It’s been a long while since my prevous post about possibly the most underrated movie of this decade, but a lots happened since then.  Firstly and semi-importantly, HD911 has passed a new milestone (yet again) by getting over the 21,000 page hit count since September of last year when the site was put up.  This number seems to be increasing at a quicker and quicker rate, though I can’t say exponentially as that would be riduculous.  But it does mean that the site has received just over 2,000 hits a month on average since it’s birth, which seems to me like an awful lot, considering the quality of my content.

After all, it’s no Isaac Newton thesis, or Oscar Wilde novel.

On Sunday night we got home from our week long jaunt through Russia, from St Petersburg (4 days), to Novgorod (1 night) and finally to Moscow (3 days).  All I can say is what an amazing country, the food, drink, sites, everything.  The whole week I was there, I don’t think I had one bad meal, which says a lot for a foreign country, especially one which serves pretty much anything in a pancake (pork roast, caviar, salmon, etc) or an omlette (pork steak omlette, mmm).

But it wasn’t without it’s dramas, like me leaving my card in a cash machine on the first day of the holiday.  I can still recall the moment it happened too:

• Walk up to machine, insert card
• Perform transaction, receive cash
• Hear funny beep, assume it means end of transaction
• Put cash in wallet, walk away with ATM still beeping.

TopDecks Tours - Vodka Caviar 2008

Yet another case of the stupidity of me.  But, the holiday went on.  The other biggie was the tour group we with for the week, a Topdeck Tour, called Vodka Caviar 2008.  The tour itself was fine, with ample time to go off and do your own thing, whilst still seeing an awful lot of the tourist attractions and each city.  But the group itself pretty much consisted completely of 30 post high school age Aussie people, or at least some older people who acted like they were this age.  Honestly, the whole trip was like a soap opera, with sex, bitching, crying, and the horribly annoying Australian habit of groups of friends at the complete exclusion of others, something which I haven’t noticed since leaving the home land.  And thats a good thing.

The Amazing Moscow Underground

The reason we chose to go on a tour instead of battling it on our own was purely due to the fear and perceived danger in Evil Russia.   Looking back, this was a silly point of view and apart from few things its no worse, than anywhere else we’ve been so far like Paris, or Prague, and I’d consider our weekend in Brussels last year a lot more intimidating than anything we saw in Russia.  A few things that you need to do when you’re over there though:

• Always carry a passport with your travel Visa, as police can request this at any time, and you’ll (apparently) be locked up without it.
• Whilst being questioned by Police, never hand over passports of wallets, as these apparently have a habit of going missing (according to guide books, police corruption is an apparent worry)
• Before arriving, make sure you’re travel insurance is up to date and active, given the visa/passport situation it’d be a hell of a country/authority to deal with without outside help.
• Keep yours wits about you, and common sense, common sense, common sense.

We weren’t actually questioned at all on our time in the country, but the police/army/guards/etc were quite intimidating, as they were pretty much everywhere on the streets in the city, though this was a slight comfort as well.  I’ve never been anywhere yet in my travels where there were so many uniformed officials everywhere.

The Church of Spilled Blood, St Petersburg

I found the key with Russia was definitely to keep an open mind, and take pretty much anything anyone else has said about the country with a grain of salt.  Friends/people I’d talked to before the trip had warned me that St Petersburg was dodgy (whilst Moscow was nice), and vice versa, and the whole country was terribly expensive and everything is a complete rip off.  In fact, our tour guide seemed to do whatever he could to diss the country with warnings of muggings, cons, bad water, bad food, dodgy cops, expensive travel.  Though I guess thats his job, to make sure nobody gets hurt or loses anything on his tour.

Anyway, I’d definitely recommend Russia, it was a fun packed week.

Россия, здесь мы приезжаем! (Russia, Here we come!)

In just less than 12 weeks, I’ll be drinking Vodka (and eating Caviar apparently), in a Russian tour group, over the course of 7 days from St. Petersburg, through Novgorod and finally to Moscow.  I’m sure it’ll be great, and I’ve been checking the weather for Moscow recently, and they’ve been enjoying 21º Celsius temperatures, which may even be warm enough for shorts.  But we’ll see.  One thing I’ve learnt about the world (in my vast travels), is that the brisk 15-18º (almost sweater weather) in Australia is perfectly fine for shorts and a T-shirt in the UK.  Going by this logic, I’m going to stock up on thongs (no, not flip-flops), as I might just enjoy it.

When in Russia, I guess!

The tour we’re going on is the Vodka Caviar 2008 tour run by Top Deck Tours, which seems to be jam packed with included food, outings and theatre/circus tickets, though it’d definitely want to be for the cost.  But, all in all, it looks to be great fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing parts of the former Soviet machine.

We’ll be travelling around in a “modern air-conditioned bus”, and the group usually consists of about 20 people (of which 16 I’m expecting to be Brits).  I’m hoping for a fun piss-up, but I hope its not like all these Contiki Tours I’ve heard about friends doing over the years, I think I’m getting too old (hell, I am 25 now). Soft, I know!

The last thing we had to do in preparation for the trip was get the Visa organised, which as always was an annoying process (the two visa applications and postage cost (just over £40) almost £150, but amazingly enough, the website told me we’d have the passports back on the 20th of June, what do you know, they turned up on Friday night.  Perfect timing.  A little too perfect perhaps.

Shannon looks around suspiciously…..Шпионы, они всегда наблюдают

Similar, except mines got a hologram (how very 2008)

There’s a few things I’ve really wanted to do since moving to the UK, and visiting Scotland and seeing snow were a couple of them. I was lucky enough to be able to see both on the weekend as we flew to Glasgow Prestwick airport and drove to Edinburgh to spend friday and saturday night.

OMG, Snow!

Before Friday morning, the most snow I’d seen in my life was summer sludge in the mountains in Canada when I was 12 years old, so this was awesome. After I got over this monumentous event, we quickly got on our way to Edinburgh, with a couple of sneaky detours to check out the snow covered landscape.

Note to self, “When driving in snowy, icy conditions the car (quite obviously) does not stop, or handle as well as it would on a normal dry road, its more like driving a boat, ‘Oh, you want to go that way, waaaaiiit a second’, and so on”

Edinburgh is a small-ish city (Yes, even by Perth standards) , of around 400,000 people, even though I’ve been told this balloons out to over 800,000 during festival time in August. I didn’t hear this until we were about to leave, but was shocked by this, as walking down the main street on Friday afternoon (admittedly it was peak knock off time), was possibly worse than walking down Picadilly in London in the same time period, in regards to pedestrian congestion anyway. What was also interesting, was that the way we approached the city was from the south, saw the first sign alerting us to the fact we were approaching Edinburgh City Centre (at this time we were still in snow covered farmland), and within about a mile we’d gone over a hill and were suddenly smack back in the city centre. I found this odd, as I’m used to the usual suburban sprawl for kilometres and kilometres in directions from the CBD. We did notice, however, that leaving the city in the other direction on Sunday there was a much larger distance to the cities edge, so basically its just a strange shape.

The really striking thing about Edinburgh though, is the amazing amount of things you can do within walking distance from the centre. The entire city is overlooked by the Edinburgh Castle, and there’s at least two or three other palaces/castles in the immediate area, as well a host of cathedrals, churchs, museums, galleries, etc all within minutes of each other.

The view of the castle from the Street just outside the Hotel

Looking back toward the hotel from the street below the castle

On the second day we went straight to Edinburgh Castle in the morning, the castle itself is absolutely amazing, perched so high above the city. The rooms and apartments are nothing like the English castles I’ve seen or Versailles in France, as they were very basic, but the rest was definitely worth seeing, and the Audio Guide is packed full of useful tidbits and stories about the history of the castle and how it survived so many seiges by the English over several centuries.

Awesome, isn’t it?

I’d highly recommending seeing this fine example of a city if your in Scotland, or the UK, its small enough to do most things in a few days, its got a whole lot of history, and a whole lot of character, and appeared to have a good night life with a feel good attitude toward getting horrendously pissed. Enjoy!

A few facts (should be much longer and more interesting, but this is me):

• Haggis is especially tasty, I’m just annoyed I didn’t get to feast on Black pudding again.
• Scottish Beer (Tennants, McEwans, Caledonian, etc) is sold with a number designation in shillings, like McEwans 60/- or McEwans 90/-. This apparently was a the traditional measure of alcohol content by the monetary amount worth of grain that went into each bottle (I hope I explained this right)
• King James VI of Scotland (Mary, Queen of Scots, Son) became King James I of England a year after becoming king of Scotland. This is significant as he was the first King to rule over England, Scotland and Wales. Why they allowed him to take the English throne considering how much the English and Scots were at battle I’ve no idea. I can do history, really I can.
• Edinburgh to Glasgow Prestwick airport is about 60-90 minutes drive away, though surely its just easier in future to fly straight in to the cities airport.

I saw something astounding on the side of the road the other day, something that stopped me dead in my tracks, and even if just for a second made my mouth drop straight open. Parked at the road’s edge just near work on St James Street, a Silver-Grey 1980’s Ford Granada, which while slightly smaller, bears a striking resemblance to my first car, the great cûn, my canary yellow XF Ford Falcon. Actually, it was more like a mix between an XD and an XE, but close enough to still bring a definite tear to my eye. Few moments have I experienced in the last 6 months or so where I was filled with both laughter, surprise and sadness such as this, and for that this momement will be long remembered.

The Ford Granada, similar looking, but far less manly

Why all the fuss over a Falcon clone, one may ask? It’s a sh&^ty Australian family sedan (saloon for those UKey’d), that like the plethora of other large 1980’s vehicles (such as the Kingswood, Monaro, first Commodore’s, Torana and other period Falcons), is destined to rust bucketry and crushing (if this has not happened already). And its long been known for being a taxi, bus, and caravan for a certain Australian minority. But it was my car, and my first one at that, and it had so much history. After being used in an armed robbery and stolen at least 3 or 4 other times, it was responsible for many a fun evening of laid-back, non jaw-dropping fun and utter destruction (mostly of the car itself). Yes, the cûn was a star and shall go down in history as a legend, at least in my eyes.

The Ford XF Falcon

The cûn and I had an understanding, I could treat her like shit, stretch her to her absolute limits and she would never actually stop running on me, apart from the occasional limp. No, she didn’t break down on me constantly (apart from running out of fuel due to faulty fuel gauge), or blow a head gasket, its features just occasionally stopped working as they should or fall off altogether, like the airconditioner, radio, rearview mirror, wing mirror(s), pedals, windows, doors, backseats and other slightly more valuable organs. And there was always the odometer that stuck at 110191km over 5 years before she was rolled out of the driveway destined for the crushing yard. But it just kept on running, and I appreciate that.I’ve always said (about 5 years ago), that when I’m old and rich, I’ll go back and find the last surviving mint XF and buy it to put next to the Bugatti, and while I adamently believe this will never happen as all will probably have been scrapped its nice to keep living the dream.

Here’s an ode, to my first car
You learned and taught me, like a training bra
For you are and forever will be the wonderous cûn
Even though you could seldom muster a tune

You, me and the H man had some great times
Like limping home all broken diffed after dimes
And yes I know, I treated you like shit
But as most who remember know, you were a smashing hit

P.S: The author reserves the right to hide the original nickname for el cûn-o.