The Amsterdam Experience

Ah yes. Amsterdam...

So the second of the three reunion legs with Ross and Richo was planned to take place in Amsterdam. They had caught the train from France and I would fly over for 3 nights just before term started for a final hurrah, as it were.

I must set the scene.

My bus lefft Oxford for Gatwick airport at 0200 hours, which was hellish but manageable.

Earlier in that evening I had been indulging in that vice which has affected scholars of this university for 900 years... cards. There was a poker tournamnet held in one of the local pool halls.... 10 pound entry, top 9 were awarded prizes, starting from £36 for 9th place, up to £650 for first place, with 63 entries.

I played with my typical cocktail of analytic scrutiny and reckless mavericity to manage to make the top 20, the top 13 in fact, when my flush was despatched by a higher, flukier, longer odds flush, and I finished in lucky 13th spot, bitter and twisted over the whole experience, but knownin that a trip to the continent in the next few ours will make it all right.

So I came back to college, packed my bags at around 1 and left for the bus. I arrive at Gatwick at 0405 hours, and get into the flight line at about 4:30.
"Where are you flying today sir?"
"Amsterdam."
"Right, may I see your passport sir?"
"...Oh Dear..."

I hop on the 0500 bus back to Oxford (and manage to draw the same driver, much to his amusement, and, despite being awake for so long, mine) to return to my room at around 8am. There, in my sock drawer, underneath the handkerchiefs is the passport... mocking me...

I ring up British Airways, the customer friendly airline and tell them 'A funny story': the upshot of the call is that I can fly at 6pm that evening and just pay an extra £10.

Capital... 8:20am.... the yawning begins. Perhaps I will take a nap...

I awake at 3:40... calculate that a 2 hour bus trip and the associated extra time in getting places and clearing customs means that trouble is brewing... I ring up BA again and tell them 'A very funny story'... they laugh, I laugh, I cry, the cycle goes on. I declined another offer of an extension, thinking it better to burn my bridges and pull up stumps in a blaze of metaphor cocktails.

So in toto the flight of £26 + two bus trips (£22 each) + accommodation (£14 was not able to be refunded) = £84, which is very reasonable to pay for not going to Amsterdam. In fact it is the cheapest I have paid not to go.

Naturally Ross and Richo could see the funny side and were a little disappointed that I couldn't make it down, so I took it upon myself to give them a convivial feast of the senses on the third and final leg of our rendezvous... the scholarly town of Oxford...

End of Estonia and Berlin

The remainder of the Estonian trip was much more of the same, drinking at 4pm as the cold settled in (we wanted to wait for the sun to set - so we sat and watched the dwindling hours of daylight before going to the beer hall; only alcoholics drink during the daylight.)

Our last night was filled with karaoke (as befits a choir tour) and a few more pints (as befits a former Soviet republic) and I said goodbye to the choir on Saturday morning. Due to the vagaries of flights I stayed an extra night in the northern land, with the intention of travelling to Berlin on Christmas Eve.

So for the first time in ym shltered life I stayed in a hostel on my own, as it were. I only had one night there, but I managed to meet some characters. There were three others in the room - one bloke, an Englishman, turned out to be quite the traveller and had been to most of Africa and the Americas. He and I had a beer Saturday night and infact he leant me some Estonian Kroons for the bus to the airport - which I caught, but didn't know where to get off, and thus ended walking for an hour to get to the aiport, which was fine in the -4 environs. The second bloke was actually from Estonia, and from Tallinn as well. The reason he was staying in a hostel and not at his home was that he was recovering from an operation on his head (the language barriers prohibited a more indepth analysis) and there were many family members around at his house, partying for the festive season which would not aid his convalescene. The third man was a sex-obsessed Swede called Timo, who, in a rather comical accent described himself as 'complete heterosexual, in fact, perhaps even 300% so.' He kept talking to me about wanting to marry bartenders that he met at the pub. There was only so much I could do to prevent reaching for my suicide pills...

I arrived into Berlin, out of the aiport and into the hostel, by around 7pm Christmas Eve - the day for my rendezvous with two of ANUs finest, Ross Townson and Richard Morton, who were catching the train in from Prague for a Christmas gathering.

They have taken some good photos (recall that my camera suffered the fate of Trescothick and cracked) and I will certainly update this post to include some audio/visual, although mostly, well entirely, visual supplements.

Christmas was, for the first time in my life, spent in a pub. We went to a newsagent (the only shop open in the near viccinity) and bought each other presents which we wrapped in Der Spiegel, Germany's finest newspaper. We went into the pub about 10 minutes after it opened (11:10am) with our Christmas hats on and cheer on our faces. The other patrons in the bar appreciated our jolility, and we had an efficient Teutonic lunch with several litres of beer. Then the presents: Ross was given four blocks of German chocolate and a packet of tic tacs, Richo received a tube of Pringles chips and a bottle of German beer, and I was fortunate enough to open a bottle of Chilean Merlot. That night was spent walking through town, telling stories of old, and of new - quite a nice way to spend Christmas, even moreso when you can't be with your family.

On Boxing Day we walked around town doing the tourist circuit, which I would like to do again and have a little more time. But we managed to see and go into the Riechtstag, look at the Brandenburg Gate and enter the oldest chocalatier in Berlin for some sampling. As we were quite laid back we didn't hustle around, which meant we had more time to eat/drink and be merry, but less to visit individual landmarks and the like. Omnibus aequis it was a thoroughly enjoybale experience, good times, good friends.

I left R^2 to arrive back in Blighty on the 28th. As they were still traipsing around Europe we thought we would meet up again, and indeed this was the first of our three meetings....

New Year's Eve was relatively quiet here at the Manor, with many people back home or out in major cities for a party. Ben and I went to the local pub where they put on some free food at midnight, and the idea was hatched to write a sketch comedy act for the Edinburgh film festival... one which is cooking over in my mind at this moment.

Up until week 0 (the one before the start of term) I was mainly lounging around enjoying a break. And then the second leg of the Rendezvous was realised...

Estonia IV (drip)

Our Church, Paimu Varna Church to be precise. As with most of the churches in this neck of the woods it is mainly Evangelical Lutheran, but they put on an Anglican matinee every week - although when we sang there the crowds were on the slim side.


Our purpose of the tour drinking in the local p... I mean, singing... that's right, good ole fashioned singin' in the church. It went well, given that we were a little light on the practising, but eventually Owain found out how to play the organ (all the stops were written in Estonian) and all was fine... in fact so fine that...



... we ran into this chap afterwards. He came up to us and announced that he had attending Balliol from 1967 to 1970. After a little bit of banter, he introduced himself as the 13th Earl of Carlisle... and he was a character, to say the least. He agreed to meet us the next day for a tour, and arrived with snuff all over him. That's right, snuff - he must have been having some and fallen over, Mr McGoo esque. The tours he gave were long, insightful, but got repetive and boresome after about 6 minutes - here is a plaque that I unveiled, and here is another... right down the road we go, oh look, here is another plaque which I paid for. In fact you can see people in the photo looking, well, not despondent, but certainly thinking of other, happier times.

It wasn't I, but someone managed to hit the E to the C in the crossfire in a snowball fight... alright then, it was I... you got me.

Estonia III - the madness of

On the Monday, our 3rd day there, the snows came. This was my first experience with this white stuff, and I had a ball. You could walk by a car which hadn't moved in a day, and see a depth of 15 centimetres or so of untouched snow. Then if no one was looking you could scrape off some pure snow, compactify a ball and hurl it at people - after a few tries to get used to throwing a) in gloves and b) snow, I honed my accuracy with many humourour results. No photographic evidence was taken though... no, this IS more credible than Roswell.

One of the tower attachments coming off Kiek in der Koch... ahh it still brings a smile.In the midst of all the snow we visited the local establishments for a bit of refreshment. This beer is as black as sin, at 13% alcohol per volume, it doesn't mess around. They were offered in half litres or litres, nothing smaller - hence in order to preserve masculinity the 1000 mills were required. The beer hall had serving 'wenches' - women walking around in shortish skirts and old fashioned villager shirts. For some reason the happy 'hour' went from 11am to 3pm, which sat just fine with us, drinks being half price during this time. So my litre of DUNKLES, as it was called, was about 40 Estonian Kroons - about £1.80, which in turn is about $4.30 Australian.
Winter Wonderland - I still hate those 'Northern Hemispherical carols' which talk about snow and sleighbells and such, but they were just tolerable here. There was a Christmas market in the townsquare with many local vendors displaying their wares. I was apporached and offered samples of 4 different types of heated vodka with spices (almost 'mulled' vodka, as it were). The attendant was keen on a sale, but I was able to blend back into the crowd seamlessly and keep my hard earned Kroons.

The temptation was there to purchase, what the Brits call 'tat' - which I think means touristy rubbish, jumpers, socks, trinkets and the like. Those jumpers with swirling white, blue, and red patterns of the Nordic countries were an option, but a little expensive. Well, that is for me - for people earning 'folding money' and not 'student money' they were probably a steal. But I limited my purchases to the local liquers as these don't collect dust, unlike books... thanks again ME Goddard.

Estonia II - son of Estonia

On a day of sightseeing we came across the following. The above is Alexander Nevsky Cathedral - not Orthodox, (so bowling left arm chinaman then... ah that will go in the book of all time best quotes) but sort of an Evangelical Lutheran two-step. But very nice on the inside... we did not sing there.
A Medieval Church known as: Kiek in der Koch... well, you can imagine what that degenerated into after a few drinks.

Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. More specifically 'Old Town' the... older part of Tallinn, which, like some of the sections of Oxford, is big on the cobblestoning.

I have finished one of the bottles of Ballantines that Rach sent over, I don't really want to pour more whisky out now, so I might pull up stumps and add to the entries tomorrow - there are still stories to tell: E to the C, snow, Helsinki ventures and more.

Estonia

Well it has been a while, but not without good cause - I've been sinking my teeth into this European continent, with capital results.

Term ended on the 2nd of December and the holidays were had. On the 16th I went to Estonia for a week with the Balliol College Choir. What a tour!

We sang twice, with a practice... so it wasn't labour intensive, although the singing was enjoyable. But we were theree for an even week, staying in a hostel, dormitory style, with a complimentary breakfast each day. I likened the porridge to molten rubber and the cheese to latex, but it was free and that is what counts.

My camera didn't see much of the trip, which is part of the reason why this update it so late. When we got out of Tallinn Airport it was, as one would expect, much colder outside than in. So I whipped my jacket out and put it on, thinking 'That is quite a large bulge in the jacket pocket... oh there it goes, much better.' But the sickening crack with which the LCD screen contacted the pavement was heard across the Baltic states and so my photos for that trip are, in round figures, 0.

So - the point of the matter was - I had to wait until other chaps posted their own pictures on the internet, now I can grab theirs and palm them off as my own ph.... I mean. No. All photos were taken by mean and no plagarism was entered into.



Above: Dinner on the first night. We all went to a medieval Banquet Hall - the jugs contain cinnamon beer - what a novelty. Some of the food included: boar and bear sausages, blood sausage (AKA black pudding, but you get a bit more useful information with the former description), bread and meat infused bread (both kinds of which weren't allowed to be touched with a knife - some custom of the local people which we didn't want to break) and many varieties of delicious cabbage... well one variety: boiled... and not so much delicious as it was bland.... so they had lots of bland cabbage, are you happy now?



All of us outside the Church where we sung. We sung in the Tuesday afternoon Mass to a sellout crowd of 12 people, then we gave a concert on Thursday evening, where we doubled our ticket sales of the previous day. So the crowds weren't great, but at least we didn't have to refund tickets for day 5 of a test match - take that England.

The chap on the left is Guy 'WestDog' Westwood, and the chap on my right is Henry 'Dan' Cullen. I may or may not have coined the latter. More cinnamon beer you see.

Due to the weather (the nadir of -10 degrees and the propensity for 6 hour long days, with darkness encroaching at or around afternoon tea time) there was little to do for most of the day but eat, drink and be merry. And that we did. And this was merely the first day.