Blogs from the Wilderness

It’s supposed to be summer here, but that just means that it’s just hot and wet (as opposed to cold and wet summers in England).

Yep, that’s right, it was raining Christmas day, however in the run up to Christmas there was good weather so I went to the fish market to get some prawns for the BBQ and then when the day came round I fired up the BBQ at home and say outside to watch the rain (at least it kept the mosquitoes away.

Christmas eve was a good day, I went down to darling harbour and watched the fireworks. Sydney doesn’t have the over the top Christmas decorations extravaganza that you get in London where every shop over does the fake snow on the windows, but they do some great light shows and there are plenty of Christmas trees dotted around.

There are several buildings around the centre of Sydney where they have projected to highlight the facade.

First off, meet the cast

Act 1, Scene 1
Enter stage left aerobatic display team

Exit stage right, the sun

The five main characters, head off to the main stage to take in the first couple of bands, after the Bellrays and Nightwish four of the five exit stage left, leaving Dancing Bear on his own.
Fireworks start.

Act 1, Scene 2
Dancing Bear doesn’t enjoy N.E.R.D so wanders off to the dance arena, spends some time at Happy Novi Sad before heading off in search of the others. The five meet up again, briefly, before four head back the house. Dancing Bear remains at the Happy Novi Sad stage before he too exits stage right and back to the house.

Act 2, Scene 1
The party starts in earnest, as the five main characters take in Primal Scream and Soulwax, they all get separated during the soulwax set later four of them meet up at the Explosive stage with only Crazy Horse missing.

The party continues late into the night taking in some Laurent Garnier before the four remaining characters exit stage right and head back to the house. Conversations ensue as to what to do next, Honey Bee, Hidden Dragon and Dancing Bear decide to go to the beach where there may be a party happening. There isn’t, however they stay and drink before exiting stage left.

Act 2, Scene 2
Kornel and Crazy Horse drive everyone up to a popular picknick spot overlooking Novi Sad and makes a barbecue. The day doesn’t quite go as planned as everyone is so tired.

Act 3, Scene 1

Tired from the excursions of the previous two days the five main characters determine to have an early night, they arrive in time to see Gogol Bordello at the main stage and then go to the Explosive stage, Dancing Bear exits stage right to take in some of Juliet and the Licks they aren’t very good so he doesn’t stay long walking towards the Fusion stage he runs into Crazy Horse and Kornel and the three wander around to Vojvodina to get some authentic serbian music and chat to some authentic serbian women. Later Honey Bee joins them.

Act 3, Scene 2

The five meet up again at the main stage in order to check out Manu Chao, so does everyone else in the festival. The five again get split up before accidently meeting up again at the back of main stage. Four of the five exit stage right and go home, Crazy Horse stays for a couple of hours before he also exits stage right.

Act 4, Scene 1

The Hive followed by Ministry and the Sex Pistols are on the main stage, the five stay mostly together only Dancing Bear wanders off to do his own thing checking out random different stages before they all meet up again at the dance arena.

They take it through to dawn on monday morning.

Finally they leave at 6 EXIT stage right to catch whatever transport will take them home.

After our excursions in Belgrade we went onto Novi Sad for the hedonism of the EXIT festival. Originally we had thought to camp at EXIT however the girls had thrown their toys out of the pram and told us that we should get out of the 35 degree heat and into an air conditioned apartment. In hindsight I think they were just about right.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, before EXIT there was a day or two around Novi Sad and of course we had to meet the hosts for our apartment, Alex is a glass worker who had spent time living in South Africa before settling in Novi Sad. He was there to greet us when we arrived at his home with a few bottles of beer and a bottle of the local spirit (which we had already enjoyed copiously in Belgrade).

That night we stayed local and ate in a local restaurant which turned out to be very good, even though we didn’t know what we were getting. The next day was all about Novi Sad and we went into the centre to check it out and meet up with Kornel, a friend of Mark’s who was to be our guide and companion for at least some of the time.

First off Kornel took us to one of the best bars in Novi Sad, a place where you could also hire jet skis although they were all unavailable when we got there so we had to make our own entertainment.

So after another, reasonably, quiet night on the town the next day was all about EXIT.

Belgrade is a city of contradictions. It has a rich history but there aren’t many buildings more than 200 years old. The city has been rebuilt approximately 40 times by the different people who invaded this part of the world.

Mostly the city is concrete blocks that are falling into disrepair; the public buildings on the other hand look like they have been recently renovated, probably to enhance the city’s attractiveness to tourists.

There main roads are wide boulevards and yet if you venture off them then you can discover tiny squares hidden in the middle of buildings, little hidden café’s litter the city in these squares.

The Serbian people though are incredibly friendly, almost to a man everyone I have met has been extremely helpful and friendly none more so than the owner of the hostel we stayed in, ‘the three black cats’ Mladen was the perfect host and we felt more like welcome friends than paying guests.

The first night we spent wandering around the castle, a massive rambling fortress that seems to have been added to by every conquering army, and sat in a café on top of one of the battlements to watch the sunset over the Danube.

There is an island in the middle of the Sava River and the government built up the land at each end of the island to create a long narrow lake where people can safely swim. After spending the day at the beach we headed back to celebrate Craig’s 30th birthday, in the Hostel we were staying there were another group of people who were celebrating two more birthdays on the same day, so Bianca and Eva created a happy birthday sign and bought a cake. We then went out to a boat run by gypsies.

On the final morning we took ourselves off to the House of Flowers to see Tito’s grave (Tito was one of the few communist leaders to say no to Stalin), which was suprising devoid of tourists. Built around the house that the grave is in they have built a museum showcasing all the gifts to Tito from other heads of state.

On the 1st March 2008, four intrepid men travelled to the wilds of the Pirin mountains to discover what Bansko had to offer.

These are the pictures I took, you can see more here.

you can see my videos here

On 11th March 2006, Jack and myself set off to Bulgaria to sample their hospitality and, more importantly, the quality of the snow.

We arrived at about midnight, and as soon as we had checked in we went in search of something to eat. Naturally everything had just closed. So we ended up begging the waiter in the hotel restaurant to cook us anything. He did and came back with some very nice, if slightly cold, food. He also gave us a potted history of Bulgaria.

Once we had had our fill, of history and food it came time to pay. Naturally the tills had been cashed up and we had no cash, the waiter just said, “it’s no problem, you pay me tomorrow.” We finally got round to paying him on Wednesday.

The next day we were down at the ski hire place early and spent all morning queuing to get our gear, we finally got up on the slopes about midday. There was loads of snow, in fact it didn’t stop snowing for the first two days.

Check Out The Bansko Website

I skied all week with my dog on my back, my ski instructor christened him Rosko.

My ski instructor, Alex, was a freestyle skier, and wanted to do jumps all the time. So we spent a lof of time on one particular run that had all the best jumps on it.

One day I decided to take Jack up to the top of the mountain and ski all the way down, only there was a lot of low cloud that day and we got hopelessly lost and skied off piste down the mountain, the snow was sometimes up to our waist’s. It took us about an hour and a half to get back to the gondola to take us down to Bansko and the last half an hour was along a snow covered road.

The picture above was taken from the top of the mountain, when the clouds cleared a little on wednesday, before that it had been really difficult skiing. We had these amazing kebabs were served flaming at one of the restaurants we visited (so good, we went twice).

On Wednesday we did an hours snowboarding, just to try it out, Jack enjoyed it more than me, I spent too much time on my backside. It was quite good fun though.

I also did the slalom course, in what I thought was a good time of 34 seconds, I went back to the top and asked the guy what a good time was and he said 22 seconds. So I’ve got some improvement to do yet.

Jack’s quote of the holiday, “Avoid large Italian women when coming off chair lifts cos they’re a pain, in the arse (and the knees)!”

In the picture underneath is my ski group, (well those that decided to come anyway) quite frequently there were only 3 or 4 people, there were supposed to be 7. So there was me, Alex our ski instructor and Jeremy.