Munich

Don't ever let anyone tell you that London is only two hours from anywhere else in Europe. It takes two hours just to get from London to the bloody airport, for one thing. And sure, the air ticket itself may be cheap, but once they've factored in the departure tax, booking fee, baggage fee, insurance, oxygen fee and fee for wasting the pilots' and cabin crew's time, you're carrying much less weight in your wallet. Don't even think about asking for a beer either: it'd be cheaper to bring your own microbrewery on board and make one yourself.

That I made it to this cheap hotel room in Augsburg without incident is a surprise even to me. I left the flat in London at 2am. Twelve hours later, I'm a tortured and broken man. “Get your party hat on”, urges Steve. With a sigh of resignation, I shuffle to the edge of the bed, reach down into my bag on the floor, and retrieve a flask of vodka.

London is about the same distance from Munich as Auckland is from Christchurch. It just seems longer, because to get there I had to take a train to Stansted airport, a plane to Salzburg airport, a bus to Salzburg train station, a train to Munich, and another train to Augsburg, where we are staying. There's no telling where I might've ended up should I have fallen asleep and failed to successfully negotiate any leg of the journey: Leeds, Madrid, Oslo, Istanbul, Vladisvostok. More likely that I'd just have been woken up by a conductor for paying insufficient fare, got turfed off the train and ended up smoking crack in a gutter with Amy Winehouse.

I spent the train trip from to Victoria station to Stansted desperately fighting off sleep and the unenviable fate of waking up at the end of the line in some inbred village in Norfolk. Sitting across the aisle from me was a West Indian man reading from a large, leather-bound bible, mouthing the words as he read, fidgeting and occasionally jolting upright in his seat, as if he could feel Jesus deep inside him and he wasn't too happy about being in there. Further stimulation came in the form of the loud conversation between a self-absorbed middle-aged American woman and three younger travel companions a few seats down. Her dark sunglasses and a garish orange dress would have been more appropriate on Sunset Boulevard than Tottenham Hale.
“Wow, yeah, look at that broken toenail!”, she announced publicly, holding her foot aloft to indicate to all present that she was wearing jandals on a London metropolitan train at three o'clock in the morning. “I wonder when that happened. That's totally nasty!”

At one stage the train came to a complete halt in a paddock in the middle of nowhere, as trains are wont to do England. It must be a new phenomenon, because I don't remember this sort of thing happening on Thomas The Tank Engine. I peered out the window, expecting perhaps to see the driver urinating against a tree, but all I could see was nothing. An uneasy silence prevailed for a while, then the PA system crackled to life. “Sorry about that delay”, said the driver, pausing briefly to zip up. “Let's get going again, shall we?”. Yes, let's. Some of us have a plane to catch, you know.

The rest of the journey neatly blurred into one long and forgettable experience, during which I repeatedly told myself that it was all going to be worth it because tonight, I'm going to be at Oktoberfest, and I'm going to get wasted and eat hot dogs with half a million drunk Germans. I'm on the train back into Munich now with Steve, a uni friend whose travel plans have converged with mine for the next two evenings. The train is loaded with expectant partygoers – many dressed in traditional German garb – exhibiting the customary European behaviour of drinking heavily on public transport. It makes sense from a responsible drinking point of view: after all, you're much less likely to drunkenly stagger in front of a bus or a train if you're already on a bus or a train. Public transport is probably the safest place to be when you're drinking. I'm told that the public outpouring of grief was all-encompassing in London when they banned drinking on the tube a coupe of months back. Prominent community members from all walks of life descended into the massive tube party that broke out the day before the ban came into effect, their gleaming faces faithfully reproduced on the back pages of scandal rags all over town the following day. It was a poignant reminder of the power alcohol has to unite and galvanise a people in the face of adversity. I think people often lose sight of that.

A brief while later, we emerge into Theresienwiese, a vast public space just south of the city centre. For a sixteen day period every autumn, it's transformed into a 420-acre wonderland where the Germanic ideals of order and stifling discipline are rejected, and joy and merriment predominates. We wander in child-like excitement down a vast central promenade, lined with food and candy stalls, carousels, ferris wheels, and of course, enormous drinking houses. Far from being an adults-only debauch, we're surprised to see a large number of families in attendance, lapping up the weak autumn sun and arguing with their children about which ride to go on next. It's like a giant amusement park with beer tents.

This whole scene makes about as much sense to us as a nun in a German brothel. We'd been planning to hook up with another uni mate – also called Steve, who grew up in Frankfurt and is a seasoned Oktoberfest veteran – but he is missing, presumed passed out in a gutter somewhere. Naïve and rudderless without him, we walk into one of the massive tents and are overcome by the sheer size, noise and volume of people within the giant structure. Beer wenches push hurriedly past us with frothy steins of beer and huge plates of roast chicken. At long tables, thousands upon thousands of drinkers are merrily clinking their steins together and singing along to the polka band. We retreat to an outside table, where we find room to sit next to a group of of lesbian caterers from Frankfurt. In a heartbeat a waiter appears to place a stein in front of each of us and make off with a small fortune of cash in return.
“So, you are coming from America?”, asks one of the caterers in a stern German tone.
“No, New Zealand”.
“Ahhh, Neeuseeland. And how long are you making holidays in Munich?”
We're just here for the two nights, which I'm told is about the perfect duration for first-time Oktoberfesters. Any more than two and you risk leaving in an ambulance, or worse.
“So, when we are drinking at Oktoberfest, we say, 'prost!'”, she continues. Just to demonstrate, her companions roar “prost!” and clink their hefty steins together at a central point in the table. As a rule, this happens about every thirty seconds, and more often than that if someone happens to tell a funny joke or a fresh round of beers arrive. Our steins smash together with tremendous force, threatening to send enormous missiles of shattered glass in every direction should they connect too enthusiastically, and it takes some training not to flinch with each new bout of glass-clinking.

The lesbian caterers depart for a different tent and are swiftly replaced by a group of paralytic Aussie boys on their gap year. They introduce themselves as Baz, Daz, Gaz, Waz, Faz, and I forget the sixth guy's name. They've been here for a week and it really shows. Their already questionable mental capacities have been compromised by the ongoing systemic brain cell destruction and recovery operations being waged in the space between their ears. They're all still coherent enough to converse at length – amongst each other, though we're clearly expected to listen in – about the various girls they've shagged, stuff they've nicked, and fights they've started and then run away from, since arriving in Munich. This is with the notable exception of one young man, who's slumped forward on his seat, staring at his shoes, looking distinctly as if the contents of his stomach might not be long for this world.
“Fuck, that guy's totally gonna spew”, says Steve matter-of-factly, gesturing in his direction. “Surely. He's looking pretty average. Ahhh yes, there he goes”.

A security guard strolls over to inspect the young man, who half-heartedly wipes the residual dribble and mucus off his chin while trying to shovel gravel over the vomit with his shoes. “He's alright, he's alright!”, the boys protest in unison, and after a considerable period of glaring, the guard decides to leave him be. One of his mates – possibly Gaz – returns with a stein full of water for his fallen comrade. “You better fuckin' drink that”, he growls”, that cost me six fuckin' Euro”. He tentatively grasps the stein and takes a placatory sip, but it's all too much for him and he's soon slumped forward helplessly again.

I get talking to Daz, who is the ring-leader, or least the most lucid member of the group. Hailing from Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches, he's on his way home for the summer, where he looks forward to “hanging out and doing some surfing, maybe looking for a job, I dunno”. I ask him what else there is to do for fun at this place, other than drinking.
“That”, he says, pointing up at a towering fairground ride that makes me feel nauseous just looking at it. It's one of those souped-up roto-drop things in which the passengers sit upright in a compartment with their feet dangling and are lifted to an ungodly height, then are swung, inverted and twisted every which way at sickening speeds for what seems like an eternity before being lowered to the ground. Daz turns to his mates and says, “well boys, are we ready for it?”.

He must be joking. They're not seriously going to go on that ride in the state they're in?
“Let's do it boys!”. Now they're all firing each other up, slapping each other and yelling obscene motivational slogans. Even their violently-ill companion has suddenly sprung to life, chopping the rest of his water and jumping enthusiastically to his feet. Then they're off in the direction of the horrid machine, and the inevitable vomiting and disaster that is to follow.
“Nice to meet you, Max”, says Daz. “Tell ya what, if I hit your this table with a chunder from up there, you owe me a beer. Fair cop?”
I agree to this. My money is fairly safe. It'd require a good 50 metre horizontal spew - not entirely out of the realms of possibility for anyone who has seen Guest House Paradiso - but he'll never find me again amongst the masses of drunken antipodeans.

Steve and I tuck into a half-chicken and a massive novelty pretzel each, washed down with another smooth, crisp lager. Now we're joined by two even drunker Aussies. These two are a bit older and down to earth, though no less loud or obnoxious. One of them, whose name I believe is Mark, notes my sympathetic face and thus begins laying all his girl troubles on me.
“The, the thing is mate, Julie, she fuckin' loves me and she knows it but I dunno, farrrk”, he confides, grappling for words like a town drunk grapples for another bottle of rum from the top shelf. “Listen mate, can I borrow ya phone? I gotta, I gotta text Julie, I gotta text her, mate”.

I willingly oblige, if only because he seems a nice guy and I'd be happy going home knowing he'd got his end away and I was to thank for it. He takes ten minutes to send the text, and another ten minutes to wait in tense silence for a reply.
“Fark it mate, she's not gonna call! Fark it! Fark come on Taz, we'll go find some other sheilas”. And off they go again.

It's getting late now and I'm tired and drunk, so we decide to call it a night. This was always just going to be a warm up night, a dress rehearsal for the debauchery that is sure to come floating our way tomorrow. For the umpteenth time today I find myself desperately fighting off sleep on the train, knowing even one moment of resting my eyes is likely to result in us waking up in Cologne or Stuttgart. Back in Augsburg, we're just negotiating our way past a man vomiting against a lampost while his mate pats him on the back and issues word of encouragement when my phone rings. It's Julie.

“Hi, this is Julie. Are you Mark's friend?”
“Who?”
“Mark? You're Mark's friend, right?”
“Oh, yep right, right I am”.
“Do you know where Mark is?”
“Well last time I saw him he was at the Hacker-Pschorr tent, but um, nah no idea where he is now. He really fuckin' loves you, you know”.
“I know! I love him too. Where is he?”
“Look I really don't know. I've gone home”.
“I've gotta find him!”
“You'll find him. Don't worry. You'll be fine. Good night Julie, it was nice talking to you”.

Well Julie, if you did find Mark, we're all rooting for you and would love to know how it went. Answers on the back of a postcard please to Max, PO Box 69, Queenstown, New Zealand.

***

Oktoberfest is a statistical wet dream for numbers men such as myself who enjoy boring chicks at parties with totally useless and unimportant information about the world. It's impressive enough that the festival attracts over 6.2 million people in less than three weeks, or that at any given time there is enough seating room within the various tents for 100,000 people. Naturally the scale of the amenities is enormous: there are 980 seated toilets and 878 metres of wall urinals, almost the equivalent overall length to three Sky Towers lying on their sides. Little wonder the demand for the toilets is so high, considering that in 2007, Oktoberfest attendees munched their way through 58,446 pork knuckles, 284,506 pork sausages, 38,650 kilograms of fish, 521,872 chickens, and 104 oxen. Which they gleefully washed down with – wait for it – 6,940,600 litres of beer. Today, Steve and I will be doing our utmost to ensure that 2007 figure is bested, although our best efforts are likely to amount to little more than a drop in a delicious, malty, 6% abv ocean.

The train to Munich is once again loaded with hungover and still-drinking festival goers. We're stuck in the entry compartment of one of the carriages, spluttering in a noxious cloud of unchecked body odour and beery breath, while the refreshments man impatiently tries to force his cart back and forth through the scrum of unruly drinkers. In planning my drinking itinerary for the day, my mind keeps drifting back to the thought of the much-feted Hofbrau tent. Whether by design or accident, this mammoth tent – which measures half a hectare inside and can accommodate 9,992 drinkers at one time – has become the staging point for acts of Antipodean silliness and shenanigans so depraved that it makes The Church in London seem like a Fleetwood Mac concert in the Dannevirke civic auditorium.

“Don't go in there unless you want to be pissed on, shat on, or have to get your dick out in front of hundreds of people”, one acquaintance warned me before I left New Zealand. I laughed this advice off, surmising that he'd probably just suffered a one-off bad experience, but every other Oktoberfest veteran with whom I subsequently spoke was to corroborate his advice. By all accounts, the sight of girls squatting to piss under tables, total strangers projectile vomiting on you, and snap “rate my boner” competitions are all the norm, rather than the exception, within the seedy confines of the Hofbrau tent. I can't wait to see it for myself.

What's impressive about Oktoberfest is the manner in which all the beef-fuelled skulduggery is neatly contained within the cavernous tents. Outside, a wholesome carnival atmosphere prevails with only the occasional bleary-eyed, wild-haired drunkard providing any hint of what's transpiring within the bowels of the event. Shellshocked from our harrowing train ride, the four of us take a leisurely stroll down the main strip, revelling in the relatively unsullied autumn air.

Steve and I have devised a plan which, if successful, will not result in us consuming herculean amounts of local beer without being ruined by sunset, as has been predicted by the girls. As a rule of thumb, we're going to one meat-flavoured item of food between even stein we consume and pace ourselves appropriately so as to avoid a dinnertime coma. A stall selling half-metre long frankfurters seems the ideal starting point for the venture. Now, I know that no one enjoys hearing other people brag about how drunk they got at events they themselves did not attend; therefore I'll simply break my afternoon's activities down into a simple chronological list for you. Hot dog, beer stein, wienerschnitzel, beer stein, roast ox sandwich, beer stein, stewed pork sandwich, beer stein, hot dog, beer stein, beer stein.

It's well after nine o'clock and we're coming towards the end of a long, hard day when we finally pluck up the courage to brave the shit-slinging mayhem of the Hofbrau tent. In actual fact, it turns out to be much like every other tent we've been in today: gigantic, noisy, and full of drunks swaying in approximate rhythm to the brass band. This is the only tent that doesn't require patrons to be seated at a table before they can order, so we flag down a passing beer wench and within moments are sipping from our seventh steins of the evening. Apart from the occasional metallic twang of an Aussie accent, there's little evidence that is an antipodean-flavoured tent: I keep expecting the brass band to swing into a cover version of “Land Down Under” or “Slice of Heaven” but they continue to stick to their well-rehearsed repertoire of jaunty Teutonic folk classics. Da, da, da-da da da da daaa, go the horns, and the German drinkers swing their beer glasses back and forth, stopping every thirteen seconds or so to yell “prost!” and smash their glass into their neighbour's as hard as they can. Occasionally though, I pick up the faint background noise of some of my countrymen in distant corners of the tent, starting “Get it down ya” chants and singing – or attempting to sing – a selection of favourites straight out of Nature's Best Volume I.

There's something about being removed from our homeland that gives Kiwis an insatiable urge to share their singing voice with the world. Just ask anyone who's witnessed a Waitangi Day pub crawl and remembered to tell the tale. In New Zealand, there's only one line from one song that a Kiwi will ever dare sing in public – in fact I'm convinced that at least half of the crowd at any given one-day cricket game only show up to yell “I don't know-oh-oh-oh why does love do this to me?” into the camera – but on foreign soil it's a different story. Split Enz, The Exponents, The Dudes, Dragon, Shihad, Max Merritt & The Meteors – all are ground-breaking acts of our time whose musical mastery must be disseminated to the unenlightened overseas masses, preferably by a pack of shitfaced tone-deaf animals who back home would consider any public singing display to be solely the realm of soccer fans and homosexuals.

Me, I'm no exception to this rule. Get seven steins in me and I'll sing anything, anywhere, any time, as the good folk of Munich are currently discovering to their detriment. We've left the Oktoberfest grounds now and are following the crowd back towards the train station. It's at this point that I decide the elderly folk in front of us would like to be introduced to the feel-good tones of “I'll Say Goodbye”. The men are so immune to it all that they barely give me a second glance as I skip past. One of them mutters something under his breath to his mate – probably “fucking Canadians”, or something like that – but there's appreciation or indication that they'll be ducking down the CD store first thing on Monday moning to pick up a copy of the The Exponents Greatest Hits.

Next thing I know I'm on a train back to Augsburg, holding a can of beer I don't remember ever purchasing and engaging total strangers in heated debate of which I have similarly little recollection, although I'm pretty sure I've mentioned the war on many occasions. Steve is asleep in the seat next to me, Caroline is glaring at me with a stern motherly look that indicates she wants me to stop mentioning the war lest we inadvertently cause another one, and just about everyone else on the train is either passed out or singing a capella renditions of the same polka songs they've heard the brass band play a hundred times already today. The walk from the station to the hotel is barely half a kilometre but it takes the best part of twenty minutes to negotiate. I swear the same guy from last night is vomiting against the same lampost outside the hotel (some sort of territory marking ritual perhaps), but there's a good chance my mind is playing tricks on me. Must be all the hectic travel yesterday catching up with me.

Yeah, the hectic travel, that's definitely what it is.

London Part II

“Yes, I'm particularly moved by this wall mural. It visually demonstrates the constant flux and evolution of the brand, as well as conveying a sense of a voyage, which is obviously the central theme of all the artwork here today. I think the fact that three artists from different backgrounds have collaborated on this mural is the perfect metaphor for the convergence of boundaries and the seamless flow between Eastern and Western cultures”.

Normally, this is the kind of pretenious art-snob wankery that I vehemently decry. You'll be surprised, therefore, to discover that it's being said by me. I'm at my brother's media briefing in a trendy art studio in Shoreditch, being interviewed by a Mongolian camera crew on my impressions of the artwork on display. Outwardly I'm doing my best to remain serious and debonair; inwardly I'm giggling like a schoolgirl at the thought of my ugly mug being broadcast all across Mongolia, from the shanties of Dalandzadgad to the shanties of Ulan Bator.

It all began when I arrived at the press conference in formal dress with a camera, and everyone automatically assumed I was a journalist. Suddenly my opinions were of worth, my thoughts coveted, my observations pertinent and measured. Gophers brought me ice cold beers from the fridge. Artists took me aside and said, “so, can you see what I'm doing here?” and “would you like me to tell you about my influences for this piece of work?”. When the Mongolians showed up and thrust a microphone in my face, I naturally went straight into bullshit mode. So this is what it feels like to be someone important.

My interview winds up just as my big brother Adam summons everybody into the centre of the room while he gives his official media briefing. Tall and authoritative, yet simultaneously witty and disarming, he's a proven master at working a crowd. “What we're basically trying to do is just showcase the brand's vibrant vision of contemporary Asia, and we want to give all of these young, bright artists a chance to work with some of the UK's leading artists”, he says, deftly sprinkling his charming and informal oration with the requisite management speak. He's got the assembled press gang hanging on his every word, and it's clear the artists have developed a rapport with him as well. He's certainly come a long way from the buck-toothed teenage punk who used to invite his mates around and hang me from a tree branch six feet off the ground by my underwear.

Adam and a few of his cronies have to depart for an official business dinner, so I meet up with my cousin Katie at a nearby pub. We quiz each other on the respective European holidays we've just returned from and I'm more than a little envious to discover that Katie had sunshine and twenty-five degree weather as her constant companions during her cruise down the Croatian coast. It remains to be seen whether my pair of jeans and grey sweater will survive the trauma of being worn by me on eight consecutive days; the result of my foolhardy decision not to pack any other warm clothes for our Central European jaunt.

We're in a pub called Filthy McNasty's, and if first impressions are anything to go by, the moniker has been well-earned. It's pretty much your stock-standard London corner pub with flower boxes in the windows, dark wooden panelling and the usual range of crappy foreign lagers on tap; it's the clientele that actually set this pub apart from the average after-work watering hole. A large, rough-looking bearded man sits at a table in the corner, enjoying a pint while his German shepherd lies by his feet, ready to tear out the barman's throat if he threatens to overcharge him. He's wearing a purple t-shirt that says “iPood” in Mac font on the front, below an icon of a man sitting on the toilet, slumped forward as if he's just given birth to a hippo. He's recently been joined by his girlfriend, a wafer-thin tattoo-and-piercing addict with dyed red hair and a glare that could strip the varnish off the walls.

On my way to the bathroom I get stuck behind a tiny bearded Welshman who could've been Gimli's stunt double in the Lord of the Rings series. He's on his way to the bathroom too, so I just follow along awkwardly behind him, no doubt creating the impression to the rest of the patrons that we're going into the bathroom together to perform a depraved act; something that I'm sure these pub toilets are no stranger to. As he opens the bathroom door he turns around to me and says something that his thick accent renders completely unintelligible, then lets forth a nervous chuckle. I just smile and nod, noting that it's entirely possible that I've just unwittingly agreed to touch him in a special place. I lock myself in a roach-infested cubicle until I can be certain he's left the vicinity.

“I vote we leave after this pint”, I tell Katie. I've had three anyways, and I'm going to need to get some food in me before my evening begins to nosedive. Just as I'm saying this, Adam texts with his new location. “Juno! Corner of Shoreditch High Street and something”. We're about to get up and leave when a haggard Nick Cave lookalike comes over to our table, gets down on his knees and begins frantically searching for something around our feet.
“Oh man, neither of you saw a cigarette on the floor, did you?”, he asks in a worried tone. “I must've dropped it somewhere around here”.
We reply that no we didn't, and so he gets back on his knees and continues scanning the floor for his missing smoke. iPood's dog looks on with keen interest while his master stuffs a bag of potato chips down his gob. We hastily make for the exit and deliberate over what's the best way to get to the corner of Shoreditch High Street and something.

We locate Adam and his cronies in Juno and they take us to a trendy nightclub in Camden, where Adam has convinced management that we should all be let in as VIPs. The club is an old converted theatre with a dance floor in front of the stage and private areas in elevated booths either side of the main floor. We're given a booth and a cooler full of beers; I help myself to one and drink it as I survey the large crowd on the dance floor and the quasi-emo rock band revving them up from the stage. I feel a bit like Abe Lincoln on this balcony, though I suspect there are no John Wilkes Booths in this crowd. Most of the adolescents on the floor are engaged in some curious social ritual that involves crashing into each other at high speeds, occasioning bouts of pushing and collar-grabbing between total strangers that look certain to turn into fist fights, but never quite do. It's most entertaining to watch from directly above – like multiple games of high-octane pinball over which you have no control.

The band are playing their part in the fracas by fuelling the crowd with their well-worn brand of high-energy emo rock. The lead singer - a young Jarvis Cocker wannabe - is careful not to take himself too seriously, fully aware of the shamless unoriginality of his three-chord tunes and angst-ridden diatribes. He's an affable young man who engages the crowd in friendly banter between each song.
“This next song is one I wrote for my girlfriend, just before she dumped me”, he confides in a well-rehearsed monotone. He then launches into a twee, love-struck ballad about the wonders of this young love he has found. Just when the tune appears to be dying a slow and soppy death, the lead guitarist unexpectedly launches into a furious discordant solo that gives way to the singer's screaming, visceral denouncement of his ex-girlfriend and a full summary of what a total and complete bitch she actually was. Even though he most certainly wrote the second part of the song after she dumped him, they're still the most honest lyrics rock music has produced since Scott Stapp famously crooned, “when you are with me, I'm free, I'm careless, I believe”.

I gaze transfixed at the scene below – a furious melange of pseudo-fights and group hook-ups – until the band members drag their sweat-drenched bodies off the stage. I return to the cooler to discover that all the beers have been plundered in the meantime.
“Go and see Kristian”, Adam advises me. “He's in the next room. He's got a bottle of vodka, and he doesn't need it”.
Kristian, who I met earlier at the media briefly, is sitting on the floor against the wall with a bottle of Smirnoff on his lap. Katie and one of Adam's colleagues are leaning on the balcony rail and generally not paying him much mind. He springs uneasily to his feet when he sees me enter.
“Max! Here, I have a shot of vodka for you”.
I look around to see where on earth he might be producing a shot glass from, and when I turn back to look at him he's coming at me with the bottle. Before I can do anything about it, he pushes my head back and pours one shot of vodka down my throat, and about five shots down the front of my shirt. A small commotion ensues as various onlookers attempt to save Kristian from spilling the lot, while I take the opportunity to sneak into the corner and suck on my sweet shirt fabric.

Camden High Street is still abuzz with drunken revellers as I stumble out of the club and breathe in the sooty London air. A reporter in a blue coat standing on the pavement approaches me and thrusts a microphone into my face.
“So Max, what would you say to allegations that you're a dickhead, and that your travel diary is puerile, derivative and unfunny?”
I have no time for such scurrilous gutter journalism, especially at this ungodly hour of the night. “Fargoffyacun”, I growl, lurching forward and aiming a right hook at his jaw. I miss and lose my balance, stumbling forward for a few steps before regaining my dignity, and all the customers in the kebab shop across the street wonder what on earth that guy was doing trying to punch himself.

There's a group of German package tourists having breakfast in the dining room when we finally arrive back at Adam's hotel, having endured a roundabout taxi ride through North London in an increasingly desperate search for an open KFC. There doesn't appear to be anything stopping us from chowing down with the Germans, so that's just what they do. As has now become a depressing reality in hotels all around the world, the orange juice glasses are ridiculously small, encouraging diners to drink less of it. I'm able to circumvent this problem by merely standing at the juice dispenser and filling, drinking, and refilling, occasionally taking time out to let Adam have a go while I stuff some of those little packet cheeses and crackers into my pockets. The Germans don't look particularly impressed, but then they never do, do they?

Adam has a spare single bed in his room which he has mercifully offered up to me for the weekend. It's my first night in a proper bed for a long time and I'm about to make the most of it when Adam re-emerges from the bathroom with two short glasses. “So, how about that whisky?”, he asks rhetorically, already reaching for his unopened bottle of duty free MacAllan.

How about it indeed?

***

London is a city whose mood and appearance can swing upon the whim of the weather. Most days it is dark and grey under overcast, foreboding skies, but that only serves the make sunny days such as this all the more spectacular. The lukewarm autumn sun brings out a stunning vibrancy in the cityscape: rows of brick buildings glow a brilliant red; golden orange leaves flap about in the breeze and every park and public space is a sea of activity as Londoners enjoy the sun on their backs for what may be the only time in weeks. There's a buzz of optimism and anticipation that comes with scarved-up football fans – many of them fathers with young children – taking their kids to a Saturday afternoon game at a nearby ground. It puts me in mind of those blustery afternoons when my father would take me to Eden Park to watch that great Auckland side of the early '90s tear into whichever band of unfortunate provincials stood on their way that week.

When you fall off the horse, the best thing to do is get straight back on. It's a phrase that applies nicely to many facets of life – job hunting, surfing, women – but especially alcohol. That's why Adam and I are heading to Filthy McNasty's for a pie and a pint, thinking that's about as English as it gets on a Saturday afternoon.
“Sorry, kitchen's closed”, says the barman, who in keeping with the bar's unspoken mission statement, looks nasty.
“But it's Saturday afternoon?”
“Yeah, the cook is ill, can't possibly come in today”.
“You need a cook to heat a up a pie?”
“Look, there's no food today, alright? Can I get you a pint?”

We walk back towards the hotel and to a brasserie across the road that has a sunny beer garden on its roof. A sign next to the door says “Sorry! No hot lunches today”. Evidently they're suffering from a power outage, but do boast a fine array of cheese and crackers.
I can see Adam fast losing his patience with English hospitality.“What the fuck is wrong with this country? You can't get a fucking beer after midnight and you can't get a pie before six”. His frustration is understandable; he's come from Singapore, where you can get anything you want at any time of the day or night. And I mean anything.

Heads pounding, throats parched, we settle upon a pub on the next corner. It isn't serving food either, bien sur, but the barman points to the Dominos outlet across the road and invites us to bring in whatever we like. While Adam goes across to retrieve a pizza, the barman pours a couple of pints of filthy English muck that the locals call “Real Ale”. In keeping with tradition it is best consumed microwaved, and preferably in close proximity of a bucket. Okay, so I exaggerate, but the muddy aftertaste and worrying lack of fizz makes Real Ales difficult for the uninitiated drinker to stomach. Not only that, but the purists insist its alcohol content should never waver from 3.5% regardless of where and how it's brewed, effectively meaning that you couldn't even get a scarfie fresher drunk off it. Still, drinking it does mark you down as something of a beer conoisseur, which is an important impression to give when you're eating Domino's pizza in a dirty pub.

“They still ask about you when I go out to the office”, Adam says, referring to my former workmates at his beer company. I did an internship there in 2005 and will always have fond memories of it, partly because it's the only place I'll ever work that had a fridge full of beer opposite my cubicle. I was worried that my total lack of skills or knowledge in the field of marketing would put me at a disadvantage but as it happened my boss loved me – he was Indian and I was the only guy in the office who could talk cricket with him.
“Do you reckon they'd take me back?”, I ask out of curiosity.
“I dunno man, the guy they brought in after you was pretty good. He had the right qualifications and had his shit together, big time”.
“Yeah, but could he drink a half-yard of Guinness in twelve seconds?”

The launch party kicks off at around eight, and a steady flow of guests begin arriving shortly thereafter. I've brought my camera to the party, hoping to be mistaken for someone important again, but tonight it looks like I'll just have to be content with drinking the sponsor's delicious product and talking shit with friends. Hibbs and Katie arrive early and head over to acquaint themselves with the bar, and I'm also introduced to Adam's cousin Tommy. I haven't met him before, but he knows a bunch of guys I went to intermediate school. “It's a small country, eh”, I find myself saying for at least the hundredth time since leaving New Zealand.

The party is extremely well coordinated and a massive success. Its appeal is based on the live art: partygoers can actually watch the artists finishing off their paintings, while a live “art battle” takes place between rival street artists in another room. There's beatboxing, two DJs and a Thai rock band who move unblinkingly from cover versions of Coldplay to T Pain. It's hard to tell whether they're taking the piss, but they get away with it by virtue of their musicianship. Adam, who is in charge of generally schmoozing and rarking up the crowd, enlists Hibbs and I to perform a “yam seng”, a slightly more dramatic Chinese way of saying “cheers”. It's a simple ritual that involves holding one's glass to the air, and yelling “yaaaam!” at the top of one's voice for as long as one can before gasping for breath or passing out, concluding with “seng” and drinking heavily from one's vessel. Our yelling draws the attention of much of the crowd on the dance floor, who look puzzled until deducing that we're just drunken Kiwis and turning away again.

I'm having so much fun that at some time around 2, I look around me and discover that just about everyone else has left. It appears that I've consumed an injudicious amount of the sponsor's delicious product, but it's not enough to keep me from joining Adam, Tommy and Hibbs in the van. Our next venue is a jazz club of which I can remember little, except that it is packed well beyond capacity, so much so that most of the beer in my bottle is lost before ever making it to my lips. Which is probably a good thing at this stage.
“Hey there”, says a fair-skinned brunette below me and to my right at the bar. “You're cute”.
“Thanks. You're not too bad”.
“What do you do?”
Christ, she doesn't muck around does she. I wasn't expecting that for an opening gambit. “Ummm, errr, I'm a writer”. That's only a half-lie, I figure.
“Really? Who do you write for?”
“Errr, ya know, mainly freelance stuff”.
“Freelance? What kind of stuff do you write about?”
“Ahhh, uh, travel, mainly travel writing”. This is hard.
“Who have you written for, then?”
This time I've got nothing for her but a long awkward silence. “You don't have a job, do you?”, she says, with a discernable tone of disgust in her voice.
“No, I don't”.

SMACK.

For a moment my whole field of vision goes white and sparkly. My beer evades my grasp and drops to the floor. It takes me a few seconds to realise what's happened, and all the while she just stares at me blankly. The bitch! She's slapped me, with all her might, right across my left cheek.
“That wasn't very nice!”, I protest.
“Mate, I'm so, so sorry, I really am”.
“That was totally uncalled for!”. Don't get me wrong, I've been slapped by girls lots of times before. This time was different though; this time I didn't deserve it. Bloody English girls, with their airs and graces and ulterior motives. I yearn for a good simple Dunedin girl, where the only question you ever get asked is “Speight's or Mac's Gold?”

I crouch down and rummage around on the floor in search of my beer bottle, but it's been swept away by the sea of feet swarming around me. When I stand back upright again a large black man, who I vaguely remember from earlier as being the bouncer, has his hand on my shoulder.
“I think it's time to go home, son”.
Yes, I think it is.

Next thing I know I'm waking up on top of Adam's spare hotel bed, fully clothed, my cellphone still clutched tightly in my right hand. The alarm clock says 7.08am. Adam and Tommy are seated on two chairs facing each other, drinking whisky. I shuffle past them to the bathroom, take a five-minute-long piss, shuffle back past them and get into the bed.
“How 'bout that whisky?”, Adam asks optimistically.
“Fuck off”.

***

When you fall off the horse, the best thing to do is get straight back on. I heeded that advice yesterday and unfortunately I'm heeding it again today. I'm at a bistro on Shoreditch High Street with Adam, Tommy and his girlfriend, and the second bottle of champagne has just been popped. My liver is screaming for mercy – if this were a cartoon it would've already bored its way out of my body, suitcase in hand, and run off down the street – but still Adam gleefully refills my glass.
“What time is your flight back to Singapore?”, I ask.
“About six”, he responds casually.
“Hadn't you better take it easy then?”
“Nah”.
“The way I see it, we're only hear for a given amount of time”, Tommy chimes in. “It's not like we're ever gonna save much money living in London. You may as well just spend it all and have a good time”.

I can see why so many Kiwis arrive on English shores and plunge headlong into a world of hedonism and excess, from which some of them never recover. It's such a novel idea to come from our little corner of the world and be able to spend an entire weekend pubbing, clubbing, partying and then finish it with a champagne brunch in a swanky restaurant. A Sunday session back home is by no means unheard of, but it usually just involves a dozen Tasman Bitters and maybe a funnel, if someone's got one lying around.

But the out-of-control partying is just one facet of London life, I think to myself after farewelling Adam with a final couple of whisky shots and making my way into the warped, bizarre world of the London Underground. It's a big scary city and one that can easily drag you down if you can't tread water fast enough. Life moves at a scarcely believable pace that takes some adjusting to. I've been here for two months on and off and still feel like an outsider looking in; unable to relate to these automatons whizzing past me. Talk on the street is of jobs and livelihoods being lost to the financial meltdown, but it feels like it's all happening in different world to mine. They're losing jobs, and I can't find one. There's only so much partying I can do before my hard-earned library money runs out and I'm faced with the prospect of having to be one of those Kiwis who busks on a filthy street corner just to be able to pay his way home. Then I'd really be in trouble, because I'd have to nick a guitar first.

I'm starting to think the bouncer in the pub last night was right. Maybe it is time to go home.

Prague

Beware of strangers bearing gifts, I keep telling myself. Especially gifts that come in shot glasses and emit an odour that evokes memories of your 5th form afterball.

“It is traditional Czech aperatif! You will like this”, says the waiter reassuringly. He's been standing patiently over me with a platter of full shot glasses for the best part of a minute, like a puppy imploring its master to marvel at the dead rat it's just dragged in from the garden. I have no idea what's in this drink or what it's going to do to me. Never have I seen a spirit so jaundiced, murky and foreboding in colour. The waiter, Georgina, Caroline and the kindly old German couple sitting next to us at the table are all eyeing me in anticipation. The peer pressure is too much. I take a shot glass off the platter and raise it to my lips. The ethanol smell is overpowering; the memories of that horrible night eight years ago rushing back to me, just as the vomit rushed back up my digestive tract and down the front of my suit on that fateful spring evening.

I'm about to take a exploratory sip when the kindly old German man catches my eye. “In one go. You must drink in one go”, he instructs me. I frown apprehensively and he and his wife laugh, possibly already under the influence of whatever it is I'm about to consume. All eyes are still on me as I tilt my head back and send the mystery liquid down the hatch. It has a smooth, aniseed flavour and leaves a gentle burning sensation in the throat, similar to Icebreaker – the RTD of choice at Dunedin keg parties – but without the unpleasant feeling of your liver steadily accumulating toxins with each sip. It's not bad.

Tucked away on a dark, quiet central Prague street, we've found a beerhouse with an ambience as lively as you're likely to see this side of Munich. Everywhere I look, something humorous and utterly foreign is taking place. The two man polka band – a jolly fat man with a tuba and a small, wiry, moustachioed man on accordion – are performing local favourites to the delight of the drunken students at a big long table that spans the length of the room. They're singing heartily and swinging their beer glasses from side to side in the traditional European fashion, yelling more and more requests at the exasperated, sweat-drenched tuba player, who duly obliges because well, that's his job. Two men carrying massive trays of beer are gliding about the room, distributing pints for thirsty diners. One of them arrives now with a chaser for my aperatif, plonking a beer down in front of me and marking another notch on my bill. Then he's off again, somehow making the thankless task of pushing through crowds of drunken Czechs while balancing twenty pints of beer on a tray on his right hand seem like a Sunday afternoon walk in the park. He's obviously been getting tips from those African women who walk for six hours at a time with water pots on their heads.

Our meals arrive – the same flattened-meat-and-potatoes scenario I've been describing throughout my recent travels – and are washed down by more of the malty, house-brewed ales. The polka troupe are going from table to table now, giving private performances. They're playing for a party of four at the table in the corner, all of whom sport flowing and voluptuous mullets. A mother and father are sitting on one side of the table, facing a stocky young man with a porn star moustache and a blonde girl who must be his sister, or his girlfriend, or both. They all go to the same hairdresser, possibly via some secret time machine that transports them to the 1980s. At the long table to the left sits a woman who is probably the drunkest person in the world right now. Her husband is sober and has a bemused but resigned look on his face, as if he spends most of his weekend evenings apologising to strangers for the behaviour of his spouse. She's just spilled beer all over the old lady next to her, and now she falls backwards off the bench onto the floor and can't get up. The waiter with the twenty pints deftly hopscotches her with all the grace and poise of a gazelle. You can't buy entertainment like this. I finish my pint and am immediately aware of a warm, tipsy stupor coming over me. Then I look at the menu and discover that the alcohol content of the beer is 13%.

Back outside in the harsh reality of a freezing Prague night, Georgina and Caroline announce their predictable decision to the return the hostel. I don't want to waste my pleasant buzz from the two pints of beer – that amounted to a bottle and a half of wine – and I resolve to wander the wind-swept streets until I find another suitable drinking house. The downtown area is spookily abandoned and devoid of activity, as if everyone else has gone to some raging cocaine party on the other side of town and didn't think to invite me. Eventually I come across a seedy-looking bar with some pokies in the back and a sign out the front that says:
“Tonight: HAPPY HOUR 5-11. LIVE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FOOTBALL: LIVERPOOL V MARSEILLE”.

I love a happy hour that goes all night. Besides, my beloved Liverpool is playing live on TV. My grandmother spent a bit of time there, you see, plus it's the hometown of the greatest rock 'n' roll band of all time (I am of course referring to Gerry & The Pacemakers). The barman pours me a pint of Budvar and I take a seat in a booth with a good view of the TV. It's not showing the Liverpool game though; it's the bloody Kings Road Mincers, Chelsea, against some rubbish European minnows.
“Could we change the channel, please?”, I ask the barman, who's sitting on the customers' side of the bar, smoking a cigarette.
“Sorry?”
“Liverpool game? Can we watch Liverpool game?”
“Ah, sorry, no, we watch Chelsea”. He takes another drag of his cigarette and gestures in the direction of three rough-looking Czech guys in the booth next to me, one of whom is wearing a Chelsea shirt. Looks like I'm outnumbered here.

Back in my booth, alone and vulnerable, I notice the Czech guys frequently glancing over at me and then talking amongst themselves in ominous tones. Oh God, what are they saying? My rudimentary Czech phrase book is no use to me here. They never tell you the crucial words, like “piano wire” or “kidneys”. Why is that exactly? My kidneys are the only valuable items I ever carry on my person. Not that they're worth much these days, either. Still, they don't know that, and I don't want to be one of those people who comes back from the bathroom to find that their beer tastes a bit funny, only to wake up eighteen hours later alone in a bath with a row of stitches down the left side of my torso.

I'm saved from this fate by two English football hooligans poking their head through the front door and asking where they could watch the Liverpool game.
“The Dubliner”, announces the barman without taking his eyes off the TV. Couldn't he have just told me that? “Go down street, first left, first right”.
I follow along behind the football hooligans, keeping a safe distance from them, and find myself descending below street level into a cavernous room with a bar on one side and tables of rowdy young Irishmen on stag weekends at the other. The bar is manned by a seedy Czech with a pony tail that makes him look like an out of work porn star, and a younger, hunched-over Irishman. He comes over to pour me a pint, and I notice that his eyebrows have grown perilously, almost fatally close together. It looks like a close run thing but one day, just as they looked like joining together and consigning him to a childhood of broken dreams and ridicule, they stopped, milimetres apart and in the nick of time, just like that giant crushing machine in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He's sharp and assertive, but the wistful look in his eye tells the story of a young man who'd rather be managing a hedge fund than pouring pints for inebriated foreigners in an Irish Bar in Prague.
“Busy night?”, I ask him.
“Ahhh, it's fairly steady, like”, he replies. “So you're from New Zealand then?”. He's the first guy to have got it right.
“You bet. You ever been down there?”

We're about to have a potentially interesting conversation when a pushy American couple around the side of the bar call him over and ask for drinks. He dutifully obliges, then is forced to stand and listen as the Americans – clearly oil barons, judging by their tacky clothes and thick southern drawl – regale the bar staff with outrageously embellished horror stories of their travails through Europe and Asia.
“I just couldn't believe it”, I can hear the wife saying. “When they had us at gunpoint and were ordering us out of the bus I really thought they were gonna kill us”. She moves seamlessly from the tale of this apparent hijacking to a near miss with a sword-wielding mugger in Istanbul, followed by an unfortunate run-in with gypsies in Romania. And so it goes on, the gathered crowd listening wide-eyed except for the cynical Irishman, who occasionally looks over to me and rolls his eyes as if to say, “can you believe these people?”.

They're still blabbering on about their various near-death experiences as the game finishes and I make my way back out onto the now even colder, more deserted, Prague streets. The Americans' anecdotes have made me wary of Czech gangsters lurking in alleyways, poised to strike out at my precious kidneys, but regrettably the two-minute walk back to the hostel passes without incident.

***

Everybody loves a good riot, and the hardy folk of North Dunedin are no exception. From its humble origins as a bogan pilgrimmage down the 360km of State Highway 1 from Christchurch to Dunedin, the annual Undie 500 race has become the pretext for a weekend of rioting, looting and debauchery so wanton and depraved that I'm both disgusted and secretly amused just thinking about it. Every time August rolls around, the tough-talking starts. No one wants to see a riot, say the students, the media and the police in a delicately-contrived joint statement intended to douse fears of an imminent societal regress into anarchy, but secretly they all do. The media because they know the public loves a good student beat-up story; the police because it gives them something to do; and the students because, well, who doesn't enjoy honouring our pagan heritage by getting naked and setting fire to things once in a while?

I believe we would do well to spare a thought for the 15,000 students who descended on downtown Prague on the afternoon of November 17, 1989. On that day, while Dunedin's best and brightest rioters-to-be were flapping about in paddling pools and riding on trainer wheels, Prague's students conducted a peaceful protest march down Národní Street to mark International Student Day. Growing ever more frustrated at the iron-fisted rule of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, they'd seen the wall come down a week before in Berlin, and now seized upon the chance to make history for themselves. As it happened, they were brutally beaten, bullied and shot at by state police, sparking nationwide strikes and protests against the increasingly unpopular government.

On November 28, with communism collapsing across Central Europe, the Communist Party relinquished power and the single-party state was dismantled. Six months later, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections since 1946. The students had won a stirring victory against their erstwhile tormentors; their deeds coming to be immortalised by the phrase “Velvet Revolution”. The young warriors of that day are now old and becalmed, and I reckon on the very unlikely chance that they picked up a paper and read about students in Dunedin rioting over what amounts to a few beer bottles and a half-eaten lasange topper, they'd have mixed feelings about the direction their revolutionary ideals have taken.

It's difficult to fathom that these seminal events took less than two decades ago on this very street upon which I stand. That these pavements, now adorned with hot dog and kebab stalls, once flowed with the blood of Czechoslovakia's young and idealistic freedom fighters. I'm on a self-guided walking tour of the city that has taken me – largely by accident – past Prague's iconic astronomical clock, down Národní Street to the epicentre of the protest. Prague is not one of the more carefully-planned cities in Europe, its sidestreets and alleys shooting off in every direction and twisting and turning every which way. Eat a bowl of spaghetti and regurgitate it upon a blank piece of paper, and you have a fair approximation of Prague's street layout. A couple of times already this morning, I've found myself taking a wrong turn and, in spite of close consultation with my map, finding myself back at the same spot from which I'd departed ten minutes hence. It would've been quite exciting to explore back in the olden days, but nowadays the risk of rounding a blind corner on foot and being cleaned up by a speeding care takes a bit of shine off the adventure.

Once I've regained my bearings, I head north along the right-hand bank of the Vltava River to one of Prague's most famous and remarkable tourist attractions. At ten metres wide and over half a kilometre long, Charles Bridge is a remarkable feat of architecture – not least because it was built over 600 years ago of Bohemian sandstone and egg-enriched mortar. The bridge established Prague as an important trading hub, played host to fierce battles and skirmishes between conquering forces, been battered and broken by countless floods, survived looting of its many famous statues and ballustrades, and still holds firm under the weight (in every sense of the word) of foreign tourists and the associated bottom-feeding rip-off merchants that line either side of the bridge.

Across the bridge and atop a steep hill rests the city's most famous attraction, Prague Castle. I'm not going to go to it, because I'm sick of the sight of castles and even more sick of the sight of package tourists (Prague is the sixth most-visited city in Europe after London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and Berlin). Instead, I follow a less-travelled path through the woods and gardens that surround the castle, pausing to admire the view of the city across the river, with its myriad towers and churches. The forest of baroque-era spires are enhanced by a brilliant blue sky on this cold but crisp autumn day. The path takes me behind the castle and into a peaceful, wooded glade. My only company appears in the form of a small red squirrel, snacking on something in the grass a few metres away. It looks up and sees me, then lets forth a terrified scream and scuttles away up the nearest tree. Something I said, perhaps?

After dusk I find myself again wandering the quiet city streets, and once again inevitably gravitating towards The Dubliner. It's the soft option I know, but this is a city where one wrong move in a bar could mean spending the rest of your life on a dialysis machine, and I'm happy to pay the little extra for a beer in an Irish pub if it guarantees peace of mind for my kidneys. I'm pleased to see that Monobrow is behind the bar, and the guy sitting to my right – a shaven-headed Englishman in his late 20s – is the same guy I sat next to yesterday. Since we were not formally introduced at the time, however, we pretend not to notice or recognise each other.

There's four different games of football being shown simultaneously on four different screens. The score in every game is 0-0 approaching halftime. Given their fierce passion for a sport in which something interesting usually happens once or twice in ninety minutes, it strikes me as odd that cricket doesn't appeal to Europeans. I suppose they are hamstrung by their deep-set and at least partially-valid suspicions that anything invented by the English must be shit. Every so often an excited cheer will go up from one of the tables of men on stag dos – they too appear not have shifted an inch from last night – signalling that something interesting may be about to happen in the particular game they're paying attention to, but I've yet to experience the boisterous singing and beer-spilling that would no doubt occur in the unlikely event that a goal is ever scored.

A scruffy looking middle-aged Irishman takes a seat at the bar next to me. He summons Monobrow over and orders a Heineken. “Bollocks!”, he barks, taking his pint, although it's not clear what he thinks is bollocks. He sees me gazing randomly at one of the TV screens and swivels his seat around to do the same. It's a full five minutes before he realises he's blocking my view.
“Fock! Sorry lad”, he says, hastily shifting his stool backwards.
“You're alright. I'm not missing anything”.
He asks what I'm doing here by myself; I tell him I have no mates and ask him what he's doing here. Turns out his wife has been kind enough to stay in the hotel room and look after the kids this evening while he gets drunk and watches football. Like any conversation between two half-cut strangers in a bar, the topic shifts around unpredictably before settling on an earnest exposition of the various crimes and misdemeanours committed by the fairer sex.
“One thing you'll learn, son, is that women don't give a fock about you. They don't give a fock about nothin', so. I've got four children by three different marriages, and believe me, I know”.
In spite of his blatant sexism, there is an endearing quality to the man that extends past the mere fact that he's Irish. I can tell by the conviction in his voice and the sadness in his eye that he loved all three of those women deeply at one time or another.
“I was gutted when the first one left me. Fockin' gutted. But ya know, I got over it, and I got another one. And funny ting is, two years later, fock me dronk, the first one was comin' back after me again! That's fockin' women for ya. Always wantin' what they can't fockin' have”.
We both turn back to the screen for a long while, sipping our beers and glancing around the room just to ensure that nope, no one has scored a goal in any of the other games either. Then he says, “ya know, I fockin' hate Arsenal. Anyway, better get back to the missus or I'm in trouble. Good luck, lad”. I'm not sure whether that was directed at me or Monobrow behind the bar. He looks like he needs it more than I do.

***

As much as I've enjoyed Prague, today I'm forced to put my Central European jaunt on hold for a few days and fly back to to London where my older and wiser brother, Adam, awaits my arrival. Part of Adam's current job involves travelling around the world and organising massive piss-ups on behalf of the beer company that employs him. This weekend he's taking the travelling beer show to a disused carpark in east London where, according to the media briefing he's sent me, “East meets West at this cultural fusion showdown which will flip the creative compass, redraw the musical map, and forge an international alliance of art”. Sounds like some Asians and some honkies are gonna meet up, get shitfaced and lay down some tunes, I conclude, before lugging my hastily-packed bag down to reception. I'd be silly to miss it.

Now, I've witnessed (and participated in) my fair share of awkward in moments in my lifetime, but nothing that can compare to the situation that greets me as I open the door to reception. There's a lady, who I recognise as a receptionist, seated at a swivel chair behind the desk. She gasps with surprise at my entry, prompting a male head to pop up inquisitively from between her legs. For a moment we all look at each other in sheer dear-in-the-headlights panic, then I pretend my shoelace is undone and crouch down in front of the desk to “tie” it while I regain my composure.

What the hell just happened? I feel like an unwilling participant in a low-budget porno flick. Maybe I am an unwilling participant in a low-budget porno flick.
“Can we help you?”, asks the man, who has swiftly recovered from whatever it was he was doing and is all smiles.
“Ummm, ahhh, um”. I can't even speak anymore. “Hope I'm not intruding on anything!”, I say, feigning nonchalance.
“Oh, no no, not at all”, they assure me in unison, even though we all know that a plainer lie has never been spoken.
“Well, errr, it's just that, I was wondering how to get to the airport”.
He tells me the name of a metro station that I immediately forget, and instructs me to take it for four stops to some other station whose name I immediately forget, and then take a bus whose number I also forget, which will drop me off at the airport. I don't even care at this point. I have to get the hell out of the room before the man plucks up the courage to ask, “hey, have you ever held a camera before?”, or something to that effect. My flight back to England, where public displays of affection are punishable by death, cannot come quick enough.

Thirty minutes later, by a random series of miraculous coincidences I find myself stepping off the bus outside the main terminal and negotiating my way past approximately thirteen McDonald's outlets and seventeen Duty Free stores to the main departure hall. Evening flights are departing Prague for every imaginable corner of Europe and beyond; except, conspicuously, London Gatwick. I check for my 9.40pm flight, but it is not displayed where it should be. Feeling my angst levels increasing exponentially, I scan up and down the board but no, it is simply not there. There's flights to godforsaken places I've never even heard of – Hurghada, Ekaterinburg, Thessaloniki, Lanzarote – but none to Gatwick.

Panic rapidly sets in, then gives way to a kind of detached, fatalistic stupor. I've come to the airport on the wrong day. Or just the wrong airport. Or more likely still, the flight for which I have a ticket probably never existed in the first place. So does that mean I don't exist either? I'm hovering outside my body now, watching myself crumble and disintegrate into the ether like the Wicked Witch. I know what's going to happen next. I'll realise that this whole journey was just a dream, that my culinary rampage across America and my hazy, pilsner-fuelled escapades through the streets and alleyways of Europe were just a fabrication of my Blue Powerade-addled brain and any moment now I'll wake up in my freezing cold, shitty Dunedin flat to the realisation that I still haven't handed in my bloody thesis. I stand frozen on the spot, but nothing happens.

Suddenly I realise what I must do. It's a crazy old scheme, but it might just work. Using what little reserves of initiative I have left, I divert my gaze from the Arrivals screen and turn my neck slowly to the right, such that I am now looking at the Depatures screen. And there – as promised and on time – is my 9.40pm flight to London Gatwick, departing from gate 23.

They do say travelling alone can be a dangerous business. Especially when you're travelling with me.

Cesky Krumlov

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. So said the inimitable Benjamin Franklin, who didn't grow up in New Zealand in the 1990s and therefore couldn't have known that losing to Pakistan in the cricket is a third certainty. Here is my traveller's addendum to the list: there's now death, taxes, losing to Pakistan in the cricket and having your travel plans rooted by the incompetence of others.

We were meant to have been picked up in Salzburg by a shuttle and taken directly to our next destination, Cesky Krumlov. But due to some unforseen cock-up on the part of the Czech shuttle bus company, our seats were re-sold and we were told there was no space on the shuttle for us. The upshot of it all is that we're now in Linz, having arrived here by train, and in a few short minutes we're going to hook up with the shuttle that didn't have enough room to pick us up in Salzburg but does have enough room to pick us up from Linz. I've given up trying to understand it and I'm now consigned to just going with the flow.

Linz has two major claims to fame, neither of which you will see mentioned on the road signs on the way into town. Firstly, it was Adolf Hitler's favourite town and secondly, it has a kind of cake named after it. This may provide some insight as to why tourists generally opt to give Linz a miss where possible. From where I'm standing, outside the train station, the the town looks as grey and dreary as the sky above it. I cannot speak highly enough, however, of the modern and expansive station; in particular the bookstore on the lower level, which does a nice line in pornography and sudoku books.

I'm just stuffing my new sudoku books into my backpack when the shuttle arrives and out steps the driver, a bulbous man in his 30s with conspicuously low levels of hygiene that are no doubt the envy of all his bus driver mates. With a well-practised gruffness, he hoists our gear into the boot and asks us if we'd like to “go a toilet” before departing, but I've just gone one earlier, so we hop aboard his van without delay.

It's one of those pack-'em-in-like-sardines minivans that in the interests of economy has been spared unnecessary luxuries, like comfortable seats or suspension. In the row in front of us, three middle-aged Japanese Hello Kitty devotees are chatting excitedly in their native tongue. In the front seat alongside the driver are a hippie couple from Australia, who look well into the 60s and are clearly too old to give a toss about what the world thinks of their appearance. The man is dressed in full khaki tramping gear and sports a thick white beard and the most ridiculous combover I've ever seen. What few fertile patches he has left on his melon have been grown out and then tied back over his head into a sweeping ponytail, creating the overall effect that he's just emerged from 30 years living in the Outback and scalped Willie Nelson. Perhaps he has: the remote mountains of the southern Czech Republic seem like he kind of place a fugitive would be headed and besides, you don't hear much from old Willie these days, do you?
“Ahhh, we don't have roads like this back in 'Straya”, he tells the driver enthusiastically. “No bloody cars to drive on 'em!”
“Oh. Really?”. You can tell this piece of news has made the driver's day.
“Yeah mate. Big long dirt roads and not a single bloody car on 'em”.
“I see”.

I had a rough sleep last night, and the rhythmic hammering of my head against the roof of the van is enough to send me into a light slumber. At some stage in the trip, this is interrupted by a loud bang and a series of gasps from the van's occupants. The driver, obviously bored with life and trying to inject some excitement into his day, has taken a corner too quickly and clipped a passing mail truck headed in the opposite direction. What remains of his left side mirror dangles limply, the mirror cracked beyond repair but still in one piece. The driver casually pulls over to the side of the road, reaches across and pats the shards of the mirror back into place, then zooms off again as if it's just a minor inconvenience that happens all the time.
“That'd never happen back in 'Straya!”, Willie Nelson says helpfully. “Big bloody wide roads in 'Straya!”

Straight away I can see I'm going to love Cesky Krumlov. At first glance it appears to be everything that Salzburg wasn't: quaint, picturesque and brimming with character. The entirety of the old town is closed off to vehicle traffic, giving pedestrians free reign over the winding, cobbled streets and alleys. Two church spires – one each side of the river – rise above the twisting rows of ancient houses. Atop the hill behind our hostel stands the most impressive structure of all: the castle and its imposing, uniquely-decorated tower. For the first time on the trip we have a hostel room to ourselves. After satisfying myself that the bathroom is free of used condoms, I lie down and treat myself to a well-earned afternoon nap.

“Welcome to this medieval house where time has stopped. Let's take a seat at the oak table and pause on how we can be inspired by the diet of our ancestors. Although old bohemian cuisine has basically vanished, let us offer you a taste of the past”.

My reading of the restaurant menu's introduction is briefly interrupted by the loud and absorbing conversation taking place in the small room behind us.
“Well today we came from Praaaague? But before that we were in Viennaaaa? And before that we were in Bratislavaaaaa?”
“Oh wow, that sounds great! Yeah we've never been to Oar-strail-ya but we'd love to visit! Are you from Bris-bain or Mel-born?”
A middle-aged American couple are dining with a middle-aged Australian couple in what resembles a kind of perfect storm of irritating travellers. Now they're joined by another Australian couple, who greet the original Australian couple with speechless astonishment, as if they'd never expected to meet people of their own creed so far from home, even though the bastards are everywhere.

I'm doing my best to tune it all out and engage myself in the fascinating menu. We are, after all, in a very peculiar and enchanting place. Tucked away down a narrow cobbled lane, we've found a house caught in some bizarre timewarp. It contains a restaurant that specialises in medieval bohemian cuisine, the owners of which have done everything possible to transport the diner back to the Middle Ages. The interior is wooden and dimly-lit, the décor is sparse; even the waiter is dressed as if he's just sprung forth from my fifth form English illustrated copy of the Canterbury Tales. The music doesn't quite date back to that time period – in fact it's Radiohead – but upon closer listening, Thom Yorke's ethereal wailings do have a kind of primeval quality to them.
“Might I suggest the feast platter for three”, says our waiter, placing a frothing pint of medieval ale in front of me. “It is roasted hare, roasted chicken, roasted pheasant, smoked meat with potato, millet and dumplings”. Well, why not indeed?

As I sip at my entree, a bowl of potato and daisy soup, I read more about the culinary traditions of ancient Bohemia. It's important to know these things. You never know when they might pop up in a job interview, or an episode of “Who Wants To Be Millionaire”.
“The poor usually ate bread with cheese, or onion and soups. The well-off ate fish with a glass of wine or beer. To finish their breakfast they drank a glass of good wine and brandy”. See, living in the Middle Ages doesn't sound nearly as bad as it's made out to be. The trick obviously was not to be one of the poor people.

Our dinner is an absolute visual delight. It arrives on one large platter for the three of us, the various meats stacked high on potato done fifty different ways (actually I lie. It's only about forty-five), with a colourful Bohemian salad in the middle to finish off the dish. Then something else wonderful happens: the Aussies in the next room bugger off, leaving us to enjoy our meal in relative peace. “Can't have too many 'Strayans in one area!”, says the lady as she departs. It's the first intelligent thing she's said all night. The meal is delicious, though if I am honest, it appears that modern Central European cuisine hasn't much deviated from the course set by their medieval ancestors. Plump and satisfied, we follow our Chaucerian waiter down into the bowls of the house to pay the bill. I'm slightly worried that he's going to ask me to hand over a pot of apple wine, a sack of magic beans or perhaps a couple of my goats in exchange for the meal, but it turns out they take Visa.

I can hear the tormented cackling of a witch burning at the stake as we step back out into the grimy, candle lit alley. An old man lies dying of the plague in a nearby doorway. The full moon illuminates the severed heads of traitors on display above the town gate and in the main courtyard, the town crier is ringing a bell as he relays news of the Saxons' crushing defeat in southern Moravia.

I wonder what they put in that medieval beer?

***

I can't say I wasn't warned there would be days like these. Now I'm having flashbacks to that chilly May night in Dunedin when I resolved I would never need any cold weather gear again, and lamenting my insolence.
“Don't you think you should keep some of those jerseys, Max?”, they asked. “You're gonna need them some time, you know”.
“Don't be stupid, you fools!”, I cried jovially as I sipped from my can of Southern Gold while gleefully throwing another sweater on the fire. “There's no rain and cold where I'm going! No bad weather for me ever again! Muhahaha!”.

Fast forward four months to a freezing September morning in the Czech Republic. I'm standing in the street outside our hostel as the rain hammers down upon my hunched over frame. I don't believe in umbrellas, and I don't own a raincoat. The only protection against the cold I've brought is a thin woollen sweater. Across the street, Willie Nelson and his wife are rugged up and peering through the windows of a grocery store. From an ice cream parlour down the road – which will presumably not be doing a roaring trade today – comes the sound of the local radio station cranking the latest Billboard Top 40 hits. I don't recognise the song but it sounds like sounds like that twat from Coldplay whining, as usual, about his vast fortunes and the possibility of Gwyneth leaving him. It seems like no matter where you go in Europe, you can't escape this particularly noxious form of noise pollution.

Cesky Krumlov is an easy town to explore, with most of its highlights found along one long road that crosses the river and joins the old town together. The old town was built along a stretch of the river where it curves so dramatically upon itself in an exaggerated S-bend that the river almost forms two islands, save for a thin strip of land. I set off towards the centre of the old town with the aim of navigating every alleyway without going down the same one twice. The town centre is extremely dense and its open doors and walkways give it a very communal feel. Shop owners setting up tables mingle with local grocers and old ladies out walking their dogs. Presently I find myself wandering down a narrow passageway and into a room which I could swear is someone's private kitchen, and that's because it is. A big pot of soup boils on the stove and a stocky, middle-aged lady looks up at me from her kitchen table with an air of indifference, as if complete strangers walk into her kitchen all the time. I cast my eyes around the room and raise my eyebrows as if to say “nice place you got here”, then turn on my heel and get the hell out.

The stroll up to the castle grounds offers pretty views of the town, the river, and the two German backpackers walking up the hill in front of me. The gardens are expansive, beautifully manicured and once again serve as a reminder that you definitely wanted to find yourself on the right side of the poverty line back in the Middle Ages. There's even a “revolving theatre” - a round grandstand structure with seating for about 200 people, that has been designed to rotate through 360 degrees during stage plays. I'm not sure how that works, since I generally prefer my theatre not to revolve while I'm trying to watch a performance in front of me, but who am I to poke fun at what is probably an ancient Czech ritual. Perhaps I might find some explanation on the sign on the base of the grandstand. Upon closer inspection, it says:
“Místnost ostrahy – Nekuřácké pracoviště”

I don't know what that means either. But a quick glance at my watch confirms my stomach's suspicions that a refuelling mission is in order. What to eat though? We can be fairly sure that the humble spud will be on the agenda. I don't really have much choice in that regard, unfortunately. “Monday special: Right wiener schnitzel of veal haunch, boiled potato”, says a large blackboard outside a culinary tourist trap in the square. No thanks. I walk down an alleyway and find a smaller restaurant pushing “gypsy sausage, sauerkraut, potato”. I don't know why they even bother mentioning that there's potato in it, since potato appears to be a non-negotiable item when it comes to ordering food in Central Europe.

I remember walking past a place called Joe's Living Restaurant last evening, the concept of which intrigues me. Living restaurant? Does this mean the animals are slaughtered at the table and vegetables are ripped out of the garden in front of your eyes? Sadly we will never know, since Joe's Living Restaurant is, ironically enough, not open for business today. Further down the street I find a traditional Bohemian barbecued meat restaurant that my guidebook recommended. A sign in the doorway promises “live entertainment with authentic Bohemian period music”, but they've got Justin Timberlake playing on the radio when I walk in, so I walk back out again. Back on the street I bump into Georgina and Caroline, who are similarly at a loss for what to eat, so we pool our collective thoughts and settle upon pizza. Not authentic by any means, but I really need a break from potatoes.

The rain hardens after lunch, making any outdoor exploration of the town an impossibility, so I set myself the task of finding a convivial local pub in which to pass the afternoon. Willie Nelson is standing in the town square as I walk past, chatting to a man who appears to be an Australian tour guide. I can't hear what he's saying, though it's always fun to guess.
“So I was out in the bush hunting for me tea and crikey! There he was, just sittin' around the campfire with a few of his roadies, strummin' his guitar. So I pulled my knife out, sneaked right up behind him, and-”

The rain is now intolerably heavy, forcing me to take shelter in the doorway of a pub on the outskirts of town. I take this as a cue to enter. The narrow doorway opens into a long, cavernous room with soft lighting and mud brick walls; it's immediately clear that I've found my place. The rest of the occupants – all local Czechs - are crowded around the bar, smoking and chatting with the bartender. A toddler is pushing an ashtray around on the counter as the tinny stereo speakers blast out that horrible song about kissing girls and liking it. It's always disappointing to visit a new country expecting to experience at least a sampling of the local culture, only to discover they're all listening to the same over-commercialised shite you'd hear in Royal Oak mall on a Saturday afternoon.

Everyone stops and stares at me – the toddler included – as I approach the barmaid. Pressure's on, Max. Better not stuff it up.
“Errr, one Budvar please”.
“Budvar, big?”
“Yes please”.
“20 koruna”.
Less than a Euro for a pint of Budvar. I want to pay her more, just as a token of my appreciation for giving the world this wonderful, hoppy brew. You'd pay seven bucks for a stubby of six-month-old Budvar back home, and here I've got a pint of the fresh stuff.

I find it comforting, and strangely gratifying, to know that generations of Czechs have been getting pissed in these very same environs since time immemorial. The décor has a wonderful timeless quality to it: lanterns hang from the curved ceiling, a hat stand adorns the corner and the walls are covered with agricultural tools – weigh scales, scythes, pitchforks – hark back to a bygone era long before the tourist dollar fed the beating heart of the town. It's just a shame about that bloody radio behind the bar. We're now being subjected to “Travelin' Man” by Ricky Nelson. At least it has lyrics that I can closely relate to, apart from all the boasting about rampant sex with prostitutes sugar-coated in 1960s pop twee.

“I'm a travelin' man and I've made a lot of stops all over the world,
And in every port I own the heart of at least one lovely girl.
I've a pretty senorita waitin' for me down in old Mexico
And if you're ever in Alaska stop and see my cute little Eskimo”

I drain my glass and make my way back to the bar for an all-but-free refill. Don't they prefer to be called “Inuits” these days?

Back at the table with my fresh pint, I open my guide book and discover that the town's history is almost too complex and diverse to follow, even while approximately sober. An important trading post along the Vltavy River since the 6th century, the area was controlled by the noble Czech Slavníkovci family until they were slaughtered by the rival Přemyslovci family in AD 995, in what may be a chilling foreshadowing of the murder of the MacDonalds by the Campbells at Glencoe in 1692. Since then, the town has alternatively fallen into the hands of the Rosenburgs, the Habsburgs, the Eggenburgs, the Czechs, the Austrians and latterly, the Australians.

I still haven't gotten to the bottom of why there are so many bloody Aussies in this town. It's not like it's a place that's renowned for having great surf, easy women and Sizzlers outlets. Nor does there appear to be any historical link between Bohemia and 'Straya. Yet I once again find myself surrounded by them as I embark upon my tipsy stagger back to the hostel, their goofy grins and Map-of-Noosa t-shirts sticking out through the rain and gathering gloom. On every street corner there's an Aussie couple, putting at a shop front or building and saying things like “corker, mate!”, or “grouse!” (ok, I lie, I've never actually heard an Australian say “grouse” outside of the Hardware House advertising jingle). My best guess is that Cesky Krumlov recently got a mention in a prominent Australian travel magazine or TV show. “Yeah, this town is like, totally wicked, mate! The sheilas are terrific and you can get a mad feed of steak for a corker of a price. It's like, fully sick, mate!”. Fair enough, but did anyone think to ask the poor locals whether they wanted them here?

***

Digging a moat to protect one's castle is a successful and time-honoured practice throughout the Old World. But what happens when your castle is built in a pronounced slope? The builders of Cesky Krumlov's impressive castle dug a moat around it alright, but instead of filling it with water, they filled it with bears. One of them is looking up at me now, with a singular hatred in his eye that says “don't even think about falling off that wide, safe pedestrian bridge and down into here”. With a grin and a salute, I heed his advice and carry on into the castle grounds.

It's just before 9 on my last morning in Cesky Krumlov and I'm on my way to the castle tower for a bird's eye view of the town. For all the thrills that adventure tourism can provide, the rush that I get by walking up a tower and looking down on something is all the fun I need in a holiday. The ticket booth appears to be unmanned, although as I approach it a gruff looking old man appears in the window.
“One student, please”.
“Your card, please”.
He takes a good, long, had stare at the card, then at me, then at the card again. As if it really matters who I am. It's a tower, for fuck's sake.
“Where is Otago?”, he asks suspiciously.
“In New Zealand”.
Suddenly an entirely different complexion comes over him. He's all smiles and exaggerated hand gestures. “Ahhh, New Zealand! I love New Zealand! Very, very beautiful country”.
“Well, you have a lovely country here too”, I reply.
“Is nothing like New Zealand! I am wanting to go there one day”.
“You should. Is the tower not open yet?”
“For you, my friend, it's open. Five Euro please. Ok, go. Go New Zealand!”

It's another miserable, cloudy day, but that does little to spoil the vista from the top. I have an uninterrupted view of the town and the dramatically arcing river that runs through and around it. People scurry about ant-like through the narrow alleys and in and out of the quaint little rows of houses. With no other tourists here to spoil the moment, I imagine being a medieval watchman surveying the hills beyond the town and scanning for any signs of an approaching enemy. Then I cast my eye westwards towards the new town that sits a mile or so away on the hill, a depressing jumble of gas stations, soullessly identical apartment blocks and buses rumbling up and down the hill. It's a stark reminder that even in an untouched historical wonderland such as this, the ugly realities of modern Europe are never that far away.

The old man is waiting for me enthusiastically as I make my way out of the castle. “Where you go next?”, he asks.
“Prague. Will the weather be any better there?”
He shrugs loosely. “It will be same. But you will like it there. I am from Prague. Very good beer”.
“Sounds like I will”, I tell him with a smile. “Well thank you, and have a nice day”.
“You too my friend! Go New Zealand!”. He raises a clenched fist to the air.
“Go New Zealand!” I reply, mimicking his gesture. Isn't it a shame that we don't even love our country as much as the Europeans do?

Salzburg

Imagine a typical household scene involving mother and child that could take place in any town in any country in any part of the world. It's late afternoon and mother is working in the kitchen when twelve-year-old Billy comes bounding through the door, not a care in the world.
“Where on earth have you been, young Billy?”, asks the concerned mother.
“Fucking!”, comes the eager reply.
You can picture this going downhill pretty fast. Pity the poor mothers, then, of the small western Austrian town of Fucking, for whom such conversations are a daily occurrence.

Yes, there is a town called Fucking. Well, not so much of a town as a collection of houses 20 miles up the road from Salzburg with the most frequently-stolen roadsign in Central Europe. So bad was the sign theft getting that in 2004 a referendum was held on changing the small town's name. Its hardy – and probably giggling – residents opted to maintain the status quo, much to the presumable chagrin of Billy's mother. Personally, I'm glad the town kept its name. While most visitors (Georgina and Caroline included) come to Salzburg for the Sound of Music tour and general associated gaiety, I have no problem putting my hand up and professing that I've only come here for Fucking.

That's if I survive the train ride from Lake Bled. Just our luck that we've picked to get on a carriage of weirdos and misfits that wouldn't be out of place on a circus train. Seated a few rows ahead of me is the fattest man I've ever seen. He's also the tallest man I've ever seen. I'd swear he was some sort of freakshow escapee, except he's wearing quite a fancy suit. Perhaps he's trying to go incognito. The seat behind me was occupied by some tosser listening to trance music – which seems a strange choice of genre for someone who is patently not in a nightclub and presumably not on drugs – but he's got up and been replaced by a … you know, one of them. It's not a he, it's not a she, it's somewhere in between. It's tall, has long grey hair in the immortal words of Ray Davies, “walks like a woman but talks like a man”. He/she talks loudly too, and is currently berating the poor elderly man across the aisle from her/him in Austrian. A man wearing a kilt has just come in from the front carriage, walked down the aisle to the rear carriage and back again, which puzzles me because I thought this train had come from Dubrovnik, not Dunfermline. There's obviously been a mass-breakout from somewhere with barbed wire and padded walls – a sort of 21st century Great Escape - and all the escapees are making their play for freedom upon this train.

But strangest of all is the man standing in the aisle next to my seat, gazing mournfully out at the countryside as it whizzes by. His sweater puts me in mind of David Bain and his morose, glazed-over look is consistent with a man whose entire family has just been shot. He's silent and stoic, his only movement the occasional raising of the elbow to take a sip from his can of Hollandia. I wish I could join him in that regard, but I've promised myself I wouldn't drink any beer before 11am. Not until we get to the Czech Republic on Tuesday, anyways. Once we're there all bets are off.

I do however have in my possession a bottle of wonderfully-titled Almdudler. It's a kind of fruity Austrian soft drink, with an L&P-meets-Appletise zing to it. It would appear - certainly from the packaging anyway - that consuming this stuff transforms a man into an irresistible sex machine, and I have no reason to doubt it. The label illustration features a strong, strapping Austrian mountain man in a green suit with a thick mop of brown hair partially covered by a wide-brimmed green hat with a white ribbon flapping gaily in the breeze. Clinking glasses with him is a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein, also decked out in a wide-brimmed green hat. She's fixing him with a look of pure mischief that says “once you've finished consuming that refreshing, lightly-carbonated beverage, I'm gonna take you back to the log cabin and do things to you that will make you scream for mercy”. It's a look I've seen a few times before, though not as often as I'd have liked, and never from a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein. A few more bottles of Almdudler and that is bound to change.

Back on the train, and the mournful starer has moved closer to me so that he's almost standing directly over me. It's impossible for me to pretend not to notice him, yet he has given no indication of acknowledging my existence, which leaves me in the socially-awkward position of not knowing whether to say hello or not. Besides this, I don't know whether we're in Austria or Slovenia and I'm not familiar with cross-border language protocol, so wouldn't know which language in which to greet him. Eventually I come to the compromise decision of playing the dumb tourist card and greeting him in English.
“Hello”.
He looks down and regards me for a long while with a face betraying a mixture of blankness, surprise and confusion, like John Key at the front of a fast food queue. Then he takes another sip of his beer and resumes his silent vigil out the window. I glance outside myself and it's just the same countryside we've been passing through for hours: towering, snowy peaks plunging into wooded valleys with meandering streams. It's like New Zealand but with more church steeples and less roadside barns selling horse poo for $3 a bag.

Salzburg greets us under a grey, murky sky and for the first time since leaving London, there's a nasty chill in the air. There's more bad news waiting for me when we arrive at the hostel. It turns out that the guy who runs the tours from the hostel to Fucking has fucking broken his fucking leg, and so the fucking Fucking tour has been fucking postponed in-fucking-definitely. Gosh darn it!

“Well, is it worth trying to get there under my steam?”, I ask the receptionist, who incidentally happens to be a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein. Too bad I've thrown out that bottle of Almdudler or else I'd have had her swinging from the chandeliers in ten minutes flat.
“Not really”, she replies. “Well, it would take you a long time to go there. You would have to be changing buses three times, and then some walking”.
“But what's the town like? Is it worth it?”
“The town, it is nothing. There is just a big swamp … and the sign”. She smiles knowingly
“Ok, well thank you anyway”.
I feel crushed by this news, like a schoolkid who's shown up for his mate's birthday party a day late and missed all the fun. My Fucking dreams are at an end. Who knows if I'll ever be here again. I could die a Fucking virgin.

Still, this is Salzburg and there must be other ways for a man – even one who has never seen The Sound Of Music – to entertain himself. After all, it is a Unesco World Heritage Site, the birthplace of Wolfgang Mozart and an important regional centre since Roman times. Not that much of this history is on proud display this particular afternoon. The fortress Hohensalzburg towers imposingly above the old town as it has for the past 900 years, but the fascinating history of the town itself has been swamped by the tourists pouring through every narrow, cobbled street and alleyway with ceaseless vigour. Turkish restaurants and hot dog stalls line every street. “Live Premiership Football” scream billboards outside Irish and English pubs. Fair enough I suppose, why would you spend your Saturday afternoons eating kebabs and watching football in a pub on the rain-soaked streets of Blackburn, Bolton or Wigan when you could watch it in a pub on the rain-stoked streets of Salzburg? The beer's better here, for one thing.

I leave the old town and walk east along the river, and quickly find myself in a run-down industrial neighbourhood. The main theme of this no doubt once-picturesque river is concrete: concrete banks, concrete piers, wide concrete walkways on either side. A cluster of unsavoury-looking teenagers are congregating around a large concrete skateboard ramp. This is the part of Salzburg that they obviously don't want the tourists to see. It's too bad that at the part of Salzburg they do want the tourists to see, you can't see a thing because of all the bloody tourists in the way.

It's not until I get back to my four-bed dorm room that I sense my luck beginning to turn. There's no one else there, but on the bunk bed below me, the occupant has placed a Billabong bag, a tank top and the shortest pair of denim shorts I've ever seen. Thus far our random dorm mates have all proven to be less-than-wholesome characters – a farting Singaporean in Vienna, a socially-retarded, monobrowed Czech in Ljubljana, Stefan in Budapest – so the discovery that I'm sharing a room with a shapely Aussie girl with (probably) loose morals is a pleasant one indeed. You can only imagine my disappointment when the two other occupants – a 30-something couple from Wellington – walk through the door. Still, they're friendly enough, and obviously won't be keeping me up all night playing drinking games.
“We just had three weeks in London. It was two weeks too long”, says the man, whose pale complexion confirms that he did not once see the sun in that time.
“Yeah, I know the feeling”, I reply. “What have you guys been up to in this area?”
“We went to some ice caves today”, says the woman. “It was pretty cold! Not sure I'd recommend it”.
And what of the Sound of Music tour? Any plans to visit Fucking?
“Haha, nah. It's just a few houses and a sign in the middle of a swamp”.
We all agree that we miss New Zealand with its friendly, uncomplicated locals, low crime, and the way you don't have to auction off body parts to have enough cash to make it from town to town.
“The Sound of Music tour was pretty shit, by the way”, says the man. I could've told him that before he even went. We're about to switch off the lights when the Australian girl, owner of the skimpy denim shorts, returns home for the evening. Turns out she's ugly, and can't speak English properly. No loss.

***

“Yeah, London is great, yeah! I love it how all the museums, are like, free? So you can go as many times as you want? Ohhh I love the Tate Modern, I went there three times? Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, I'm like, a young 'Strayan female? So I end all my sentences with question marks? Even when they're not questions?”

If there hasn't been scientific research conducted into why Australian accents carry over the top of everyone else's, there bloody well should be. Maybe then we'd stand a chance of putting a stop to the phenomenon. The hostel dining room is abuzz with excited chatter, but all that can be heard with clarity is a porky Australian girl in the corner telling a bored-looking Scotsman about her time in London. The Scot probably had some loose designs on getting in her pants when he initiated the conversation, but now that it's clear she's of about as much interest as a game of Six Nations rugby, he's resigned to just sitting impassively, nodding occasionally looking at his watch, like a bored office worker hanging out for the five o'clock bell. Back at our table, my “Authetic Austrian Breakfast” is making pretty dubious claims to originality considering it's just scrambled eggs with some ham, onion and tomato mixed through, but I'm prepared to give the chef the benefit of the doubt.

It's another overcast day, and the girls have headed off early to embark on their Sound of Music guided tour. They asked me again this morning whether I would like to tag along but I declined, citing far more important business to attend to. The Bledisloe Cup and Tri-Nations decider is on this afternoon and I have to find a pub in which to watch it. Logically, the first place to look would be the Aussie-themed pub on the outskirts of the Old Town. It's manned by a solitary Australian behind the bar, with a goatee that he's waited until his OE to start growing because he knows he'd get too much shit about it from his mates if he grew one at home.
“You'll be showing the rugby here this arvo, mate?”, I ask in a neutral accent.
“Ahhhh, I dunno if we have the channel, mate”, he says with furrowed brow.
“Well what is gonna be on then?”
“Um, Premiership football probably. It's a Saturday”. He flicks through his TV guide. “Yeah. Newcastle against Hull”. Jesus.
“But this is an Aussie pub, right?”
“Ahhh. Yeah, it is. Sorry mate”.
That's shithouse, mate, I think to myself as I step back out into the gloomy afternoon light. My hasty reconnoitres around the English and Irish pubs in the area also come to nothing. Newcastle v Hull is obviously the premier sporting fixture anywhere in the world this afternoon, and if that's what brings the crowd in, so be it. But we're rapidly approaching kickoff in the rugby and the thought of missing out on seeing our boys give the Ockers a hiding has me in a mild panic. Only one thing for it. I'll go back to the hostel and follow the action via live text commentary.

I suppose you might say that sitting in an internet room as live text updates of a rugby game pop up every ninety seconds or so isn't exactly your idea of a swell time in Europe, but I merely see it as doing my patriotic duty for the country. After all, what did Kiwis and Aussies on their OE do before the wonders of internet and satellite TV came along? Were they too busy sinking Guinness and shagging local sheilas to care about these vital rugby clashes, or did they sit huddled around a radio listening intently? I'm fairly sure it would be the latter. At any rate, the updates tell the story of a see-saw match in which first we take the lead, then the Aussies sieze control, then the good guys go on a three-try burst and hold off a late rally from the convicts to win 28-24 and retain the Bledisloe Cup. My fellow travellers in the computer room look up curiously as I dance around the room making suppressed whooping noises, before eventually taking my seat again and triumphantly punching the air and banging my fists excitedly on the desk. If only they could understand the unbridled joy and raw emotion of watching your team win rugby's second-biggest trophy via text update.

And in the other big match of the day, Hull won 2-1.

***

It's our last morning in Salzburg as I walk into the bathroom and find a used condom on the floor. Wow. It's quite the shocking discovery – like finding a hair in your risotto, only slightly less personal – and it's shaken my faith in humankind to its very foundations. What, pray tell, would possibly compel two human beings (sober or otherwise) to engage in sexual congress in a confined space that plays host to germs and other filthy rot from naked backpackers the world over? What kind of people could be so morally depraved and ethically bankrupt as to do the wild monkey dance in a public bathroom and then leave the condom proudly on display like a steaming dog turd in an upmarket fashion store? Oh yeah, our friends across the ditch.

When events like this occur, it's hard not to let them tarnish your overall experience of a place or trip. Like that time in Tauranga mall when a seven-year-old Max put a coin into a love tester and, to his sheer horror, the machine began making all sorts of loud siren noises that caused everyone to stop and stare. Or our weekend away in Whangerei in '93 when my brother smacked his head open on the side of the Hamburgler's head in a McDonald's playground and we spent most of the night in an A&E ward. Which, granted, is probably one of the safer places to spend a Friday night in the far north.

Not that Salzburg appears to have much going for it in the first place. The old town, wedged precariously as it is between the river on two sides and hills on the other two, is just too compact and full of tourists to showcase any of its ancient charm. Across the river is the impressive Palace of Mirabell with its elegant gardens, and the fortress Hohensalzburg cuts an imposing figure upon the skyline to the north, but much of the rest of the city is the same nondescript jumble of heavy industry and characterless buildings that you'd find anywhere across Central Europe. If you don't like The Sound Of Music, or watching unimportant football games in Irish pubs, it's probably worth giving this corner of Austria a miss.

There's one final gutting piece of news awaiting me as we pack our bags and head for the train station.
“I overheard these four Aussie guys talking down here just before you came down”, Caroline says. “They were about to go and rent a car and drive to Fucking for the day”.
“They were going to fucking? When??”
“They were going to rent the car just now”.
“I could've gone with them! They left already?”
“Yeah, just then”.

Fucking hell.