Strike One

Too long again, I know. It seems the blogging habit just hasn’t carried over into my post-traveling life. That said, there are a few things to report on.

I had a job interview on Friday – my first real chance at a real job. Up to that point I’d simply been trying to meet as many people as possible in the hopes that eventually something would cross someone’s desk and they might think, “Hmmmm… I wonder if that Canadian woman is still knocking about?” But Friday? Friday was a real interview for a Production Management job with a small company opening a show in late October and then touring 5 different UK venues. It sounded like an interesting gig, the pay was enough to keep me going, and it might have been the foot-in-the-door that I’ve been hoping for. Of course astute GGSRED readers will already suspect, due to my subtle use of phrases like “might have been”, that I did NOT get the job.

Honestly, I was a bit surprised by this. I thought the interview went really really well – I think I asked more questions than they did, and found myself getting a bit excited about finally diving back into work again. Of course there were one or two stumbling blocks. I could tell they were nervous that I don’t have a real web of professional connections here yet, because small companies usually need to draw on every possible resource to get a show running. And there was a question about whether I’d still be here in the new year and into the spring, when they are planning to remount the show for some important festival and tour dates. Ultimately they said this was the reason for their decision – I simply couldn’t guarantee that I’d still be here. Never mind that there’s no guarantee that whoever they did hire won’t jump ship if something better comes along. And also never mind that it would have been simple for me to stretch the truth a bit on this point, something a couple of people have already said I should have done. But I didn’t, and they picked someone else, and I have to tell you that it’s kind of knocked me on my ass.

So it’s been an off few days. Naturally, I’m feeling down about things, and that’s coloured my whole attitude, making me focus on all the things that aren’t working. Yes, I’ve met a lot of people, but that’s slowing down. Also, even though I’m meeting new people at new theatres and production companies, it’s starting to feel a bit like I’m listening to a broken record. Everyone is friendly and helpful, but I keep hearing the same names over and over again, and it feels like I might already have almost reached to the edges of this particular web. If I haven’t already met someone, then I’m waiting for a response to an email or phonecall to them, or waiting to get contact information for them from someone else. There’s a short list of people and theatres that I haven’t tapped yet, but that’s getting smaller. Oh, and it’s now clear that I won’t be getting an interview for the Olympics position that I applied for before I left Canada. Most importantly, no one has yet said those magic four words to me: “When can you start?”

Add to this a growing dissatisfaction with the glories of Willesden Junction, and you’ve got a somewhat toxic mix. The neighbourhood is just sad. Even the local pub is kind of grubby and cheerless, and you know when you can’t find a convivial pub within walking distance in London then you’ve been exceptionally unlucky or unwise in your choice of location. I’m starting to regret my decision to stay at the tiny flat for another three weeks, but at the same time I really didn’t want to deal with the hassle of finding somewhere new, packing up, and moving. Yes, it’s poorly located, expensive and tiny, but I guess now it’s home. In fact, I’ve lived here for more consecutive days than anywhere else since I sold my house all that long time ago. But it does suck the life out of me a bit, and sometimes have to remind myself that in less than an hour I could be just about anywhere in London. LONDON! I really do need to snap out of it and at least enjoy being in the city.

Then again, to get anywhere requires enduring the tube, which has it’s own stuffy and sweaty brand of cheerlessness. Especially when the escalators in particularly deep stations stop working. Or when there’s a signal failure on the Bakerloo Line on top of a planned closure of the entire Circle Line… not that this scenario happened to me on Saturday night.

At least if I do stay the odds of me ending up in a nicer neighbourhood than Willesden Junstion are so close to 100% that it would be difficult to slip a slice of Tesco Value Pack Streaky Bacon between the two (and I can tell you from experience that Tesco Value Pack Streaky Bacon slices are so thin you could read the Daily Telegraph crossword through one).

This is NOT Willesden Junction. This is the sculpture gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, to which I escaped this afternoon. You can tell it’s not Willesden Junction because it’s not full of shuttered shop fronts, internet cafés for making cheap international phone calls, and dollar stores.

And on the positive side (which is a side I’ve had to force myself to remember in the last few days) I still have a solid application in at a great theatre in the West End, and expect to hear something about that this week. And there’s a chance of something at a busy production company, and a faint hint of something else that was really nothing more than an almost-whispered maybe. I know I need to just keep at it, but I do feel like time is running out. My return flight to Winnipeg is on Sept. 13, and if something reasonably solid and encouraging doesn’t happen in the next three weeks, then I’m not sure I can justify changing that flight to a later date and hanging on for a few weeks or months more.

That’s life in London these days, sorry I didn’t choose a cheerier time to finally get another blog post up. At least I can report that I’m now starting to look the right way when crossing the street. This is after I literally ran in front of a bus – double-decker, of course – while on a Hash just after I arrived. I’m getting used to glancing over my right shoulder when I cross the street, but I still get an odd tingling down my whole left side when I’m crossing while looking the “wrong” way. It’s like my body is bracing for the impact it can’t accept is NOT coming.

I’m also starting to get a bit more comfortable with the quirks of language. For instance I say tube (as in London Underground Train), CV (resumé), flat (apartment) and mash (-ed potates). Words I can’t yet say without feeling like a complete fraud? Trousers, as in pants. But this is one I really need to get over because here “pants” means underwear, which means you don’t want to go around casually commenting on people’s pants. Also: quid (pound sterling), spanner (wrench), boot (trunk of car), mate (friend), cheers (thanks) and chemist (drug store). And did you know that in England a “grill” has nothing to do with a BBQ, or with applying intense heat or flame to the underside of food? Nope. Here, a grill is the broiler element in the oven, or anything that applies intense heat from above. It’s upside-down world, I tell ya.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

The first report from London

Life in London is… good, I think. My tiny short-let flat has turned out to be reasonable, though it’s smaller than it looked in the pictures (All in a chorus now: “I really thought it would be bigger!”). It’s also more run down and grubbier than would be ideal, but it’s certainly not the worst I’ve seen. After a few trips to the Poundstretcher/Dollar Store I was able to supplement the supplied amenities to a point where the place is now functional. (Still, could they not give me more than one bowl? Or a toilet seat that’s actually attached to the toilet bowl?). I was amazed at how much better I felt after I was able to convince the Russian cleaning lady in the stairwell outside my door to allow me five minutes of quality time with her vacuum cleaner. At least now I know that the layer of grunge that’s accumulated since then is all mine. And really, how can you complain too much about a place where leaving the bathroom door open allows you to watch TV while showering?

The view from my window… Ahh, Willesden Junction, thy charms are uncountable.

I’ve been here a week now and have settled in fairly well. The job hunt – my main focus – has been up and down. The first few days were great, mostly because I had several meetings set up before I arrived, the first one on Friday afternoon when I was fresh off the plane and still befuddled with jetlag. Everyone has been polite, friendly, helpful and encouraging; they seem to think that my resumé is good, and agree that I’m approaching this the right way and meeting the right people. And they gave me more names of people to reach out to, and ideas of how to proceed. But it’s also become clear that I’ll really need to pay some dues here – meet the right people and learn the ropes – before I can really be functional and therefore attractive to an employer. I think my best bet is to try and connect with some overworked freelancers who might be looking for assistance, but there’s been nothing on that front so far.

So now I’m in a bit of a lull. I’ve made it through all the meetings I arranged before I arrived, and am now in the process of making contact with the people and companies I learned about in those meetings. That’s been a predictable mixture of unreturned emails, impenetrable voicemail systems and friendly people who would be happy to meet with me but are about to leave on three weeks of holidays. After the initial rush of arriving and getting all that positive feedback things have slowed down a lot, and that’s making it hard to stay positive. I know it’s still early, but it’s hard not to want it all to happen instantly.

In the mean time I’ve been running, wandering around a few areas to try and find where I might want to live, and spending a bit of time being a tourist. What can I say? Old habits die hard, and that’s why I’ve been on three different walking tours since I arrived. I mentioned them back when I hit London last June, but they’re so good I’m mentioning them again: London Walks are fantastic. The guides are incredibly knowledgeable, fun, and friendly and I always come away feeling that was two hours well spent. Also, the selection of walks is incredible – about ten different ones on offer each day. And they all start and end at a tube station, and are utterly reliable – I’ve never shown up and been disappointed. All that for just £8. (Or £6 if you invest £2 in a discount card, which I did.)

Part of Regent's Canal, which I saw on the “Little Venice” walk on Wednesday. The canal also runs through my neighbourhood. It’s much less picturesque there – more backsides of industrial yards and graffiti and fewer million pound flats - but there’s still an even, open towpath alongside the canal which is an excellent place for a run, and only five minutes from my door.

But back to the work situation, or lack thereof, which is what this whole business is mostly about. Here’s a quote from an episode of the original UK version of “The Office”, which I watched last night on the computer. These words resounded in my head like a gong when I heard them:

“It’s better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb, than half way up one you don’t.”

Or is it? That’s the question these days. I knew when I decided to leave my job and travel that I’d be starting over when the trip was finished. But what I pictured at the time was fetching up in some large, convivial Canadian city - maybe Montréal or Vancouver - with a new, exciting, well-paying job and a cache of money to set myself up in reasonably high style. Instead I’ve landed in a pocket-sized worn out studio in an unloved corner of northwest London with a whole lot of resumés in the “Sent” box of my Gmail, and a cache of money that’s dwindling daily. Sometimes this “I’ll regret it if I don’t give it a try” business wears a bit.

What I’m starting to realize is that I need to figure out how far I’m willing to go to make this work. And I’m not just talking about how much money I can afford to spend supporting myself while I’m looking for work. I’m also talking about quality-of-life kind of things like:

• How small a flat could I be happy living in? The room I’m in now is about 10’ 6” x 12’, and I’m pretty sure that’s too small. But how big is big enough? (I think that answer might be “Big enough that you don’t have to fold the bed up every day”.)
• How far outside the centre of the city am I willing to go to live somewhere nice? Conversely, how tiny/grungy/sad a place would I put up with in order to be close?
• Or, am I willing to share a flat? Is having more space, better amenities and a nicer location more important than having complete privacy? It’s pretty common here, even among actual grown-up people, but it’s been a long long time since I lived with roommates. Is it something I need to consider?
  
• And on the work front: How far down the ladder am I willing to go? Would I take work outside theatre to support myself while trying to break in? Actors do this all the time, but I think I’d really struggle with it.
  
• Or if I stay I’m able to get work in theatre, how long can I be happy in an entry-level job, and how long will I have to “pay my dues” before I really feel like I’m doing what I came to do?
  
• And, fundamentally, is this the right thing for me? For my career? For my life? If I spend a year or two or five here in London, what does that mean for my career when I eventually go back to Canada?

I haven’t come to any conclusions yet, but these are the questions I struggle with in between crafting friendly, engaging emails to anyone who might help me get a foot in the door, trawling endless real estate listings, and walking to, waiting for, or sitting on tube trains. (Which is a whole other post. Or possibly a whole other blog.) I’ll try to keep writing about my progress, and to tell you some of the funny, quirky things I’ve already noticed about living in London, because there are a lot. Like why can’t I find any cream for my coffee? There seems to be nothing in between whole milk and pouring cream. And why do I have to flick a switch on the wall behind the stove to power the whole thing up before turning on the individual burners? Should I call a licensed electrician to disconnect the power to the stove when I’m finished, just to be extra cautious?

And now, let me leave you with these profound words, which I’ve already heard so often they now echo in my dreams:

“This is a Bakerloo line train to Elephant & Castle. Please, mind the gap between the train and the platform.”

"London Calling"

Hey, remember me? Sorry for the long break, but if you haven’t realized it yet, things have pretty much wound down here at GSRED. However, that doesn’t mean things are winding down for my life. Au contraire! In fact, all kinds of interesting stuff is happening, so I thought I should share a little update on what’s been on my mind most since I got back those many weeks ago: What happens next?

I’ve investigated a few different work possibilities, but the one thing that kept cropping up in my mind was… London. I’ve talked before about wanting to work on the London Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies, but my keenness for that project is related only partly to the Olympics. It’s also partly just about the idea of living in London. Add to this the fact that nothing particularly exciting has popped up on the Canadian job front, and the obvious advantage that there will never be a time when I’m so uniquely well-positioned to pack up my (now meager) belongings and try out life in another country. So I’m going to give it a whirl.

Most of you will not be surprised to learn that I have A PLAN. I’ve already spent the last several weeks spamming almost everyone I know trying to drum up some contacts in theatre in London. Finally, some of those leads are paying off and I’ve made a several connections with people who sound like they’ll help point me in the right direction. However, all this would be accomplished much more simply if I were actually in London. So, I’m going to London. I’m flying out on July 29 with a ticket whose return date is set for Sept. 13, but can be changed for a reasonable fee to any other date within a 12 month period. If all goes swimmingly and I find a good job and just want to stay and get on with things, I can change my return date to the Christmas holidays. On the other hand if the whole notion turns out to be hopeless waste of time and money I can turn tail and run back to Winnipeg after a few weeks.

Then again, why would I want to leave?

I’ve manage to find a place to stay while I’m there, though that was a bit of a saga in itself. Suffice it to say that if someone on Craiglist is offering a one bedroom flat a five minute walk from Charing Cross Station with a full kitchen, wifi, washer/dryer, and satellite tv for £35/night, the phrase “If it seems to good to be true, it probably is” should spring inevitably to mind. I asked a friend in London to go check it out and he reported that the people at the building say they do not rent through agents and a one bedroom flat goes for £171/night. This discrepancy, coupled with the fact that the agent wanted me to advance 60% of the total cost of the rental as a bank transfer to an account in his name (not even the name of a rental agency!), set off alarm bells so loud that the neighbours were complaining.

And so I find myself with a three week reservation with Shortlet-London.com, who require a mere £60 deposit (payable by Paypal), and who are offering properties whose combination of price, size, location and facilities enjoy a much closer relationship with to reality. Here are a few shots they sent of my London pad:

Full kitchen, including one square foot of eating space.

Ahhh… the old fold-down futon couch/bed. And I thought those days were behind me.

Not shown is the bathroom, window, wardrobe, dresser, tv and wifi (for a reasonable £5/week) – all the mod cons. The flat is right on the border between tube zones two and three in an area that is, shall we say, not exactly Chelsea. But it’s probably the kind of neighbourhood I might actually be able to afford to live in so I might as well get used to it. I’m not saying I’m going to end up in a cold water bedsit in Zone 37 (somewhere on the outskirts of Glasgow), but there are real limits to where I can reasonably expect to end up. It’s probably a good thing that I’m not going to be in the fabulous flat minutes from Trafalgar Square; spending a month there would probably give me a decidedly skewed idea of what life in London would be like. It’s probably also a good thing that I just spent a year making myself comfortable almost anywhere, including tiny, crappy hotel rooms. All I really have to make sure of is that I end up with something better than the Baronie.

(Note to London-mad travelling friends and relative: Yes, if I end up staying I will try to get a flat with enough room for a spare bed. But honestly, it is gob-smackingly expensive over there. I’d love to see you all, but be prepared to get comfy in a hammock slung over the kitchen sink, or, more likely, be presented with a lovingly compiled list of cheap hotels and short-term rental flats in the area. I’m just sayin’.)

Besides trawling Craiglist and sending thousands of emails, I’ve also been spending some quality time over at my storage space since I got back to Winnipeg. My goal was to go through most of the boxes, do a bit of an inventory, and repack some items that I could have shipped overseas on short notice. I want to make sure it would be easy to ship just the things I’d really want or need – favourite kitchen knives and utensils, cool weather clothing, artwork - things that would make a place feel like home. This is in the hope that I could avoid either having to come back to sort things out later, or simply having to ship everything over at great expense. Mostly, I want to avoid opening a series of boxes in a too-small flat and uncovering the kind of things that get thrown in at random when you’re hurriedly packing your entire house up on a tight timeline. (“Really? I kept a worn ziploc baggie of twist ties and asparagus elastics? And I just had it shipped 4,000 miles? Fantastic. And thank God I’ve got that twelve pound bench vise. That’ll come in handy when I set up a little workshop in the space between the bathroom sink and the shower stall…”)

You may have detected a note of anxiety about money in this post so far, and I’d be lying it I said that wasn’t a concern. Yes, I just spent $64,000 travelling around the world, and yes, I left a good chunk of money to come home to. But I really didn’t envision having to spend a large percentage of that nest egg on a potential wild goose chase to London. So I’m stressed about money - about how much I have now, how much I might be able to earn if I actually do get a job, and how much it would cost me to live in London. But Karen pointed out something that really helped settle my mind on this issue: I’m not throwing this money away. I’m using it to try and chart the course of my career and life for the foreseeable future. I need to consider this an investment in my future (to use an annoying cliché). (Want some more annoying language? How about this: I need to embrace this change in my life paradigm.) If it doesn’t work out, then in retrospect it may seem like a foolish extravagance, but right now this feels like the kind of thing I’ll regret not doing.

So after a mere 59 days on home soil, I’ll soon be packing a (slightly bigger) bag and bracing myself for another new adventure. It all feels very déjà vu – it seems that not so long ago I was doing the rounds of lunch and coffee and dinner dates saying good bye to people and gathering all the best wishes I could. Now it’s a bit different – much less fanfare, and a whole lot more uncertainty. Last time there was a more-or-less definite schedule – I was pretty sure I’d be back within the year. This time it’s a trifle more open-ended: somewhere between three weeks and forever. All I can say is: stay tuned.

And finally (because there hasn’t been a picture of me for a while, and Rob H is probably getting twitchy) here’s a shot of me at Lake Winnipeg, where I spent a day lounging around my friend Judy’s cottage, pier and deck. Thanks Judy!

Ahhh… a perfect summer day at the lake. Not show: G&Ts that came later.

Five weeks later, a few Top Fives

I’ve been back for 37 days, and I wish there was more to say. I’ve got a lot on my mind but none of it is about the trip, it’s all about looking forward and that doesn’t seem like part of it, you know? The trip has faded way into the background, and my enthusiasm for the blog has faded with it. These days “Write blog post” has fallen way down on my list of priorities to somewhere after “Clip toenails” and before “Surf the web for Franklin Mint commemorative figurines of FIFA 2010 World Cup stars”. It’s just not on my radar screen.

Luckily I started these lists ages ago, and recently found new interest in fleshing them out. Everyone always asks about my favourite this or that, so here are a few thoughts on that subject. Ask me again in a few months and it would probably all be different.

(Note: the items in each list are presented in chronological order, rather than trying to rank them. And there are lots of links so you can dive back into old posts to read about stuff on the lists. Maybe this will ease the blog separation anxiety some of you were complaining about.)

Favourite Big Cities:

1. London, England – It’s familiar – Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace – even if you’ve never been there, it’s like you know it already. It’s just foreign enough to be interesting, but still accessible. No weird alphabet, no strange national costume, no deep-fried bugs, just that business of driving on the wrong side of the road and the charming habit of using the word “whilst” without a trace of irony. It’s also got the British Museum, double-decker buses, Roman ruins, West End shows and a proper transit system. And so much has happened there you can turn almost any corner and be confronted with a random bit of history that in Canada would occasion at least an Interpretive Centre and a small gift shop, but in London barely rates a small blue plaque. It’s big enough that you could spend your whole life there and never discover all its secrets. Of all the cities I visited, it’s the one I’d most like to try living in.
2. Paris, France – It’s big too, and has the same amount and depth of history as London. And it’s cosmopolitan (way more than I am), and has great food, and I can (sort of) speak the language, which makes it much more comfortable. Also, the French have something like four hundred kinds of cheese, which alone would give Paris a place on this list. I could almost live there too, but I just don’t have the wardrobe for it.
3. Venice, Italy – Venice was just perfect. It was the first place I went that turned out to be exactly like I thought it would be. Quiet, but also bustling and vibrant, and built on a totally human scale – no concrete high rises, no strip malls, no cars, no smog, no parking lots. Just people living in a postcard, eating great food, and taking bus boats or taxi boats or (if they’ve had a particularly bad day) ambulance boats. You should go before it sinks completely.
4. Hong Kong – Again, it’s big enough to have everything: museums, great restaurants, galleries, theatres, shopping. It’s exotically Asian, but still has a lot of Englishness, which makes it very easy to get around and quite comfortable. And it’s got a great metro and those clever Octopus cards.
5. Tokyo, Japan – Another huge metropolis, with all the amenities you could want, and some you didn’t even know existed (adjustable front- and rear-spraying buttocks cleansing, anyone?). Tokyo loses points for its bizarrely complicated metro system, but gains by being another of those properly exotic Asian cities that’s also safe, clean and easy to negotiate. And the sushi. Ahhh, the sushi.

Venice. As I’ve said before, it’s really like that

Favourite Small-ish Cities, towns, etc..

1. York, England – It’s got great medieval walls, and the city inside them is preserved really well. It’s got York Minster, my second favourite cathedral, and those tipsy Tudor style buildings and tiny covered alleys charmingly called “snickleways”, and a zillion pubs. Plus you can run a five kilometer route that takes you around the whole circuit of the walls.

   The tipsy buildings of York

2. Oban, Scotland – Tiny, charming, and they make nice whisky there. I also saw the latest Harry Potter movie in Oban, so it holds a special place in my heart. And I met Tommy and Deborah there, who really made my day, and Stevie, perhaps the funniest bus driver in Scotland.
3. Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark – Any residents would bristle at me including Christiania in a list of “towns” since they consider it the Free State of Christiania. The gates have a sign on them as you’re leaving that says “Now entering the European Union”. All that aside, I just really liked the vibe there. It’s not just about Pusher Street and the chance to smoke up on any number of mind-altering substances. I liked wandering through the residential areas and seeing the houses, some of which seemed to have been made out of scraps but turned into something really interesting and inviting-looking. There were also long, leafy paths that were great for running.
4. Bruges, Belgium – If you’re looking for chocolate, beer or french fries, look no further. And really, what else does anyone need to look for?
5. Granada, Spain – It’s got Alhambra, which is excellent sight, and a cool Arab quarter full of typically twisty streets. The food was great and there is still at least one bar in Granada serving free tapas with every drink.
6. Luang Prabang, Laos – It was the first place I went in Southeast Asia that looked like I wanted it to look. Perhaps because it’s a major tourist destination it was much cleaner and tidier than most of the rest of SEA. It was cheap (not Thailand cheap, but still cheap), and full of photogenic young monks in saffron robes. The night market was fun and extensive, and the fruit shakes were great. Just stock up on ziploc bags if you’re going to be there at New Year’s.

Another photogenic monk in Luang Prabang

Least Favourite Destinations:

1. Bushmills, Northern Ireland. Yes, it has the famous distillery, and the Giant’s Causeway, but the town itself has… nothing. Two nights and I was ready to walk out if necessary.
2. Drogheda, Ireland. When the main attraction in your town is a shrunken head, perhaps it’s time to consider relocating.
3. Naples, Italy. I’m sorry, but it’s a pit. The main square outside the train station – Piazza Garibaldi – is a veritable festival of idling buses, haphazardly parked cars, and overflowing dumpsters. If Naples has a good side, it is very well hidden. At least the pizza was good.
4. Nairobi, Kenya. It had lovely giraffes, though they were, technically, out of town. It also had a scam I almost fell for and the dodgiest cab ride of my life. Any place where everyone warns you not to go be out after dark is not a place I need to revisit.
5. Huay Xai, Laos. I spent three days in Huay Xai with a head cold, awaiting the next departure of the Gibbon Experience. It could have been the booby prize on a particularly vindictive Japanese game show.

Main Street, Huay Xai, Laos. All it’s missing is a dog asleep in the middle of the road.

A Few (but certainly not all) Favourite Experiences:

1. Walking out of the train station in Venice, Italy, and being confronted with the Grand Canal for the first time. I couldn’t believe it’s actually like that. It was like every image in my head of Venice. Magic.
2. Going for a hamam at the oldest bath Turkish bath in Istanbul. I don’t think I’ve ever been that clean. And it was made that much better by being there with friends, and having those same friends to go for dinner and beer with after.
3. Whitewater rafting at the source of the Nile River in Uganda. I signed up on a whim, and had a really excellent day. Again, because of the people. The only downside was a sunburn on the top of my legs that could probably have been seen from space.
4. Swimming to the edge of Victoria Falls on Livingstone Island, Zambia. When people ask about favourite moments, this is always the first one I pull out. It was one of those days when your face starts to hurt from smiling so much.
5. Cruising the Ganges River, India. I was nervous about this, but it turned out to be two of the most relaxing days I had all year. The boats were tiny but comfortable, and at regular intervals the kitchen boat would cruise up and give us fresh, hot chai, or some amazing meal. There was nothing to do but snooze, read, blog, chat, and watch India go by.

My gang in the raft, Uganda

A Few (but again, not all) Favourite Sights:

1. Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow. It’s just the most museum-y museum I’ve seen. Not all shiny and modern and full of interactive whatnots. Small enough to see it all, and eclectic enough to please just about anyone with a brain. And the architecture is all Victorian and full of vaulted ceilings and balconies and long hallways and stuff. It was great.
2. Sagrada Familia, Barcelona. Sagrada Familia restored my soul after the whole Barcelona Wallet Abandonment Debacle. It was just what I needed.
3. Wild animals on the Serengeti, Tanzania. The best part was seeing them all in their natural habitat, which meant they were all mixed up together: giraffes and gazelles and wildebeest and warthogs all just hanging out, doing their thing. It was soooo not a zoo.
4. The Ancient City of Petra, Jordan. Petra was one of the places I had in my sights when the whole idea of the trip was still just a vague notion. Walking through the Siq and coming out to see the Treasury building for the first time was another of those unforgettable moments.
5. Preah Kahn, Ancient City of Angkor, Cambodia. Of all the sites at Angkor it was certainly my favourite, far exceeding the famous, crowded and (in my humble opinion) over-sold Angkor Wat. It was mostly deserted, eminently explorable, and very Indiana Jones.

Inside Sagrada Familia

Hashes Fondly Remembered:

1. Setting a trail in front of Buckingham Palace, London HHH. I’d only been in town for a week, but an odd set of circumstances ended with me pushing through the crowds of gawking tourists with a chunk of chalk in my hand a mission. It was brilliant.
2. The Bog Hash, Dublin HHH. What a great gang, and what a riotously fun run. It was also the first and only time I ever hashed through thigh-deep peat-stained bog water.
3. Full Moon Pub Crawl, Copenhagen HHH. I can’t remember how many pubs we went to, which I think is a sign of an excellent evening.
4. Hashing the Great Wall of China, Beijing HHH. Definitely a highlight. I can’t believe I almost skipped this whole experience because I was tired and didn’t feel like making the effort. Yes, it was cold, but I hashed the freakin’ GREAT WALL OF CHINA. ‘Nuf said.
5. The Dead Brain Cell HHH, Tokyo. I’m not sure if you even heard about this one, but it ended with champagne, and yes, a few dead brain cells.
   

A wild section of the Great Wall of China. Thank you Beijing Hash House Harriers

Memorable Meals:

1. Every meal with Freddie, Sesimbra, Portugal. Seafood, seafood and more seafood, along with gallons of red, white, rosé and port to go with, and side order of excellent company.
2. First taste of real Italian pizza, Padua, Italy. A randomly chosen restaurant in between the hotel and the train station. A well-earned hunger. And a pizza menu with enough choices to be boggling. The cover charge for the breadsticks was cheeky, but the pizza was perfect.
3. Walnut Ravioli, Siena, Italy. It wasn’t stuffed with walnut, it was served with a sort of creamy walnut sauce. Amazing. Everything at that restaurant was amazing, even the “splee sauce”. I never learned what it was, but it was nice spread on bread.
4. The Green Papaya Restaurant, Hanoi, Vietnam. It was like being on the Food Network. Everything was drizzled or artisinal or heirloom. Beef carpaccio, seafood gallete, and a frozen yogurt to die for. Three full courses and two large beers, and the whole bill was only about $45.
5. Conveyor belt sushi, Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan. I just kept going back. I know it wasn’t the freshest or highest quality sushi by a wide margin, but I loved having the chance to try anything that looked interesting without first having to pick it off an incomprehensible menu or bust out the Japanese phrasebook.
   

Conveyor belt sushi, the video

Top Five Weird Foods:

1. Sheet o' meat, Macau. It was really tasty: juicy, sweet and salty, sticky, meaty. And damn, it would have been great with beer.
2. Chicken heart kebabs, Laos. I would have gone back for seconds if I hadn’t been so full of dried squid and other Lao delicacies.
3. Eggs-on-a-stick, Thailand. They were EGGS. On a STICK. And they’d been scrambled inside the shell. And did I mention they were EGGS ON A STICK?
4. Chocolate covered bacon, USA. Sheer genius.
5. Deep fried Twinkies, USA. Again, inspired. It elevates the Twinkie (which, let’s face it, could use a lot of help) into something… more. I’m not saying it’s on par with a sticky toffee pudding or a Paris macaron, but it’s light years ahead of a naked Twinkie.

The egg-on-a-stick man

Bottom Five Weird Foods:

1. Pig ears, Spain. Deep fried cartilage, thinly disguised with gallons of olive oil and a bit of spice. Too fingernaily for my tastes.
2. Mopane Worms, Zambia. A bit like liver, a bit like dirt. A lot like I didn’t want to eat any more.
3. Durian, Hong Kong. It doesn’t taste as bad as it smells, but that would be impossible.
4. Chow Guai Vegetable Jelly, Thailand. Black, death-flavoured jello.
5. Salak fruit, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The texture was nice enough, but the flavour was like buying a banana, throwing away the fruit, and eating the peel.

Leftover mopane worms anyone?

Five Things I never expected to do:

1. Camp on a beach in Scotland. Thank you Edinburgh Hash House Harriers (in general) and Nigel and Margaret (in particular).
2. Surf in Northern Ireland. Of all the places to try surfing… Northern Ireland? Also unexpected: spraining my thumb while attempting to surf in Northern Ireland. (Well I don’t know for sure it was sprained because I never had it checked out by a medical professional, but I was certainly left-handed for a while.)
3. Sleep off a hangover in a park in Vladimir, Russia. I have not had a sip of vodka since then. No sir, not me.
4. Almost fall for a street scam in Nairobi, Kenya. I’m glad Laurie’s spidey-senses were tingling on that day, because I was oblivious.
5. Jump off a cliff, twice, in Livingstone, Zambia. Once was apparently not enough to convince me that I really, really don’t like freefall.

A never-before-seen picture of Pam’s Feet! Gullane beach, Scotland.

And those are my thoughts for now. I can’t promise when (or even if) there will be another post, but keep checking back every week or so. You never know.

Go See Run Eat Drink... Pay

I know this post has been a long time coming, but once again I have to say that this is partly because there were a lot of numbers to crunch, and partly because I’m less and less inclined to settle in for hours of blog writing when I’ve got a new job to find and a new life to design. The end is nigh, people.

On to the numbers, but first a word on where all they all came from. Anyone who knows me won’t be surprised to learn that I was keeping careful records for the whole trip. I tried to write down everything I bought so I knew where my money was going. (This is not a new habit for me, it’s one I’ve cultivated for a few years now and also one I highly recommend.) Those numbers went into a spreadsheet for each currency or region. I tended to start a new file whenever the previous got so large and unwieldy that opening, saving and otherwise manipulating it caused my tiny computer to grind to a halt and caused me to contemplate tossing it, and all its spreadsheets, from the nearest balcony.

29 different currencies displayed for all to see at my Welcome Home Party

What I’ve been doing for the last week is going through all these spreadsheets, making sure that they included everything they should, making them all look the same, and making sure they all added up approximately correctly. I also spent a lot of time categorizing things so I could tell how much I’d spent on food, travel, accommodations, etc… Here are my categories:

• Go: Airfares, visas and visa service fees, rail passes, inter-city buses, taxis, local buses, metro tickets, rickshaws, boda-bodas, cycle rickshaws and any other thing related to getting from Point A to Point B that separated me from a small or large bit of my money. I assigned the cost of airfare to the destination to which the plane delivered me, except for the two trans-oceanic flights, which I put under “Whole Trip” costs. This category also includes the costs of the Intrepid, Dragoman and Imaginative Traveller tours I did in Russia, Africa, the Middle East, India/Nepal and China.
• See: Admission fees (for museums, galleries, temples, churches, cathedrals, etc…) walking tours, audioguides, trusty LP guide books, shows, movies, and activities like hot air ballooning, Tea Ceremony, lion walking, etc.
• Run: Food and drink supplies bought for long runs leading up to the marathon in Athens, and Hash Cash – the fee paid to run with each different hash group (mostly to cover the cost of beer). These fees ranged from free-for-visitors to £1.00 in London up to a high of about $12.00 CDN in Singapore.
• Eat: Food of all kinds: Steve’s Weird, Pam’s Normal and everything in between. Bought in restaurants, from street vendors, in grocery stores and in markets.
• Drink: Beer, mostly. Also cheap wine in boxes. And that disastrous affair with vodka in Russia
• Sleep: Hostels, hotels, hostals, pensiones, guesthouses etc…
• Talk: Cell phone SIM cards, cell phone air time, the cell phone internet USB thingy in the UK, internet cafés and wifi internet charges
• Live: A large category – toothpaste, shampoo, and other toiletries, pay-for-use public toilets, laundry, new clothes, postage, books, newspapers, haircuts, small bits of gear, blah blah blah
• Give: Souvenirs and gifts sent home to others, or bought for myself. Also: baksheesh, tips and bribes of all kinds.

I separated out some expenses that I thought really applied to the trip as a whole. That’s where those ocean-crossing airfares went, along with the cost of the new computer, new camera and iPhone, and the big chunk of cash I lost along with my wallet in Barcelona.

Also, a word about currency exchange rates, and that word is: “Ugh”. They fluctuate all the time, so I just picked one rate for each currency that was something close to what the real rate was when I arrived and left it at that. There’s a huge margin of error here, but too bad.

So how does it all shake down? Well, it seems that travelling the world for 351 days cost me about $64,000, or $182.00 per day. I suspect that’s pretty high, and that many hardier backpacker types could do it for much less. To them I say: “Go ahead. Be my guest. And have fun with your dehydrated cup-o-noodles and your twelve-bed dorm rooms and your dodgey, smelly, glacially slow intercity buses. If you’re looking for me I’ll be over at the bar having a drink and waiting for them to call my flight.”

Here’s a look at my big tally-up spreadsheet:

The red numbers are the three highest in each column, the green are the lowest. Ooohhh… conditional formatting! (Sorry these numbers are so tiny and fuzzy, but that’s what happens when you try to cram 424 numbers into 600 pixels. Click here to see the Google spreadsheet, which is still a Work In Progress.)

And what do we learn from these numbers? Surprisingly, Russia turned out to be the most expensive place overall. This is partly because of the cost of getting there, and partly because I was on an Intrepid Tour, which adds substantially to the cost of visiting. Also, I was only there for a short time so that expensive airfare was only averaged over ten days. Denmark clocks in as second most expensive, again partly because the airfare from St Petersburg was not cheap, and I didn’t stay long. Also, as I mentioned when I blogged from there, Denmark is freakin’ expensive. And it turns out that Japan was expensive, just like everyone says. It’s number three on the overall list, and number one for both food and accommodations.

As for the cheap spots? My numbers are skewed; Singapore and the U.S.A top the list, entirely because I stayed with friends who gave me a free bed and fed me (Uganda, which also falls into the “generous friends” category, was fourth cheapest). Third on the list is the perennial favourite of cheapskate travelers the world over: Thailand. It really is cheap. I remember thinking that when I was there – that even when I tried to indulge myself, I still couldn’t manage to spend more than about $10 on a meal, and the hotel room (once I moved out of the fancy place) was ridiculously cheap.

A caution to anyone who might be tempted to use these numbers to budget their own trip: Your mileage will certainly vary because every choice I made every day had an impact on the bottom line, and everyone makes different choices. The fact that Hong Kong was relatively cheap for mean doesn’t mean it would be for everyone. And I spent more money in Greece than many people might, but I was being more self-indulgent there than in other places. Oh, and speaking of self-indulgent – look at all that red in the VACATION row! Top three for Eat, Drink, Sleep, Live and Give. What can I say? I was a good vacation. And I’m still not going to tell you where I went.

Other random thoughts and caveats:

• It’s really not possible to feed yourself as a tourist in Malawi on 63 cents a day, although I suspect many Malawians might. That number is so low because I was eating all my meals with the big orange Dragoman truck, which was part of the cost of the tour. That 63 cents per day was the average cost of me buying cold drinks and snacks outside the food provided by the tour.
• Similarly, do not plan to travel to Thailand for a mere 55 cents per day. I was already in the region and took a cheap (but comfortable and air-conditioned) minibus across the border from Laos, so the “GO” part of Thailand was misleadingly cheap.
• Seeing things in Zambia was expensive, but included some really cool big ticket items: walking with lions, riding in a helicopter over Victoria Falls, the gorge swing and other adrenalin activities and, of course, the swim and breakfast at Livingstone Island at the edge of the falls. All expensive, but mostly worth it. (Similarly, Turkey included the hot air ballooning, and Belgium included a guided tour of WWI battlefields.)
• Macau is unfairly tarred as the most expensive place to eat, but that’s because I was only there for a day and I went for a really nice dinner. Please don’t skip Macau because you think it’s over-priced.

And that’s what it all cost. Go ahead and ask me specific questions in the comments, but I’m not going to get into any blow-by-blow stuff. I deliberately decided not to give you the country-by-country, day-by-day costs because:

1. That’s a bit personal, thank you very much, even for someone whose life has been on public display for a year.
2. It is a LOT of numbers. No really. A LOT. Did I mention there were eleven spreadsheets?
3. No one would get any further than about Day 6 because it’s so boring to go through that their eyes would start bleeding within minutes.

The paper wallet. Still hanging on.

And now, a few fun numbers that don’t have dollar signs attached:

• 351 days on the road
• 33 countries visited
• 158 different beds slept in
• 72 city maps fruitlessly consulted and roundly cursed
• 29 different hash trails run with 27 different hashes in 21 countries
• 24 flights composed of 37 flight segments on 17 different carriers
• 23 languages misunderstood
• 17 guide books consulted, abbreviated, mangled and discarded (15 LP, 1 Rough Guide, and 1 other)
• 29 currencies gushing in an endless stream from 1 paper wallet that’s seen better days
• 17 metro systems navigated
• 21 overnight journeys by train, bus, plane and ferry
• 38 Weird Foods sampled
• 12,861 photos taken, which is an average of 37 per day
• 1 trip of a lifetime

Oh, and also for the record, I swam in the Atlantic off the southwest English and Northern Irish coasts, and in “the Med, the Red and the Dead”, the Indian Ocean, Lake Malawi, the Zambezi River (Victoria Falls!), and the Nile.

And how am I doing these days? Pretty well, thanks for asking. I had a nice visit with my sister and family in Calgary, I’m on version 973 of my resumé, and I’m slowly devising a plan for the next few months that I’m both excited and nervous about, so I think that must mean I’m on the right track. My sum-it-all-up blog post is not even a vague spark in the back of my mind yet, but some day I’m sure my random impressions will coalesce into the grand finale we’re all hoping for. Yup. Any day now. Yessiree.