All Over O’ahu

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Tiny Tino

When I wasn’t lounging around on the beach (which I admittedly did a lot of during my time in Hawaii) or celebrating Christmas with Ashleigh and Nick, I made an effort to go out and see some of the local tourist attractions. However, given that my sisters boyfriend was in the navy, I felt as though one of the most important places to visit in my days of tourist sightseeing was Pearl Harbour. It was approximately a half hour drive from Waikiki, and while Nick did have a car, he used it to actually drive to work at Pearl Harbour. He was out underway on the submarine on the day that I had set aside to head out there to visit, but luckily there were plenty of bus services that stopped right outside the museum and visitor centre.

Anchor sculpture in the courtyard at Pearl Harbour.

While Pearl Harbour is actually the military base for the US Navy in Hawaii, there is still a decent portion of the compound that is a museum dedicated to tourism and visitors. Upon entering you are given an audio guide to listen to as you walk through the museum exhibits and displays, and the cool, collected voice of Jamie Lee Curtis guides you through the compound and narrates some of the history of Pearl Harbour. I knew the basic facts about the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941, when Japan attacked the US and spurred their direct involvement into WWII, but it was always a fascinating yet harrowing learning experience to delve deeper into the history and the more personal accounts of the horrors that went down. Much like the Vietnam War Museum in Saigon, I couldn’t help but feel quite overwhelmed by some of the stuff I learned during the walkthrough, but I pushed on through the unpleasantness. It was a strange juxtaposition, to be taking in such sadness and long-standing national grief, all while being surrounded by an environment that is the peak definition of idyllic (in my opinion, at least).

View of the Waterfront Memorial from the USS Bowfin.

As part of the tour, you were also given the opportunity to board and go inside one of the submarines that was docked in Pearl Harbour, the USS Bowfin, which was originally launched on the one year anniversary of the bombing and was nicknamed the “Pearl Harbour Avenger”. People with claustrophobia were warned against going inside, and once you were inside, the reason was obvious. Low ceilings and narrow walkways, exposed pipes and metal all around you… I could only imagine that the term ‘personal space’ would lose all meaning once one of these submarines was full with a crew of sailors and plunging deep into the ocean.

Flag atop the moored USS Bowfin.

Inside the submarine.

All the inner workings of the submarine were on display for visitors to examine.

However, the biggest point of interest in any visit to Pearl Harbour was undoubtedly the USS Arizona Memorial. It feels somehow wrong to call it a tourist attraction or sight, but I guess for all intents and purposes, that’s what it had become. The memorial was built around the sunken hull of the USS Arizona, a boat that was destroyed during the bombing in 1941. The pristine white structure was designed in such a way that it floats above the wreckage of the hull without actually touching it, as though the architecture itself represents the respect that the morbid site deserves. It can only be reached by boat, which also accommodates for the limited space within the memorial and eliminates any potential for overcrowding. After waiting in line for the passenger boat that would ferry us across, my group of fellow tourists unloaded from the boat and solemnly marched into the beautiful white structure.

USS Arizona Memorial

A shrine at the far end of the memorial, with a list of all the names of all those killed on the USS Arizona.

View of the memorials flag from the inside, through one of the windows in the roof.

Perhaps the most interesting and unique thing about the USS Arizona Memorial is what has been dubbed the “tears of the Arizona“. An oil slick that is the result of a leakage from the sunken battleship can be seen on the surface, a small yet perpetual phenomenon that struck me as a fitting aquatic equivalent to the eternal flames that burn at so many war memorial all over the world. I know that an oil slick is technically really bad for the environment, but it was on such a small scale compared to some of the worse disasters in history, and as the oil floated on the surface of the water and glistened into a rainbow mixture in the sunlight, it actually looked kind of beautiful. And I couldn’t help but appreciate that small piece of beauty that was born out of something so tragic and horrific as the events that transpired in Pearl Harbour all those years ago.

One of the few parts of the wreckage of the USS Arizona that protrudes from the water, next to where the tears of the Arizona trickle to the surface.

***

Other than Pearl Harbour, I wasn’t sure what else there was to do in Hawaii or on O’ahu (the name of the island that Honolulu is on), other than spend a lot of time at the beach. And, well, I’m not going to lie – as much as I love travelling, seeing new places, meeting new people and experiencing new sensations, I had been doing it for a long while now. So on the days when the weather was good, I actually made going down to the beach and enjoying the sunshine my number one priority. I did walk around some of the shops and browse through some of the touristy trips that you could take to the other islands, but none of them were really day trips that you could do spontaneously, which is the way I had been doing pretty much everything lately. So I just cut my losses and happily camped out on the beach with a book most days.

There was one other place that Ashleigh really wanted to take me to, and that was the North Shore. As you can probably guess, it was the northern coast of the island, and one that was far less populated by your typical tourists and holidaying families. The beaches up there were well known by surfing communities though, and if you picked the right time of the year there was optimal swells that apparently made for terrific surfing – but I’m not going to pretend I actually know anything about surfing, so that’s all I’ll say about that.

On a day when Nick didn’t have to work, the three of us all piled into the car and took the drive up to the North Shore. I have to admit, everything about the island was beautiful. If it wasn’t the white sandy beaches and the blue ocean, it was the lush green fields and the mountains looming in the horizon, cloaked in thick, beautiful white clouds.

The beach at the North Shore.

When we arrived at the North Shore, the weather had taken a turn for the worse. Ashleigh told me that the weather can often be really different on opposite sides of the island, due to all the mountains in the centre of the island, and the different sea currents and tides coming at the shore in their different directions. Waikiki and been warm and sunny, yet up north the sunlight had flitted away behind the cloud cover, and it even started to sprinkle with rain. We’d brought our towels and swimwear, but after finding a park and stumbling down onto the beach, one look at the powerful swell and crashing waves assured us that there was no way we would be going into the water. I mean, I love a bit of rough surf every now and then, but this was something completely different. Watching those waves made me fairly confident that a broken bone would be the best case scenario.

Still, we sat on the beach and watched the waves for a while, munching on the snacks we’d brought and just admiring the power of the sea. Afterwards we drove back to Waikiki a different way, one that took us closer to the mountains. Nick pointed out a few of his favourite ones to hike – having grown up in a small town in upstate New York, he was definitely a naturally outdoorsy type. He talked about them with such enthusiasm, and it was a shame that between the Christmas obligations and his work schedule, there hadn’t ever really been a convenient time to go up there with him. He and Ashleigh both seemed pretty happy together though. They hadn’t been together that long, but I probably would have put money on him still being around if there was ever a return trip to visit my sister in Hawaii, so I settled for putting those hikes in my future plans.

***

There were a few culinary highlights in Honolulu, too. Ashleigh and Nick took me to their favourite sushi restaurant, a place in Waikiki called Doraku.
“Look, just- we’re ordering for you, okay? Trust me,” she had said as we’d walked in. I’m pretty open minded when it comes to food anyway (tarantulas, anyone?), so I rolled with it and let her order me a dragon roll, which was absolutely as amazing as they had assured me it would be, and we topped it all off with deep-fried brownie for dessert. On another night when Nick was at work, Ashleigh and I had drinks and dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, where we only ate half of our mains to safe room for dessert, because you best believe there is no way I am going to a place called the Cheesecake Factory and not eating cake. And it was, of course, absolutely worth it.

I also went out with Ashleigh and Nick once, to a club where they were regulars and where many of their friends congregated for nights out. The clubs was okay, but there were a few dramas with Ashleigh’s ID (she forgot it), and the music wasn’t really the kind of stuff I could listen to for too long before starting to get a little bored and/or over it (it was a kinda of EDM that I wasn’t really a fan of, though I can’t articulate the differences between them for the life of me). It was nice to see all the aspects of my sisters new life in Hawaii, but we called it a night not too shortly after that.

And of course, my exploration of a new city wouldn’t be complete without me checking out the gay scene. As fate would have it, one of the most popular gay bars in Honolulu was actually in my sisters old street, where I had helped her move from on my first day in Hawaii. Luckily, she hadn’t moved that far away, and on a couple of evenings where not much had been going on back at home, I had wandered down to Waikiki for a drink at Bacchus. It was a tiny gay bar on the enclosed roof terrace, and you had to walk up a few flights of stairs to get there. I had been chatting to a guy from LA on one of the gay apps, who had escaped to Hawaii for Christmas, so we ended up meeting there and having a few two-for-one drinks and chatting a bit more. He told me how he wasn’t a huge fan of Christmas – something about a relatively dysfunctional family – and so some years he just escaped here for some alone time. I was actually quite surprised at how many people came to Hawaii for Christmas. I felt like I was an exception, because the only reason I was here was that I was actually visiting family, not escaping from them, yet there were lots of families who seemed to come here and spend the holiday period here in Waikiki. It seemed odd at first, but then I realised that having Christmas on the beach was a novelty for most Americans that, as an Australian, I just didn’t find that out of the ordinary.

Rainbow after a sun shower in Waikiki.

My sisters apartment had a decent view, but it wasn’t straddling Waikiki beach. I ended up crashing in my new friends hotel room that night, and in the morning got to wake up to the stunning views of the aqua blue water and the gentle sound of waves rolling into the shore. In that moment, I completely understood the desire to run away, forget the stress and craziness that comes with the holiday period, and put it all in the back of your mind while sipping a cocktail by the beach.

View of Waikiki from my new friends hotel room the following morning.

***

After a lovely 10 days of rest and relaxation, the moment that felt like it was never going to come had finally arrived: my final flight home. It was an early morning flight, and while I had tried to assure Ashleigh that she didn’t need to accompany me to the airport, she still awoke without complaint when my alarm went off. Nick had been at work overnight, so I had already said my final goodbyes to him, but together Ashleigh and I wandered through the deserted streets of Waikiki in the early morning and waited for the bus. We laughed and made jokes, and tried not to get too emotional. I knew she’d been working like a maniac at her two jobs to stay afloat, and life had thrown a few curveballs that are (speaking from experience myself) usually a little tougher when you don’t have the usual support network of your family. So I think being there was a much-needed dose of family love for her. For both of us, really, except I would be seeing much more of my family very soon.

So once we got to the airport, we got off the bus and Ashleigh walked with me over to the check-in desks.
“It was so lovely to have you here, little bro,” she said with a smile and pulled me in for one long, final hug. “I love you so much!”
“I love you too, Ash.”
“Well, I guess I’ll see you… well, I’ll see you when I see you! Have a good flight!”
I checked by bags in, and then waved goodbye as I entered the departures gate. It was hard to believe that with one final flight, this epic journey of mine was coming to an end.

Aloha! A Very Hawaiian Christmas

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Tiny Tino

After a rather uneventful flight from LA, I landed in Honolulu and immediately knew I was in the tropics. California hadn’t exactly been cold, but the humidity in Hawaii was inescapable. It was the kind of weather that I loved though, so I couldn’t wait to get out and be amongst it. I made my way through the terminal, collected my baggage, and then looked around, wondering which exit I should take to get out onto the street. As I approached one of the glass automatic sliding doors, I saw a dark-haired woman passing by on the footpath, with an earnest, slightly concerned look on her face. I sped up my pace and ran out the door to catch up with her.

“Ashleigh!” My sister heard me call out and instantly turned around, her expression morphing into a relieved smile when she realised it was me.
“Thank God I found you,” she said with an exasperated sigh as she reached me and gave me a big hug. “I hate this airport, I had no idea where you were going to be coming out.”
“Don’t worry, I’m pretty used to these places by now,” I said with a cheeky smile.
“I bet you are! How was the flight? How are you? Wait, let’s get to the bus, you can tell me all about it on the way home.” We headed to the bus stop and jumped on board. The ride between the airport and the centre of Honolulu was the better part of an hour, so after not having seen my sister for about eight and a half months, we had plenty of time to catch up.

Taking a selfie on the bus to send to Mum.

***

Ashleigh had moved to Hawaii in May, only a couple of months after I had left to begin my year of travelling. She was doing work experience in hospitality as part of a course that she had started back home. When I learned that she would be moving to Hawaii, I had decided to reschedule my existing flights so that I could stop over and visit her on my way back to Sydney. Well, it was actually my mother’s idea: it would be the first time that she wouldn’t have both of her children with her at Christmas, which was amplified by the fact she wouldn’t have either of her children with her, so it was some small solace that while we wouldn’t be with her, at least the two of us would be together, and we’d still be spending Christmas with family.

However, the day that I arrived happened to be perfect timing. Up until now, my sister had been living in a share house in the heart of Honolulu, but today she was moving to a furnished studio apartment, which she would share with her boyfriend on a part time basis, given that he worked and partly lived at the navy barracks where he worked in the US navy. He was going underway on a submarine for a few days, which was a pretty routine thing as part of his job, but it meant he wasn’t around to help with the move.
“So, you’re not going to have to share a house with anyone else when you’re here,” she said. “But, I’m going to need your help moving some of my stuff to the new place.” She didn’t have a lot of stuff, and the house wasn’t too far away, but she also didn’t have a car. So after we arrived at the house, we collected all her stuff up, threw out a bunch of things she didn’t want to take, and ended up calling two taxis and loading all her stuff into the cars to take it to the new apartment. It was less than a 5 minute drive, but carrying everything would have taken literally all day and involved multiple trips. Helping someone move house was probably the most randomly domestic thing I had done in a long time, but it wasn’t too long before we had unpacked everything and were setting up my sisters new apartment.

We spent the afternoon hanging out and setting up the new place, finding places for all her things and blowing up my air mattress, with me assuring her that the place would feel a lot bigger after I went home – after nine months of travelling, I’d definitely acquired more things that I had left with. In the evening she took me down to the Tony Roma’s Restaurant, where she worked as a hostess as one of her two jobs. Though on the way there, she got a strange message from her boyfriend.
“Wait… he’s supposed to be on a submarine? That must mean… that must mean he didn’t go! Maybe you’ll get to meet him tonight after all!”
And sure enough, much to my sisters excitement, he walked into the restaurant just after we’d sat down and ordered our first drinks.

“Robert, this is Nick. Nick, this is my brother Robert”, Ashleigh introduced us, rather unnecessarily, since each of us had already heard so much about each other through her. Though it was nice to finally meet him, and it didn’t take too long for us to warm up to each other and enjoy a decent steak together.

Well, I ended up getting ribs, but you get the idea.

***

Between the two jobs she was working at two different restaurants, Ashleigh was actually pretty busy most of the time. Nick’s work was a lot more sporadic, since the free time he had when he was home was contrasted by the 24 hour shifts of duty he had at the navy base. He would be around for a few days though, so we had the chance to hang out and get to know each other. During one of my first days, when Ashleigh wasn’t at work, the three of us set out to buy supplies for Christmas. This would also be Nick’s first Christmas away from his family back in upstate New York, and his mother had been worrying about it even more than ours, so we’d promised that we would go out and decorate the small apartment as best we could. First it was off to Walmart to buy Christmas lights and some small decorations, and then we headed out to get a tree.

“We’ve gotta have a real tree, though,” Nick had insisted. I’d thought it must have been a tradition for his family, to always have a real tree (I’d already explained to Todd back in San Francisco why they’re a lot less common back in Australia), but I soon learned that it was the opposite – despite living in a place where he probably could have chopped down a tree from the forest just beyond his backyard, Nick’s family had never had a real Christmas tree. That he was in Hawaii and very much in control of this years festivities meant that he could finally realise his dream of having a real fur tree as his Christmas tree this year.

Except… when we showed up at the yard where the tree were being sold, the three of us probably wore the most disappointed expressions on the whole island. It’s safe to say that traditional Christmas trees do not thrive in the tropical climates of Hawaii – either these pathetic excuses for Christmas trees had very much struggled to grow in such an environment, or they were runts that had been rejected and shipped over from the mainland, a journey which undoubtedly did them no favours. I had to believe they were imported into Hawaii, if nothing else for the exorbitant cost that we were expected to pay for them. For a tree that barely stood taller than my sister, and was definitely shorter than Nick, we had to make the executive decision that it was not worth it. We headed home, slightly disheartened, with nothing but a roll of Christmas lights and a few dashed dreams.

In the evening, Ashleigh had to work, so while she was there Nick took me down to the Hilton Hotel resort. Every Friday evening there was a firework show in the garden areas that were open to the general public, so we wandered down there to kill some time after grabbing dinner.

The silhouettes of palm trees as the fireworks explode behind them.

Afterwards we headed home, and the two of us brainstormed a little more about how we could make the apartment feel a little bit more like Christmas, even though we didn’t have a tree. Ashleigh had seemed a little dejected by our inability to secure one, given that the tree is a general staple of the holiday. So we pulled out the Christmas lights, and a box of decorations that Nick’s mother had sent over from the mainland. We unrolled the lights and tried to discern the best way to place them around the room, when suddenly I had a flashback to an image that I had seen on Facebook about a month ago. I pitched the idea to Nick, and he instantly loved it, so we set to work setting up the lights so that we could be finished before Ashleigh got home.

When Ashleigh finally arrived home from a long evening shift, Nick stopped her at the door and told her to cover her eyes.
“We’ve got a surprise for you,” he said. “No peeking.”
He guided her across the room (all three paces – it was a studio, remember), and then I hit the lights on the wall to turn them off before flicking on the Christmas lights.
“And… open.”

Our DIY makeshift Christmas tree.

And she was able to behold the roll of lights that we had strung up against the wall in the shape of a Christmas tree, with some of the lighter decorations hanging from the wires, and topped of off with a pre-fixed ribbon bow at the very top, in place of an angel or star. Sure, it wasn’t a masterpiece, and it probably didn’t look as good or as colourful as either Nick or I had imagined it might. But as the saying goes, it’s the thought that counts, and Ashleigh was thrilled.
“Oh my God,” she said, half rolling he eyes but still clearly pleased with our efforts. “You guys… We finally have a tree!” It had been a long and exhausting evening at the restaurant, so she hadn’t been in such an excellent mood when she arrived home, but coming back to a little bit of dysfunctional Christmas magic had definitely put a smile on her face. “Thank you, both of you,” she said as she gave each of us a hug and a kiss. “I can’t wait to spend this Christmas with my two boys!”

***

Christmas Day itself was actually a pretty easy-going day. We woke up in the morning and Nick cooked us bacon and eggs for breakfast, and then we took turns Skyping our families back home. First we called ahead to Nick’s family, who were a few hours ahead of us and were already finishing up their Christmas lunch, and then over to Australia where it was already Boxing Day, and my mother and aunty were already onto the champagne. There wasn’t much in the way of gift exchanges though, given that it was just the three of us. Ashleigh had bought me a cute pair of underwear, and I gave her the necklace and earrings that I had picked up on the Grand Canyon Tour in Arizona. Other than that, it was just Ashleigh and Nick exchanging a handful of gifts. Not that I’m complaining – it was just an extremely different experience from the past Christmases of large family gatherings where exchanging gifts took up a significant portion of the morning.

By the early afternoon, it was time for Ashleigh to head into work. Nick was pretty happy to spend the afternoon relaxing at home, but there’s not much privacy or personal space in a studio, so I ended up grabbing my towel and heading to the beach. Ashleigh and Nick’s new place was only a 10 minute walk from Waikiki Beach, probably the most famous and popular beach in the whole of Hawaii. The shore was lined with hotels, so the beach was always packed, but there was plenty of sand and places to stretch out in the sun, so I found a relatively quiet section and settled down with my book and spent the rest of the day without a care in the world.

Waikiki Beach.

Obligatory beach selfie.

I stayed there literally all day, to the point where I was able to watch a beautiful ocean sunset. Despite being surrounded by a small horde of people, being there by myself helped make it feel like my own personal slice of paradise.

Christmas sunset at Waikiki.

After the sun went down, I headed back home, and eventually Ashleigh returned from work with three juicy steaks from Tony Roma’s, which she had picked up at the end of her shift. She brought a few servings of our favourite sides too, and so together we sat around in Ashleigh and Nick’s new home and celebrated a successful end to our experimental yet still thoroughly enjoyable Christmas.

California Dreaming: The Sights of San Francisco

Posted on November 26, 2015 by Tiny Tino

Out of all the American cities that I was excited to visit during my travels, San Francisco was easily one of the top contenders. After the hundreds of times I’d seen the sweeping aerial views of the Golden Gate Bridge after the opening credits of almost every episode of Charmed, I was excited to see the city that I’d viewed so often through a TV screen. Or at least, I thought I was… however, a quick Google search upon my arrival revealed that the Charmed manor was actually located in LA, and that pretty much the entirety of the show, save those sweeping panoramas, was filmed in LA, despite being set in San Francisco. Yet San Francisco was the chosen setting because of the supposedly weird and quirky nature of the city, which allowed a sisterhood of urban witches to exist unnoticed, so in my mind the city was still a mysterious gem waiting to be discovered.

***

When I wasn’t getting drunk and passing out in the Castro or celebrating some wholesome American holidays, there was plenty of time to explore the many corners of San Francisco. Of course, after getting a bike from Rob on my first day in the city, I leapt at the first chance I had to cycle over to the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Make sure you pick a day when there’s not too much fog,” Rob had reminded me when he’d taken me to pick the bike up. “Otherwise you might not actually see that much of the bridge.” I wasn’t exactly sure how I was supposed to tell whether or not there was fog on the bay, given that I couldn’t see it at all from my place in Noe Valley, but a bright and sunny day was the only cue that I needed to jump out of bed and set out on my way.

What I loved about San Francisco was how bike friendly it was, despite being a huge city with lots of traffic. When I punched in my destination into Google Maps, it showed me a route that I could travel that took me all the way to the northern edge of the city via bike lanes. And most of the cars seemed pretty accommodating to the cyclists too, unlike some of the aggressive behaviour from traffic that I’d witnessed in various places, particularly my home city of Sydney. However, the hills were my biggest downfall. I could power on up the longer, gradual inclines, but I have to admit there were a few monstrosities that were far too steep for me to pedal all the way up, and I had to dismount and walk the bike up those.

Once I hit the northern edge of the city, it was a long and mostly flat stretch of green ovals and parks until I finally reached the Golden Gate Bridge. It hadn’t seemed that far on the map, but it took me the better part of an hour to even get close.

The Golden Gate Bridge

Once I finally approached the bridge, it took a little while to actually navigate the roads and pathways to make it up to the bridge itself. And then it was only when I got onto the bridge did it really strike me just how long it actually was. But there was no way that I was going to come this far and not ride across the bridge.

Before crossing the bridge.

The bridge and Rob’s old Burning Man bike.

Bridge selfie.

It wasn’t until I reached the other side of the bridge that I realised that there wasn’t actually much on the other side. I mean, I knew that it wasn’t in the centre of the city, so I wasn’t expecting anything too exciting. But it was, for all intents and purposes, a bridge that led to nowhere. I went to keep following the road that led off the bridge, but saw that it started off into what felt like the countryside, and while I’m sure there is something if you keep following the road, I was conscious of how far I had come, which was exactly how far I still had to go in order to get home. So instead I turned off and headed on a trail down the hill to the waters edge. There I discovered a few fisherman and a small information centre, with not much to offer except a shop where I purchased a bottle of water – I had underestimated the distance and therefore how much water I would actually need.

There wasn’t much else to see though, so I powered back up the hill and once again cross the Golden Gate Bridge back into San Francisco. Once I reached the other side, I decided to take a new route through some of the roads and pathways around the bridges edge, in an attempt to see some more sights. And that is how I found myself passing through the San Francisco National Cemetery. I slowed down a little as I passed the pristine, green grass with the rows of small white tombstones, and paused for a moment and spared a thought for the dead, before cycling on out back into the city and onwards towards home. Rob hadn’t been kidding when he said that a ride out to the bridge would take most of the day, and I promptly collapsed when I got home, and eventually ran myself another long, hot bath.

San Francisco National Cemetery

***

For my next sightseeing outing, I decided to give my body a break from the cycling and test out the public transport system in San Francisco. On a few occasions when I hadn’t had the energy to walk to the hills to and from the Castro, it had been easy enough to jump on a bus, but this time once I arrived at the Castro, I kept going and hopped on the metro system known as the BART, which stands for Bay Area Rapid Transport. There are a number of BART stops in San Francisco itself, and the network crosses the bay to connect it with Oakland, Berkley, and a bunch of other cities on the east side of the bay. I jumped off just before the train crossed the bay, which placed me in the Financial District. I then walked up along the edge of the water until I reached Pier 39, which is without a doubt a huge tourist trap, but nonetheless I entered and walked along the wooden boardwalks, passing all the shops and restaurants and food stalls and screaming children. I paid no attention to any of that, but the only thing that really caught my attention was the sea lion colony that lived on a collection of wooden flotsams by the pier.

View of the sea lions from the opposite pier.

I hadn’t even known about these sea lions, so at first I was rather shocked when I rounded the corner of the pier to see so many of them sprawled out across the wooden planks. Then I thought that I must have been extremely lucky to be here on a day when a huge group of them had seemingly randomly come so close to the shore and decided to hang out, and it wasn’t until later that I learned that the sea lions were as much locals as any of the humans living in San Francisco.

A strange sculpture that I encountered along my walk.

I spent a little while longer looking out over the bay. I had contemplated doing a tour out to Alcatraz, but they cost a little more than I was willing to spend on a day out, and none of them were leaving at any convenient times. So I just wandered around the area some more, and took my time watching the thick fog roll in across the water.

After that I headed back inland, back down to the Financial District and then into Chinatown, where I wandered around a bit more and bought some street food for lunch as I went along. The only other really identifiable attraction that I came across was the Transamerica Pyramid, which had also appeared in many scenic segues during episodes of Charmed, so I was very glad to discover that it too was also actually located in San Francisco. Although much more appealing to gaze upon was what was next to the Transamerica Pyramid – the Transamerica Redwood Park. I knew that there were forests of redwood trees further up the coast of California, not too far away from San Francisco but most likely too far away from me to get there, short of hiring a car, which was practically impossible (or insanely expensive) for me given that I was under the age of 25. The trees in the Transamerica park weren’t nearly as tall as the wild redwoods, I suspect, but it looked like a nice little sanctuary in the heart of the Financial District.

Transamerica Redwood Park

The Transamerica Pyramid

***

There was one attraction in San Francisco that I hadn’t actually heard of before my arrival, but as soon as I studied a map and spotted it, I knew that it would be the site of one of my full day outings. Golden Gate Park, located just south of the Golden Gate Bridge, was San Fransisco’s version of Central Park, and while it wasn’t as big as some of the other huge parks that I’d visited in New York City and São Paulo, it was still of a significant size, rather narrow but extremely long, and with numerous different section inside, my visiting turned into a full day of adventure and exploration.

Some of the features of Golden Gate Park include, but are not limited to, a golf course, an angling pool, a polo field, the San Francisco Botanical Gardens, several playgrounds, a stadium, De Young Museum, numerous gardens and meadows, an archery range, and a bison paddock.

One of the numerous water habitats throughout the park.

The Rose Garden

The Conservatory of Flowers (which had unfortunately closed for the day by the time I reached it)

Sun dial that I found amongst one of the many open meadows.

I also made sure that I took my bike off some of the main roads, and rode through some of the more off-road terrain the park had to offer. I’m not sure if that was really allowed, but it was such a nice experience to turn off into the forest and delve into the depths where it felt like you could disappear and no one would ever find you.

Although I have to admit, I probably got the biggest kick out of seeing the bison roaming around in the paddock, which really took me back to my Year 8 History classes and flashbacks to Dances With Wolves.

The bison paddock.

After making it through the entire length of Golden Gate Park, I emerged on the beach, and I rode down along the edge of the sand a little bit, and watched the flocks of seagulls flutter aimless along the mostly empty beach. I stared out over the Pacific Ocean for a little bit, and while I’d worked up a bit of a sweat with all the bike riding through the park, there was a cool wind whipping off the ocean that made the idea of swimming rather unpleasant. It was also blowing a lot of sand everywhere, which was also quite unpleasant, so eventually I found a beach house to take shelter in and have some lunch, after which I headed back to the park.

Birds at the beach.

Dutch windmill located in the western end of Golden Gate Park.

***

My final bout of sightseeing took me into the city centre again, on a rather aimless afternoon stroll, if I’m perfectly honest. From the Castro I wandered further into the city and stumbled across the beautiful San Francisco City Hall, an elegant building that almost looked like a brilliant royal palace. Across from the City Hall lay the Civic Center Plaza, which had rows of trees that had all shed their leaves at the approach of winter, but the way they were planted in perfectly straight rows created a strange visual effect when you stood in the middle of them that reminded me a lot of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

San Francisco City Hall

Civic Center Plaza, complete with a Christmas tree.

The narrow tunnels created by the trees in the plaza.

I wandered through the centre in the dying afternoon light, before heading back through the Castro and over the hills to get home.

The gay streets of the Castro.

***

I had been in San Francisco for almost two weeks, and I had loved every minute of it. While not as warm as I had expected California to be, I’d learnt a little about the phenomenon of the local climate, and the vibrant and colourful culture of the city had more than made up for it. I’d also met a bunch of awesome people, many of whom I’m still in touch with and will likely ensure that my first visit to San Francisco will not be my last. But alas, the countdown to the end of my seemingly endless worldwide journey had begun, and I still had the huge city of Los Angeles to explore before I jetted off from the mainland USA.

The morning of my departure, Todd and I both got up early: him getting ready for work, and me gathering up all my belongings and throwing them into my bag. He offered to give me a lift to the nearest BART station, which would take me across the bay and over into Oakland. It was from there that my Amtrak train would depart, and carry me down the Californian coast to LA. I said a heartfelt goodbye to Todd, who had done so much for me and without whom my stay in San Francisco would not have been the same, before jumping on the metro and heading across the bay to embark on one of the final legs of my worldwide tour.

Sights to See and Sights of the Sea

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Tiny Tino

For a city that has a handful of extremely recognisable and world famous icons, I didn’t do an awful lot of sightseeing in Rio de Janerio. James had mentioned the cable car ride to Sugarloaf Mountain, a pretty popular tourist attraction on the eastern edge of the city. Though, when I’d probed Tom about it later, he had shrugged, appearing pretty indifferent.
“I mean, yeah, it’s a great view,” he said. “It’s one of those things that everyone just does, know you? Almost without thinking about it. If you do go, just make sure it’s on a day when the weather is nice and clear.” I’d taken the advice into account, but there was no denying that on the bright and sunny days, the allure of the beach down the road was far more powerful than any urge to climb a mountain. The same could be said for Christ the Redeemer – the journey to actually get up the mountain to the base of the monument wasn’t a breezy walk in the park, and I can’t admit to having any strong spiritual calling from Jesus to go look at the huge idol up close. So I settled for the glimpses that Tom and I had had of the statue through the clouds on our hike a little closer to home, satisfied that I was probably experiencing a few more interesting things in Brazil than statues and landscapes.

But there was one other sight in particular that James had described that had piqued my interest much more than either of the mountains. “There’s the steps at Lapa,” he’d said as he rattled off a quick list of things that would be worth seeing, and perhaps it was the fact it was something I’d never actually heard of that made me research the steps and eventually want to go and see them. I jumped on Google and did a brief search of some of the other sights in the area – Lapa was a neighbourhood closer to the centre of Rio de Janeiro – and on one of the afternoons where Tom was at work, I set out via the bus and metro to explore a little bit more of the city.

***

I found Rio to be a curious city because it felt very decentralised. I’m much more familiar with the concept of a city centre, an obvious hub of activity that has a greater population density, is usually a little more expensive than the rest of the city, and has lots of things to see and do and entertain the tourists. But as soon as I stepped off the metro and emerged into the more central streets of Rio, I realised this wasn’t the case. The touristic focus of the city is by and large the coastal areas, and the regions that have the gorgeous beaches and natural beauty within the landscapes. That’s what people want to do and see when they come to Rio – I too had been primarily more interested in catching some rays and working on my tan than I ever had been about the sights I was about to visit.

Now, Rio is a pretty big city, so maybe there was a more accurate, central hub that I didn’t know about. To be fair, most of the city it actually based long the coast, around the mountains and the landscapes, and so the “centre” really just seemed to be the midpoint between the northern and southern parts of the coast. But the area I was in looked not far off being a ghost town. A lot of the buildings looked particularly old and run down, graffiti and litter were present – not overwhelmingly, but consistently – and I was very quickly introduced to another far less glamorous side of the city, which I had a feeling didn’t see half as many tourists as the beaches at Copacabana or Ipanema. It told a different story, a toned down version of the rife poverty that existed in the favelas over the hill, the concentration of the Brazilian slums. It was actually quite confronting, and for the first time during my stay in Rio I actually felt the mild presence of danger and the need for a little more caution than usual – a fear that I had been secretly harbouring about the city yet had never before now been actualised. But I kept my wits about me and moved on, taking a few photographs of the significant buildings and trying me best to not look too much like an ignorant tourist. Firstly there was the Teatro Municipal, considered one of the most important and beautiful theatres in the whole of Brazil.

Teatro Municipal

The relatively quiet centre of Rio.

After that I made my way further west over to Lapa, where there were two more sights that I had read about. The first was the Arches of Lapa: the ancient Carioca Aqueduct. When I first read about them, I assumed I had just misheard James say ‘steps’, but they were actually something else entirely. I have to admit, I was expecting a little more than what I saw. To be fair, there was nothing misleading about the name – the were definitely arches. However, they’re been described as great architectural feat, a landmark of the city, and I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when I discovered the building looking particularly dirty on one end, as though it had suffered some major neglect. Although in the end it all ended up feeling rather fitting for the ghost town vibe I was starting to get from the area.

Arcos da Lapa: the arches of Lapa.

But as I followed my directions down a few small side streets, levels of fear and uncertainty slightly but gradually rising, I turned a corner and instantly felt like I was in another city, with an entirely different mood and atmosphere. Escadaria Selarón – Selarón’s Staircase, or the Steps of Lapa – loomed ahead of me, an explosion of colour that appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the otherwise dank and drab corner of the city.

Escadaria Selarón

The entire staircase was decorated with an array of coloured materials.

There was so much intricate detail in the ceramic installation.

Honestly, I hadn’t done that much research into what the steps actually were, so I was completely blown away when I stumbled across them. The entire staircase had essentially been turned into an artwork, with barely a patch of free cement that wasn’t adorned by a tile or ceramic in some way. There were words in the steps, there were flags, there were pictures – it was such a complex and diverse range of colours and images, there was nothing you could do but slowly ascend the staircase while marvelling at the walls around you, taking care to not trip up them in the process. There was a substantially larger amount of tourists on the steps, too – it seems as though this is one of the few attractions that people venture out this way to actually visit. I took my time picking out some fellow tourists who seemed trustworthy enough, and asked them to take my picture on the steps.

Other tourists marvelling a the ceramic artwork.

Sitting on the steps of Lapa.

It was actually quite a long staircase, and as I climbed further I realised that the staircase was actually a street. There were houses along either side, front doors opening directly onto the staircase, and I few times I actually noticed Brazilian families coming and going from their homes. I wondered what it must be like to literally live on a tourist attraction – frustrating at times, but surely a beautiful backdrop to spend even the most relaxed and casual days of your life. When I reached the top, it was interesting to gaze back down the steps and realise how unremarkable they looked from above. Almost all of the tiled surfaces faced downwards, and you could only really be confronted with all the colours as you climbed the staircase. I sat there at the top of the steps, partly to sit and marvel at the complexity and beauty of the whole thing, and also partly because I had discovered an adorable little stray cat which I couldn’t stop photographing.

The view from the top of the steps.

The cute little stray that I stumbled across.

Seriously, he was probably the highlight of my day.

The steps were really interesting though, and something I was so glad I had taken the time and effort to go and see. Now, whenever I see a movie that’s set in Brazil and there is a visual of the steps at Lapa, no matter how brief or insignificant, I can’t help but shout out “Hey, I’ve been there!” to anyone who will listen. It wasn’t a hugely popular attraction, such as, say, the Eiffel Tower, and I think the fact that there were less people made it even more memorable, and something that I really will carry with me for the rest of my life.

***

That day was the only real sightseeing that I did while I was in Rio. After seven months on the road, it’s a little difficult to muster up the enthusiasm for that kind of thing all the time, but I felt satisfied with what I had managed to see. The rest of the sunny days I spent hanging out with Tom, going to the beach with him and James, and for the most part just relaxing and taking it easy. People sometimes underestimate how taxing on your mind and body travelling can be. Sure, it’s essentially an extended holiday, but you’re constantly moving your body around from one unfamiliar environment to the next, and all the new things you see and learn about and discover can build up to overwhelm your mind. Rio provided the perfect opportunity for me to just kick back, soak up the sun, sand and sea, and really not have a care in the world.

Tom in the ocean, taken with his waterproof camera.

And there’s me, diving into the surf.

Swimming at Ipanema with the scenery behind me.

And of course, the experience wouldn’t be complete without a selfie.

When the sun comes out, Rio de Janerio really does become, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever visited.

From Parks to Parties: Killing Time in Rio de Janeiro

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Tiny Tino

I have to admit, my stay in Rio de Janeiro was not quite like how I had originally imagined it. Around the world, the name brings to mind exotic images of the legendary Carnival, and belly dancers in the streets and lavish, feathered costumes and parties on the beach and… well, I guess I can’t really speak for the rest of the world, but it’s definitely considered a bit of party city. So I surprised myself at how little partying I actually did while I was in town. I spent a great deal of my time outside, either on the beach or taking walks through the neighbourhoods and some of the nearby greenery, or just hanging out with Tom.

***

On my first morning I was woken up by Tom getting ready and having breakfast in the kitchen – which was, for all intents and purposes, my bedroom. He was doing his best to be quiet, but I’m a pretty light sleeper, and he noticed me stirring.
“Sorry,” he said in a whisper as he shuffled between the tiny gap between my sofa bed and the kitchen counter. “If you want, you can go into my room and lie on my bed if you wanna sleep in some more, so I don’t disturb you.”
“Oh, nah it’s alright,” I said, “but thank you.”
“You’re welcome. How was the bed?” His face looked a little wary, as though he was afraid how I might answer.
“It was… okay,” I replied with a sheepish chuckle, and Tom started to laugh too.
“Yeah, it’s a little bit hard,” he said, with the slightest hint of regret in his tone of voice. “Sorry”.
“Really, it’s okay. It’s fine,” I said again, but I guess I must have made a grimacing face as I went to lie back down – the sofa bed was pretty uncomfortable to sleep on.
“Are you sure you don’t wanna go and sleep on my bed?” Tom said again with a knowing smile.
“Well…since you’re offering,” I said with a reluctant laugh, and gathered up the sheets from my bed to go and rest for a few more hours in Tom’s room. He had to head to work for the day, so he left me to sleep in and relax.

When I finally got up for the second time that morning, I decided one of the first things I wanted to see was the beach. Firstly I grabbed some breakfast at a café on the adjacent tourist street, full of bars and restaurants that catered for the English-speaking crowds, but as I went to head straight to the beach I found myself having second thoughts. I’d heard my fair share of horror stories about getting robbed or mugged on the beach in Rio, and while I’d had to make some pretty dodgy security arrangements for previous beach visits, it didn’t make sense to take my bag with my phone and wallet in it down to the beach when I was staying in Ipanema, such a short distance away. So I headed back to Tom’s apartment, lathered myself up with sunscreen, and headed off down to the beach. I didn’t even bother wearing a shirt – all I had was my towel, my thongs, and the swim shorts I was wearing, with the apartment key safely secured in one of the sealable pockets.

The day was overcast, but temperatures were still warm and humid. This meant it was still warm enough to go swimming, and there were significantly less crowds due to the fact nobody was sunbathing. It was actually perfect. The cloudy weather also made the beach beautiful in it’s own mysterious way, to the point where I actually returned to the apartment after my swim so that I could fetch my iPhone and take a picture. But it was so lovely to be in the ocean again – I hadn’t been swimming in the sea since my dip into the beach in Amsterdam, and as someone who grew up on a coastal city, I was realising for the first time how much I really did love the sun, the sand and the surf, and how much I missed it when it wasn’t in my life. So I didn’t do a great deal that day except for be unashamedly lazy, and indulge in the beach bum lifestyle while I had a chance.

Clouds rolling in over Ipanema.

That evening Tom and I just hung out at home. We ended up bonding over a mutual understanding of certain pop culture references, and I introduced him to Ja’mie King: Private School Girl. He couldn’t get enough of it, and we pretty much exhausted the collection of clips that YouTube have of the hilariously offensive Australian character. Later we ended up watching an episode of American Horror Story: Coven on TV, since it was the only thing that was in English. The TV was in his bedroom, so we were lying on his bed watching it. Tom must have noticed me start to doze off at some point in the evening.
“Hey, if you want, you can sleep here tonight. I know the sofa bed is pretty uncomfortable.”
“Really? Are you sure?” I’d hate to feel like I was intruding on personal space, but Tom did have a double bed and the sofa bed was one of the hardest things I’d ever slept on.
“Yeah, it’s cool. Honestly, I don’t mind, I just thought it would be a bit creepy to offer on the very first night,” he said with a laugh. But we’d instantly taken to each other as friends, so when the time came to sleep we very comfortably crashed there together, and I ended up doing so for the rest of my stay in Rio.

***

The following afternoon, when Tom had some free time, we went for an easy hike up the mountain that was located in the park by the lagoon, Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas. The national park of the side of the hill was semi-dense rainforest, but once again the weather was humid and overcast, which made the day warm but not too blistering hot with intense sunshine. It was a pretty peaceful and pleasant walk through the natural surroundings, getting away from the hustle and bustle of the streets and the beach.

Entrance to the national park we went walking through.

The park was a pristine section of rainforest tucked away behind some of the more expensive houses in Rio.

And when we got to the top of the trail and stepped out onto the lookout, it was a pretty incredible view.

Afternoon sun glowing behind the clouds over the lagoon.

The ritzy, more expensive houses on the northern side of park, east of the lagoon.

The ritzy, more expensive buildings on the northern side of park, east of the lagoon.

Taking a break after the climb.

And when the clouds momentarily parted, Christ the Redeemer made himself visible from the taller, neighbouring mountain. Tom and I both quickly grabbed our cameras to snap some pictures before the clouds rolled over again to conceal the famous statute.

Christ the Redeemer on his lonely peak.

A close up of Christ the Redeemer, just visible through the cloud cover.

On the walk back down we found ourselves locked in at the gates to the park, so we had to ask one of the groundskeepers to let us out via the service exit. We chatted as we walked back to Tom’s place, watching kids playing in the park and locals jog around the flat areas by the lagoon. We also stopped to sample something that Tom insisted was an important part of local Brazilian life. I don’t know if there was an actual Portuguese name for it, but essentially it was just a purple frozen smoothie, made from the pulp of the açaí berries, found on the palms of the same name which were native to Brazil. It didn’t have a very strong flavour, but it was common to throw in little extras or add-ins to make it more exciting. I got a small cup and mixed in muesli, while Tom had protein mixed into his larger one. I can’t say I was a huge fan, but it wasn’t too bad.

***

While I did spend most of my evenings just hanging out with Tom, but there was one night where we did do a bit of partying. I’d failed to get in touch with any of Fausto’s friends in regards to invitations or offers to join them at their parties, but I much preferred hanging out with Tom and James instead, so that’s what I did. On Saturday night James came over to Tom’s and the three of us drank vodka and laughed and caught up, and James gave me some advice and suggestions about things that I could see or do during my last few days in Rio de Janerio. There was also a lot of Ja’mie quotes being thrown back and forth, and for a minute I actually felt like I was back at home in Sydney, between the mindless banter and the crude jokes and figuring out if we had enough vodka left to make a decent roadie or if we should do a few shots before heading to the club.

Honestly, I can’t tell you what we decided about the roadie, but eventually we were in a taxi to a place called 00 (Zero Zero), supposedly a pretty popular gay bar in the area. When we got there we went through the whole process of getting IDs checked and registered and being assigned a tab card, but after going through the same drill so many times in São Paulo it felt basically normal. The club was an interesting space, with an indoor seating area, a huge outdoor patio, and a dance floor that kind of blended into both of them. Tom, James and I got our first beers and sat down outside, since the night air was nice and warm, and it was only a matter of time before we were approached by some of the local men. I have to admit, a large percentage of Brazilian men are absolutely gorgeous, but so many of them have this weird charm about them that would come across as super sleazy if it were anyone else. But somehow it just makes them seem cheeky and romantic. Or maybe it was just sleazy and I was blind to it, I honestly can’t say. I also discovered that a lot of Brazilian gay men were very flaky and unreliable, and despite strongly insisting that they would “be right back”, there was really only a 50% chance you would ever see his face again. So based on personal experience, I guess I now have a few trust issues with some of the locals (although, if we’re being honest, it seems more like typical gay bar behaviour than anything else).

It was a fun night, with the three of us continuously being separated and reunited throughout the course of the evening, each time a little bit more drunk and having some other bizarre social interaction to report. The music was a mix of pop and funky traditional music, and a few times I found myself being awkwardly dragged through a drunken two step tango by a sensual Brazilian gentleman, though for all the ballroom dancing classes I’d taken in high school I still struggled to keep up with his lead. The dance floor was fun and wild, though I had a fair share of unwanted attention while shaking my hips to Shakira and insisting that they didn’t lie. Though Tom was great for that – he was a well built guy and at least six feet tall, towering over literally everyone in the club, so I could always just fall back and swoop behind him for protection.

I don’t know what time it was when we eventually decided to call it a night, but we were all danced out and our skin had a light sheen of sweat. We checked ourselves out of the club and paid, then piled into a taxi and headed back to Ipanema. Once we were in the general vicinity of home, we got out and parted ways with James, who wandered off in the other direction to his hostel while Tom and I headed home. However, the amount of dancing that we’d been doing combined with the amount I had drank meant that I was totally unashamed in telling Tom how hungry I was and pleaded that we stopped somewhere to get greasy, post-drinking food. Of course, he agreed – I was his guest, after all – and after we wandered through a few streets we found a place that was open 24 hours. The service was less than satisfactory at such early hours of the morning, but that didn’t matter once we’d been served our burgers, chicken legs, and our delicious plate of bacon and cheddar fries.

And so my world tour of sampling drunken fast food continues. And it was so, so good.

After that we headed straight home, showered and crashed into bed. As beautiful as the beaches and the natural surroundings and the hiking had been, I couldn’t have let myself leave Rio without doing at least some partying. And even though it was the only night in Rio de Janeiro that I had spent partying, it was a damn good one.

The Road to Rio

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Tiny Tino

After about a week in São Paulo, it was time for me to move on. When I had first arrived in Brazil I had discussed with Fausto my options for visiting other cities, and whether there was an easy and affordable way to get to any of them. The city that was first and foremost in my mind was obviously Rio de Janeiro, and Fausto told me that it was only about six hours on a bus to get there. After some of the other long-haul journeys I’d taken, six hours on a bus seemed like nothing at all, so I went ahead and booked a ticket leaving São Paulo in about a weeks time. However, I also had to book my return ticket, since I already had my flight booked out of Brazil from São Paulo, something I’d had to do in a split second decision during my minor crisis at Dublin airport. After doing that, I spent my free time during the rest of the week looking for somewhere to stay while I would be in Rio. Fausto was looking up and recommending some pretty cool looking hostels – and most importantly, advising me on all the better areas of the city in which I should stay – but I directed more of my efforts into searching for Couchsurfing hosts and writing requests, and in the end it paid off: a friendly-looking American gay guy in his mid-20s who was currently living in Ipanema had agreed to host me.

Jump forward in time, after my nights of drinking and partying in São Paulo and waking up in the wrong city, and I was on my way to the bus station, using the public transportation of São Paulo for the first time. Fausto hadn’t spoken too highly of it, but there wasn’t anything wrong with it, really. I had to catch a bus and then two different metro lines before I got to the major bus terminal, and it took over an hour to eventually get there, but everything went smoothly and according to plan, and nobody tried to rob or pick pocket me in broad daylight, so I have no complaints. I actually overestimated how long it would take me to arrive, since I had also allowed enough time to pick up my tickets and make sure I knew where I was going within the terminal – a process which turned out to be remarkably simple – so I ended up having to sit around for a little while waiting for my departure time. Although, to be sure, that’s definitely a better feeling than sprinting through there terminal because you’re running late. Once we were on board and finally got moving, I chatted for a little bit to the guy who was sitting next to me, but eventually he moved away to where there were two empty seats, so I had a little more room for the rest of the journey. It was a beautiful day outside, and Brazil has some gorgeous countryside scenery, so I just relaxed and was able to quite comfortably enjoy the ride.

Just a taste of much of the interesting and contrasting architecture I saw along the way.

The mountains got a lot greener the closer I got to Rio.

I arrived around in the late afternoon, but before I went off into the city I decided to pick up my ticket for my bus ride home, so that I didn’t have to worry about it in the early morning when I was departing. I am so thankful that I decided to do that, because since both my journeys had been booked with two different bus services – yet I’d only received one printed confirmation when I booked them together – there was a huge misunderstanding within the entire system. I was sent from counter to counter of the different bus companies, trying to explain to people what I had done and what I was trying to do, with the fact only about half the people spoke any English proving to be a rather large hurdle. It took almost another hour of exasperatedly trying to make myself understood before they realised they were looking for my booking in the wrong place. After that, it was was simple as it had been at the station in São Paulo, but I secretly thanked myself for having the foresight of going through that whole ordeal earlier rather than when I actually had a bus to catch.

***

After all that had happened, I followed the directions my Couchsurfing host had given me to get from the bus terminal to his place. There was a bus route that would take me most of way, right down to the beach in Ipanema, one of the better known neighbourhoods in the south of Rio De Janerio. His directions were very good and I had no problems finding the place, but he’d told me to send him a text message when I arrived, rather than dialling any buzzer or number. I arrived to find a nice looking apartment building with the typical Brazilian level of security – this particular building had a tall black wrought iron fence – so I sent my new host a message and waited. The timing couldn’t have been better, actually, because he was just arriving home minutes after I had sent the message.

Tom was actually an American, originally from Baltimore, but he was living in Rio teaching English. He was a tall guy – something that made him stand out amongst the generally shorter Brazilian men – but he was super friendly from the moment I met him at the front gate.
“So, the reason you can’t dial my apartment,” Tom said as we went through the gate and around to the elevator, “is that it used to be the maids quarters to the apartment next door. So if you ring the bell, it just goes to their apartment.” I chuckled to myself, wondering how many awkward situations that might have caused for Tom in the past, but once I arrived he had a spare set of keys for me, so that wasn’t something I’d have to worry about while I was staying with him. “Though I gotta warn you, it’s obviously not the biggest place,” he said with a chuckle himself, but I assured him it wouldn’t be a problem.

It was a pretty small space, but not too small – although ‘cozy’ isn’t exactly the best descriptor for somewhere in the humid tropics, that’s kind of how it felt. There was a main room that was essentially a living room, dining room and kitchen all in one, a small bathroom, and a separate bedroom. There was a sofa that folded out into a bed, although it took about half the room when it was open, so we left it shut for the time being. I settled in a little bit as Tom and I chatted and got to know each other. I told him about where I’d been so far, and he was pretty excited to learn that I’d visited his hometown of Baltimore. I think he was overcome with a wave of nostalgia when I pulled out the timetables of the MARC train that I had caught from DC to get there, which had been sitting in the bottom of my backpack since then. We were already getting on really well, and I was confident I’d already made another success story to add to my Couchsurfing experiences.

***

When I’d been in São Paulo, some of Fausto’s friends had told me that they were going to be going to Rio the same weekend that I was going be there, and invited me to come and join them at the parties that they were going to be attending. From the way they had described them, it sounded like they were going to be pretty over the top and lavish events, but I had told them I would have to wait and see what the situation was like with my Couchsurfing host in Rio. I can only imagine how rude it would look to turn up on someone’s doorstep, drop your bags off and then head off straight away to hang out with someone else. Though Tom turned out be a really cool guy, so when he told me that there was a friend of a friend of his in town who was also from Australia, and that he’d said we would be meeting up with him for a drink that evening, I decided to join them instead of chasing up Fausto’s friends. While they’d all been incredibly nice and welcoming during my time in São Paulo, I never felt like I’d totally fitted in with their kind of crowd. They were all a bit older, and all about finer and nicer things – half the time I felt like I didn’t currently possess any clothes that would meet the dress code to wherever they were going. Tom, on the other hand, was a totally chilled out guy who was living the casual, simplistic life of an ex-pat who lived a five minute walk away from a Brazilian beach, with zero hint of pretentiousness. There was definitely already a good connection between the two of us, so I stuck with him and headed out to meet this other Australian.

James and Tom had never met each other, but had been put touch by a mutual friend that Tom had met during his time previously visiting Australia. As a traveller it’s always nice to have a gay-friendly point of contact or someone you can meet up with when you arrive in a new place, especially in potentially dangerous places such as Brazil. We met James outside Tom’s building and had a quick greeting followed by a couple of awkward moments establishing how we all actually knew each other.
“So wait, you’re Australian?” James asked, pointing at me. “But how do you know each other?”
“Well… we don’t. I mean, we just met half an hour ago?” I said.
“But you’re staying with him?” James seemed a little puzzled, but when we explained the whole Couchsurfing thing it all made sense to him.

Tom lived in the heart of Ipanema – very close to the beach, and even closer to heap of different bars and restaurants down the main strip leading away from the beach. Tom chose a favourite bar of his and we sat down at a table and started off with some beers.
“I wanna try a Caipirinha,” James had said when it came time for the next round, and he proceeded to study the menu. “They’re supposed to be the speciality here in Brazil.” This was all news to me, so Tom and James explained: a Caipirinha is a cocktail made with muddled limes, ice, sugar and cachaça, a type of Brazilian rum made from sugar cane. However, in Brazil they don’t use limes, but a kind of green lemon called ‘limon subtil’ that is native to the region.
“Technically isn’t not a real Caipirinha unless it uses those Brazilian lemons,” Tom said, “but this places makes them with all different kinds of flavours.” We all decided to try different ones – however, I wasn’t much of a fan of the strawberry Caipirinha, and after tasting the ‘real’ Caipirinha Tom has ordered I wish I had chosen that rather than the pink, bastardised version.

Myself, Tom and James with our beers at the start of the night.

We sat in the bar chatting for at least a few hours. James was a really nice guy too. He’d been travelling around South America for a few months, and we both agreed it was kind of nice to talk to someone who actually perfectly understood all the weird slang words and ‘Australian-isms’ that we tend to use in everyday language without even realising it. We even confused Tom a few times, but we all got on really well. After a while we decided to leave and possibly head elsewhere. There was a gay night at q nightclub that James had heard about and wanted to check out, so Tom walked us there, but it looked a little dodgy and not that great. I was actually feeling pretty worn down from my bus trip, and no one was really in that much of a partying mood – I think it was a Tuesday, after all – so we ended up bidding James goodnight as he headed back to his hostel, and Tom and I went back to his place to crash and call it a night. It had been a quiet but really enjoyable evening, and all in all I was already pretty pleased with how my stay in Rio was turning out.

From Beach to Butch: My First Day in Amsterdam

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Tiny Tino

As much as I had wished Lola’s prediction was true, there eventually came a time, again, when I had to leave Berlin. However, this time the departure would end on a much lighter and livelier note, despite having to get up before 6am. Last time Ralf had seen me off at the U-Bahn station on his way to work, and I’d waved goodbye as I descended down the steps onto the platform. This time, Ralf would be coming with me to Amsterdam. Throughout most of my travels around Europe, I had always been planning to finish up in Amsterdam on the coming weekend because – you guessed it – that’s when they were celebrating pride. I had already planned ahead with my Couchsurfing hosts a couple of months in advance, but as it happened Ralf was also travelling over to the Netherlands to visit a friend, and join in with the pride festivities. While we both had our own plans for while we were in Amsterdam, Ralf had suggested that we catch the train there together, to provide each other with some company on the 8 hour journey. With the exception of Itzel on my way to Prague, most of my train trips had been moments of solitude, so I gratefully accepted the change of pace.

Staring out the window while my coffee goes cold.

Ralf having a nap on the train.

During the journey Ralf told me a little bit about Amsterdam and their pride celebrations. When I was in Groningen, Gemma had also told me a little about what she had heard of Amsterdam pride, so unlike my experiences in Madrid and Paris – which had been completely unexpected – pride in Amsterdam was something that had been highly anticipated for quite some time now. Towards the end of the journey, I saw rows of rainbow flags strung up across the city, waving gently in the wind, and suddenly my heart swelled with excitement. Pride or not, Amsterdam was one of those cities with a worldwide reputation for a lot of different things, and I was excited to get amongst it and experience it all for myself. When we disembarked and stepped out into the bright sunshine – something that was apparently quite uncommon in this city – it was time for Ralf and I to part ways. He was going to meet his friend, and I would be meeting Michael – an Australian friend of mine who was also travelling in Europe – and crashing with him in his hotel for the night. We bid each other a quick farewell, assuming we would probably run into each other at some point in the weekend.

***

Michael had had a big night of partying the previous night, so we ended up just having dinner out and hanging out at the hotel, catching up and relaxing. He was catching a train to Berlin the following day, and I was more than happy to take it easy in anticipation for the coming weekend. As much as I love meeting foreigners and new local people, it’s always nice to sit down and have a chat with a familiar Australian and not having to worry about running to cultural barriers of any kind. It was a fleeting encounter though, and the next morning we parted ways – him to the train station and myself onto the next friend I was catching up with. Asja was was the ex-girlfriend of my best friend Gemma’s older brother Brendon, who I’d met up with in Thailand. The connection really isn’t as complicated as it sounds when you try to say it out loud, and I had met Asja a few years ago when she was living in Australia. Originally from Germany, she was now living and studying in Amsterdam, so at Gemma’s suggestion I had gotten in touch with her and arranged to meet up. After arriving via foot at her small flat – located above the shop she was working in – I was dripping with sweat, so I was delighted to learn that she was planning on taking me to the beach.

“It’s such a beautiful day! You don’t get many sunny days like this in Amsterdam, so you have to make the most of it!” We were going to be joined by a couple of Turkish guys Asja had made friends with earlier in the week, and so I left my luggage in Asja’s room and we set off to the train station. The city limits of Amsterdam itself are so small that the beach Zandvoort aan Zee, Asja had explained, is technically outside of Amsterdamn, but it only took about 20 minutes to get there. However, as Asja had said before, you need to make the most of days like today, and so the train was absolutely packed with beach goers. We squeezed like in like sardines for the relatively short train ride, but it wasn’t that much better when we finally arrived at the beach. The shoreline stretched on in both directions for what seemed like miles, and every inch of it was covered in people. We made our way down to the sand and eventually found a space to claim as our own. We laid out on our towels and began to soak up some sun.

Asja and I enjoying the sunshine.

The crowded beach at Zandvoord aan Zee.

At the Zandvoort station after our afternoon at the beach.

“This sunshine is so amazing! It almost feels like I’m back in Australia,” Asja said with a grin.
“Well, I guess I just brought the weather with me,” I responded. “But at least this sunshine isn’t going to kill you.” I had been using sunscreen here and there, but I was amazed at how impossible it seemed to be to get sunburnt around most of Europe. No wonder so many Europeans came to Australia and got burnt to a crisp – the strength of the UV in our sunlight really just seems to be in a whole new ballpark. A few more of Asja’s Dutch friends joined us for a little while on the beach – I briefly met so many people during such a short period of time that I had no hope of keeping track of all their names – but I chatted to a few of them between dips into the cool water. It was lovely and refreshing, but if someone had told me the first thing I would do on my first full day in Amsterdam was go to the beach, I’m not quite sure I would have believed them. Yet it was a much needed escape from the heat wave that was currently moving across Europe, and it was great seeing Asja and catching up with her. Eventually we packed ourselves up and headed back to Amsterdam – Asja had plans to meet another friend, and it was time for me to go and meet my Couchsurfing hosts.

***

Asja’s place was relatively near to the centre of town, and just a short tram ride later I had arrived at my new hosts place. Asja had been right in saying that Amsterdam was a relatively small city – in comparison to sprawling cities like Sydney, nothing was actually that far from anything else. When I arrived I was greeted by Joris, who loomed over me in height – the Dutch are typically one of the tallest races in the world – and had a short buzzed haircut and a warm, friendly face. His two beautiful Russian Blue cats, named Stoli and Bolli, also made a point of introducing themselves as they came up to inspect the new visitor.
“So my boyfriend Thijs is away on a work trip, but he’ll be back tomorrow morning. We’ve actually got another Couchsurfer staying with us this weekend too, and I’m pretty sure I just accidentally gave him the wrong directions,” Joris said with a sheepish grin. “So we may have to go pick him up from another tram stop.” So I’d barely been in the house 10 minutes before we were off to pick up André, who was originally Portuguese but now lived in Copenhagen. When we arrived back at Joris’ place he offered us a beer each, so we cracked them open and had a brief chat as we got to know each other. But it wasn’t too long before it was time to move again.

“So, I have to go and help run this rugby workshop.” Joris was a member of the Amsterdam Lowlanders, the city’s gay rugby team. As part of the pride celebrations, the team was organising a workshop for anyone who was interested in getting involved, or even just learning a thing or two about the game. André was meeting up with another friend of his that evening, but I had no other plans, so despite having somewhat of an intense fear of team sports, I decided to go along with Joris and check it out. But instead of driving, we would be getting into the local culture and riding our bikes there. Joris was planning on borrowing a couple of bikes from a friend for André and I for the weekend, but for now I would be borrowing Thijs’ bike. I found it remarkable just how popular cycling was in the city, and in the Netherlands in general.
“Why, don’t people ride bikes in Sydney?” Joris had asked me when I’d seemed rather incredulous.
“Well, they do… But you have to be, like, really serious about it. It’s mainly an exercise thing. You need to be motivated, since most drivers just hate cyclists.”
I think that surprised Joris a little. “It’s nothing like that here. Everyone rides bikes. It’s just an easy way to get from Point A to Point B. Nothing too extreme about it.” Indeed, it would appear that bikes too precedence over cars in most of the city. Amsterdam was similar to Copenhagen in that it seemed as though bikes really did have right of way in almost any circumstance. They had their own lanes and their own traffic lights, and if there wasn’t a cyclist whizzing by you at any given moment, you could be sure there would be at least half a dozen locked up no more than a few metres away from wherever you were standing. I think I remember Gemma telling me that there were actually more bikes than people in the Netherlands, a statistic that was extremely believable when seeing cities like Amsterdam.

Still, the cycling culture was a little intense to the point of being terrifying, as I’m not the strongest cycler. I did my best to stay as close behind Joris as possible so that I didn’t get cut off or intercepted, and have to manage the intersections on my own. It wasn’t too long before we arrived at the park, where a fairly large crowd had assembled for the rugby workshop. I was an obvious beginner, but after getting over the initial nerves I found that for the most part I could adequately pass and catch the ball – well, maybe not according to the more experienced players, but I don’t think they minded too much since it was a workshop for beginners. After the passing practice came something even more terrifying – learning how to tackle. Team sports? I can deal with that. But contact sports? Terrified. Absolutely terrified. I’d done a couple of crazy things that should probably have killed me over the last few months, but this one was still by far the scariest for me.

Or at least, it was at first. But as the experienced players explained it to us, it became a lot more simple to understand. In fact, the whole logical behind tackling, and being tackled, was to not be afraid of falling. If you’re going down, be aware of how you’re falling and just go down. It’s when you try to resist it or when you’re afraid of falling that your body reacts in a host of weird and potentially painful ways when you inevitably do eat the dirt. I have to admit that by the end of it I was actually quite enjoying myself, getting down and dirty with a bunch of sweaty guys – hey, maybe Amsterdam wasn’t quite so different to the initial expectations? At the very least, I was able to prove to myself that I wasn’t completely devoid of any masculinity in a traditional sense, or that I wasn’t a complete gay stereotype. I was also once again I was reminded, like I had been with Robin in Zürich, that I really needed to get some more hobbies when I got home. After all, I did know I few team members of the Sydney Convicts… well, we’ll see how I go.

The Lowlanders showing us some more technical rugby skills at the end of the workshop.

The scrum was one rugby technique that I decided not to take part in.

After the rugby workshop, we got back on our bikes and headed back home to get cleaned up. It was the Friday night of Amsterdam Pride weekend, and the adrenaline I’d been pumping during all that rugby had made me more keen than ever to get out and experience the city’s nightlife.

Recovery: From the city to the sea

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Tiny Tino

I watched the Italian countryside whizz past me as the train carried me away from Rome. Eventually the train tracks became parallel with the seaside, and I gazed out into the distance over the Mediterranean. In one short trip I was going from coast to coast in Italy, from the capital city of Rome to the tiny port town of Ancona. “Ancona?” Valerio had asked me with a very confused expression, when I had informed him of my next destination. “Nobody… I mean nobody, goes to Ancona. Pass through maybe, but… well, there’s nothing there!” Ancona was a regular port for ferries that routinly carried passengers from the east coast of Italy to Croatia and Greece. It hadn’t exactly been on my high priority list of places to see, but while I had been searching desperately for a place to stay in Rome via Couchsurfing, I had received a message from Ike.

The interesting thing about Couchsurfing is that you can send requests to potential hosts, but you can also publicly post your travel itinerary so that hosts in areas where you are planning to travel are able to find you and invite you to stay with them. The majority of people who I have spoken to about this assured me that that was way too creepy for them, and that they wouldn’t just accept offers from random people they didn’t know, but my journey so far had showed me that taking a chance on the generosity of strangers can sometimes have the most rewarding results. I had been looking for other places to stay in while travelling Italy, but so far all my other searches had been unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Ike had sent me a message saying he had noticed I was travelling through Europe, and that if I ever made it to Ancona he would be happy to host me. We had stayed in correspondence during my frantic search for hosts in Rome and my breakdown in Madrid, and from what I could gather he seemed to be a nice and rather genuine guy. So when I arrived in Rome and had to make plans for my next upcoming destination, I agreed to visit Ike in his sunny little corner of Italy. Four days later, and I was stepping off the train into the blistering afternoon sun, where he was waiting to pick me up.

Ike was a fun and outgoing guy with a cheeky sense of humour, and just like when I had met Stefan – who had also stayed with Ike – we got on well straight away. I knew I had made the right decision in coming here – better to spend a couple of days in a town you’d never heard of with a fun stranger than wander around a well known city by yourself. I’d done plenty of that in Rome, so during my time in Ancona I was determined to do absolutely no sightseeing. I needed a break from all that. When we got back to his place, Ike showed me a map of the area and a bunch of information pamphlets about things to see and do. “There’s a short historical walk through the main centre,” he said, pointing at the map to a spot in the centre of town – Ike lived a little further up one of the many rolling hills that surrounded the port, about a 10 minute drive from the train station. “Stefan was very into that kind of thing, but I’m not sure what you want to do while you’re here.” I told Ike that I would be happy to find a spot on the beach and just chill out, so he gave me a few options for the nearby beaches that I could try, most of which were pretty easily accessible by bus. “I’d love to come with you if I had the time, but unfortunately I’ve got to work.” Ike even had to go back to work that afternoon, so he left me at his place to do some laundry and get some rest. When he got home, Ike cooked dinner and we had a night of great conversation over a bottle of wine. We talked about travelling, our Couchsurfing experiences, and he even taught me a couple of phrases in Italian. It was a fun and carefree evening, and I was already very pleased with my decision to stop by Ancona and take some time out in this Italian hideaway.

***

The next day Ike had to go to work again, so after a bit of a sleep in and a lazy morning, I caught a bus down the hill to the city centre and then transferred to another bus that would take me to the nearby beach of Portonovo. The bus was crowded with lots children and teenagers, and it was only then that I realised it was the height of summer and that school was probably out, and everyone in town would be heading for the beach. It also took a little longer to get there than I had anticipated – I was on the bus for over half an hour, going up and down the twisting and winding hills of the outskirts of Ancona before we finally arrived at Portonovo. I wandered through some of the shrubbery around the bus stop and down through a small woodland area before emerging onto the beach. The area had a handful of restaurants and other overpriced-looking places where you could hire beach chairs, but I bypassed all that and went straight to the waters edge.

There, I faced a problem that I hadn’t really faced since I’d been in Thailand – I was alone on a beach with a backpack containing valuables such as my phone and wallet, and I had no way of properly securing them. Even if I was to put a lock on my bag, there was nothing stoping someone from simply running away with it. The beach was fairly crowded, but not so much that I wouldn’t be able to see my things if I left them in plain sight from the water, and it was too hot to not go swimming. In the end I just had to take a chance and leave my backpack while I went into the water. I never swam too far from where I’d left it, but I was a little more relaxed than I had been on the beach at Ao Nang. And it was worth it – with the hot sun beating down on the crowds of beach goers, the cool blue water felt absolutely amazing to dive into. When I’d had enough of that, I crawled back onto the beach, lathered myself in sunscreen, and laid down to soak up some rays. I think it was something I’d first noticed lying in the park in Christiana during my time in Copenhagen, but the sun in Europe just doesn’t seem to be as strong as it does down in Australia. Obviously Italy has a lot stronger sunshine than Denmark – Ike told me he regularly uses 50+ SPF sunscreen – but compared to the sun in Australia it felt like a casual warm day. I was very conscious of my sunscreen use though, which allowed me to relax enough to actually doze off into a state of semi-sleep more than a couple of times. It was the perfect temperature, and I stayed there on the beach for as long as I dared before I thought there really was a chance of me getting significantly burnt.

The refreshing blue waters of Portonovo Beach.

Lots of people set up camp for a day on the beach in the gorgeous sunshine.

I took one final dip in the ocean before heading back to the bus stop, and indulging in some amazing Italian gelato while I waited for the bus. When the bus finally arrived, slowly making its way down the hill from the highway, I hopped on board, thinking it would take me back to the centre of Ancona. I was surprised to find that its final stop was simply at the top of the hill. “Last stop – everyone off,” the bus driver called out to me. It was definitely up there in my travel nightmare scenarios – being forced off the bus but having absolutely no idea where I was or how I was going to get back. However, when I hopped off the bus I was momentarily distracted by the field of sunflowers that spread out in front of me in the paddock beside the road. I took the opportunity to take a few photos, and just sit back and marvel at the Italian countryside and the picture perfect landscape I had laid my eyes on.

The sunflower fields just next to the bus stop by the beach.

But then it was back to panicking. Another bus with the right number came along, so I hopped on. It took me… back down to the beach. What the Hell was going on? I decided to swallow my pride, realising I needed help, and approached the bus driver, crossing my fingers and praying he spoke some English. I explained where I wanted to go, and he knew enough to understand and give me a reply: “Ahh – next bus!” I sighed, knowing it was about as much help as I was going to get, and stepped off the bus. It wasn’t too long before the next bus came trundling down the hill, and when it finally did I was relieved to feel it make the turn onto the main road that led back to Ancona. I had given up trying to understand how public transport timetables – or indeed, any kind of timed service – operated in Italy. I’m not one for generalising stereotypes, but I can honestly say that chronic lateness was something that I experienced in pretty much all public services in Italy. Countries like Italy and Spain are currently suffering from unbelievably high levels of youth unemployment, but I can’t help but wonder if the people who were actually employed were doing any more work than the people who weren’t.

***

That evening was my second and final night staying in Ancona, so when Ike got back from work we decided to go for a little drive to see some of the other parts around the area that I hadn’t been able to see by myself. We headed south down the coast, admiring the countryside in the dying daylight. At the small town of Sirolo, we stopped the car and got out to watch the sunset behind one of the cliffs. It was nice to be outside of the huge cities for a change, and to experience some very natural beauty such as this. I took a few photos before we continued on to the next small town of Numana. There we got out and walked around the town. It was a little more tourist-orientated than the centre port of Ancona had been, and the streets were quite well preserved in an older, historical style, with uneven tiling and cobblestones lining the streets. We walked down to the docks and looked out over the water as twilight settled in. It wasn’t quite as prominent as the white nights in St Petersburg, but even in southern Europe it still took a very long time for nighttime to actually become dark – often there was still a lot of natural light and visibility as late as 10pm. It was a strange phenomenon that I was only now getting used to.

Overlooking the beach at Sirolo at sunset.

The ocean view from our vantage point near Sirolo.

Overlooking the town of Numana.

Ocean views as dusk settles over the province of Ancona.

After wandering through the old, steep streets, we headed back to the car and went home. I didn’t ask, but in a small town like Ancona I assumed that there wasn’t much of a nightlife scene, gay or otherwise. Even if there was, I don’t think I would have bothered going. My time in Ancona had been all about relaxing and taking the down time that I had been unable to take in the past couple of weeks. I helped Ike make some dinner and we had some more wine before retiring to bed. He was leaving for a work trip the following day, and I had several trains to catch. But I’d had a fun and memorable few days with Ike in Ancona. He’d told me that it was often just a passing through town for so many people, and that people rarely discovered the little gems of beauty it contained. At that moment, I was eternally grateful that I’d decided to travel the way I was travelling: solo, using Couchsurfing, and meeting all kinds of interesting locals along the way. It assured me that not only was I having an amazing once in a lifetime trip, but that I was seeing parts of the world that many other travels might breeze over without a second glance.

The Seaside and Sightseeing in Beautiful Barcelona

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Tiny Tino

There are many benefits of overnight transit. You kill two birds with one stone by paying for transport plus a night of accommodation in a single cost, and your time sleeping is spent productively whisking you away to your next destination, and you wake up refreshed and ready to venture into a new city. Unless, that is, your luck runs out and you don’t get a bed in the sleeper carriage and are forced to sleep in the ‘reclining seat’ class. It was described as being like business class in a plane, which really meant “You have lots of leg room but the seats are still terribly uncomfortable and actually nothing like business class on a plane”. I had fallen asleep in France and woken up in Spain, but not without the accompanying neck pain and stiff, sore legs that were the result of an inability to find a comfortable sleeping position. I would have been a little more annoyed if it hadn’t been for the fact I’d just arrived in one of my most highly anticipated destinations: Barcelona.

***

When making arrangements for staying in Barcelona, I had discovered that Rich, one of Brendon’s friends who I had met in Thailand, was also on vacation in the city. She was renting out a room through Air BnB, and fortunately there had been a second room in that apartment that I was able to rent out for myself. I’d been unsuccessful in finding any Couchsurfing hosts, and the fact that the price of my own Air BnB room would be less than the four bunk dorm in the hostel in Paris definitely made it a preferable option, so I had booked the room. When I arrived in Barcelona, I dragged myself off the train and through the sunny streets to meet Rich at the apartment. It was around 9:30am and a gorgeous day, with a sky that was a clear and cloudless blue, but the city around me only just seemed to be waking up, with limited traffic and only a few pedestrians. I would quickly learn that Spain generally runs several hours behind the conventional time of most daily events and activities. When I arrived at the apartment, I sent Rich a text message asking which apartment to buzz on the intercom. A few moments later, I heard a shout from above me. I looked up to see Rich hanging out of the window, a big smile on her face and waving down to me. She let me up into the apartment, and she introduced me to the owner of the apartment before sitting down to catch up over a little breakfast. The last time I had seen Rich, she was putting me in the back of a taxi in Bangkok and giving the driver directions in Thai. We’d both come a long way since then, so I told her all about my trip across the Trans-Siberian and Europe so far, and she described some of the beautiful sites she’d seen while she’d been vacationing in Spain. Rich was actually in Barcelona for part of a Spanish language component of her university studies, but she’d arrived early and done some traveling prior to the academic side of her holiday. However, she had been in town long enough to be able to play tour guide for me, so once we were done with breakfast we got ready and headed out to seize the day. Our apartment was right near Arc de Triomf which, having just arrived from Paris, made me do a quick double take. It seems erecting arches on the site of ones victories had been a pretty common tradition at some point in European history. Barcelona’s arch was a fraction of the size of the Parisian one, but it was a still a beautiful piece of architecture among the charming Catalonian neighbourhood. That was one thing I had underestimated before arriving in Barcelona – the desire to distinguish the west coast culture of Catalonia from the rest of Spain. “Argh, it’s so frustrating that I can’t read all the signs!” Rich had bemoaned out loud. I’d been confused at first, knowing that she basically spoke fluent Spanish, but it turns out that most of the signs were in Catalan – a distinction one could probably only make if they actually knew at least one of the two languages. It was at that point that I realised, despite a five week trip to Costa Rica followed by almost a year of language lessons, I really knew next to nothing of the Spanish language.

A beautiful and sunny day in Barcelona.

Rich and I walked to the metro station and caught a train across town to one of the sights she suggested – the botanical gardens and Montjuïc Castle. In proper European fashion, the town was one architectural delight after the next, from the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc, which comes alive with a colourful light show at night, to the beautiful Italian-style building that was Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, or the National Art Museum of Catalonia, to the classical castle itself, which also gave stunning panoramic views of both the city and the harbour and seaside. In our attempt to find the castle, we also got a little lost and somehow stumbled across the Olympic Stadium from when Barcelona hosted the games in 1992, which we were able to have a peek into as well. Afterwards we wandered through the streets on our way back downtown, with Rich pointing out all the features of the cities buildings, and we stopped for a lunch of traditional Spanish cuisine: paella. Despite it being included in every example in every Spanish textbook I’d ever used in my studies, I’d never had the pleasure of eating paella, let alone paella in Spain, so it was a small novelty that made me quite happy.

Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, with the famous fountain in front.

The Barcelona Olympic Stadium.

Inside the stadium.

Montjuïc castle.

The view of the port from the top of the castle.

The view over the city from the castles vantage point on Montjuïc Hill.

From there we walked home through the historic centre of Barcelona, and up the famous main street, La Rambla. “You have to be really careful around here,” Rich cautioned as we strolled past the many shops and stalls that lined the dividing strip of the street. “Street theft is a pretty big problem. They’re not just opportunists – they actually have professional pick pockets.” It wasn’t so much a matter of safety as it was just keeping your wits about you, and your valuables out of your back pockets. While I’d fallen for a couple of irritating scams along the way, I’d been extremely lucky when it came to a matter of forceful theft on this trip, so I found myself being extra cautious so that I didn’t spoil that record, although most people just seemed to be peddling their standard cheap and tacky souvenirs. Eventually we turned off the main road and wandered through the smaller streets, adorned with art work and exquisite sculpturing, and grabbed a delicious gelato before returning home to rest and ready ourselves for the coming night out.

Rich and I waiting for the paella.

The delicious paella.

Tiny side streets of Barcelona.

***

The following day, and in fact most of the rest of my time in Barcelona, was spent relaxing and chilling out, rather than seeing any more sights or doing anything particularly touristic. Barcelona was flooded with tourists for the summer, and I didn’t enjoy feeling like a sheep in that collective. Though one of the things I had been most excited for in Barcelona was the beach, so the next day Rich and I took it easy after our night of partying and spent the afternoon soaking up the sun on the sand, and I also ventured out into the waves. The most striking thing about Playa de St Sebastià was that it was “clothing optional”, but unlike many nude beaches I’ve known or visited back in Sydney, which are usually small strips of sand tucked away in the far corners of the city, this beach was one of the main beaches of Barcelona and it was packed. Men, women, children, families, couples, big groups – the sand was full of all kinds of people and a good 50% of them were baring all for the world to see. Topless sunbathing isn’t such a big deal in Australia, but these women had stripped off entirely, as had the men. I have nothing against nudity, but it did feel a little different from previous beaches I’d been to. I think what struck me as so peculiar was how many people, including myself, remained relatively covered up. I’ve always felt as though there’s some weird reverse taboo about actually leaving your swimsuit on at a clothing optional beach, but the term ‘optional’ is taken very literally here – you’re free to chose, and naked and the modest mingle as though there was no difference in their attire at all.

The beach where Rich and I spent the afternoon in the sun.

In addition to being a nude beach, I’d also read that Playa de St Sebastià was a gay beach, though while it was frequently by gaggles of gays showing off their naked bodies, there was an equal amount of small children also running around naked, something one wouldn’t expect at a designated ‘gay beach’. I guess the atmosphere was just so liberal and carefree that it attracted all kinds of people. Rich and I stayed there all afternoon, and when we were done we decided to walk home instead of catching the metro. The streets of Barcelona were the perfect blend of seaside relaxation and a festive, lively flair. In the early evening, when the sun was setting but the streets were bathed in twilight, we went for another walk and saw may people in the parks around Arc de Triomf and saw lots of skateboarders and roller skaters, as well as street performers and other people just enjoying a stroll down the promenade. Compared to my arrival on my first morning in Barcelona, it felt like the city had finally woken up.

Arc de Triomf and the promenade during the day.

Although, while the city had definitely woken up during the day, there’s always a lull in activity when most people observe the beloved Spanish tradition of an afternoon nap, or siesta. They slowly take their time waking up again in the afternoon, but it’s when the sun goes down that the city truly comes alive…

The Geometry of Genocide: Triangles and Tales from a Concentration Camp

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Tiny Tino

While I was trying my best to avoid the typical tourist scenes and experience the more authentic culture of Berlin, there is one historical aspect of the city that is simply impossible to ignore. So on Wednesday I set off on the S-Bahn heading north to the Sachsenhausen Memorial Museum, located on the site of one of the “model” concentration camps where prisoners were taken in WWII. It was located approximately an hour north of central Berlin, and it took me even longer after getting lost in the surrounding suburban streets, but the trip was worth it – ‘enjoyable’ isn’t exactly a word use can use to describe a visit to an old concentration camp, but it’s definitely a moving experience that you come away from with more of an appreciation of your life, and of life in general.

The cute little suburban German streets I wandered through while getting lost on my way to the museum.

***

The entrance to the Sachsenhausen Memorial Museum.

When I visited the Killing Fields near Phnom Penh in Cambodia, Laura had described the place as “harrowing”. I still feel like it’s the best fitting adjective to describe a visit to a location tainted with a grim history of mass genocide. While the Killing Fields were particularly morbid, with broken skulls and bones depicting the barbarity of the Khmer Rouge clearly visible in their monuments, Sachsenhausen Memorial Museum was a little more refined as a tourist attraction. After passing through the main entrance and picking up an audio guide, and listened to the history of the camp as I wandered down the same path that hundreds of thousands of prisoners were brought down during the Second World War. As I waled through the wrought iron gates, I noticed there were words – a slogan, or a motto – worked into the metal: Arbeit Macht Frei. Translated into English it reads ‘work will set you free’, something that is hard to mistake as anything other than cruel irony given how things ended up for most of the prisoners who walked through these gates. In the courtyard I sat and listened on the audio guide to testimonies of people who had been hit, kicked and beaten when they were down, right at this very spot. It was almost too overwhelming to listen to, and I moved on before hearing them all, already feeling a little depressed as the scenes were visualised by my imagination.

Main gate through which prisoners were escorted.

Metal inscription on the main gate.

This concentration camp was opened in 1936 as a model design for other camps, although it ended up being much more than just an example – Sachsenhausen become a fully functioning concentration camp and prison. The architecture was designed to symbolise the subjugation of prisoners and the absolute power of the Nazi regime – the triangular design was built in a way that meant while in the grounds, prisoners were unable to escape the gaze of the guards in the watchtowers. Most of the barracks that were the prisoners quarters have been levelled, so now the area has an even eerier feeling, with so much open space between yourself and the watchtowers. There’s obviously no armed guards in there these days, but it still managed to recreate that sense of vulnerability the prisoners must have felt. Other features of the camps design included a security system which included a ‘death strip’: an electrified pathway and fence that took the lives of prisoners who made fleeting attempts to escape. Some of the barracks remain standing and have been converted into museums, showing the daily lives and conditions of the camps prisoners with a little more tangible depth, and you could also see the site of the gallows in the middle of the main triangle, where troublesome prisoners were routinely executed in front of large assemblies in order to create and example for the remaining prisoners.

The grounds of the camp are now vast and desolate.

Part of the security system at Sachsenhausen.

The barracks that do remain have been transformed into smaller museums.

Barracks 38 is one of the few that remain standing.

The Execution Trench – the morbid name is self-explanatory.

In a building that used to be a garage for Nazi vehicles, there was now a museum that showed the history of the camp, and had numerous artefacts on display. Included in these was one of the uniforms that the prisoners were required to wear – the pink triangle sewn into the shoulder indicating that this particular prisoners crime was being a homosexual. The Nazis imprisoned anyone who disturbed their regime, whether they were political opponents, or those who were deemed by the National Socialist ideology as racially or biologically inferior, and were later joined in 1939 by captives from countries which Nazi Germany moved to occupy, such as Austria and Poland. Though historically famous for the persecution of people who were Jewish, the Nazi regime would happily have beaten me senseless and locked me up to starve simply because of my homosexuality – this uniform, now sitting behind a glass cabinet looking as innocent as a pair of striped pyjamas, was a chilling reminder of that. More than 200,000 people were imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp between 1936 and 1945, with tens of thousands of them dying from starvation, disease, forced labour, malnutrition, and brutal, systematic murders. It’s a lot to take in as you stand upon the scene of these crimes, especially considering this is just one camp, where only a fraction of the atrocities committed during the war were committed.

The memorial obelisk.

The pink triangle resonated with me strongly during the time I was at the Sachsenhausen Memorial Museum, but weeks later, at the time of writing, it’s truly terrible to realise that some parts of the world are still stuck in some of these barbaric ideologies. I’m referring, of course, to the horrific state of affairs for LGBT people in Russia. The newer, even harsher homophobic anti-propaganda laws came into place after I left Germany, but right now it’s something that I can’t just ignore. Having been to Russia and met a couple of very lovely gay men, it absolutely breaks my heart to see what is going on over there, to think that they might be suffering.
In the middle of then main triangle at Sachsenhausen, there now stands a forty metre high obelisk adorned with 18 red triangles – the symbol the Nazis gave to political prisoners – on each side, the number representing each of the European nations where prisoners at the camp came from. It’s a monument of memorial, but right now all it makes me think of is the European nations that are in such close proximity with Russia, and hoping that something might be able to be done before the persecution reaches a level of homosexual Holocaust. I never had the intention of using this blog to voice political opinions, but that was just one thing that I couldn’t let slide.

***

It had been a long hot day wandering around Sachsenhausen, and I was sweating profusely by the time I’d walked back to the station in the afternoon heat. “It’s not a heat wave”, Ruth would later tell me, fending off the claims of some other Berliners. “Thirty degrees is a normal summer day for Berlin – winter just lasted so long that most people forget about it, and are just shocked when it’s actually hot!” Nevertheless, even for an Australian I was feeling the heat. On the train home, I messaged Eva to find out what she was up to – the two of us had been sharing a key, since there weren’t enough for both of us to have one. She would be going out before I got home, but Simon would be around for a little while longer. When I was back into the heart if Berlin, I got a phone call from Simon.
“Hey, where are you?”
“I’m nearly home… Do you need to leave now?”
“Well, sort of… I’m going to the pool to meet Ruth, I was gonna ask if you wanted to come?”
Swimming sounded exactly like what I needed. Donatella had had to head out of town today for some work commitments in Munich, so she wouldn’t be joining us, but Simon said he’d grab my swim shorts and towel and pick me up from the U-Bahn station I was at.

What I didn’t realise – either because he didn’t say so or I didn’t listen – was that he was not picking me up in his car, but on his motorbike. A surge of panic ran through me – I hadn’t been on a motorbike since the horrific afternoon in Phnom Penh, and I still bore the mental and physical scars. However, I had to reassure myself that I’d since ridden quad bikes in Siberia and navigated the bicycle traffic of Copenhagen, and had come out unscathed, and I also wouldn’t even be driving this time. It would be just like catching the motorbike taxis in Bangkok, and so I put on the spare helmet, climbed on behind Simon, and we took off onto the roads of Berlin. We passed a few other bikies done up in their full leather gear, which I guess was to be expected in Berlin, and whizzed our way through the traffic until we finally reached the pool.

The place rented deck chairs from Simons vodka company, so we got to skip the queue and also got in for free. The place was really cool – the water in the Spree River and the adjoining canals is not something you’d ever want to go swimming in, so this place had designed a way around the problem. There was a large pool that was built on the river. The ground all around the edge was covered in sand so it felt as though you were really at a beach, and then off the wooden jetty the swimming pool itself sat just off the edge of the river. Of course, given that today was an extremely hot day for Germany, there was a long line to actually get in the pool. After finishing a beer from the beach cafes inside the complex, Simon and I joined the queue to go for a swim. After the long day I’d had walking around the old concentration camp in the hot sun and learning about all the horrors of history, it was definitely worth the wait – the swim was exactly what I needed. And so the end to an otherwise slightly depressing day was spent cooling off, kicking back and putting my feet up with my new Berliner friends.

The riverside pool where I ended my day.

Tiny Tino's Travels

Just a boy trying to find his place in the world

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