Monday 17 January 2011

'The lightning Storm' - An entry from my inter-railing diary


Sunday 1st August

I write this from a cafe in St. Anton, Austria, cos Jeremy skis here and suggested it as a jolly jaunt; to which we agreed. 

On arrival we spoke to the hot blonde woman at the tourist office who advised us not to go up the mountain as it was illegal and dangerous. She had nice tits. We dropped off our bags and headed up. 
Up
It took like 4 hours to get to the top - along the way we filled up our bottles with freezing mountain-stream water which was probably about 90% elk piss, and sophia farted in sams face and then laughed for about 30 minutes. What a classy lady. 


Eventually, after an arduous trudge, and me getting shocked by a deceptive electric fence and not realising until my hand smelled like a barbecue, we found an amazing camping spot on a flat piece of land with a 180 degree view; I've never seen such an great view in my whole life. 
Took loads of crappy photos. 

sittin' rock


We watched sunset from 'atop the sittin' rock' and it got pretty cold and pretty dark pretty quickly.


Sophia went mad at me for shouting 'FUCK YOU NATURE' at the mountain and said it would bring 'bad karma'. 
Lol. Moron...

....


We all woke up at around 1am to the loudest thunder in history. It was raining really heavily and there was lightning about every 15 seconds. Alex and Sophia were screaming and crying as if they had just dropped their hair products down the toilet. I made about 500 crappy puns to calm the mood/mask the fact that I had just crapped in my pants. I also screamed at Allah to 'do his worst' but the superstitious bunch did not appreciate my humour at this time. 

Eventually the rain and thunder stopped and Sam's heart started. 

...

At 2am we woke up again and this time the storm was even more 'in tents'. There was a HUGE wind. Sam had farted.

We grabbbed the walls of the tent cos they were flappin' around all crazy-like and I was sure it was about to tear. If it had torn we would have been absolutely fahooked. We were also pretty scared about actually getting struck by the lightning itself and going up in flames: to distract ourselves we counted how many seconds there was between the lightning-flash and the sound of thunder and I had to explain about 500 times why 5 seconds = 1 mile. This didn't help to calm us down (cos it was 3 seconds away). 

Sam thought it would be a great idea to hold his penknife in his pocket: that way, if the tent got struck by lightning, he planned to 'cut his way out'. Pretty st00pid idea if you ask me, since he was now holding the only metal object for about 100 miles. In a lightning storm.

Sam also did his 'goat which yells like a man' impression which was absolutely hilarious.

Jeremy got really scared, did a small pee pee his pants and then claimed that 'the tent leaked all over me bruv allow this'.
How unfortunate that it leaked all over his crotch. From inside his pants. And was yellow. And smelled like piss. And was piss. 

The sound of thunder was incredible - it echoed all the way through the valley so we could literally hear it go from left to right. Eventually the storm passed and we went to sleep. 




We woke up and looked outside but it was really foggy. The fog moved way faster than we could run (and with superior endurance). Me and Jeremy ran a few hundred yards up the mountain to touch the snow, which was cool. 


At about 8am we were in the tent and heard a guy say 'HALLOH?' from outside - it was an Austrian farmer who owned loads of cows on the mountain. He was almost too friendly - wearing a massive coat and he had a walking stick which I was immensely jealous of. He had 2 'Australian Sheepdogs' which were SO cute and after a brief chat all three of them bounded off merrily up an almost sheer rockface, which gave us some (misguided) confidence in our own climbing ability. 

Eventually we got back to the town after a long-ass trek through hail and rain. We got dry and changed and then had a massive meal - spagetti bolognese, a frankfurter with this amazing mustard (which sam thought was 'yellow sauce' and then got genuinely grumpy for not realising it was mustard) half of sam's carbonara, most of sophia's spagetti and some of alex's soup. 

And that's all I have to say about that. 




Friday 14 January 2011

Europe by Rail (3) - Apeman lost in Venice / Italy in pictures

 - Milan - Bologne - Parma - Vezano - Forte Dei Marmy - Pisa -  Florence - Lake Garda - Venice -
Jeremy passes on in Piazza Del Duomo 
Milan is incredible - but to summarise: beautiful city, didn't like the people, got drunk and climbed the monuments, had a fight with the hostel owner because he turned off the orange juice machine. Here are some photos:



Forte Dei Marmy: We travelled several hundred miles for the sole purpose of taking a photo in a place called 'Forte Dei Marmy' and despite missing trains, eating a shitty meal and spending a day in a dilapidated ghost town....we all agreed it was worth it:
Forte Dei 'Marmy'
'Spending up to 11 hours on a train on a diet of McDonalds milkshakes and granola bars will lead to extreme flatulence in males and aggressive response in females' - this warning should be written on the back of every inter-rail ticket.

Farting on Sophia's face (somewhere in Italy)


Friday 30th July
Venice
St. Mark's Square


Being the apoid-yahoo that he is, Jeremy gave his phone and wallet to Sophia to look after, and then got lost in the main square. We looked for him for a few minutes. Alex and Sophia discussed the many ways he could die, Sam ranted about how irresponsible he was and I looked for a nice fish restaurant, which I found. It was delicious.




St. Mark's Basilica

 On our way back to the hostel at around midnight, Sophia saw a short old woman in a red coat and started, quite literally, screaming with genuine terror and sprinting in the opposite direction. Having always been secretly terrified of Venice because of that movie 'Don't Look Now', and being a massive pussy by nature, I instinctively screamed twice as loud and followed her.





Gondolas in Venice

6 hours after we lost him, we found Jeremy at the hostel. Expecting some inspiring stories of introspective adventure, I was disappointed to hear the most exciting thing that happened was that he bought a plastic bag from a street vendor for 1 cent.






Photos from Florence and Lake Garda:


Scene from 'Don't look Now' - SPOILER - (but now you see what I mean)

Next we travelled into the austrian alps....