My year in Europe

I still have to write about Turkey and Croatia.. but here is a map of all the places i have been. The little numbers on the dots are how my photos i have on the web of those places.

If you want the interactive full zoom in and see the photo map go here

www.flickr.com/chrisvsworld/map

Peace out and its great to be home with all my friends and family.

The Acelerators

Hey People

Went to a gig last night in London and caught up with a lot of the London pop punkers for the last time. The accelerators are from Rotterdam and good friends with The Apers. They were really good so we bought out there merch stand and are heading to Brighton tonight to see them again.

Here is a photo with (starting from left)Me, Tinks, Ox accelerator, Daz Griswalds, Georgina, Seb Zatopek.
We are taking off to to Croatia on Friday and I cant wait.
Peace out.

Good Bye To London Pop Punkers

Saw the Griswalds and Punch puppet in the city last night probably for the last time in England. I say in England because I have decided that they are coming to Australia with Zatopeks. They dont know this yet... Anyways it was really cool show and the pub got really packed from some skin head band that finished up early over the road. After their show ended they pilled in to this gig and a fight broke out. They closed the bar for a bit but Tinks held her ground and got me a beer. Hell yeah !!!! Well if the Girswalds, Punch puppet or Zatopeks ever read this thanks for everything and being so nice to me and Tinks. Daz i owe you some money for the t-shirt.. ill try to get it to Steve..

Jansen out

Going For a Skate

Have shipped everything home now.. so i will be without my xbox for the next couple of weeks.. :'( Ohh well Croatia and Turkey here we come. ohh yeah. Went for a skate the other day and ran into this sick as skater.... could do massive flip tricks...


Going to a Griswalds show tonight..

Take it easy Jansen out

Leave England Behind

Hey All
Nothing has really happened to me lately just been working and trying to earn some coin to travel over summer. Its sad really but England life has really boiled down to every day type stuff. Going to work coming home getting up and going back to work again. Having a beer on the weekend and then going back to work on Monday. This weekend we are going to see the Griswalds our friends band which should be really cool. (pop punk 100%) We only have a few more weekends left before we start doing our travel in Turkey and Croatia. To say that I'm looking forward to this would be a massive understatement. Ohh yeah this weekend I think I will go and watch the start of the tour De France which starts of in London. I will probably be kicking myself in a few months for not wanting to get back to London when I'm really board back in Australia, but for now I'm sick of bumping into people just trying to walk down the street.
When you first get to London you find yourself dogging people and walking all over the place. You walk down the street and you do about 10km extra just trying to get out of peoples way. Within a month or so you get the London attitude and you would knock down a granny if she got in your way and then give her a dirty look as she lay on the ground holding her knee. You end up feeling claustrophobic and just want some space.

Anyways enough winging I'm starting to sound like a pom... ha ha ha. Any ways when I get back to Australia I'm going to see the last Mach Pelican show in Australia. Cant wait and I want to see as many as my friends there as possible. So get your ass to the tote in Collingwood on the 25 of august I think.

Anyways Im out
see ya later all.

Cool Photography Compertition

Red Bull Photography Competition
Above is a link to a photography competition. Being a red bull sponsored competition its associated with extreme sports. Anyways have a look because there are some unique photos.
Take it easy
Jansen out

Amsterdam

So I thought I better write something about Amsterdam before I forget what I did there. I have just had some holidays from work last week and for a long time me and Tinks were really not sure what we wanted to do. In the end on the Sunday we booked some flights on the net and headed of to Amsterdam. I was hoping to meet up with some relatives at the time as well but it seems they were in Istanbul at the time. World travel is getting really easy nowadays.
So we booked a hostel. They were quite expensive in Amsterdam but we managed to get a room right in the middle of the famous red light district. If you don't know a lot about Amsterdam they have a pretty relaxed attitude to prostitution and drugs. The red light district is an area where lots of women stand in windows the size of a door with red lights and UV lights shinning on them. If you liked the look of one she could simply open the door do some quick negotiation on the price and you could go on in. So looking out the window of our room you could see quite a few prostitutes dancing in the window trying to entice people to use there service. It was really quite strange and different it was all out in the open, no back doors or secretive things. I'm told that prostitution is legal in Holland and they have laws regulating it. I read somewhere they even have a loosely nit union called the red thread. Coffee Shops are every where in Amsterdam Red light district. They do sell coffee I think, but in addition to this they also sell marijuana and mushrooms. It was very strange people would be sitting out the front of a coffee shop smoking a joint or out of a pipe. Some places you could buy space cakes which is marijuana mixed in with a muffin. I'm not sure its actually legal to smoke weed but I think that police just turn a blind eye to it. A few years back I think that the major of Amsterdam cleaned it up a bit and shut down a heap of the doggy coffee shop and stopped all of them selling alcohol. This does not stop you buying some weed and taking it to the pub next door and smoking it while you have a beer. No one seemed to care really. Along with the prostitutes and drugs there is quite a few sex shops and even some sex museums. We had a look at one of the sex museums... it was quite funny. I guess i should also mention the visit to the Heineken experiance, if you end up going to Amsterdam and want to go to the Heineken museum.. I would suggest a visit to a coffee shop before you head in. I did not myself but I'm sure it would be a whole lot more funny.

Anyway we did a fair bit of just wandering around in Amsterdam. The canals are really beautiful and the main mode of transport seems to be the bike. We went on a bit of a day trip on one of the days we were there out to see a little bit of country side in Holland. Saw a few windmills and how cheese and clogs are made. The land is very flat in Holland and quite a large percentage is bellow sea level. One of the primary tasks of the windmills in Holland was to pump water off the land and re claim it from lakes and the sea. Dutch saying "God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands". We took a ferry ride across a really big lake that used to be part of the sea until the dutch put a huge dike in during the 1920 and early 1930's. When they put the dike in, the water became fresh because it no longer had access to the sea. This meant that a lot of the towns that we visited used to rely on fishing now rely on tourism. Here you can see a satellite image of the dike. The dike is called the Afsluitdijk dam. I thought it sounded like a bit of an environmental disaster. So in our two days we managed to sea bit of the dutch country side a bit of Amsterdam and I hope to go back one day to finally see the relatives. Im not sure I will get a chance this trip but we will see how we go.

Jansen out.

Rome To Paris To Amsterdam In a Post

So it has been a while since I wrote anything on this blog.. no one complains... well since I last wrote on this thing I have been to Amsterdam Paris and I still need to write about Rome. Its a shame that I have left it so long because I really cant remember all that much about Rome. Or is that because I just got back from Amsterdam today?... who knows .. anyways I will do my best. Ok..

We were pretty tied coming to Rome because the night before in Naples we stayed at a hostel. There was this one person in the hostel room that snored all night long. I remember at one stage kicking the desk trying to wake him up but he just stopped for 2 seconds and then kept on going. Now when I say he snored I don't think this does full justice to the sound this guy was making. There was not way I could make the sound as loud as this guy whist awake and fully aware of what I was doing, yet he somehow made this noise as a result of breathing while he was asleep!!!! Many swear words were said and threats that were never followed though with in the morning. It was probably a good thing that the guy got up and left while me and Tinks were getting out 2 hours sleep that night. Me and tinks were reduced to a laughing mess by the time we got to Rome the next day on the train. But we soldered on, first up in Rome we hit the coliseum. It was really impressive and we went inside. It was ok going inside but if you were short on cash I would probably not worry about it. The most impressive views were from the outside. The hostel in Rome was ok. I remember the blankets being itchy but we did not have snorers in our room so it was all good. We spent two nights in rome. Vatican City was probably the most impressive thing I have ever seen in the way of art. The line at the Vatican was reticules going for probably two kilometres or more. We saw this and said maybe we will come back tomorrow and get here early. We went just round the corner to St Peters and went up to the top and took some photos with the pushy nana radar on high alert. The pushy nana alert was the alert that you gave about every two minutes when you encounter a pushy nana tourist most likely from somewhere in Europe. Needless to say that there were plenty of non Europeans, locals and young people that were plenty pushy as well. I'm really starting to hate tourists. It pisses me off sometimes that I'm one of them. Anyway the top of St Peters gave a nice view and the basilica itself inside was amazing. St Peters statue that many people make a pilgrimage to touch the foot of was there. If you wana read about the Vatican click here. The next day we did what we said we would do and hit Vatican city. Tinks was not keen and the line was still shit but i was determined we got there before opening time and when it did open the line moved quite fast. So if you are going to Rome don't not visit the Vatican because of the line just know its going to happen and deal with it. It really made you stand there gob smacked by the detail and beauty of it all. I wonder the painters felt when the finished the job. Michelangelo’s frescos in the Sistine Chapel was probably the most impressive but there was plenty more around the rest of the Vatican that could rival this. I guess this is just the famous one. The rest of the time in Rome we spent wondering the streets and eating more Pizza. As if we had not had enough yet!!.From Rome we flew back to London and back to Work.

I think it was only a week later that we went to Paris via the euro-star. If you are going from London to Paris its a really good way to avoid airports. If you book a few months in advance as well it can be really cheap. Paris was the prettiest big city I have seen in Europe. Having just done Rome and a bit traveled out we spent a lot of time in Paris just sitting in parks and eating. Wandering around and seeing the sites such as the Eiffel tower and Arc De Triomphe. We got a really good private room (no dam snoring) for pretty cheap close to the arc De Triomphe. We hit the Louvre but after seeing Vatican Museum I don't think it was as impressive as it could have been. I really liked some of the bigger Italian paintings but I think sometimes that a lot of this art is wasted on me. Maybe ill appreciate it a lot more when I’m older. The Mona Lisa was funny, it was quite small and had an amazing amount of tourists around it. Some paintings you loose alot of the punch if you just look at pictures of them but the Mona Lisa did not look much different to me. I did like some of Da Vinci's other stuff though. Other highlights were sitting and drinking in the park next to the effiel tower. Taking a cheesy boat ride down the River Seine. Watching the light show at night from the top of the Arc De Triomphe and just drinking lots as always. The weather held out for most of the trip so we were lucky. Amsterdam, I think that ill have tell you about next time because I cant be bothered writing about it.

Peace out
Jansen

Lets Try to get in Trouble :P

The AACS (Advanced Access Content System) have issues a number of letters telling web sites to take down the following hex number..

02 E9 18 02 9D F4 E3 5A D8 61 56 C8 6A B6 88 CC

This number allows skilled programmers to create software to watch HD-DVD movies.(without paying money). I wonder if I can get issued with a Cease and disist letter.. .i wonder if they will bother considering how few people look at my site. In an interesting move they have also issued a letter to Google for even linking to sites with the number on it.
Link to more info

Hmm interesting... :D
Jansen out

Italy

Hey all coming to you live from London is your favourite traveling midget. A few weeks back me and Kerry went to Italy for a week and I thought I will fill you all in even though you don’t really care all that much.

Me and Kerry flew in to Venice and caught the bus onto the island. We had our packs on our backs as we wandered through the small lanes of Venice. There are no cars or roads in Venice and public transport is a network of ferries and the odd gondola crossing the canal. This is one way you can get your fix of gondola for quite cheap. I think it was 50 cents. ($1 Australian). Although it only lasts for 2 minutes. The much more expensive private gondola around the canals are around 60 Euro.($120 Australian). For me and Kerry the public no1 ferry that goes down the grand canal was quite enough. The grand canal is the main canal that runs through the centre of Venice and a trip down it offers some of the best views. There are amazing buildings all the way along with front/back doors opening onto the canal itself. You would want to watch your step or you could get very wet. We spent most of our two days just wandering the streets and getting lost. Getting lost in Venice is quite easy. Take a look at the map and you will understand what I mean. Getting lost did not matter though because the cool thing about Venice is the real beauty is in the back streets where you would go if you were lost. We did the big sights as well including the Rialto and St Marks Square. We did not hit any of the church’s as I was saving this for Roma. After a few days in Venice roaming streets wandering and taking photos and laughing at squashed flower watches we jumped on a first class train to Napels. It was funny the train ended up costing us more than our flights from London.

Naples is in the south of Italy about 2 hours south of Rome. We stayed at Giovanni’s hostel which was great. Giovanni cooked us some authentic Italian food and was the nicest hostel manager I have ever met. He showed us the no go areas of Naples and the top spots to see. The next day we went to Pompeii to see what people lived like 2000 years ago in ancient Rome. Pompeii was a town that is amazingly preserved after around 2000 years ago Mt Vesuvius (volcano) erupted and covered the whole town in ash killing quite a few of the occupants. Today you can still see the plaster casts of the bodies and almost the expression on their faces. The whole city is preserved from great temples to a normal house and quite a few paintings and even rent adds. Later that day after walking around Pompeii we jumped on the train down to Sorrento (not on port Philip bay) and sat drinking Peroni(Italian beer) looking at the cliffs and fishing boats.

Day 5 We hopped a ferry to an island called Capri. We got of the ferry and had an amazing trip on a bus with some of the best views I have every seen, then found ourselves hiking up quite a large mountain. We were lost ….. again. We stayed on the cheaper (and nicer) part of the island called Anicapri. The mountain view from our hotel was great. We spent the afternoon sun baking and swimming (Jumping off rocks not a beach to be seen) in some of the clearest and bluest water I have ever seen.

Day 6 in Italy was spent catching small buses around the island. I don’t know how they do but they manage to fit a bus and a car on a road big enough for a motor bike and a mini. We had to check out this blue grotto thing. We arrived and it looked promising, we got on a boat and three minutes later we were 9 euros each poorer and it was all over. The last time I said this was at the statue park in Hungry….. but don’t go to the blue grotto. Go to Capri by all means it was one of the best things we did in Italy, but the blue grotto was a rip.

Any ways I think I need a rest from typing.. ill tell you about Rome and Paris ( the weekend after) in another post.

Peace out Jansen