Poor Stevie

Backpacking has really made me want to help other people see the world. I could open a hostel, but that would require me to actually enjoy the company of others. I could be a tour guide, but I hate people too much. I could become a bus driver, but that requires driving and also people. I could become a travel agent, but I hate desk jobs and customers. I could sign-up to host couch surfers but, what with all the aforementioned hatred of people I have in my heart, I would probably end up charged with someone’s murder.

I think the best thing I can offer other backpackers, or those planning to do some budget travel, is some comprehensive advice. That way no one dies. Before we left for our six-month trip I had a hard time finding a lot of very basic information about backpacking. Every time I searched for something like “backpacking six months europe america”, Google would ask “Did you mean: That’s totally fucking impossible you complete idiot. Give up your lame dreams already”. Our trip has been crazy, wonderful, challenging, inspiring, life-changing, best-thing-I’ve-ever-done-incredible and totally possible. And I want you to have the same. Hence, I give you:

A BACKPACKER’S GUIDE TO BACKPACKING FOR ANYONE WHO HAS EVER WONDERED HOW TO ACTUALLY BACKPACK LIKE A REAL BACKPACKER

Our trip: We flew out of Sydney on July 4, 2010 and will return on January 10, 2011.

Our route for the first four months looked a little like this:  Sydney – Bangkok – Koh Samui – Bangkok – London – Brighton – Cambridge – London – Bath – Rotterdam – Amsterdam – Berlin – Dresden – Berlin – Warsaw – Gdansk -Krakow – Vienna – Salzburg – Zagreb – Pula – Zadar – Split – Dubrovnik – Sarajevo – Split – Budapest – Kecskemét – Cluj – Brasov – Sofia – Veliko Tarnovo – Sofia – Thessaloniki – Delphi – Athens – Rome – Florence – Venice – Milan – Paris – Tours – Paris – London – Barcelona – Madrid.

Riding a bike in the drizzle in the countryside near Tours, France.

After Madrid we flew to New York in November, where we stayed for a week before we got in a car with a couple of friends and drove across the states, staying in the following places: Philadelphia – Washington DC – Roanoke, Virginia – Asheville, North Carolina – Charleston, South Carolina – Atlanta, Georgia – Gatlinburg, Tennessee – Nashville – Memphis – Little Rock, Arkansas – Tulsa, Oklahoma – Oklahoma City – Amarillo, Texas – Albuquerque, New Mexico – Holbrook, Arizona – Flagstaff, Arizona – Las Vegas – Los Angeles.

After three nights in Los Angeles we flew to San Francisco, where we are right now.

Welcome to Texas, baby!

Budget: Basically, I had been putting away money each week since working as a check-out chick at Big W throughout uni (I graduated in 2007). When I got a job in Sydney I tried to put away about $200-250 every fortnight. I was able to save so much money by doing things like op-shopping for clothes and homewares, only drinking beer or wine when I went out, making my own lunches for work, cooking at home, avoiding taking taxis anywhere and never really buying myself anything new. Even so, I was still able to do things like go out to dinner most weekends, go to the movies, buy the odd book and the occasional piece of clothing that didn’t belong to someone’s dead aunt.

I opened a high interest savings account and put my savings and any other money I ever got – including birthday and Christmas money and tax returns – straight in there and watched the figure slowly grow. J-man did much the same with his money and we worked towards contributing the same amount to the trip.

By the time July rolled around we had enough money to spend at least $200 a day for a 188-day trip. We also saved up a nest egg to come home to, which was beefed up by money various family members gave us for our wedding to go towards new furniture upon our return. Yep, you did the maths right – we could have bought a house made of gold instead of going overseas. But who wants a lump of metal when you could be eating baklava in Bosnia? Or riding a bicycle through 50 kilometres of French countryside in the autumn? Or devouring the most amazing red velvet cake in a deserted playground in Madrid? Or exploring Brooklyn flea markets? Or peering into the Grand Canyon? Or getting your vows renewed by Elvis in Las Vegas? NOONE.

At first we weren’t sure whether $200 a day was enough. But, it was more than enough in most places. In fact, the way we travelled probably isn’t everyone’s idea of backpacking – we slept in a bed every night, ate every day and bought ourselves little treats every now and then.

In western Europe $AUD200 a day was enough to get the two of us:

• Accomodation in a hostel dorm room
• Transport
• Entry into a museum or attraction, or both
• Dinner at a cheap restaurant with drinks

To try and keep under budget in places like Germany, France and Italy, we tried to book hostels that provided breakfast, we would buy our lunch (usually fruit and nuts) from supermarkets and we would refill a drink bottle with tap water. The only countries that made it impossible to stick to our budget every day were France and Austria, where the economy is based on the exchange of newborns and kidneys for goods and services.

In places like Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece $AUD200 was enough to get us:

• Accomodation in a hostel or budget hotel
• Transport
• A sickly sweet bakery breakfast
• A cafe lunch
• Coffee
• Entrance into at least two or three attractions
• Dinner at a cheap restaurant with drinks
• The occasional movie

In eastern Europe we were able to actively stay well below our daily budget, which we did in an effort to “save up” for more expensive countries and our US road trip.  We probably spent less than half of our budget on an average day, but we were still able to do absolutely everything we wanted to do and had a bunch of fun on the cheap.

Cliffside in Bulgaria.

Thanks to our brave efforts in eastern Europe, and trying desperately to stick to our daily limit everywhere else, our budget for the US became almost $300 a day.

We booked our road trip through Auto Tours USA and prepaid for our hire car and all our accommodation. That amount averaged out at $185 per day for 28 days. We then had enough money to allow ourselves $AUD100 a day for everything else.

That 100 clams (keeping in mind the US dollar was almost parity) was always enough to pay for:

• Petrol
• Coffee
• Entrance into museums, attractions or national parks
• Parking
• Dinner with drinks

It helped that we had two friends with us for half of the road trip, which meant we could split the costs three ways (yep, marriage morphed J-man and I into one superbeing).

My basic budget travel tips:

• Choose hostels/hotels that provide you with everything you need. There are a lot of amazing places around the world that have internet, breakfast and touristy activities included in the price.
• If you are staying in a place that doesn’t provide any food, head straight for the supermarket for cereal, milk and bread to save on expensive cafe or bakery breakfasts.
• Buy easy-to-carry lunch food and snacks, like fruit, nuts and biscuits, from supermarkets.
• Walk everywhere – so many major capitals are very walkable and it really is the best way to see and experience a city.
• Drink tap water where it is safe.
• Buy alcohol from liquor shops and supermarkets, rather than downing a million expensive drinks at bars.
• Hotels in the US almost always have bar fridges in the rooms and ice machines, so we bought ourselves an esky to keep milk and other perishable groceries for our breakfasts and lunches.

Before you go: I am an anal freak. Yep, you heard it here first, I am extremely organised and hate being ill-prepared for anything. So I was really worried about how our trip would turn out without a whole lot of pre-planning. But the only things you really need to organise are your flights, travel insurance, any required visas (the Smart Traveller website is really comprehensive, but suggests you contact embassies before you leave), credit cards and/or travel money and your first few nights of accomodation.

Tickets: We did the easiest thing and went to Flight Centre. We lucked out and found ourselves working with a really cool, young woman who helped us find cheap flights, so we didn’t shop around and check prices with other travel agents. We ended up buying round-the-world tickets that were part of  a Lufthansa promotion, which was super cheap and great.

Weird tour bus we saw in Croatia. Hmm, enticing!

Packing: After six months, I can safely say I definitely packed the right amount of stuff and the right type of stuff. J-man packed way too much stuff and had to send a lot back to his mum, who emailed to ask him if he wanted it washed, ironed and returned to him. Teehee!

A few days before we left, I bought a 65-litre Black Wolf backpack. It was super handy because it unzips almost all the way around, making it easy to find things, and also has a removable day pack. The girl who sold me the bag gave me the best packing advice: to pack with the bag extensions zipped up and only to unzip them well into the trip.

Trunks full of junk in Venice

This is what I packed:

• Three summer dresses, which could easily be rolled up
• A pair of shorts
• Two singlets
• A pair of jeans
• Three light jumpers
• Basic toiletries
• Swimmers
• Hat
• A travel towel (I got this as a farewell present and it was super useful in hostels where towels weren’t provided)
• Thongs (as in shoes – also useful in hostel showers)
• About 25 pairs of undies, in anticipation of rarely being able to do washing

All I really had to buy overseas were a pair of Converse, a t-shirt, lots of socks, cheap wool gloves and a big winter coat that I found for $AUD10 at a Romanian op-shop. Even in the northern hemisphere winter, light jumpers, jeans, a scarf, gloves and the heavy coat have been enough to keep me warm (we left Europe in November and stuck to the southern states in the US, so it’s not a good indication of what it might be like in deep winter or in scary, blizzard-prone areas).

Travel books: We schlepped the Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget all over the place. It gave pretty good advice on budgets, accommodation, transport, eating and nightlife. It was also really user-friendly and gave tips for travelling “off the beaten track” and suggested a lot of quirky sights and destinations. We didn’t use it religiously and found it led us astray a couple of times (it told us The Hague was a bit lame, but we found it to be awesome, and directed us to go to Kecskemét, which was a bit of a hole) but it was really useful for quickly finding out essential, basic information about a place and how best to get there. Also, we went to a few smaller places that didn’t have hostels and the book always had great suggestions for budget hotels or guesthouses that couldn’t be found online.

Europe rail passes: We researched the benefits of buying rail passes (Eurail is the option for non-EU citizens) for a while before we left, but didn’t end up getting them. Firstly, it didn’t seem like there was a good option for a trip as long as ours. Secondly, we wanted to be really flexible with our trip and it didn’t look like we could do that with a rail pass. Thirdly, we didn’t want to part with that much money when we didn’t have a concrete itinerary. As it turns out we made the right decision because we spent the majority of our Europe trip in the east, where all forms of transport are incredibly cheap and train trips are about a third of the cost of similar trips in western Europe. So it wasn’t for us, but I reckon it’s worth investigating if you’re planning to do a shorter trip in the more expensive parts of Europe.

Watching election coverage in Krakow at an internet cafe, where THEY LET YOU DRINK BEER.

Travel cashola: The Australian consumer website Choice was a really great resource for comparing different types of travel money. We ended up using the ANZ travel card, and loading one card up with Euros and one with US dollars. It’s hard to know how beneficial that ended up being because you get the conversion at the bank rate and other fees apply. Also the Australian dollar almost matched the US dollar during our trip and we cursed having bought dollars when it was around the 88 cent mark. For the majority of transactions we used the Wizard Clear Advantage credit card, which doesn’t have any international transaction fees and we just kept it in the black to avoid interest. But it wasn’t a dream run with that card – they changed their name towards the end of our trip, sent us a new card to an Australian address and suddenly deactivated the card we’d been using, just as we were about to pay for our hire car return fee. Thumbs down, dudes. J-man and I also have debit cards with our banks, which we kept as a backup.

Overlords of Florence.

Getting it on: All the way through Europe, J-man and I totally travelled on the fly. We had a rough idea of where we wanted to go, but would often only make solid plans about three days before, or a week at very most. We even changed the entire route of our trip about a month in, after realising it would be incredibly expensive and annoying to travel in western Europe during the peak season (umm, no shit Sherlock). So about once a week we sat down in front of a computer and figured out where to go next, how to get there and where to stay.

For accommodation our first stop was always Hostelbookers or Hostelworld. We had more luck finding things on Hostelbookers, which we thought was a bit more user-friendly and cheaper (no booking fee, you just have to pay a 10 per cent non-refundable deposit). Each site lists hostels by their ratings and reviews, which are given by other travellers. The ratings system was spot on – without fail, the hostels rated in the 90s and high 80s were always amazing places. There were only a few places – Kecskemét, Delphi, Thessaloniki and Venice – that didn’t really have hostels, so we stayed in little budget hotels that we found online or in our travel book.

The hideous Parthenon.

Organising transport was always a little harder, but you can get just about everywhere from just about anywhere in Europe if you look hard enough. For trips in western Europe, you can go online to book trains, buses and planes (we only ever found cheap fares with Easyjet, though other people suggested Ryanair and Wizz airlines, as well as Kayak to compare prices). One of our favourite websites for figuring out how to travel by train in Europe was The Man in Seat 61, which gives you tips on buying tickets online, in advance and links to transport and ticketing websites. In eastern Europe you almost always have to go to a train or bus station to see timetables and buy tickets. I found talking to someone was better in these countries anyway, because the little that could be found online was often outdated or just some loser guesstimating on a travel forum. Croatia, which is an amazing place, BTW, is one of the few countries we went to that had limited train connections. It does, however, have the most efficient and well-organised bus system we experienced.

The US was a different kind of trip for us because it was planned, booked and paid for well before we got there (we actually organised it from Sarajevo over a cup of tea, while I ate peanut butter from the jar). Even though we totally loved the way we travelled in Europe, we figured we’d be over winging it by the time we got to the states. After researching Amtrak, Greyhound and talking to other travellers, we realised early on that travelling in the USA is near impossible without a car. Most US cities (except New York, Washington and San Francisco) have pretty pathetic public transport systems and are very spread out, so walking often isn’t an option. Although we booked our US trip through a company, it would be very easy to wing a road trip in the US. Budget hotels like Red Roof Inns and Best Westerns, which often have free wifi and breakfast, are a dime a dozen and we had a very smooth, trouble-free experience hiring a car through Hertz. There are also about 12 zillion websites and travel books that outline American road trip itineraries. Also, a GPS is totally necessary because US roads can be freakin’ labyrinths.

Other general tips:

Waiting for a cinnamon roll at the Route 66 cafe in Santa Rosa, New Mexico.

• To preserve your budget and sanity, head east during European summer and save your western adventures for autumn and winter. We rarely had trouble finding accommodation and were never anywhere (even Paris) where the crowds were overwhelming. I am sure we made the right decision to do it that way, no matter how beautiful western Europe would have been in the summer. We didn’t have to wait to get into the Louvre, the Sistine Chapel, the Acropolis or any other major tourist attraction, really. Plus, a drizzly Paris was beyond romantic and I’m glad I didn’t have to share it with 50 billion sweaty jerks.
• Learning basic greetings and manners in each country is invaluable. If you can say “hello”, “thank you” and “goodbye”, you will have a much easier time and locals are far more willing to help you if they see you are trying. That myth that French people totally hate you if you don’t speak French? Not true. We just tried our best with the basics and we had a wonderful time and were showered with macarons. Also, we had a lot of fun saying “shizer!” and “nine” and “ich libre dich” to some German gals we met in Hungary. I think they probably hated us.
• Do some overnight travelling if you feel comfortable with it, because it saves a bunch on accommodation. Night trains can be quite fun and are reasonably comfortable, while overnight buses are kind of arduous but you feel smug and accomplished when you disembark alive.
• If you’re travelling as a pair, it’s worth shopping around for accommodation. Sometimes a budget hotel room can be cheaper than two beds in a hostel dorm. Plus, it’s a lot sexier.
• If you’re thinking about travelling alone, you’re awesome and brave and I applaud you. It’s worth looking out for hostels with common rooms,  so you can meet people, and places that offer pick-ups from stations or airports. A lot of girls I met who were travelling alone felt safer catching buses and would ask around the hostel to see who was thinking of going to the same place, so they had company.
• Think about bringing a laptop or iPhone or whatever. Wifi is absolutely everywhere and J-man’s beloved iPhone saved us from certain death many times, like when we arrived in Warsaw late at night and got lost in that big, scary, humid, concrete city of misery. Also, a lot of hostels have free wifi but will charge you for using their computers.
• Use Skype. We didn’t have a mobile number in Europe so it was incredibly useful on several occasions. We bought a bit of Skype credit too, so we could call home every so often for cheap.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for advice – it’s not cheating. This sounds obvious but sometimes the people who can give you the best tips on what to do, where to go and how to get there are the people behind the desk at the hotel or hostel. Locals know all about train timetables, bus routes, laundromats, the best bars and restaurants and they actually want you to have a good time in their city/town.
• Ignore the naysayers. Weirdly, the most common topic of conversation at hostels is travel horror stories. We were told we were going to be murdered on night trains, robbed to death in Barcelona and that Athens is hell on earth. Night trains were completely fine, we didn’t get robbed in Barcelona and Athens was amazing. Anywhere where kebabs are sold with hot chips inside is not my definition of hell.
• Backpacking is hard work. Sometimes you sleep in gross beds, you hear people having sex all the time, you wear the same old clothes, you eat weird food, you get sick, you share showers with people you wouldn’t share a bus seat with, your bags just get heavier and dudes? You have to pretend to be interested in churches.  Sometimes you need to ignore the budget and treat yourself. Go and see a movie, eat a decent meal or find yourself a comfy bed.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to compile a bunch of top five lists of my favourite places, foods and travel moments, so y’all know where to get the world’s best raspberry tart. Hoorah!

Feel free to comment if you reckon I’ve left out any important travel tips.

Today is the first Christmas J-man and I have had together in the six years we’ve been dating and marriaging the hell out of each other. It’s also the first Christmas I’ve ever had without my family, so we decided to combine some of our families’ traditions to make it one giant superhero Christmas.

As you probably don’t remember,  J-man and I are total cheap skate hippies and instead of buying a plastic Christmas tree (they’re so bad for, like, the earth and Bambi and junk) each year we collect sticks and decorate them.  This year we are in San Francisco and I was afraid any sticks we might collect would have tarantulas in them. Tarantulas and rattle snakes and Michael Myers. So we decorated a candelabra instead:

We collected the decorations from around the world and plan to keep them forever and, when we have kids (which, if I have any say, will be tomorrow), we can tell them the stories behind each of the little trinkets.

• The wooden black cat at the top and the apple at the bottom were decorations we bought at the Holiday Market in Union Square in New York. It was a super cold day and I was so excited to be having my first cold Christmas. The apple is because of The Big Apple and the cat is sort of a memorial to J-man’s late cat Lucky.

• We bought the egg-shaped decoration at a flea market in Sofia, Bulgaria. There was a funny cast of characters behind the market stalls, including a legless man and a faintly-bearded woman. Lots were selling military paraphernalia, so I really hope this innocent-looking decoration isn’t actually a Christmas grenade.

• The little wooden man was bought from a flower shop in Salzburg. It cost something like six euros and the woman told us he was uniquely Austrian. We later saw them in every country for about one sixth of that price. Still, I guess it’s a nice reminder to never, ever return to Austria.

• The wooden red and white heart is from Paris. I would have loved a jewel-encrusted Eiffel Tower bauble, but I would have had debt collectors cutting off my fingers and threatening my family. We bought this little number from a supermarket, along with bananas and footless tights.

• The little angel next to the wooden man is from Budapest, one of my favourite cities ever. We were there in September but already the city was lit up and Christmasy and beautiful.

• The little Venetian mask is from Dubbo. Oh, you’re so gullible. It is, of course, from Venice – a seriously magical, out-of-this-world place. I’ll look at this and remember the pink and peach sunset we watched just after I’d thrown a hissy fit when a hawker forced J-man to buy me two roses for ten euros. I really have been the most wonderful travel partner.

Yesterday – Christmas Eve – J-man and I did our present shopping, food shopping and a little baking. One of my favourite Christmas memories is helping mum make a chocolate Christmas tree, complete with icing sugar snow. So while J-man talked to his family for the first time in six months, I tried to recreate the joy. I think what I actually made was a chocolate cow pat:

Last night we drank Gingerbread man cocktails – made from vanilla vodka and ginger ale – and ate an array of dips and salads. All my Christmas dreams came true when we found It’s A Wonderful Life playing on cable television. It made me cry, poor old George Bailey.

This morning we woke up and exchanged gifts. I bought Joel his newly-discovered favourite beer Dogfish Head and Jonathan Franzen’s book Freedom. He bought me some bow earrings I’d pointed out, a Macaron cook book and a necklace with an Eiffel Tower charm. Am I not the luckiest gal in the world? Afterwards we cooked a breakfast of pikelets, strawberries and bacon and eggs. After that, we devoured:

Later today, we’ll eat more and nap. Merry Christmas, y’all.

The pros and cons of our first 24 hours in lovely San Francisco.

+ Pretzels and water served on flight from LAX, while I sit next to a delightful teenager who does that cute head-bobbing-on-the-brink-of-sleep thing. I resist all temptation to guide his head onto my shoulder, stroke his hair and tell my mum’s famous “…And all the little lambs are in their barn. And all the little spiders are in their webs. And all the little snails are in their shells”  bedtime story. Realise husband may be affronted.

- Stand at luggage carousel for about 40 minutes, hoping and praying for our bags to turn up. Bags never come, so we lodge a delayed baggage report and are told they’re probably just on the next flight in. Little do we know the grinch is about to steal Christmas.

+ Get a shuttle bus to our hotel. The driver is a kindly man, who has decorated his van like a portable Buddhist temple. Am instantly calmed, converted and we take a copy of a free book he offers called “Heart of a Buddha”.

- Enter hotel room, which will be our home for the next five days, to find it has a distinct hourly rate feel to it, if you know what I’m sayin’.

+ Realise we are close to Japantown, where we discover an amazing shop selling all things awesome Japan. Things include a children’s book I wish I had written entitled: ‘Everyone poops’. We eat from bento boxes and walk back to our hotel amongst the Christmas lights and drizzle.

- I awake the next morning in despair, realising everything I have ever loved is in my bag. Things include black and white photos of Bulgarian strangers we bought at a flea market in Sofia, beautiful Christmas decorations we’ve collected from each country we’ve visited, my remarrying dress and the junior version of my beloved blankie.

+ We find out our insurance policy is reasonably sweet and can go and buy ourselves some replacement things. On the way into the city, we find a great coffee place that sells all kinds of crazy blends. We think we’ve found a San Francisco gem and feel it’s a sign of things to come.

- Things do come – rather too quickly – and I spend about half an hour in the bathrooms at Westfield cursing strong jumbo coffees with cream.

+ I find myself three pairs of underpants and four pairs of socks, which is luxury after wearing mostly hand-washed underwear for six months.

- I feel guilty and hopeless for spending money I had saved for Christmas on emergency underwear and walk home alone through the Tenderloin district, while J-man goes in search of emergency fashion.

+ Married to Rock and 16 and Pregnant are on the telly when I get back to the sex hotel. Such reality programs make me feel smug and superior. I know how to defy nature!

- Realise that babystoppers are also in my missing luggage. Prepare to re-marry Joel again in his drag racing gear and move into a barn set up in my parents’ backyard with baby Jeph and Soel.

+ Go and see Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman in a grand old theatre.

- Get to thinking that maybe I am too much like her crazy-insane-insane-crazy character, complete with nervous breakdowns, way out sensitivity and awkward make-out sessions where the kiss-ee yells “ow, you bit me! Why did you bite me?”

+ Eat dinner in a 50s style diner, where juke boxes are on every table. Amongst other things, I choose Bing Crosby’s ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’. San Francisco makes everything okay.

I’m no Jack Kerouac, but I’d like to show you what a day on the road looks like.

0800 – Wake in a mysterious budget hotel room and make sure valuables and innocence are still in check.

0815 – Eat breakfast. Sometimes it comes from the red WalMart “cooler” we bought and other times it is provided by the hotel, with a healthy dose of Fox News on the side. Democrats are such idiots, y’all. Also, imma gonna picket me some funerals.

0845 – Pack the car. Originally we had a silver Honda with Michigan number plates. We called her Michelle, because she was classy like the First Lady. Michelle was in desperate need of a service though, so we had to swap her for a blue Camry hybrid in Memphis. We have named her Blanche.  Please note the Girls! Girls! Girls! sign in the background, below. That should give you an idea of the calibre of our accommodation.

0900 – Set up the GPS  (named Wendy, who has a beautiful Brooklyn accent and a penchant for spontaneous, illegal U-turns) to guide us to our next destination. Open door on advent calender pinned to the back of the driver’s seat.

1200 – Have an in-car snack. The best thing I’ve found at petrol stations in America, other than fresh bananas and transvestites, is a hazelnut cappuccino. I love them, but limit myself to one a week because I’m pretty sure they’re flavoured with pure corn syrup and pigs’ blood. Joel tried his first twinkie on the drive between Oklahoma City and Amarillo.

1330 – Stop at some road side attractions, which have included everything from road signs (Texas, duh), a big blue whale (just outside Tulsa, OK),  VW Beetles driven into the sand (also Texas), NATURE (Texas) and dead raccoons (not shown).

1500 – Check into our new hotel, usually in the boondocks. Surf cable channels (my favourite discovery is the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills).  Make prank calls to other rooms. Remove pants.

1515 – Realise we should actually do something with ourselves. Sometimes these things include having Christmas at Elvis’ house in Memphis, or having a chocolate soda at Nashville’s original soda shop (again, I have to limit myself because my trunk is getting so full of junk I’ll have to take out insurance on dat ass, just like Beyonce)

(This is our friend Garth. Garth and Dale, two of Joel’s friends from home, joined us for a couple of weeks. I don’t think they expected me to love bum jokes with such a passion)

1900 – Eat dinner. We’ve had some incredible meals in the US, but I think my favourite was barbecue in Memphis. We shared the dining room with a bunch of fat truckers, some cops and rowdy families. It was the most genuine American experience I’ve had.

Dollywood was closed.

I will admit that I cried when I found out.  Visiting Dollywood and supersizing a McDonald’s meal were the only two things I desperately wanted to do in the states.  I know, dream big! I’m not a huge fan of Dolly Parton’s music, but I love her kitsch southern style and I like to imagine she is exactly like her character in Steel Magnolias. She’d paint your nails in a nice, coral shade, gossip with you over biscuits and grits and then come to your funeral in something tight and low-cut.

Anyway, it turns out Gatlinburg, Tennessee – the neighbouring town of Pigeon Forge, where the great Dollywood lies – is possibly the greatest place on earth. It’s pretty much a permanent amusement park, so it was a nice consolation prize.

Observe:

This was an amazing shop called Aunt Mahalia’s Candies, where they had all kinds of dreamy fudge, boiled sweets and candy canes. It was near a tobacco shop where the shopkeeper told J-man he was welcome to fill up his pipe with free samples. I also saw my first Mormons here, but thought it would be rude to take photos or ask for hairstyle tips (no, really – back combing? teasing? shoulder pads to lift the pouf?)

On the next floor was this boot, hat, whip and gun shop. Channelling Dolly, I thought briefly about buying a pair of red cowboy boots. As J-man was trying to convince me to get them, the owner (who was wearing denim overalls and, for the purposes of this story, chewing straw) said in a rich, southern drawl: “Be careful it might bring out the cowgirl in ‘er and we won’t be held responsible for anything that happens”. Needless to say I wussed out and didn’t buy the boots, fearing I would uncontrollably rip my shirt off and mount a raging mechanical bull, before birthing an illegitimate child called Something-Ray on the spot.

This was taken in the same mall, between a nunchucks and knuckledusters outlet and a quaint shop that sold hideous glass figures of barnyard animals. I was trying to do my best Dolly Parton sexy wink to go with my hooker outfit. As you can tell, that definitely needs more work. It’s hard to wink with a lazy eye and fishnets that are riding up.

Lining the streets were all kinds of wack things like this. Countless fair rides, fudge shops, permanent Christmas villages, gun and ammo shops, diners, grills and fast food chains. There were even the equivalent of carnies in residence – two tattooed brothers who ran the local Burger King and were spotted smoking cigarettes they’d found on the footpath. Only after J-man finished eating his handmade triple cheeseburger.

But it wasn’t all fairy floss and incest. Before leaving Gatlinburg we took a short hike in the Smoky Mountains National Park.  There were icicles hanging from rocks, dramatic waterfalls, beautiful tall trees, autumn leaves and… snow!

What an amazing way to spend the first day of December.

Only 23 days ’til Christmas!

In Paris I had the most amazing life moment. (“Life moment” – you can tell I’m writing live from downtown Philly while Dr Phil gabs in the background.) Was it my first sighting of the Eiffel Tower? No. Catching a glimpse of the Mona Lisa amidst a bustling bunch of losers taking blurry photos? Hells no. Walking along the Seine on a drizzly afternoon? Shutup, you sentimental losers!

Nope, I reached the height of contentedness in the Jardin des Tuileries when I bit into the most perfect, delicious, decadent, exploding-bro-fist-incredible raspberry macaron.

Here is what that moment looked like:

I didn’t think I could get much happier. That was until I mixed my two favourite things – food and massive castles – and had a picnic in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles. So Frenchy, so chic, so HUNGRY.

So when we flew out of Paris, I tried to come to terms with never, ever eating such beautiful food again. It was like losing a family pet. A tasty, perfectly light and puffy family pet.

Little did I know my wildest eating dreams would come true in New York City. The following pictures need no explanation.

(Also – before I go and try a Philly cheese steak, allow me to share this terrible photo of THE WORLD’S BEST NACHOS EVER, JERKS with you.)

I want to preface this post by saying that hosteling around Europe, particularly eastern Europe, has been a life-changing experience. I’ve met incredible people – a guy who kayaked his way through Germany, an old, cheerful and, not surprisingly, lean Japanese man making his way around the world on a bicycle and lots of young, strong women exploring the continent on their own. We were privileged to stay in a hostel in Sarajevo run by a 22-year-old incredi-dude who set up rooms in the top storey of his parents’ house after it was bombed. Without hosteling, I would never have tried a traditional Hungarian stew made almost entirely of potatoes and actual buckets of sour cream (umm, hello boys!) cooked by the most fun, gracious and kind host we’ve had. Without a doubt, we have met some 0f the best people on planet earth and experienced the best of human behaviour.

But enough of that wankery. Having shared a bedroom and bathroom with up to eight strangers every night for the last four months, we’ve also met some people who should have been left on the mountain at birth.

They fit into the following categories:

The selfish: Really these people are the most harmless of the lot but they still drive me to the brink of bite-the-curb violence. They’re the kind who rifle through their bags at 1am, turn the lights on and off all night or let their alarms ring for minutes at the crack of dawn. Just the other night, I was kept awake by a room light that was still on at 2am for the sake of one girl “doing work”. Eavesdropping on her earlier inane conversations, I knew she was a receptionist at a language school so I wondered what kind of work she could be doing. Translating hieroglyphics? Cracking the Da Vinci code? When I got up out of bed and asked if I could turn off the light, she hesitated and when I did she said “Sorry, do you mind? I have pages to read, I’m not just using my computer”. Really? That’s interesting because my husband knows ninjitsu – once he takes off his eye mask and pulls out his industrial-strength ear plugs, things are gonna get real biatch.

The spewers: We’re lucky to have only met one of these a-holes. One night, J-man and I were rudely awoken from our dreams of unicorns and adultery by what we both initially thought was our roommate choking on some water. We looked over at each other in shock when it became clear this guy was puking all over himself, his bed, his bag and all over the floor. We were even more horrified as he swiftly got up, dressed only in his tight undies, stripped the bed, threw his soiled sheets in the hall, flipped his mattress and scrubbed his bag clean before going back to sleep. The next morning he apologized profusely, blaming the whole thing on a bad mushroom pizza. Nice try buddy, but there was one dead giveaway. Not only was he swaying and bumping into things as he cleaned up the funghi death slime, but as he bent down to pick up his sheets, he let out a ripsnorter. Nothing says pissed as a fart quite like … a fart.

The rooters: Ah yes, there have been many, many of these incredibly romantic moments on our trip. There’s no lullabye like the sound of two drunk strangers lick each other clean not five metres from your head. A story I’ll tell at every dinner party for the rest of my life comes live from a lovely little hostel in the Bulgarian countryside. We were sharing a room with a bunch of the usual backpacker crowd and a couple of elderly dudes. In the middle of the night a young couple started doing the bad thing on the good foot on the bunk bed above a snoring, gassy English grandpa. That night I was suffering from a very unsexy condition known as Bulgaria Butt and was up and down until dawn. But that didn’t stop the young lovers, who were also up and down until dawn and still canoodling in the morning light. When they still hadn’t wrapped things up after breakfast I – feeling angry, tired and about 12 kilos lighter – scolded them for being inconsiderate and walked out of the room in a huff as they tried to plead their innocence. Later, I came back into the room to find the girl talking sweetly to the old guy she’d been bonking on top of all night. In the middle of their conversation about Israel and the joys of world travel, the old fella pointed to a screwed up pair of sexy underpants that had fallen on his pillow from her top bunk. “Are these yours?” he said, “because they’re certainly not mine”.  Aw snap, you dirty slapper.

At the end of this trip, I hope to write a comprehensive travel guide outlining budgets, travel options, the best hostels, cool cities, dud cities and where to find the best donuts (Okay, I’ll tell you that now: Rila Monestary, Bulgaria. You buy them from a stand called “Happy American Donuts” and you add your own sugar. Dangerous! And Happy!). But there’s a little something I want to share with you now because it’s a discovery all y’all ladies can use at home.

Behold the world’s most perfect travel hairstyle!

It’s the side bun circa 1989! I also rocked this look for my wedding. (However, at my wedding I wasn’t wearing a second-hand coat from Cluj and – luckily – wasn’t completely infested with bed bugs, as I was at the time this photo was taken. Thank you, Romania!) The side bun is the perfect travel hairstyle because a) you can lean your head back on train/bus seats and relax b) it’s really easy to do c) it gets your hair out of the way of the straps on your 14kg backpack and d) it can easily translate from weary traveller to international party girl with just a flick of a comb.

Here’s the view from the back:

It’s a little messy here, yes. But that’s from all the lying back and relaxing I’d been doing from Brasov to Bucharest. (The dude in the photo is an NYC-er we met at our Brasov hostel. He was an inspiration to me – he ordered fried chicken for breakfast.)

And below is the same hairstyle a few hours later, while preparing for a long night aboard a sleeper train (and, obviously, earning a little extra cash on the side as a model for Big W photo frame happy example shots).

(This post has been brought to you by the overuse of brackets for witty remarks on the snide.)

The world doesn’t need another photo of a couple of idiots grinning in front of the Trevi fountain.

After years and years of dreaming about visiting Italy, it is everything I imagined.

Before I begin the second installment of Weird Things I’ve Noticed About Europe, I want to tell you that I just saw the Acropolis. THE ACROPOLIS, DUDES! It was seriously impressive and I got all girly about it.

Herewith Weird Things I’ve Noticed About Europe Part Deux

The venga bus is coming: On just about every bus we’ve caught, the driver puts on some kind of dated mix tape of vaguely nationalistic songs. On our bus ride from Bulgaria to Greece the driver’s music could hardly be heard over some kind of torturous malfunctioning alarm that buzzed endlessly. The poor dude had to pull over the clunky old wagon heaps of times to check something and eventually he fixed whatever was going on. And that’s when the partae really got goin’. As we crossed the border, Madonna’s Like A Prayer came on followed by Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U. But even better, he kept replaying one Greek party song with a chorus that went a little something like this: “I’ve waited for so long, can’t we do it now? (touch my body)”. Clearly, it wasn’t just the bus that needed a good fiddle under the bonnet.

Gone to the dogs: Something that’s really distracting in Europe is the presence of – how I can I put this politely? Nope, I can’t – dog’s nuts. I know, surely I could be spending time admiring ancient monuments, great art and nature, but of course I’m spending all my time checking out animal genitalia. Forgive me. It’s just hard not to notice because stray dogs are absolutely everywhere and, obviously, the two are related. You don’t desex dogs and they go and mate with each other, have babies and form gangs. Exactly like bogans.

Double Lines: Catching buses or riding in cars in Europe is absolutely terrifying because there are no road rules. Red lights mean nothing, double lines mean nothing, speed limits mean nothing, impending head-on collisions mean nothing. Overtaking in Greece, for example, is done wherever and whenever – the oncoming cars just calmly shift to the side of the road. It is actually a miracle I’m not blogging from beyond the grave.

Real men: Just about everywhere we went in Eastern Europe, there were men on the street pushing prams…with dogs in them. I don’t know if they just don’t sell leashes in that part of the world, but it just seemed to be the done thing and it was no laughing matter. The first time I saw it, a man was pushing two regal looking cocker spaniels around in a pink pram. Thinking he was just an eccentric dog lover I looked at him, then pointedly at the dog babies, and smiled. Nope, not funny you idiot western woman – practical.

Sunday Best: There are more sex shops in Europe than people, dog’s nuts, crazy bus drivers and cocker spaniels in prams combined. We’ve been to countries where we’ve been advised to cover up, dress modestly around churches and be ultra respectful to the older generation. It’s those same countries where everything will shut on a Sunday in the name of the sweet Lord. Everything except the sex shops on every corner. Need a latex dress last minute? No problem! How about some fluffy handcuffs? Done. What about a leash? Yeah, sure I’m tired of pushing my wife around in a pram, anyway.