Grabbed the sign on the door and popped it on the outside of the door and put it out so I could tidy up in peace... As I was heading out, I realised that I probably should have checked which side I had put facing outwards, and as expected, the side on the outside said “Please tidy my room”... The inside said “Privacy Please”... I might put that on the outside from now on....

Headed out and walked toward the station to get a train to Fremantle. The train was on time and clean, it wasn't overcrowded, the ticket machine worked and it was full of attractive people (myself excluded, of course), so it was the exact opposite of a Melbourne train.

Train arrived in 25 minutes and as I got out of the station I realised what kind of a place we were looking at. An attractive city with lots of old buildings (old in an Australian sense, so about 100 years), and a lot of cool restaurants and cafes. I called my brother Neil to wish him a Happy Birthday and discussed Supercoach... The sizeable Italian community in Fremantle was instantly visible too, in the names of the cafes, the sight of old Italian men sitting outside said cafes, and the abundant Italian flags in various spots around the city.

But none of this mattered to me. I was in Fremantle for mostly one reason...

And I got here... It is, in essence, my spiritual home, even though I had never been here... Let me explain... I love beer... This place makes my favourite beer on earth... Hence, it was a place I needed to visit. And visit I did. I sat down at the front in the outside, patio-type, area and ordered a beer, after drinking it, I waited for the slightly unfriendly waitress to come back and ask if I wanted another. She didn't for a little while, but she served the people on the table next to me and told them that there was a group of tables on the other side which faced the water, so I grabbed my beer glass, and my water bottle and menu and stuff and walked to those tables. “Probably got better waitresses over there too” I thought, and I couldn't have been more right...

Waitresses were pleasant, the beer was delicious and I could see the boats sailing through the harbour just as Australia II did on that day in 1983 when we won the America's Cup or some shit... I don't know, I was drinking Little Creatures Pale Ale and loving every drop... I also had one of the woodfired pizzas and it was delicious too... And then I had another couple of pints... And then I realised I had better do a bit more sightseeing...

I walked around a bit further and went to a couple more pubs and had some more beers... Saw a pair of bikies get into an argument in one and almost get into fisticuffs until they were stopped by another bikie... All-in-all, a cracking day...

I headed back to Perth and walked around endlessly looking for a restaurant in the middle of the CBD for dinner... I ended up eating at an Irish pub and had some pretty good fish and chips...

Back to the hotel for some rest and to prepare for my last day in Oz before the African adventure...

written by  Big_T on June 2, 2010 from Perth, Australia
from the travel blog: World Cup
tagged Beer, Perth, LittleCreatures and Fremantle
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Got in my seat with an empty one next to me and an almost naked girl in the next seat. I had heard her speaking to her friends in the departure lounge and she had an accent. She had obviously come from a Northern Hemisphere summer and wasn't really aware of the climactic differences. In my head I pondered “How long will it be before she asks for a blanket?”

6 minutes was the answer. She requested a blanket to cover up her modesty, and promptly slept. As usual the food was pretty bad. After the meal, and 2 small bottles of white wine (as I had gone for the chicken), I attempted to sleep myself. I outdid myself at failing at this task. It is difficult to explain just how badly I did at sleeping on the flight, but I think it can be imagined.

As we were about to land, the young lady next to me, all covered in blankets due to her coldness, started talking to me. She had spent the previous 40 minutes applying layers of make-up (not that she needed it, she would have looked better without all that shit on her face). She started telling me that she was here to visit her boyfriend who worked in Perth and that she had been on 5 planes, San Antonio to LA, LA to Melbourne and Melbourne to Perth. I know that's 3, and you know that's 3, but she seemed to think it was 5. Oh well, who am I to disillusion the young lady? I wished her a good trip and we went on our separate ways.

There are shuttle buses from Perth Airport to the city, but there was a 20 minute wait for the next one and they don't provide door-to-door service like my friend Oli the Bosnian Cabbie does. The cab cost $15 more, but the shuttle bus driver doesn't regale you with glorious stories about fleeing war-torn Bosnia in 1992 and coming to Australia with his young wife (who, by the way, is an excellent cook and if she hadn't been, he would have told her to fuck off). So, it turns out, the old ways are still quite popular amongst the former Yugoslav republics.

Get to the hotel and the room is small but clean. The TV didn't work and when I called reception, the girl told me that I probably hadn't held the power button down long enough. After holding it until my arm went blue, I went to the counter and she saw the blueness for herself and called a maintenance guy up. There was an issue with the power cord, so he sorted that and then I turned the TV off and went for a walk. It's my first visit to Perth and the city seems nice and quiet. I had always been told that outside of Melbourne and Sydney, other Australian cities weren't quite as expensive. This rule may be true, unless the word Belgian is in the name, as this adds $5-$10 to any beer price. I enjoyed a quiet beer at the Belgian Beer Cafe (about $300), and then continued on my walk getting back to the hotel at about .

Nanna nap time! I slept for an hour and went out to get some dinner. If you do this, please read the menu... I saw Bacon Burger on the menu and assumed that it would be a burger with some bacon on it... How silly I was... There was no burger... Just 6 slices of bacon and salad on a bun... The menu did say this, but I made an assumption that no-one would want a burger like that, but it was surprisingly not bad...

Tomorrow is Fremantle, and a personal Hajj to the Little Creatures brewery... I am looking forward to it immensely.

written by  Big_T on June 1, 2010 from Perth, Australia
from the travel blog: World Cup
tagged Perth
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We were told that we could check in to the apartment from 7:30 or so because there was no-one in the apartment the day before. Well, when we arrive it turns out that the guy here the day before went and got hit by a car, and needed another day's rest. Talk about inconsiderate! So we were told that we could check in at about 12:00 or so.

At 9 we left our bags at the agents office around the corner, and walked in to the centre of town. A nice 15 minute walk. The new town, especially Wenceslas Square is very nice, busy and active. Lots of young Czechs and foreigners walkinga round, but as we were both tired, and Adam wasn't talking to me, we decided to go to the apartment and have a day of doing nothing. We sat back and watched the 1008 channels of satellite... Every channel had shit on it... Adam went to bed at 10...

Next morning, get up and Adam is chipper again! Yes! Very pleased about that... We went out to do some sightseeing in town. Started with a pizza for lunch, went to the old town square... Millions and millions of tourists there, you couldn't move for tourists... But it was entirely understandable. Prague's old city square is absolutely stunning, and as it turns out, even more beautiful at night.

The same thing can not be said about the smell. The city square, particularly up around the Astronomical Clock smelling like horseshit, mostly on account of all the horses shitting there... The trams, also, smelled like B.O. or at least our one home last night did. It reaked of the two homeless people sat in front of me. Mostly on account of the fact that they needed a shower...

Dinner and drinks followed, and we went to a traditional Czech bar called Caffreys, to watch the second half of the Arsenal/Dynamo Kiev game. Drinks at this bar proved to be expensive, so I only had 2 more after the other 7 or 8 I'd had through the day, and went back to the apartment at 12:30 to play an online poker tournament... My KK came up against AA and I was out just outside the money...

Today, (our 3rd and final day in Prague) is another day of sightseeing. Heading to Prague Castle, and hopefully taking some pictures around the city. I will eventually add some more pictures to the blog and to Facebook. Hopefully I can get that done tonight... And, hopefully, I can survive the smell of horseshit...

I meet up with Mum and Dad tomorrow afternoon, so that's pretty exciting too...

written by  Big_T on September 18, 2008 from Prague, Czech Republic
from the travel blog: Big_T's Travel Blog
tagged Prague, Horseshit and Horses
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Krakow is over 1000 years old, and it was Poland's old capital. Looking at the place it surprises me that is not currently, but according to legend, Hitler forbade the destruction of the city and that he may have been planning to live here after the Germans won WWII... Whether any of thats true or not I would say that he couldn't have picked a lovelier place to live...

Beautiful castles, the world's largest medieval square, churches, fortifications, streets, etc. Lovely, except for the fucking weather...

It has hardly stopped raining since we left Moscow, particularly in the Baltic States. It has been raining cold and miserable almost every day. Even on days like today when the morning was a little cloudy and about 15degrees, it starts raining in the afternoon... SHITHOUSE!

Well it's about 5 now, we have a train to Prague tonight at about 10:20pm... I am excited because my brother said he might be coming out to meet me and my family in Europe next week!!! Very happy about that, so me and Adam might go and get drunk before the train!

Will write again from Prague!

written by  Big_T on September 15, 2008 from Krakow, Poland
from the travel blog: Big_T's Travel Blog
tagged Rain, Krakow and Weather
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Wow... Not a great deal can be said about it... It is divided into 2 parts, Auschwitz and then about 3 kms away, there is Birkenau which was known as Auschwitz II...

Walking around the museum you see and hear and read about the stories of the 1-1.5 million people killed at that very place. They were often brought in under the illusion that they were going to find new riches in an Eastern country, and bought plots of land, and fake businesses from the Nazis. They were then loaded into trains to be taken to either work as slaves or to be killed...

Those who have visited can understand, those who haven't should. There is not a great deal more I can say...

written by  Big_T on September 14, 2008 from Krakow, Poland
from the travel blog: Big_T's Travel Blog
tagged Auschwitz
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We do the Riga walking tour, lots of 17th and 18th century buildings, most in quite good condition and then we arrived at the Occupation museum...

This is the place that explains the constant occupation of this country by foreign invaders from 1940-1991... USSR, Germany, and then USSR again... Pretty much had their way with this country and no-one did anything to help them... When the Germans came, the Latvian people thought that they had been liberated from the Soviets, until the Germans started exterminating people they didn't like... When the allies beat the Germans, the Latvians thought they would be independant again, until They were handed back to the Soviets and it took until 1991 to gain independance...

We left the Occupation museum in a cheerful mood and found a traditional Latvian place to have Adam's birthday dinner... Adam drank a local booze called Latvija Balzams... Looked, smelled and tasted hideous! (but a great treatment for Scruffula) He couldn't look straight after drinking it either, but he had a good time for his birthday dinner and that's all that mattered...

Slept and now we are awake, about to head to the bus station for our bus across to Lithuania... This will be the 4th country in 6 days, we are there for less than 24 hours before flying to Poland... Things start to slow down a little there...

written by  Big_T on September 12, 2008 from Riga, Latvia
from the travel blog: Big_T's Travel Blog
tagged Bus, Museum, Birthday and Balzams
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http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=jgTyVkpJY3g

After hitting up the internet cafe for the previous entry we walked down to the port and jumped on our accomodation for the next 15 hours or so i.e. the boat across to Sweden.

We got on on the 7th deck, even though we were staying in the cheapest possible rooms on the 2nd deck... The boat was massive, it went up to about 13 decks... We knew that we would be safe from the seasickness of the Osaka to Shanghai debacle...

We were, we stayed up and had a few bevvies, slept and were awoken by the captain telling us we were an hour and a half from port...

We arrived at the hostel which was a former prison after following the directions (well written, but they underestimated the walking time by about 300%)... Of course, as we had arrived in the morning, we couldn't check in yet, so we had to leave our bags and do sightseeing as we were...

We visited the main sights of Stockholm, much like Helsinki a beautiful old city, some really cool museums and old buildings... I got frostbite as it was about -140 degrees... We walked around until about 5:30 when we went back to the hostel to check in... Smallest room ever!

I guess as it was designed for prisoners, there wasn't much chance of a suite at the Park Hyatt, but it was a real 8'x3' job... The 2 of us slept in a bunk bed, at the end of it there was a locker and on the side there was a small table and 2 chairs...

We decided to forego the guidebook for our dinner location tonight and walked around and see what we could see and we found a restaurant/bar in this cool part of Stockholm... The food was good and the service was really cool... I have started to appreciate that much more since Moscow, where if you ask for help, it is like you set their Grandmother on fire...

Next morning was Adam's birthday, and we were going to do 2 things from my 1000 places to go before you die book. First, we got up and visited the Vasamuseet... A museum that houses the Vasa a gigantic warship from the 17th century that sank after 1 nautical mile... It is 95% intact and one of the most magnificent things I have ever seen...

After that we ate for lunch what the Swedes are famous for, Smörgåsbord! We headed about 10Km north of Stockholm to a lovely country inn that is famous for it's smörgåsbord... Even the King of Sweden has been known to eat there, and we know he has a diamond car with platinum wheels (subtle movie reference there)...

The food was awesome, and again we ate reindeer! The Finnish reindeer was better, but that was specifgically prepared and much more expensive... This was on a buffet table...

We left, headed to the port again for the ferry to Latvia... This time, the boat was pretty big, but a rain started just as we got on and this was not a great sign... I felt OK most of the trip but at about 11PM we were having a beer on the top deck and the constant up and down of the boat started getting to me...

Adam could notice I was getting a bit green in the gills and suggested we head back to the room... We did and within 30 minutes we had both passed out... We would have the birthday dinner at another time...

written by  Big_T on September 9, 2008 from Stockholm, Sweden
from the travel blog: Big_T's Travel Blog
tagged Boat, Museum, Birthday and Sweden
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Finland... Land of excitement, thrills, etc. Adam brought a guidebook (Europe on a shoestring) with a short guide on each country in Europe. It even has Andorra in it... The France section is about 30 pages long, Finland, a page and a half.

The 4th attraction listed for Finland is a Cable Factory (admittedly it is now used as an art space, but you get the picture). The one attraction they had which sounded pretty cool was a former fortress island, it was used to defend Sweden, Russia and then Finland after independence from Sweden and Russia. We took the ferry out there and walked all around the place and had a pretty cool time looking at old cannons, battlements and exploring a series of underground pitch black tunnels which led to more underground pitch black tunnels. I tired of these after a while, but Adam seemd to get continually excited about them.

Walked around the island for 2½ to 3 hours and then headed back up to the city to get something to eat. Went for a beer in the pub first (bottle of Stella €5 thank you very much...) The other thing that interested me about Finland was the wacky stuff they eat. I had already eaten Reindeer for lunch and when we got to the restaurant for dinner I chose the Elk and Venison casserole... Absolutely lovely... Adam had Buffalo for lunch and Reindeer for dinner...

All in all, Helsinki is a beautiful old city, with great architecture but there wasn't heaps to do if you don't love saunas... Kind of like that Seinfeld character Vegetable Lasagne (who was Finnish by the way)...

written by  Big_T on September 7, 2008 from Helsinki, Finland
from the travel blog: Big_T's Travel Blog
tagged Beer, Helsinki, Reindeer and Elk
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So we sat down and discussed our options, and we decided that to try and get a sneak peak at the square from the back would be the best option, so we walked around until we found somewehere for lunch, ate and then continued walking around the square. Walked for about 2 hours and then went to a pub for 6.

Adam went easy on it because of his injury, I was uninjured so i didn't bother to go easy and we got to watch 3 games of soccer with almost no goals, but i didn't mind beacause I celebrated each 15 minute interval with a beer...

That evening at 10:50PM we boarded the train to Helsinki for a 15 hour train trip. A walk in the park after the last one...

written by  Big_T on September 6, 2008 from Moscow, Russia
from the travel blog: Big_T's Travel Blog
tagged Beer, Moscow and Helsinki
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