GISHWHES, year four

‘kay my dudes, I am still stuck in this blistering hellscape (until next week, whereupon I shall escape to the slightly less blistering hellscape of North Carolina for a bit!), but since this is a travel blog, I’m putting out some travel feelers here.

So, I do this ridiculous scavenger hunt every year — GISHWHES, or the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen — I have been doing it with the same team, which some changes in roster, since 2014, aka That Time I Got a Tattoo of The Pope for Fourteen Total Strangers on the Internet.

Which leads to some awkward conversations, as I’m atheist, but I do like the guy.

Since then, these assholes have become an important part of my life, and an important factor in my travels, between a place to crash in NYC, cats to sit in Seattle, a trip to Vancouver in which I may never have laughed that hard ever, also more cats in Northern Ireland and a guide — and most importantly, people all the fuck over who I think will be my friends forever.

This year, thanks to a combination of things, I am pretty much useless — paralytic depression, in a place I hate, with little to no artistic/technical skills, no confidence, and no photographer on hand doesn’t really work well with this thing. But one thing I do have is connections in some pretty far-flung places.

SOOOO, basically, do I know anyone — or do you know anyone — in any one of these places, for some simple and silly fun? I’m looking for someone in Grenada, Malta, the Maldives, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Tuvalu, Nauro, Monaco, or Vatican City. And also the Gereja Ayam, the abandoned chicken church in Magelang, Indonesia.

These just involve “forced perspective photo of something very small that makes that object look huge in front of a famous public landmark or historical site in that country” in any one of the first group of places, and doing something “fitting” at the Gereja Ayam, examples given like a game of duck-duck-goose, or “pondering the question of the chicken or the egg” — or, hell, just holding a rubber chicken.

There are also location-based things in Zadar, Croatia or San Francisco; London; Foshan, China; Duisberg, Germany; Ghent, Belgium; Budapest; Cat Island in Japan; or Prague — but these ones all involve a fair amount of costumes/teamwork/artistry or just plain balls/confidence/lack of shame, they’re a substantially bigger task than the others. If you are or know a super-ballsy creative type there, hell yeah — but the other items above are pretty straightforward.

If you’ve been following this shitshow of a blog for a while, you might remember some of the very classy snapshots of my life during this time of year (and you can read about 2015 here; I don’t think I blogged 2014 or 2016

So yeah. This is the last year this thing is going to be happening, it seems, so if you are in any of those or know someone who might be willing, let me know. ❤

yorkshire // york, scarborough, moors, a walrus

I’m pretty sure my desire to visit Yorkshire is like 90% based on my love for The Secret Garden as a kid. And an adult.

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun–which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eyes.

Well, maybe 50% The Secret Garden and 50% James Herriot’s Dog Stories.

(And I find something in the fact that when paging through my copy of The Secret Garden — originally a Christmas gift to my brother in 1989 — I found a collection of dried dusty flower petals still pressed between the pages from lord knows what decade.)

There’s also something inexplicably romantic about walled cities. It just makes it sound so old — which, of course, York is.

Mostly, as usual, I just kinda wandered the city streets, through parks and gardens and castles, the names of which I quickly forget. And walls, in this case.

I did, at least, get to the National Railway Museum, which was very cool — especially the cars from various eras and places you could walk through. It wasn’t quite as expansive as the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento — which I think is among the many blog posts I fully intended to post and just… didn’t — but still super fun. And given my last couple of years, I feel an obligation to visit railway museums whenever I can.

I wanted to take a day trip, instead of spending my Yorkshire itch-scratching solely in York, so I decided to take the train out to Scarborough, then a bus up to Whitby, and back to York in the NYMR steam train through the moors. Which… sort of happened. Mostly.

I did go to Scarborough, which had unsettling elements of alt-dimension Daytona Beach to it, kind of both bleaker and much, much cooler. This was still, like, very early June, which is not exactly beach weather on the North Sea, but damn, people were trying. Also at this point I still had no sneakers — I think? — in retrospect, I think I did not get new shoes until Inverness — so I was walking around in my very cute but very cheap boots from Croatia, which gets old when the city is up and down hills and also there’s a mountain (not really, but a somewhat bigger hill) and also also your ankles are kinda grotesquely mangled at the best of times.

So I went to Whitby, but did not really spend any time there aside from hobbling to the library to get my shitphone a bit of juice and figure out train things, which I did not follow through on. The train would have been like £20, and did not go straight to York so plus bus fare/headache, versus a bus that cost half as much, straight to town, and followed basically the same route. Not great for pictures, and definitely not as charming as a steam train — but also did not have the block-stretching line of middle schoolers waiting to board.

And I finally got some photos of sheep!

Speaking of middle schoolers, this hostel (Safestay York) was an odd one.  Not in a bad way, overall, though the schoolgroups of like eighty 10-13 year old kids with maybe two adults total. I’m fully aware that I’m already in the get-off-my-lawn demographic, as far as hostels go, and in general am not remotely fazed by the drunk 19 year olds partying ’til dawn unless they puke near me, but the shrieks of kids and, like, kicking of walls was… jarring.

But it was a cool place — probably the most gorgeous hostel I stayed in, with the possible exception of Plovdiv, in an old Georgian house from the mid-18th century, and plaques describing the history of each room.

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However, within its storied walls also lurked these, uh, decorations.

Which are unsettling enough, but let me tell you, when you’re exhausted enough, and in an old historical house with odd decorations anyway, and you don’t really register what you’re looking for a couple of hours — that unprepared realization is a level of what-the-fuckery that I may never have experienced before or since.

(I mean, growing up in Florida, I’m sure I have, but it’s up there.)

Anyway then I hopped on yet another train and headed up to Inverness, which is really the only sort of vague ancestral heritage I think I have, like, period, in my general Northern European mongrel blood, and waved goodbye to Yorkshire.

Somewhere back in [indistinct noises], when I was still in [more indistinct noises], someone mentioned the Hay Festival in Wales. And so I idly looked it up and immediately was like holy shit, Eddie Izzard! And then holy HOLY shit, Neil Gaiman! With Stephen Fry and Chris Riddell! Fuck me sideways.

The Neil/Stephen/Chris event was only like $15, so despite having no place to stay — and literally everywhere near Hay-on-Wye sold out — I bought a ticket, like, immediately. I hemmed and hawed over Eddie a bit more, since it was more like $40, but eventually, you know, fuck it.

And then weeks later realized oh shit I should probably actually find a place to stay.

I think Eddie Izzard was on like a Thursday and Neil et al the following Monday, so there was some leeway in actually spending the weekend somewhere. Thought about Bristol or Gloucester, but eventually decided on Cardiff as there was a fairly easy/inexpensive train up to Hereford and then a shuttle bus between Hereford and Hay — and also because there were actually still rooms in Cardiff. And I’d never been.

Also on the way to Eddie Izzard, the train broke down for like three hours — thankfully I’d allowed for waaaay more than that leeway getting there for the first time — and now I am friends with a young Welsh politician and we periodically email about, like, ants and cockroaches, and just generally had a good time talking. I love train people.

The Festival was great, though I opted not stick around to get my beloved Neil Gaiman-signed journal double-signed, because (a) I had a migraine and (b) was also racing to catch the shuttle to catch the train to get back to Cardiff and did not feel like waiting in line for hours to fluster over another tired author.

(I considered it, though.)

And not that conducive to photography, since by this time I was solely reliant on my terrible replacement phone that ran out of juice in like thirty seconds.

But at least I can check “watch Neil Gaiman and Stephen Fry banter while Chris Riddell live-draws them doing so on stage” off my list.

And Cardiff was beautiful in and of itself. I bought a pair of Adidas there, which was pretty exciting. Like, why are my ankles even more achy than usual? — Ohhh, because I don’t own a pair of sneakers anymore because mine probably got blown up in Manchester. Some Romanian dude in the hostel who walked the line between cute and creepy hit on me on the daily, which was equal parts — well, cute and creepy, depending on the day.

Me too, dude. Me too.

Manchester // words, no words

So, on 22 May, I flew into Manchester. This was, you’ll probably note, not a very good day to fly into Manchester. Nor a good day to leave your suitcase in the airport. Not really a good day all around.

I was lazing around the hostel in the evening, drinking and watching American Pie 2 (because it was like the only fucking dvd actually in its case) with a bunch of Aussies and another token American — who, oddly, had also been in DC on 9/11. (He’s like yeah I was in third grade and I’m like oh god I’m old.)

He gets a phone call and goes out into the hall, comes back in, shaken, and is like, uh… guys? So… there was just a major terror attack, like, a mile from here.

(Why is this not the first time I’d been in this situation??)

It was not, like, DC on 9/11 levels of strange and terrible, but still pretty strange and terrible, and the numbness and helplessness vividly threw me back to the feeling of sitting in my college apartment with my roommate watching the news, and listening to the sirens, and thinking well, there is a highly non-zero chance we might die today.

I hope to go back, because Mancunians were some of the nicest people of all the many places I’ve been, and just resilient and seemed to react to the horror of it by being even kinder to folks from elsewhere. And from what I saw of it, Manchester is gorgeous and grey and exactly my kind of city. I did not, however, do a whole lot of exploring and photo-taking in the following day or two I was there.

(Plus I discovered Primark, after awkwardly going up to the hostel person and being like uh so I lost my suitcase and have no clothes anymore please advise. And the fact that Primark is now in Boston is definitely another tick on the move-back-to-Boston-someday checklist.)

Next I went to Wales for about a week, to see Eddie Izzard (!) and then Neil Gaiman (!!!) along with Stephen Fry and Chris Riddell (!!!!!) so hopefully I will have more to say and show about that other than just like… this was a huge thing that happened and I don’t know how to talk about it.

Ah, Copenhagen — kind of the beginning of the end in a way, before I hopped back to the UK. And the last time I was able to call myself a suitcase-owner.

Given that it was, you know, Scandinavia, and my savings were dropping into oh shit oh shit territory, instead of merely alarming, I didn’t stay long or do much.

Or eat, like, at all. I stayed at the Generator Copenhagen hostel, which like, Generators generally have a deservedly good reputation (I think I stayed at one in Venice and Dublin), but the one major irksome downside is they never have kitchens, or even a refrigerator, presumably to funnel people into their onsite restaurant/bar. Which, fair, but rubs me the wrong way. And I was only there two nights, which on top of being as fresh out of fucks to give as I was money, was just kinda like well a slice of bread will do.

I did wander through the Botanical Gardens — because yay, free, and also very cool, and dropped like $12 on a boat tour of the canals. Also cool, but kind of shit pictures, being, you know on a boat.

Which broke down halfway through, which was quite exciting.

I think things and places start to seriously blend together at this point in my wanderings, especially as it’s been two months now, but here, have some pictures.

gothenburg // photodump / my friends are adorable and sweden is beautiful

catch-up // budapest

My introduction to Budapest was kinda not great, in a very uninteresting way that wasn’t really Budapest’s fault. I had a shit time getting to the airport in Kiev, since my terrible cell phone didn’t get reception even with a Ukrainian sim card so I missed my Uber drive and had to frantically get a taxi, for which I way overpaid (I mean, it was still probably only like $10, but just irritating). And when I got to Budapest, I discovered the directions to my hostel were pretty much “get off the subway, turn left, and walk ’til you see us,” but not, like, which subway exit to take, or any cross-streets, etc.

And again, my phone being useless, had no way to even begin to load Google maps.

But desperate exhaustion outweighs shyness, so I stopped a couple of dudes on the street, who turned out to be a lovely Parisian couple visiting family there. Sadly they spoke English much better than I speak French, and I wasn’t really in ooh-let-me-practice headspace. But they looked up the place on one of their phones and found directions, and then walked with me until they could point out exactly where to go.

Travel people are nice.

And despite its shit directions, the hostel — the Flow Hostel — ended being one of my favorites. Budapest is legendary for its party hostels, and like, being a sad older traveler who abuses her liver enough on her own, I wasn’t really looking for that, but also wanted to stay somewhere fun and lively and social. And it was eerily big, with all kinds of weird spaces to hang out or chill (and a massive kitchen), which was neat. Also bed privacy curtains. Love me some privacy curtains.

Anyway, Sunday (I think it was a Sunday), as usual, I just wandered aimlessly for a few hours, along the Danube and through downtown, getting acquainted and taking pictures.

Which, like, going through and editing (and I use the term “editing” loosely, but whatever), holy fuck am I happy to have a phone with a decent camera again, as well as access to an actual camera here (like, basic cheap digicam, but decent). I apologize for the graininess in so many of these.

Also, the Hummus Bar does not fuck around.

Monday was about the same, but I did take the funicular up to the Buda Castle and wandering around up there before walking back down Castle Hill. Not sure if funiculars are so charming just because of the word funicular.

And finally, Tuesday I went to the Szechenyi Baths, which was all kinds of awesome even if I still can’t spell or pronounce it. I dropped more money than I could really afford on a massage, because my back was (and remains) hella borked after throwing it out in Albania, and then lounged in various pools for a couple hours, which I must say is a fairly civilized way to spend an afternoon, even alone.

And then Wednesday morning I finally left continental Europe for the first time in over six months, which was a very sad day.