So I made it home. It was a great trip, I met so many amazing people, did so many amazing things, I'm sure it's something that's going to stay with me forever. Now I'm home though which is kinda nice too. I just need to decide where to travel next!

You can always get me at phawker[a]gmail[dot]com.

Posted on August 25.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I haven't really been doing anything blogworthy since Cornwall. Well until I came to Germany I guess.

So.

I flew out of England on the 19th flying into Frankfurt. I came down to visit my friend from high school, Isabelle, who lives in a place called Giessen. Isa was nice enough to come and get me from the airport and take me back to her parent's beautiful house.

Giessen isn't really all that pretty so the next day we went to see a city called Marburg instead which is pretty close. We got to wander around for a little while and Isa took some pictures. I'll need to get those off her because I've lost the charger for my camera. I might be able to get a few more pictures out of it but I'm not sure.

Isa had to go down to Switzerland on Thursday (the 21st) to take a Spanish exam (she's been in Peru for the past 6 months working on her Spanish) so I decided to come with her and visit a friend of mine who was living in Zurich. Also her Dad was driving her down in his Porsche. That may have influenced me as well. He's got a convertible Porsche Carrera S (really fast) and we went REALLY fast. It was pretty cool.

It was fun to meet Anna (my friend in Zurich) but I wasn't very impressed with Switzerland in general. People weren't very friendly and it was really expensive. Like prohibitively expensive. Also less pretty and less mountains than I expected. I was only there one night though so that was ok.

Yesterday, we went wakeboarding which was a lot of fun. I've been wakeboarding in Canada before (Wakeboarding is to waterskiiing what snowboarding is to skiing). In Germany though, the lakes aren't big enough to take a bunch of boats out though so instead they have a cable that goes around a circuit and you're towed on a course by a rope attached to this cable. It's kinda weird. Fun though.

Today I hitchhiked up to Berlin. It's nice and cloudy here right now but by tomorrow it's supposed to clear up. I've got a couple days planned here then it's back to Giessen to visit Isa for a couple more days then back to Wales. I've decided I'm ready to come home and my ticket is booked for September 6th.

See you soon!

Posted on August 1.

So on Tuesday (the 29th) I hitchhiked down to Penzance in Cornwall. Viv dropped me off at a gas station outside town and I started hitching from there. It took a long time to get going but I lucked out and got a lift all the way to Exeter (just over 100 miles). It took me two lifts (one with a millionaire (seriously) in a fancy Lexus and one with a Scottish Air Rescue helicopter pilot) which got me to Saltash, about 60 miles from Penzance. The train was only going to be £4 from there so I had a nap on the train.

I arrived in Penzance to a break in the clouds and beautiful sunshine. Within 20 minutes though it had clouded back over and started to drizzle. I met up with my couchsurfing host, a really nice guy named Flinn and we went out to meet up with some of his friends. The group "hangout" is in one of his friends' conservatory where I spent a lot of my time in Penzance (it rained most of the time).

The rain was ridiculous too. It seemed to switch between the standard constant English drizzle and almost sub-tropical torrential rainshowers. I can now see how it's so green down there. I got soaked mutiple times.

A group of Flinn's friends were going to a fancy dress music festival (eh?) and there was a Japanese theme. One guy had decided to dress as a samurai and the others had decided to band together and go as Pearl Harbour (they had a girl dressed in white with pearls and stockings with ships on them and the rest were dressed as Japanese airplanes). I spent a few good hours drinking and helping craft and paint airplanes out of cardboard.

I didn't end up doing that much sightseeing (and therefore didn't get many pictures, oops) because of the rain but I did make it up to St Ives which was really beautiful. Even Penzance itself was really nice though I think it might be a bit of a place that's nicer to visit than to live.

All in all though, I saw a lot of pubs, drank a bunch, and had a great time.

I've got a friend in Germany I've been trying to visit for ages (she's been in Peru while I've been here) and she comes back next week so I've got booked my tickets today to head back to Germany (Aug 19th). From there it's either Sweden or Italy (probably Italy first) and then, to be honest, I'm contemplating coming home. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really homesick but I'm kinda feeling like I'm ready to get on with my life.

Ah well, we'll see how things go.

Posted on July 21.

Things have been pretty quiet in Portsmouth, hence the lack of updates. I got a job bartending at a nightclub downtown called Route 66. It's pretty fun, the hours take some getting used to though. I don't get home until 4:30 or 5AM so it makes sleeping difficult.

I've decided to hopefully start traveling again sometime around mid August so I've given up on getting another job. I'm doing about 20 hours a week at Route so I can still make a bit of money and travel a bit around the UK perhaps before I hit Europe again.

I still really want to see Sweden, Italy and visit a friend in Germany so we'll see how things go.

Right now I'm planning a trip to Cornwall for next week. I hear it's pretty nice. Time to try hitchhiking the UK!

Posted on July 10.

Sorry it's taken me so long to update, as a result this post may be long. Be warned.

So.

I spent a good week in the UK resting up before heading to the festival in Belgium. I dropped off a few resumes and (hopefully) got some interviews lined up now that I'm back.

Thierry and I made shirts for the 4 of us coming from Portsmouth (Me, Thierry, Simon, and Colin). On the front they said "Got Tent?" with a picture of a tent (a parody on the old got milk ads) and on the back it had our names, country flag, the couchsurfing emblem and the saying "Making Werchter a better place, one tent at a time". This came from the couchsurfing saying "Making the world a better place, one couch at a time".

On July 2, I headed off with Thierry and Simon (both couchsurfers) to roadtrip to Brussels. We drove from Portsmouth to Dover then took the ferry to Calais. From there we drove on to Brussels to stay with some friends of Thierry's for the night before heading to the festival.

We did some shopping to provision ourselves for the following 4 days (8 crates of beer between 5 and some food) and then headed out to the festival. The festival was being held in a small town about 40Kms East of Brussels called Werchter. It's been going on for 35 years now or something.

We arrived and met up with some of Thierry's friends and a bunch of couchsurfers and proceeded to set up camp. All in all there were about 40 of us which was pretty cool.

The festival itself was amazing. There was music from noon until about 2AM over two stages, a big stage for the larger bands and a smaller marquee for up and coming bands. There were a few conflicts deciding what you wanted to see but overall it wasn't too bad. Drinks were reasonably expensive at the festival but if you collected 20 plastic glasses you could trade them in for a free drink so I did a lot of collecting.

A couple bands I would recommend that you may not have heard of:

The Editors - From England I think, check out "Munich" and "Bullets"
The Kaiser Chiefs - One of the best bands of the show "Ruby" "I Predict a Riot" "Everyday I love you less and less"
Kate Nash - Not normally my kind of music but look at "Mouthwash" and "Foundations"

There was lots of dancing, lots of drinking and lots of people! I made my way up front for Radiohead (arguably the biggest band that played there) until I was 3 rows back from the stage and I can see how people die sometime at these types of things. It was honestly so packed I couldn't move. If I had wanted to get out I wouldn't have been able to. There was a girl next to me who fainted and I had to get some guys to help me lift her up so she could be crowdsurfed out. It was crazy. It got so hot that security started passing out waterbottles that were passed back to hydrate people. When the band played you didn't really dance yourself so much as the crowd danced and moved you along with it. Which was kind of a cool experience too I suppose.

It was seriously awesome overall though. All too soon it was over. It would be easy to get used to going to concerts everyday. Monday morning we packed up and headed back out. I had planned to catch a ferry from Le Havre (in France going directly to Portsmouth) but wasn't going to be able to hitchhike all the way there in one day so I organized to spend one night in Paris before going to Le Havre on Tuesday. It's weird to think of Paris as a city and not as "Paris" if that makes any sense.

En route from Brussels I got a ride with a really cool couple who were shooting a documentary. They'd been in Algeria the day before and had driven all through the night to get to Brussels. The man had been doing all the driving though because the woman only had her learners license. She had been driving for the last 20 Kms though and when she pulled in to get gas, hit the curb and got a flat tire. When I asked if I could get a ride with them the man asked if I knew how to drive and when I gave him the affirmative handed me the keys and went to sleep in the back seat. So I drove 200Kms to Paris.

Tuesday I hitchhiked to Le Havre and took the FIVE AND A HALF hour ferry (ugh) to Portsmouth. Wednesday was spent sleeping and recovering because I think I'm getting a little sick. Today I'm going to print off some more resumes and go job hunting again. I think. I might put it off until tomorrow.

Lots of new pictures up HERE.

Posted on June 26.

I know, I know. I've been getting lazy with posting pictures. But now I posted some! So no more complaints.

You can see the new pictures on Facebook or HERE.

Posted June 23.

So my plans changed a bit. It turns out the ferry was going to cost £78 and flying back to England was going to be 50 Euros. Hmm...

I headed up to Mainz on June 18th and got to see Frank and Charlotte (they both stayed with me in Canda with some of their other friends). I stayed at Frank's parents house and was a little spoiled by his mother (she did my laundry).

I explored around Mainz, drank lots of German beer, and relaxed. It was nice.

Saturday we went out during the day, played some squash in the afternoon and then went back to have a traditional German asparagus dinner. It was excellent. I was leaving Sunday so we went out Saturday night as well. My bus was leaving at 3:00AM so I stumbled to the bus stop from the club and groggily got on the plane. You develop a strange sense of humour when you're exhausted (and slightly drunk) which you'll see when I get some of my photos uploaded.

I made it back to Portsmouth at about noon on Sunday (still with no sleep). Viv was having a little party at her place so I socialised for a few hours before going upstairs to put on some sunscreen. I sat on the bed and promptly fell asleep until 7:30. This turned out to be good though because a new episode of Topgear was airing at 8 so I was just in time.

I get to relax this week and get prepared and then next week it's off to Belgium!

Whoo!

Posted June 17.

So from the limited response I've gotten from my email campaign, my visa doesn't help me and I'm limited to 3 months.

Shitty.

Anyways I successfully hitchhiked from Wageningen down to Heidelberg in Germany (about 500KM) on Friday. I met some pretty cool people all along the way. I got picked up by a Polish truch driver who barely spoke English for a little while. He pointed to the radio and said "Polish techno" and we sat there and listened to Polish techno for half an hour. It was fun though. Then on the completely opposite side of the spectrum, I got picked up by a CEO of some German company in a BMW M5 (expensive car). He took the car up to 250km/h to show me that the Autobahn can be exciting.

There's a strong CS community here in Heidelberg so I've spent a lot of time hanging out with them as well as my host, Clarissa's, friends. It's kinda like Lisbon where we've been drinking in the streets except in Heidelberg it's so expensive to drink that only people with careers are out. Which is too bad. And bad for the budget.

Last year I had a bunch of German couchsurfers come and stayed with me (5 of them arrived in a van). I got to meet up again with one of them, Uli, who's studying in Heidelberg. Hopefully I'll get to another one, Frank, tomorrow as well.

I've been wanting to find a music festival to go to for a while and I finally decided on one in Belgium called Rock Werchter. It's in the beginning of July and costs €165 (about 230). Which is expensive. But it's 4 days long and has a great line-up. You can see the site HERE . It should be fun.

I think I'm going to head back to England for a few weeks to get prepared for the festival and to "save" some Europe travel days. It will be nice to stay in the same place for a few days as well.

I haven't really taken too many pictures but I'll try to remember to take some more. It's hard playing tourist.

Thursday I need to make another 500Kms hitchhiking. Wish me luck.

Posted on June 12.

I found a place in Amsterdam for 2 nights and went up there on Tuesday. My hosts were great and I got to explore around Amsterdam for a couple days which was nice. Hitchhiking there I met two conspiracy theorists who drove me quite a ways (though they refer to themselves as "truthists"). They were pretty cool and tried to convince me that the moon landing and 9/11 were all fabrications. I got driven the last 30KM by a guy who was going to Amsterdam to take his vintage Porsche on a marathon for 5 days. Unfortunately he picked me up in his shiny Volvo rather than his vintage Porsche. Ah well.

Amsterdam has a lot of canals. It has more canals (I'm told) than Venice. Go figure. Amsterdam was tremendously touristy. Usually there is a tourist core to most big cities but Amsterdam was touristy through and through. It was nice though and I got to see some really cool stuff. In Amsterdam, squatting is legal (but there are rules). The house needs to be unoccupied for at least 1 year and you need to APPLY to SQUAT a house. ...?

Anyways, my hosts in Amsterdam were members of an anti-squatting organization. House owners hired the company who in turn found people (in this case my hosts) to stay in the house so that squatters can't live there. When a house is available they'll call you and give you 10 minutes to decide if you want to live there or not. Then you have to move in the next day, sight unseen. And if the owner wants his house back for whatever reason they only need to give you 2 weeks notice that you need to find a new place to live. Cheap rent though.

I went to the British Consulate twice while I was in Amsterdam trying to figure out my visa question. The first time the Consulate was closed (It's open from 8:30-12:30 then from 2:00-3:00). And the second time I was informed that the Consulate will only help British Nationals (my visa means nothing, which I kinda figured) and the visa office requires an appointment with a 5 week waiting list.

So I gave up and found a computer and sent off half a dozen emails to various offices trying to find the answer. So we'll see. On the plus side I had a nice walk through a huge park trying to find the Consulate. That, on the other hand, was quite nice.

Today is my last night in the Netherlands because tomorrow I've decided to press on to Germany. I met an American couchsurfer in Paris who lives in Heidelberg, Germany so I think I'll go see her first then perhaps head up towards Berlin.

We'll see.

//Edit

I forgot to mention this part. Feel free to ignore this if you like, it's about the Dutch education system and it's a bit of a rant.

The Dutch are very liberal about a lot of things (drugs, alcohol, prostitution, hitchhiking, etc) so this strikes me as weird.

At the end of Primary school in Holland you take a series of tests. Based on the results of these tests (and the recommendation of your teacher) you're put in 1 of 4 different secondary school curriculums. The lowest curriculum is taught mainly practical skills. Skills that use your hands such as woodwork, metalwork, cooking, etc. Very little math, language and such. As you get to the higher curriculums, you get less practical skills and moe theoretical skills (Maths, etc).

Also the lowest curriculum is 4 years long whereas the highest is 6 years long. To me it seems like the smart kids get the best chances and schooling and the less intelligent kids don't even get the chance to better themselves and are stuck in a labour job. Also vice-versa if there is a smart kid who really likes doing woodwork he isn't able to. To make matters worse, each curriculum has 4 "profiles" which is the set of classes you take. You have the option to take a few electives (like in Canada) but nowhere near the flexibility that you get in Canada. You choices are things like "Economy" (lots of math), "Culture" (lots of history) and things like that. In the end you've only got 4 types of students and very limited diversity. You wouldn't be able to take both Calculus and Cooking.

From what I've been told, the students also don't really associate with students in the other curriculums. They are all segregated to their own curriculum and they move through their classes together. Also the better teachers, naturally, teach the higher levels and the poorer teachers teach the lower levels so not only do the lower levels get a more basic education but they get a poorer one as well.

And now for the kicker, SIXTY PERCENT of Dutch children take the lowest level of education. Only 10% take the highest level.

I'm sure someone smarter than me designed the system so it must make sense but honestly looking at it from the outside it seems like a really fascist, segregationalist and stupid system.

Anyone have any ideas?

New pictures are up HERE.