Hometown Tourism

Is there something about living in a city that decreases its beauty? Is there a positive correlation between how much you love a city and how many hours flying it takes you to get there? Is there a minimum amount of borders to be crossed to forget about the stresses of your life?

Fuck no.

Every city has it's own good and bad parts. Melbourne for example has amazing restaurants and bars with cuisines and brews from around the world. It has one of the best stadiums in the world hosting the best sporting events. On the downside, Melbourne can experience erratic weather and seems to have an obsession with tacky reality TV about cooking, singing and renovations.

No matter where you live, it has more to offer than any one person can take advantage of, so try to take advantage of as much as you possibly can. Go out on a weeknight, get coffee somewhere you normally wouldn't, go and support your city's team in a sport you normally wouldn't care for. Little things like these can make your hometown much more appealing and exciting.

If nothing else, at least it will colour in that grey time before you can finally get to go back to Berlin or New York.

Zac's Infinite Travel Wisdom

It is now under six weeks until I depart for Barcelona, and the excitement is gradually building. Any time I think about the trip I can't help but compare it to this point before I left for Buenos Aires in Argentina. Many things are different this time and has resulted in the excitement and other emotions differing dramatically.

Major travel experience: With one extended trip under my belt, my confidence in my ability to successfully travel more has increased drastically, and travel is addictive, the more you have the more you want.

Solo versus with friends: In hindsight, I definitely threw myself in the deep end. Choosing to travel for three months by myself as my first real experience may have seemed ambitious, but I think I am better for it. I did things and met people that I may not have had I traveled the three months with a friend. This time around I am looking forward to having a companion. All in all, our travel schedule this time around will suit having a mate to enjoy it with.

Now with some (very sketchy) language skills: When I arrived in Argentina, it was difficult to even make myself say 'gracias' just because it sounded weird. At the end of the three months I could speak in very basic sentences and conversations. With even the smallest amount of language, my experiences in the countries towards the end of the trip were greatly enriched. Learning some Spanish was also one of the primary reasons for wanting to travel to Spain next, the language is simple and beautiful, and is definitely something I want to pursue into the future.

Closer to home... kinda: In kilometers, maybe not, in flight time, not really. I am closer to home in the sense that I have points of contact in Spain and more so in England.

Budget: After Christopher Pyne's announcement on Tuesday about cuts to students... No. Not that budget. All of the other points have been reasons making this travel easier than South America, but one thing that is not as comfortable this time around is my personal financial situation. Heading off to South America in December I knew that I had enough money to live quite luxuriously for three months. I could eat the thickest steak on the best menus in Buenos Aires. I could drink caipirinhas on Copacabana beach until my heart was content and my eyesight was blurry, mostly because that only took two drinks. This time around my budget will be somewhat tighter, but as long as Rhomas has anything to do with it, there will be no cost cutting when at the front of the bar.

Running of the Bulls: Unlike the other points this one is purely because I am shitting my pants.

Mas Espanol para Zac!

In a previous post on this page, I spoke about the inevitable planning of future travel while the current travel is far from over. A plan that was briefly mentioned in passing to a few friends while I was bussing around Argentina, has turned into a reality. With some minor and some major tweaks, a five week express trip around the Iberian Peninsula with best mate Rhomas has ascended from nothing more than a suggestion that was shaped by the love of a new language and with the help of some South American lager. 

Due to the length of the trip, it will be slightly more jam-packed than the cruising style of travel I employed in South America. Also travelling with a mate has given the trip more structure, and probably a little more stupidity.

Main event on the July calendar for Rhomas and me is a leisurely jog through the main streets of Pamplona on the second morning of the San Fermin festival. To spice things up a little, there will be six bulls chasing us. 

Many other activities have been arranged, all the while with the endeavour to taste as many different brews and sangrias as we think is necessary to get a proper feel for the culture. And to further broaden our own lagery horizons, a quick stop in the UK we thought was essential.

Curiosity Killed The Cat

No it didn't, obesity and kidney failure did.

Like the upstanding global citizen (I like to believe) I am, I ride my bike to university everyday. Personally this has it's ups and downs. Up, saving money on petrol and parking. Down, I sweat profusely. Up, I receive 40 minutes of incidental physical activity each day. Down, it rains a lot in Melbourne. And finally... Up, I get lots of time to think about the useless stuff that plagues my brain.
Right up there alongside 'My Kitchen Rules' ads in the list of things that annoy Zac, is a compilation of shit sayings. 'Curiosity killed the cat' is the king of the list.

For what reason would someone want to discourage or suppress curiosity? It is a fundamental part of being human (or feline).
Curiosity is enormously positive, it leads to adventure, technological advancement, and being really good at general knowledge for trivia nights.

To finalise this, I will make an outrageous claim not backed by any facts or stats. For every cat that is killed by curiosity, ten are killed by lethargy, laziness, and boredom. Same goes for people.

My brains thinky stuff over the last 22 days.

Coming home from three months overseas has been just as enjoyable as the time spent away. I live in Melbourne, a city that has more to offer than any one person knows. I have lived here for just over a year now, and spent three months of that in South America. So I am coming home to a place where I can still walk along the main streets and feel quite like a tourist. That fact alone has been enough to ease the so called 'post travel depression'. I hear so many people who come home from travel and complain that they want they want to keep travelling (#takemeback). I honestly don't think these people are trying hard enough in their hometowns. There should be enough to keep you occupied in your job or study or hobbies, how do you think your friends feel when all that ever comes out of your mouth is how much you don't want to be here?
Admittedly, since getting home, I have had my rants about Melbourne's prices for beer and general living ($10 for a pint of Boags??), but overall my city and home life could engage me fully for the foreseeable future.
When you get home after being away for a while, especially after being in a culture very different to your own, your friends and family will try to pick out any little thing about you that has changed, and say "you've changed". They don't say it in a bad way like when you got your first girlfriend and your mates said you've changed, its more of an amusement to them that three months away could make you talk differently about the world or wear different clothing (usually tending towards the 'hipster' movement). Personally I'd be disappointed if I, or a friend of mine, came home from being overseas with no new outlooks on life or no new clothes or no anything different.
One inevitable thing that happens while travelling, is planning other travel. It happened to me on multiple occasions, most notably while sitting on one of the eight 15+ hour bus journeys. I have now planned (very loosely) with some mates to be in Spain and Portugal over the mid-year break. Do I have enough money? I don't know. Will I live like a pheasant for three months to make it happen? Probably not because I'm enjoying Melbourne a bit much. Will I keep asking myself questions like this? No, I'll stop now.
Anyway, after my big spiel about being at home fulfilling my need for mental stimuli as much as being away, my quantity of interesting content to put on this page has dramatically decreased. With said decrease, I'm quite sure my number of regular viewers will also decrease. I suppose this page may head in the direction of 'things that Zac's brain thinks' or 'things that give Zac the shits'. Could be interesting... maybe.

Return to Rio: Carnaval Edition

 As I write this, I sit at my new house in Melbourne, fighting mild jet-lag and a not-so-mild desire to crack my first beer in the mancave, but I have to wait.
My last week in South America was the long awaited Rio Carnaval. Amidst all of the hype for Carnaval, I was fast running out of money and more urgently running out of energy. Turns out three months in foreign countries accompanied with three months of substantial beer consumption can take its toll.
The first night we planned to attend a bloco in Ipanema. Since most blocos tend to include tens of thousands of people and drum beats that can be heard from all over town, it was not hard to find. When we got there the atmosphere was electric. Thousands of people meandering along the road doing samba and drinking beer while the band sang (although you couldn't hear them) and the drum beats continued with impeccable timing and rhythm.

Pre-first bloco

This bloke thought it was a good idea to bring the dog

I think we spent the whole night following a giant condom on wheels

A few of our Brazilian friends

The night continued in this fashion until we got to what felt like almost dawn, and we decided to head home, only to find that it was a few minutes passed one in the morning.
Day two coincided with Steph's 22nd birthday, and a certain Taylor Swift song got more plays than it deserved and became our unofficial anthem for the night. After some drinks on the rooftop we all went to join the bloco, only to find that we were too late and all of the blocos had finished for the day. Luckily almost every corner has a few hundred people and a band so the night was not without entertainment. A group of Brazilian girls included us in a circle of such classic dances moves as 'the slut drop' and 'the sprinkler'.

Champagne for Steph's birthday

Tonight's posse

Yeah so... that happened

The third day, Cheryl and I joined a bloco that was expected to have 1.5 million people attend. We stepped off the metro into a sea of costumed bodies. After some time, we had noticed that there was an unusually large amount of women kissing women, and an even more unusually large amount of men kissing men. We asked 'Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France' (a man) and he confirmed our suspicions that it may be a gay bloco. We partied away, all the same.

1.5 million people bloco

Cheryl and 'the Queen of France'

Some of the flock of shuffling bodies

It probably took us longer than it should have to realise it was a gay bloco

El Pres

The official Carnaval had been taking place all week at Rio's Sambadromo. We got hold of tickets for the Monday night event, which is the second last night and holds some of the biggest and best Samba Schools. The spectacle was incredible. The way the whole place was lit up as these enormous floats moved down the street, with thousands of people in amazing costumes samba'ing along. One disappointing part of the night was that it was difficult for one to get oneself a beer, so the guy selling weird tubes of cachaca had to suffice.

A float about the upcoming FIFA World Cup

My favourite float by a long way

Some of the various flavours of cachaca available

Big babies must have been a theme, there was a lot of big babies

Rio Carnaval was not all happy days. The streets were piling up with rubbish after the second or third day and it was starting to give off quite an ungodly smell. It seemed as if the council had decided they should organise the rubbish into neat piles every 50-100 meters down the road, rather than actually removing it. Although I have been advocating the fact that the guide books are horribly wrong about safety in South America and that with general common sense you can remain completely safe, there were noticeably more incidents involving pick-pocketing. I usually countered this by taking nothing more than a small amount of cash anywhere I went.
These are small negatives compared to the experience of Rio de Janeiro during the week of Carnaval. Something that is truly unforgettable.

Selfies 4 Dayz

G'day Bloggers!

Recently I have been viewing South America through a bus window more than ever before. Naturally, as the beer has dried up, so have the stories. San Pedro de Atacama in Chile to Florianopolis in Brazil, is 3,139 kilometres, and about 56 hours on a bus. I accomplished that voyage in about 78 hours. Early on, I decided to document my 'travels' through the magnificent and modest medium, of the Selfy.

Welcome to the Selfy Zone

Three days of buses to come, forgot to bring water...

Old mate was asleep after two minutes, still asleep upon arrival

Bought a Sudoku book, opened it to find this...

My reaction on completion of weird Sudoku 

Another day, another bus

Just saw a goat eating clothing

The sweet sounds from the Hungry Kids of Hungary to pass the time 

Crossing the border in a car, just to change it up a little

Look what I found in Puerto Iguazu

Steph didn't like the Selfy idea, obviously not as entrepreneurial as me 

Hey Zac, we're going for a bus ride, wanna come? ps. Sweet jumper

Ahhhh water! Long 36 hours without it

Almost there, even the selfies aren't keeping up moral now. Awesome jumper though

Made it! Very very worth it. 

 So that's the story of how I cruised my way across the continent, fighting severe boredom and the ever-present danger of Deep Vein Thrombosis. After three days in Florianopolis I (you guessed it!!) boarded a coach bound for Rio to celebrate Carnaval 2014. Here is a sneak peak of what you may find on the streets of Copacobana this week, and also what you may find in my next post. Stay tuned!

One of the more conservative outfits being sported last night