Kebab

Whilst some of you have been running multinational ventures, studying, rewriting HR policies, or slaying fire breathing dragons, I have been trying to wash KEBAB out of my jeans.

This was no ordinary Kebab stain. This has sent hairly legged Bosnian women screaming from thier laundries. It has kept Maytag engineers in a state of confusion. It was a kebab stain of mass destruction. Stop looking in Iraq George W. Visit the little shop in an arcade in Belgrade. After three washes it has nearly vanished from my jeans and the garlic odour dissipated. At least my jeans have had a wash and now fit me better.

When not washing Kebab Ive been getting on the wrong bus (fortunatley to realise at the last minute and get on the right one). Would have been rather dissapointing to end up where I had just come from and not go to where I intended. (Why change the predetermined path of my already chaotic life now, I hear some of you ask). It was not a blonde moment on my behalf. (And I have had many) The bus driver had pulled into the wrong bus-booth-thing.

I spent 3 days in Belgrade and from there got into Zagreb for two nights before arriving in Sarajevo - what an amazaing place. Although the pension I was meant to stay in had the address of a derelict building (read "destroyed by bombing in war"). Fortunatley the suspicious looking guy who followed me for a while was actually the owner and was waiting in the coffee shop opposite to take me to his "other pension".

In Sarajevo - Buildings are still riddled with bullet holes and the whole place is still recovering. Currenty in Mostar which is just as incredible. Staying in a pension here on one of the rivers. They have only recently reopened the "old Bridge" Stari Most and it makes a spectacular sight.

I attempted to climb one of the local mountains here for a decent panoramic view but had to turn back due to the "MINE" and Skull and Crossbone signs around the place. From here onto Dubrovnik and Split and the ferry to Ancona before in arriving in Milan around 7/9.

Training In Romania

I got incredibly drunk with Richard Wagner on the train from Budapest to Brasov. He wasn't the actor or the composer but a Romania local who was employed to do something very well paid and seemingly illegal by a chinese man who had to live in Berlin so the Romanians couldn't find him.

In Brasov I stayed in an apartment with 2 finns, 2 swedes and a big hairy SPaniard who looked like Robert Di Niro.

One day Robert Di-Niro guy and the others met up with two italian girls (who were always late, last or lost) and visited a castle. Our driver looked like Gene Hackman (or was it Dr. Phil). On the train to Belgrade I sat opposite a guy who bore an uncanny resemblance to Richard Attenborough.

Brasov in Romania was nice enough and I spent 4 days in the area before coming to Belgrade. I got in trouble on the train and was shouted at by a large female Romanian train conductor who had obviously ingested a little too much testosterone.

I was only going through a chain locked door because I thought it was the way to the bar carriage. After she chased me back to my cabin I realised that this train HAS no bar. A fourteen hour trip with no alcohol to compensate for Richard Wagner and the 12 hour trip with too much alcohol.

I have one decent pair of jeans that fit me well for a week (or so) of wearing and then start indicating thier need for a wash by growing a size or two and becoming loose. I knew they needed a wash the other day when they fell off me (while i was eating an ice cream) in the middle of Belgrades main shopping strip.

Will leave Belgrade tomorrow and head for Zagreb with the intention of heading down to Split and on to Dubrovnik where I should have time to visit Sarajevo and then head across the adriatic to Italy.

Bags of news....

Lucky for us, our African Safari included around 6 hours a day of walking. Thats quite a lot.

This was good, as it put us in good practice for arriving in Budapest, where we arrived rather late at night and got into a taxi which took us to the wrong hotel on the right Island. Unfortunatley it was now 1AM and the right hotel was on the wrong side of the island to where we were. The other good news was that the island road was closed so we weren,t going to be going there in a taxi. 1AM in the morning is a great time for a 2.5KM Walk.

It was also great news (in the case of the long walk home) that British Airways had LOST our luggage. (Not sure how they lost julies case - our plane flew from cairo with a list) - Otherwise we would have been walking with that too. Our luggage enjoyed its extra two days in Heathrow and met up with us later.

Speaking of luggage - when we arrived in Cairo and the little (literally) man offered to help Julie with her luggage, the first thing he asked when he tried to lift it was "What do you have in here? An Obelisk?"

As sure as death and taxes, Schumacher wins and Minardi doesnt. I don,t actually know the end placings (and can,t find the apostrophe on this keyboard) but the race was great. We sat between a group of immigrant Latvian potato farmers from the northern Hungarian town of ZOBGLAT (Too small to be on the map) who had arrived in thier 1940,s flatbed truck for the day, and who had obviously never seen women before. It didn,t take them long to start to grope everything in sight, until the group of Drunk Germans arrived, one of which had a vision problem which resulted in his eyes staring at the chests of every woman from 14 to 90 within a 50 metre radius.

This morning Julie sent herself off to Vienna and this evening I am off to Brassov in Romania to work out where I go next. Will meet up with JR again in Milan for Monza around the 7th September.

Baa Baa Baksheesh.

Egypt is reminiscent of the India in terms of culture and smell. The heat is unnatural. The people welcoming, curious and somewhat forward with foreign women (not that I'm a woman - just speaking from experience). I could have walked away from Egypt with 2 Million Camels and NO Julie, but politley refused.

In Egypt, you drive wherever you want, however you want, as long as you flash your lights and toot your horn a lot.

In Egypt, chaos reigns and efficiency is something that pops its head up when its good and ready. There is a time and a place for everything and everything has a time and place. There is a job for everyone, and if there isn't, someone will make one up. Wether it be the three year old selling boxes of tissues in peak hour Cairo Traffic (18 million people, 20 million cars) or the man who hands out the toilet paper at the airport. Everyone has something to do. And with that - Comes BAKSHEESH! - You pay for every service. The driver, the guide, and the holy ghost (and all his attendants and porters and waiters and shoe shine boys).

But all in all egypt is a fascinating place, we toured the pyramids and got the overnight train to ASWAN and visited temples and islands. We flew into Abu Simbel for 2 hours, and that afternoon boarded our 'four star' cruise boat to sail to Luxor. They got the 'cruise boat' bit right but two of the stars had fallen off in the last 10 years or so. I think the cockroach I saw in our cabin was a little dissapointed that he had company.

In Luxor we visited Karnak and Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings and the temple of Queen Hot Chicken Soup (or something like that). Whatever - she was important and built things.

The two of us had our own personal guide who travelled with us for four days. Yahia was an absolute legend and we were both a little sad when he left. The place wouldn't have been the same without travelling with someone so knowledgeable about the history.

Another 8 hour stopover in London today and out to Budapest tonight for the F1 race this weekend (Am I HAPPY about that!!). More in the next week or so.

A tree giraffe, a rock zebra, and three rabbits.

My apologies.  The email updates are running late and out of timetable order.   But after a rather frenetic week, here I am sitting at Johannesburg Airport BA Lounge waiting for my flight to Cairo via. London.

I have spent the last week living in a tent and trialling out for long distance deodorant adverts.  Since we last met, I managed to touch two continents, two hemispheres and three countries in less than 18 hours.

Following on from Hong Kong, we flew into Jo'burg and had a direct connecting flight to Zimbabwe to see Victoria falls. 

The 21 hours in Vic falls went something like this.  Get off plane, Have shower at airport, Get on another plane, Get off plane, go to hotel, change clothes, run to victoria falls admission booth, avoid gang of thieves selling plastic giraffes, pay admission, run around victoria falls, get wet, take photographs, get wetter, make lots of appreciative noises about how nice the falls are, take photos, dry wet cameras, leave falls, run to hotel through gang of thieves now selling girraffes, raincoats, elephants and plastic llamas, get to hotel, change clothes to get to river boat cruise (leaving in 5 minutes), do river cruise, point at hippo showing us teeth, take photo of elephant, go back to hotel, eat, sleep, get on helicopter to see falls from air, lean out of helicopter window, get in trouble from helicopter pilot, get back to hotel, leave hotel, get on plane.  

Arriving back in Johannesburg, we arrived at our hotel which was sort of in the middle of nowewhere, well, at least if you were standing on a chair to hang out your underwear, you could SEE the middle of nowhere.  We had a 5 hour drive to the Krueger National park with a driver who looked like he needed a good cardiac surgeon.   He also liked overtaking on blind corners at 140KMH.  We did arrive safley. 

We spent the next 5 days camping (quite acceptable amenities even for Julie), waking up at 5.30AM and trekking through bushland looking for animals.  We did hours of walking.  Our guide holds the Guinness World Record for walking from the Cape to Cairo.  I think he may still be going.   In two days of trekking we saw at least three Rabbits.  Fan-bloody-tastic. 

I am going to get T-Shirts printed that say "I came all the way to South Africa to do a safari and all I saw was THREE F*!N Rabbits". 

I did not spot any Aardvarks.

But wait - there's more.  We did see some wildlife.  At one stage we came around a corner in our safari truck and nearly drove into the rear end of a large Elephant.   At one stage I saw a giraffe and had the rest of our crew looking for it before I realised it was a branch of brown leaves in a tree.  One of the other guys spotted a zebra that was actually a rock and Julie spotted a wilderbeast that was actually a Lion.  We did see a lot of animals (elephants, antelope, buffalo, zebra, girraffe, etc, etc.  It was awesome. 

We are now off to Cairo (via London).  More when I can find internet access.

Ric.