Statues are not my friend.

Day 4 - 6

Prague, Vienna, Budapest

Statues are a great way to see what historical figures would look like covered in bird shit. Pigeons have no sense of history.

Australians don't really get off on statues, I can't think of more than three statues in Sydney. I guess convicts were more concerned with staying alive than building things praising mother England. Beaches are more attractive to look at anyway. But as central Europe is nowhere near the beach (i checked my map) it's littered with statues. Actually, i don't think my beach/statue theory is holding much water. I'll stop.

Anyway, point I was trying to make was that Prague, Vienna and Budapest have a lot of statues. Wow, talk about a long winded way to make a boring point.

So I spent the remaining day in rainy Prague, stumbling around clenching my arms and cursing that i left my jacket at the campsite. The Czechs found this very amusing, they pointed and laughed at a wet, grumpy Australian. Maybe i just don't get Central European humor. How is someone being wet funny? Maybe my fly was undone? Or that i just look funny and my friends and family have been too kind to tell me.

We left rainy Prague and drove a few hours into Austria. I did my introduction to the rest of the group on the bus microphone ("Hi, my name is Andrew, and i like holding hands, long walks on the beach..."), and we had a contest to see who could tell the worst joke. I lost. I should have told a different joke than "What's long, brown and sticky?"

We arrived in Vienna, and i spent the afternoon wandering the streets. My prior knowledge of Vienna was confined to it being the birthplace of Mozart, and the setting of the 1995 romance film 'Before Sunrise". In the film a young Ethan Hawke randomly meets french student Julie Delpy and they spend the next 12 hours walking the streets of Vienna talking and connecting. It's a terribly romantic film, but unlike Ethan, i didn't have a beautiful foreign stranger to walk the streets with - I had pigeon shit encrusted statues. They would pop up at every turn. I've nothing against statues. They have historical value and can be good to look at, but please, you can go overboard. Maybe the residents of Vienna should create a man made beach instead.

I met up with the other tour members at the only Aussie pub in Vienna. Ignoring the fact that i'd travelled across the world to get away from my culture, I proceeded to get horribly drunk on Australian beer.

On our tour is a 21 year old Irishman, he is incredibly funny and incredibly horny. After a few beers he appointed himself "Group wing man" and introduced (or forced) himself onto every female Austrian at the bar. Seeing that i was content to just sit there and binge drink, he introduced (forced) me onto a group of girls. He said that I was famous in Australia, as i was a former child star on the Australian soap Neighbours, I was a good friend of Steve Irwin, and I have a pet Koala named Blinky. His lies somehow worked as they all simultaneously expressed curiosity. But i couldn't be asked to keep up the lies... Which is a shame.

Girls think lying guys are hot, especially the drunk ones.

After the bar a certain 21 year old Irishman decided that it was time to go to a strip club. (Geez, there is a theme developing here.) I was sitting down minding my own business, watching some bad choreography (and careful not to take any happy snaps), when a girl named Martina came down and sat next to me. She started to make conversation, Ie "What are you doing in Vienna? Wow your belt makes you look sexy (???)"" In my limited history i freeze up like an Austrian statue when strippers make conversation with me. So to signify that i had no intention of taking her up on her offer, and out of boredom of watching bad dancing, I used a universal icebreaker - trivia.

I said " What two countries start with A but don't end with A? "Instantly her face lighted up and she said.... "Afghanistan and Azerbaijan". Impressed with her speed i replied with " Who was the only US president to wear a Nazi uniform? After a brief thought she shouted "Ronald Regan". This continued for several more questions before her boss came over.

Seeing that i was taking away his business, he barked at her in German and she timidly stood up and started conversation with the next customer - an middle aged, overweight Welsh tourist (who instantly had his fat left arm wrapped around her shoulders).

Admittedly, I thought the best part of the whole club was sharing trivia with one of it's employees.

Today we crossed over into Hungary and i have spent the afternoon wandering around Budapest. It's very picturesque and yes, it has some statues. Apparently, the thing to do is go to a health spa. They're supposed to be really cheap and the big Hungarian guys that rub you down are supposed to be fantastic masseusers (sounds a bit homo-erotic to me.)

So we (all the guys) had dinner and went to the premier spa in the city. It was near the tourist area and was located in a prestigious hotel. We got there at 5:45pm to realize that it closed at 6:00pm. The decidedly dodgy doorman told us that his "friend" knew a good spa in another area of town and would take us there for a good price. Instantly a taxi turned up and he went over and opened it's door and beckoned us in.

My spidey sense was tingling We had been warned of safely in some parts of the city. I declined. Half of the group dived into the taxi (including a certain Irishman) and i walked off to find an Internet cafe.

I don't know. If i got in the taxi, the best scenario would be that i would have a great massage. The worst scenario would have me being driven to a housing estate and mugged by some locals. Thinking about it, although my shoulders are tight from sitting on the bus, i think they look ok without any stab wounds. But that's just me.

Oh, by the way i hate, hate, hate camping. Did i mention i hate camping? Oh, i said that in the previous sentence. I will bore people to tears with my problem in another blog. But when i die (hopefully not from a massage related death) please don't bury me in a tent. Even as a joke.

PS:

Q. What's the capital of New Hampshire?
A. I hate camping. (that's my new answer for everything.)

Czech it out! I hate alarm clocks.

I hate alarm clocks.

They annoyingly wake you up (yes, i know that's what they're supposed to do) and they put the rooster out of work.

Actually hate is a strong word, what i meant to say is that I hate alarm clocks when they don't go off. The alarm clock i'm referring to didn't go off because... cough... (hushed voice) I didn't set it properly. Yes, i know it's my fault. I admit it. I can handle the truth. I'm sure all you alarm clock lovers will point that out. It's just that this alarm clock failure had huge consequences.

It was my last night in London. The bus was due to leave at 7:30am the next morning. I was going to get there at 6:30 am just to be safe. After having a wonderful meal with a best mate's parents in Hoxton Square I decided to go home. I was staying with my cousin in Allgate and as I was arriving he was leaving to have a night out in Fulham. He said I was welcome to come.

A mature man would say "no thank you i have a 10,000 mile bus ride tomorrow. I really should sleep now as those damn coach seats are uncomfortable."

The immature boy Andrew Marriott said "Oh yeah! It's my last night in London! I mean I can always sleep on the bus."

I proceeded to have a great night out with my cousin. The night included a club filled with beautiful people and expensive drinks and my cousin being (innocently) headbutted on the street and then having a policeman tell him that the headbutter wants to press charges (it was all ok, but i learned that when you drunkenly speak to cops, your hands should ALWAYS be in your pockets). The night also had the obligatory kebab.

By the time i got home it was 4:30am, and being drunk and tired I figured that my bags were already packed so a short nap wouldn't hurt. So i set my alarm and went to sleep -I woke up at 10:00am.

I ran down to the bus departure location in the hope that the 37 passengers would be diligently waiting for a drunken Australian idiot. They weren't. They were already on the ferry to France.

I frantically rang Ozbus only to find out that i wouldn't be able to catch them until the following evening when the bus arrived in Prague. Defeated, I booked a (sl) Easyjet out of Gatwick and then moaped around my cousin's flat cursing my alarm clock.

The next day I flew into Prague about six hours ahead of the bus. I wandered around the city listening to Joy Division, comprehending that i knew nothing about the Czech Republic except that they made Pilsner and they were the only country in Europe with 13 letters in it's name.

I stumbled upon a football match featuring the top Czech team Sparta Prague. I paid my 150 Koruna and decided to sit with the club's passionate supporters. The match was entertaining but I was more interested in trying to ape their Czech chants. In the end i could only join in their sole English chant - the imaginative "Lets go Sprata".

That night met up with the rest of the Ozbus group-it's an interesting cross section of tourists. There is the 19 year old schooleavers right up to the 70 year old Welsh couple. They are all nice.

We all went out as a group and ended up at a bar/restaurant/club/strip club (those Czechs sure are functional). Not being a strip club regular (I just don't find the thought of 50 men sharing a communal erection over a badly dancing girl that arousing), I attempted to take a photo of a fellow ozbuser drinking Pilsner (totally innocent. Honest). I had taken my camera out of my case, when a fellow traveller frantically told me to put it away. Good thing, because the bouncer/neanderthal/stripper's boyfriend was about the launch me out the exit. Note to self: there are no Kodak moments in strip clubs.

Today was overcast and I saw a few tourist attractions populated by an army of Japanese and Italian tourist pensioners. As a result of the weather i have holed up in an Internet cafe and did something i swore i would never do - write a novel of a blog describing my actions, instead of enjoying my holiday.

That's it- I'm going to be proactive. I'm going to do more in my holiday!

Starting tomorrow I'll be getting up early.

Let me just set my alarm.

Introducing my blog.

So here i am.

I'm sitting in an exorbitantly overpriced Internet cafe in overcast Prague starting this blog. I've been a bit hesitant about starting this blog but with encouragment by some great friends, i've decided to start this.

I find blogs a bit unappealing. Maybe sometimes they can be a me, me, me exercise (so enough about me, what do you think of me? Honest, make some comments!) or they can be deadly boring. But i will go into this thinking that, interesting or not, i am only writing for myself as a diary of my future travels - the billions other internet users can just eavesdrop.

Oh, by the way i'm announcing that I have poor grammer. Get it? I spelt grammar wrong. Hilarious.... Is this thing on? Tough crowd. Hey I thought I wasn't writing this for others. I'm smirking at my own jokes. wow I'm the funniest guy i have ever met. (insert sarcasm.)

Anyway, so I'm starting this blog to document my overland journey from London to Sydney on the Ozbus (www.ozbus.com). Basically the bus leaves London, catches a ferry to France, drives to Malaysia, catches another ferry to East Timor, then another to Darwin, and then onto Sydney.

For the last two years i've been working in advertising in New York, selling people things they don't need, and i've decided to go back to school in Sydney to hopefully one day be a slimy lawyer. I would love to stay in NYC but i can't afford the tuition. So i have decided to take this bus as buffer from my life in New York to my life in Sydney.

I imagine i would be one boring man in Sydney if i went straight home as i would be constantly talking about New York. I would end up having no friends and even my pet basset hound Chelsea would tire of hearing (for the 14th time) about that time i woke up at Coney Island.

So hopefully i'll have some amazing adventures on my way home, which will help in getting over New York. I will still be boring, but at least Chelsea will hear about tales of Iran, and Laos, rather than just that damn Coney Island story.

I have also sworn that i will not spend my whole holiday writing a travel blog that no one reads. So hopefully it will be interesting stuff. If i start commenting about how the Internet is faster in southern Laos as opposed to the north, please kill me!

So here goes my blog...

So stay tuned.