week, not Roman times). This was a chain that we saw in Krakow, Poland. A bunch of sports stores that tried to appeal to the english speaking. An unfortunate choice of names though, I´m sure someone got fired when this one went international.




Finally, as a culture note, the Montreal homeless had to try quite hard to get me to throw my ´coin´or ´cheddah´(as the youngsters call it) at their feet. There was one less-well-off man this morning who amused me enough to make me part with a euro. I gave one up for his ferrari fund, and i honestly hope that one day he gets it.



Oh! And I almost hay forgetando! Our last day in Grenada was fantastic because I got to realize one of my european dreams, or one of my goals for this trip, and play some football (soccer) with the locals! After the Australian loss to the Italians, some frustrated aussies from our hostel decided to take to teh streets of granada and show the Spaniards some game, so we gathered some more people and went to play inthe streets. We found a large empty square in teh midlle of teh city and just kicked it around, 5 on 5, for an hour and a bit. It was great!¨We had so many different people playing! Aussies, an american, malaysian, mexican...even a father and his ten year old son from australia who had watched the Italy game happened to walk by and join in. And of course, as we played, some local spaniards joined in and we played our best to keep up. This was right downtown with a great granada backdrop and pedestrians stopping to cheer us on and watch. Great commentary was heard as well from the few words that we had all picked up watching spanish soccer commentary. Ladies and gentlemen, you have not watched proper soccer unless you watch it with Spanish commentary. These people could describe butter melting with so much excitement that you would want to go out and buy margarine baseball caps and butteredtoast flags

Random Festivals that We Just Happen to See (Part 2)

Hola gringos

Some travelling has happened since the last update, but as always, there is so much to do that the internet is not always #1 on the to do list (although, jeeeez, its hard to live without a computer this long!)

What i meant to write about a little bit ago was our fashionable way of stumbling upon random festivals wherever we go. We were sitting in Tarragona on a patio with a tapa or two when suddenly we were peppered with mortar fire from hidden positions. Seriously, the street was overtaken with explosions all over. We looked around, and no one else seemed to be pulling the ´duck and cover´like we were, everyone was just going on their own way. What?! Crazy Spaniards. Turns out that the mortar rounds were cherry bombs and firecrackers that children use to celevrate the last day of school as wel as the Dia de San Juan. It was a fireworks fest. For 24 hours and more there were explosions and fireworks EVERYWHERE, around everycorner and in every childs hands. Not too safe, but kinda cool

We watched this happen for a while and then later on in the eve, I took a stroll down to the beach because of rumours of a concert happening. What I found was the pitch black beach taken over by people...young and old. Groups of students dancing, families with babies around fires, seniors and children sitting and talking. And fireworks shooting off into the water. It was crazy. It was as if no one was going to bed, they were all just relaxing and beaching it up

I walked around there for a bit, tried to espagnol it up. Once i got tired I thought I´d grab a kebab and go to bed so i walked down to the main square to find some food. I turned the corner onto the main street only to be accosted by a giant dragon shooting white flames from its face. Id walked right into the main fireworks parade in the middle of the street. I dont know how i didnt hear it before i got there because each dragon (there seemed to be one large dragon for each group, maybe school group) was followed by a regiment of drummers and other firework weilding figures. There were clowns running with giant sparklers and each dragon had large flames of sparks shooting from its eyes or nose. The air was full of smoke and music and i was basically in the middle of all this, confused. COnfused, but amused. It was something to see

And of course, at the end of the parade, the fantastic firefighters of Tarragona made sure that everything was safe. Huzzah to you brave firefighters

Ciao

¿Hey everyone, how´s home?

Some more news for the merry

We´re enjoying our Spain life thus far, the town of Tarragona is a fantastic break from the hustle of Budapest. The city boasts almost no tourists, few english speaking people and mandatory siestas. Well, not really. The city is beatiful ofcourse, here´s a picture in which you can make out the big cathedral in the middle. Right behind me as I took that picture is the sandy beach called Playa Miracle, which is hot, fun and nearly empty! Thats right, this place is like a haven that people seem to have thus far ignored. Thats one of the reasons why paul and I have been entertaining the idea of opening up our own hostel here which would include the best features of the ones that we have stayed at thus far

Speaking of fun hostels, I promised some pictures from our Budapestian home. The hostel there was just full of interesting doo-dads and randomness on the walls. Here on the right is a picture of the backyard where you can make out random stuff hanging from trees and foliage all around. The backyard was also home to the ´hammock district' as i´d like you all to call it. 4 hammocks ready for anyone to snooze, read or play guitar in, as you can see our hero doing in this picture on the left. Notice the crazy carpet and coole dragon decorations on the wood

In sadder news, Czech Republic was booted from teh Cup yesterday in the division of death. I mean, I´m happy for Ghana, they are an amazing team, I just don´t know who to cheer for right now. Ghana-Brazil should be exciting though, either that, or a thrashing.

Finally, as we´re getting ready to shift locations contantly, let me show all of you with warm beds that its not all fun and games. We´ve become accoustomed to the fact that sleep needs to happen wherever the opportunity arises, so with an 6 hour gap between flights in frankfurt (midnight to 6 am) we made the most of a couple of hours of sleep in front of the terminal gates. I woke up at 4 and had lost most of the feeling in the right side of my body

Hooray for mattresses!

I have 2 minutes and 45 seconds for this post!!!

Paul and I made it to a little town in Spain called Taragona. Spectacular and free of tourists! More tomorrow but no time left now! Here´s a pic of us at the airport, pointing to the amazingness of what we hope to find

A Quick Photo-less Update That Turned Longer Than Expected

Hello all,

There's a lot I wanted to write about, but the computer at this cafe isn't picking up my jumpdrive so I can't get any pictures up. It's ok though, i'll get them up later on.

So we're finishing up our Budapest visit. It was definetly fun and different. The trip here was long and scary enough, as Paul mentioned in his blog. I just remember thinking how I did not want to spend the night in a scary Czech industrial town in the middle of nowhere, where our train got delayed for a couple of hours. The place was pretty dank, with large chimney stacks and industrial buildings looming in the background. Not to mention numerous shady characters lurking around.

Maybe I was just paranoid after hearing a lot of stories this month of Hungary/Czech nighttrains being hubs for theivery and whatnot, so I refused to sleep the entire leg up until Budapest. When we got onto the train leaving the scary town for Hungary in the middle of the night and saw how deserted it was, I just assumed that that meant we could more easily be cornered in our cabin. We tried to think of fool-proof alarms systems involving rope/fishing wire but the lack of these materials didn't help that much. Here´s a pic of Paul passed out in the Hungary train

Anyway, the city is great and stressful travel is exciting in its own way. I'll get some pictures of it up here later. The hostel we are staying in is fantastic. They have hammocks people! They also have rooms broken up into different themes. There's a Bob Marley room, an amazon room etc. Really neat. And the entire place just has random doo-dads all over, like pictures of other cities and backpackers doing weird things. Or the "Record Board" where those who have stayed at the hostel can attempt to win new records and be immortalized forever. Examples of ones that we saw up there include: First to jump off of Liberty Bridge (large main bridge downtown), Largest amount of money payed for taxi ride to hostel (the taxi drivers are known to scam you if you don't know what you're doing) and Quickest consumption of jar of Nutella (59 seconds)

The Airplane and Dzido

Going back to the Czech for a little, I always wanted to bring up the AeroBar. In Olomouc we were told that one of the shadiest but coolest looking (at least from the outside) bars was this AeroBar. So on our last night there we planned to have a dinner, then head over for a quick beer and back to the hostel, to wake up for our morning train. The whole pizzaz of this bar lies in the fact that it is actually an old Russian Tu-104 passenger jet that is parked in the middle of a field, where the inside of the plane has been remade with seats and a bar. (pictures to come) However, rumours and word of mouth had gotten to us telling us that besides the outside, the inside is not that great to look at and they serve warm beer. I said, who cares! It's a frikking airplane in the middle of a field!

Complications struck, however, in the form of some meaty Czech goulash seen in the pic on teh left. During our evening meal Paul's goulash got the better of him and he was forced to bow out of any evening beer sit downs. With the Aerobar looking to become forever just a legend in my mind I decided that maybe I'd just go for a quick beer on my own. With Paul still reeling from picante beef inflicted goodness, we met a few americans and hostellers and tried to see if anyone would go for a beer. Unfortunatly, they all refused on the grounds that the bar is much too dirty and perhaps actually a front for the Hungarian mafia.

We walked home to the hostel and I wrestled with the dilema. Midnight had just struck and Paul was going up to the hostel, hallucinating from his meal. I stood at the stairs and flipped a Czech Crown and decided to go for it. Leaving with Paul all of my documents, camera, and money, save for a few bucks for a drink, I headed out to the plane. Not 15 minutes away, it stood like a beached whale in the dark, quiet, with moody lights shining from teh windows. I walked up the stairs to the back door and rand a doorbell at the metal bar door. A hefty looking gentleman came and inquired to my business. "Pivo" I said. With the door opened, I stumbled into what can maybe be described as a seedy, 60's casino atmophere. There was a bar at the back of the plane with a dusty TV on. The walls were covered with what looked like red velvet pillows tha reflected what little dim yellow lights there were. The entire plane was filled with a haze of chain smoke and no more than 3 people were visible down its entire length. I ordered my beer quietly and was given a warm can of something. Sitting down in one of the old airplane seats which had turned, every other one, so as to make booths, I proceded to finish my drink. The eyes of everyone on the bar were on me, probably surprised that anyone would come here to drink. Dank, smoky, scary and dark...but great! haha I'm going to have to post a picture for you guys.

Anyways, Spain is next up on the list!

91 minutes? Games should end at 90

Soccer fun recently. We went to watch the Poland/Germany soccer game in a Dank/sweaty/dark polish bar in Krakow (let me put the emphasis on sweaty). Anyways, we're here staying with my cousin Victoria and the three of us went to this bar that was filled with rabid Poland supporters. We all dressed in national colours...even Paul! Here he is with Victoria.

The game was fantastic to watch. I thought I was the only one rooting for Poland initially because everyone around was pessemistic about us holding up to the German powerhouse. But the game started with a good Polish barrage and held steady for a long time. It was really really exciting. The best thing was that ANYTIME Poland even had the slightest chance to score, the bar went CRAZY! People were up and yelling and cursing (Paul learned some new ones). And the cheers! There were at least 5 different random Polska cheers that kept being chant ed. And EVERYONE was involved! Even Paul, for all his Polish-bashing-ability. It was just a fantastic atmosphere to watch the game in. Heres a quick shot of the bar, with metre-high beers visible. The aussie smiling kept getting my camera flash and was blinded by the end of teh game, but at least he kept smiling.

Poland held it to nil-nil until the 91st minute, even after losing a player to a red card and playing short handed. At one point, the Germans had a shot AND rebound go off the crossbar. It was ridiculous, you could feel the bar almost explode. Great times in Krakow. As a finale, here's a coninuation of Paul's great facial expressions. This is one of him in mid chant of "Polska! Polska!"

Also, we've decided that since Poland is out we are all going to go for the Czech Republic now. That includes all of you

Hostel Life

Hello

We've taken a quick surprise detour to visit my cousin Victoria in the university town of Krakow for a few days. Staying here in her apartment (which she claims is old and run down but I think is beautiful and huge) i thought I'd let you all in on some of the places that we've stayed in our travels. Just so you don't get the impression that we're constantly homeless

Hostels are actually pretty well kept, and some of the smaller ones tend to be quite homey. The one that we stayed at in Olomouc was much more laid-back and quiet than Hostel 99 in Cesky Krumlov (site of the horror movie 'Hostel'). So the Olomouc one, called Poet's Corner had communal, family-like atmosphere. Heres a view of the common room which could probably pass for tea-room in an old folks home or something. Relaxing...

Just below is a picture of the snore machine, otherwise known as "dzido's bed". Bunk beds are always fun, especially if you get the top one and forget where you are in the middle of the night. I kinda wish i still had a bunk bed at home

Finally, from that same hostel, we had a fantastic view of the main cathedral in teh city and the countryside. Here it is...

So as you can see, its not that horrible to live sans maison in Europe. Well, I say this now, but the Pamplona Bull festival is one that has been booked for months. Once we get there, I may post a new series of pictures showing the benches/sidewalks that we might sleep on. Just kidding! Or am I? Sign in some more and see!

PS - Paul's blog has a great account of the festival we ran into in Olomouc, it was pretty cool. Check it out!

As per your request:

Here's some more pictures for you ladies an gents, I hear they're causing a hubbub back overseas so I thought I'd let you all peek in on our ever-interesting lives somemore. I love this blog deal in that I don't need to overlead anyone's email with mass-messages to everyone. Instead, i can sit at my computer and pretend that people find my life interesting enough to read about when really paul and I just end up being the only readers of either blog. Joking, i love you all

Ok, so just because i can, I'm going back to Krumlov rafting fo rthis first pic. This one shows off paul's numerous facial expressions that get me up in the morning. I call this one, stale bun in mouth (out of context?)

Next, we bought two kinder eggs this morning for a snack and because we hoped that they had cooler toys than we did. I didn't know how to eat mine

Paul finally opened his but we had no idea what was going on inside of them. Some sort of communist kinder toys, no doubt.



Anyway, the moral of the story is, we are eating very healthily and experimenting with new things wherever we can. There's rumours of an airplane bar around here. A bar housed in an old 70's russian plane in the middle of a field. I'll tell you how our hunt goes. But for today, Czech/USA world cup game with some locals. Sounds exciting

A PS Post

I almost forgot! For all the AD fans, we met a few Americans to watch the soccer game with and during the match they noticed a player named Koku. Suddenly, Paul and I heard Gob's chicken dance song from this couple. So we got up and in teh middle of this Czech bar were doing the most ridiculous chicken dance known to man! It was great

Ireland shouldn't talk about soccer...

...unless they're in the world cup. As for rumours of my snoring, I can't attest to that. I can't hear it and I sleep beautifully

So we just spent the past 10 hours or so travelling from Krumlov to Olomouc based on raving reviews from some travellers we met. Czech it out (haha, brilliant Dzido) www.hostelolomouc.com

It was kind of ridiculous with the trains. As Paul put it, it took us less time to cross the Atlantic! Either way, we came here on a bright note as tomorrow is some big city festival that we will look into. Maybe ride a merry-go-round or something. On the way down here, i spent the train time listening to music, reading, musing, sleeping etc but at one point I found a group of 6 or so Czech travellers sitting in a compartment playing folk songs and having a great time. I snuck in and asked to listen and enjoyed myself for a little while. It was hilarious, they knew maybe 5 chords or so between all of them and were playing on a tiny, beat up, cracked, guitar but were having such a blast. I couldn't help but smile and clap along to the beat.

Once again, time runs short, have to leave hastily. But I'll come back with some more pictures soon. I'll let paul fill you in on the historic aspects fo the town and travels. I miss you all!

Wet and Runny

Just finished a fantastic 3 hour rafting trip through the Cesky Krumlov countryside with some newly met friends. Two aussie girls, a Minnesotian, and Matt from Lorne Park...it sure is a small world.

Here's a picture of the Krumlov Castle and basically half of the city. Paul seems to be pointing out the awesomeness of it all. It sure is beautiful.

The rafting trip took us through some small rapids and fancy sights. We brought along a few beers and some food, though after the first rapid we ended up dumping our soggy buns overboard. After a while, Paul, our semi-captain, soaked our cartoon map and was replaced by Minnesota-Neil who steered us sideways into rapid number 4. Either way, Paul took the brunt of the water and as he put it "always takes it in the face". Yes yes, that's what she said, but jokes aside, we all had a great time, all got wet and all want to do it again. Now its time for some evening-patio-dinner-fun.

I'm curious to hear whats going on in other places around the world. Email me people! dzid@hotmail.com



Here's a happy bus picture from the trip

I didn't learn my lesson last time

So just like so many (3) years ago when I came to travel, I ended up lost and in Dresden on my first day. Well, to be fair, I wasn't lost, just in the wrong place. Wait, no, that's a proper definition. Oh well. The point is, this trip is about randomness and I randomly had a fun time with what happened.

The flight from TO was a blank as my consant sleep was a testament to how little I had dozed the week before. I mean, I'm one of those guys who turns on TLC to watch Extreme Machines so I LOVE watching planes and stuff work. But I slept through everything, up until Frankfurt. Then I found a train to Prague with a switchover in Dresden and slept in it for 6 hours. Finally, when it came tim eto switch trains, myself, two americans and a paraguayan (sounds like the start of a joke) ended up on the wrong platform because we didn't understand the german announcement. So we ended up stranded in Dresden, the same city where Paul and I started our adventure 3 years ago.

EIther way, it was a nice turn of events. I showed the trio our old hostel and they booked me in the exact same room as before, making for some scary deja vu. Rod and Esther were kind enough to buy my euro-less soul some dinner and we laughed about the Cultural Trainwreck restaurant which is coming to cities near you.

Aaaa time running out! Have to post!!

The PPP

I think this picture is absolutley ridiculous. Honestly. So we saved our egg cartons for a few years and may have made two towers of of them, but put together, I never thought that I would be stunned by them. Two stories! haha Please, someone send the Guinness people this photo. Or the egg advisory council, to see if we can get some sort of sponsorship deal going. Paul and I could travel Europe with 3000 eggs on out backs, promoting good cholestarol and omlettes

Home in mississauga now and finding the odds and ends that one needs for travel. Lock, sleeping bag, Ipod? Maybe. Also listening to my grandma remind me how NOT to get robbed. She actually just called me down to see a news report about the increasing crime rate in Europe and Polish pick-pockets. The dreaded triple-P

Two days to go now, feeling a bit nervous/anxious. Also, still in denial about having left Montreal. It's as if I'm just on a weekend trip...with all my stuff

Graduation Whoopah

I just watched Christopher Plummer give the address to this morning's Art grads (over the internet, I'm lame and have to wait until the afternoon). What a cool guy, seriously. I want him to be my grandfather or something. Maybe its his accent or his demeanor but his speech was great.

It was also a good pick-me-up. This Europe trip is definetly exciting, but leaving for a year while packing up my life and seeing all the people I've been friends with for 4 years disperse is kinda stressful. Last night while packing I was just in a daze and my mind was out of it. Stressed about so many things at once. Plummer helped me out a bit today though

I guess I just needed someone with an English accent to tell me that life is fun and exciting and sometimes scary

Out of MTL in 24 hrs...?