Wednesday
7:56pm - Fireball Kid gets choked out by Kenny Florian. Depression sets in. Mainlining Keystone Lights eases the pain. Slightly.
11:56pm - I finally realize I have to work the next day, and mainlining Keystone Lights is a dumb idea. This realization doesn't stop me from drinking 3 more before I pass out.
Thursday
6:01am - Fuck you, alarm clock.
6:38am - I wake up on the bus, unsure of how I got there. It takes a few seconds, but I finally remember. For some reason I feel like vocalizing my epiphany, so I say "OHHHH" out loud. Everyone sitting around me looks at me in confusion. This won't be the last time this happens this weekend.
9:45am - Hating life.
11:15am - Talk to Milo, and agree to meet him at the Cambie later in the day. I tell my boss this, and he just says "The Cambie? Oh no."
3:30pm - Arrive. Milo shows up. Chaos reigns.
4:35pm - Lisa shows up, and is shocked at how drunk we are already. She then starts in with her regular Cambie song and dance - "I'm NOT drinking the cheap beer today. I AM NOT. Can I get a vodka soda please?"
4:43pm - Vodka's gone. And she switches to beer. Couldn't see that one coming.
5:15pm - Milo gets up to go to the bathroom, but stops next to the Asian girls at the end of our table and just holds out his fist to them for a fist bump. They don't acknowledge his presence at first, but Milo's nothing if not patient, so he just stands there with his arm out.
5:16pm - He's still doing it. The awkward scale is off the charts. Lisa is laughing so hard so she almost falls off the bench she's sitting on.
5:17pm - Finally, they acknowledge him just so he'll go away. Milo counts this as a victory.
5:46pm - Milo busts my pint glass with his fork. And laughs.
5:47pm - Somehow, we haven't been removed from the pub yet.
7:01pm - We're now at another pub called The Press Box. I have no idea how we got there. But Jeff and Len are there, so it's bound to be entertaining.
7:55pm - They go to the Muse concert, and I go home. Oh yeah, didn't I tell you that they all actually had a PURPOSE for going downtown? And I just came down to stuff beer in my face?
8:15pm - I call an audible to the cabbie and he drops me off at the OT. By myself.
8:30pm - I'm sitting in the corner of the pub, by myself, drinking beer and listening to my ipod. And screaming at the TV every time Luongo lets in another shitty goal. The other 6 people in the pub are all staring at me, and I think they're scared. I'm completely clueless though, so I just yell "DID YOU SEE THAT SHIT??" at them. Everyone looks away immediately.
8:45pm - The waitress politely tells me to shut the fuck up. I figure this is probably the right time to leave.
8:47pm - I decide I'm gonna walk the 3km home, because I'm cool like that. Falling down in a parking lot helps me to change my mind.
8:48pm - I just start waving down random cars for a ride. Shockingly, no one stops.
8:51pm - Even more shockingly, one of the random cars eventually turns out to be a cab, and he stops. I yell "YESSSSSS!" Like I just won the Super Bowl or something.
Friday
1:31pm - The phone wakes me up. I guess I fell asleep fully clothed. Again. At least I took my shoes off this time.
1:32pm - I realize that there are two full vodka sodas on my computer desk. Why two? Why vodka? No idea.
1:33pm - Well, there's no reason for them to go to waste, so...
1:36pm - Hammered again.
1:50pm - Milo calls me and says we're going to Langley. All that rings through my head was Lisa's favourite saying: "Nothing good ever happens when you go to Langley!"
3:30pm - Start at the Waterstone. Milo leaves his headlights on.
4:35pm - On the way to Donald's, we drive by the West Country Inn. I start screaming at Milo that we HAVE to go in there for a beer. He just shakes his head and laughs.
4:45pm - We're drinkin in the West Country! Milo sends everyone he knows in Langley the same text: "Me and Tim were driving by and a hurricane blew us into the West Country! Come on down!"
4:47pm - Milo says to me "Do you think I left my headlights on again? I think I did. Ah, fuck it."
4:51pm - Shaun Vadasz responds to Rob's text with "Hope you guys are enjoying the cigarette butt in the pint special!" Yes, the West Country is a classy, classy establishment.
5:02pm - Donald walks in and says to Rob "Dude, you left your headlights on." I laugh. A lot.
6:45pm - Len, Jeff, Kilby and Mike show up. Business is about to pick up.
7:05pm - York shows up too. It's like the perfect storm of Langley beer drinkers now.
8:23pm - Someone pukes on the carpet near the bathroom.
9:46pm - For some reason, Len and I are sitting at the bar, while York is ordering shots he calls "The York". As soon as I see it I take off running, and make Donald come over and do the shot instead. Yes, I'm a pansy.
10:38pm - Baselines. Len orders a beer, and somehow convinces the waitress that it was his birthday, so she brings him a muff diver shot.
10:41pm - I make a joke about something or other, and Len decides to shake up his bottle of MGD and hose me down with it like it's fucking New Years or something.
10:42pm - He pours the remaining beer all over Milo.
10:45pm - Milo has stewed for 3 minutes now, so it's time to put on his hero pants. He grabs all the whip cream out of the muff diver shot, and gives Len the most epic whip cream pimpslap of all time. If someone was filming this, it would have 2 million hits on youtube by next thursday. It was unbelievably awesome. I swear that every single person in the pub yelled "DAAAAAMN" at the same time.
10:46pm - Len tackles Milo through some tables. Aaaand we've been thrown out of the pub before me and Kilby have even taken a sip of our beers.
11:10pm - The Rendez-Vous. Milo and I walk in, and Len is already playing pool with some guy. And showing him his belly for some reason. Yeah.
11:17pm - We discover that Tracy's in the pub. She immediately offers us a place to stay, because she knows we're retards and we still hadn't figured out where we going to sleep yet.
11:55pm - Lainie tries to hug Donald, and somehow they knock over a bunch of tables. The only table (and beer) remaining standing is mine. This makes me happy.
11:56pm - Milo walks over and says "What the hell happened?" And then stumbles over something and knocks my table (and beer) over. I'm laughing too hard to be unhappy.
11:58pm - There's still some beer left in the pitcher, and Len's sweater is right beside me. I yell out his name and he looks over...and I hold up his sweater and pour the rest of the beer all over it. He just laughs.
Saturday
12:05am - Tracy convinces me to do a shot of Crown Royal and Banana something. I like neither, but Tracy's cool (and she bought it for me) so I did it anyway. I'm easily convinced, I guess.
12:11am - Tracy calls Craig to come get all of us.
12:20am - I start talking to people and forget that it's Craig coming to get us. I get pushed into a car that I somehow thought was a cab, so I'm yelling out the window "TRACY, WHAT'S YOUR ADDRESS? I HAVE TO TELL THE CABBIE WHERE WE'RE GOING!" Craig turns around and says "Dude, I live there, I know where I'm going." I STILL don't clue in and was about to say "Why does a cab driver live with Craig and Tracy?" Luckily I was too busy getting laughed at by everyone to get the chance.
12:31am - Craig, always the generous host, gives me a beer and says to help myself to the rest in the fridge. Ruh roh.
12:40am - Dayton starts telling me and Milo stories. We're in tears laughing pretty much immediately, because he's a funny dude.
12:55am - Vadasz and me start doing shots of whiskey or something. No clue why.
1:33am - There's no beer left in the house fridge, which is very disappointing. I go out to their garage with Tracy while's she's smoking and tell her this. She says "Dude, look behind you." I do just that...and there's a fridge full of beer. I cry tears of joy and turn into a hoarder immediately, filling my pockets with cans. She just laughs at me, because she's cool like that.
3-something am - Nap time.
10:15am - Tracy wakes up and sits and talks with me and Milo. I realize there's a litany of cans in front of me on the table. Weird.
10:22am - Tracy goes to pour out all the half-drank beers. I yell NOOOO and ask her to bring one back. She asks me why I would want to drink a warm, flat beer. I tell her that they didn't exactly taste fruity and delicious before anyway, because they're beers, so warm and flat beer really isn't that much worse than regular beer. She's disgusted with my shitty attempt at logic, but she gives the can back. Milo just laughs at me and says "Timmy, you're gross."
10:25am - Milo asks Tracy why the picture on her wall is so fucked up. She explains to him that it's not a picture, it's a mirror. He doesn't believe her for some reason, so she makes him stand up and look at his own reflection. All he can say is "Oh." And he sits back down. It took precisely 3 minutes for everyone to forget about my little beer episode. Thanks, Milo.
11:15am - We're headed back to the Rendez-Vous for breakfast.
11:47am - I regale the table with my many stories of stupidity and hurting myself, and they seem fairly amused.
11:49am - Someone who shall remain nameless for fear of recrimination (his name rhymes with Ben Deadwards) says "Holy shit, I beat up someone outside last night for not speaking english."
11:50am - After we all stop laughing at the absurdity of that statement, we are told the story. It's even more absurd than the initial statement, but he had a witness and it did really happen. Welcome to Langley.
11:55am - The story is retold to someone else, but certain parts are changed just for fun. The person that was beat up is now Australian, and tried to speak his version of English, but no-name didn't understand what "G'Day, Mate!" meant so he beat the tar out of him.
11:58am - Every time I take a sip of my pint I say "Thanks Milo" and try to cheers him, because I only have 39 cents on me. He thinks I'm kidding. Len doesn't have any money either, so I'm trying to convince him to order pints on Rob's tab too. He's nicer than me apparently (you know, other than tackling him through a table the night before and kicking the shit out of an Australian), so he declines.
12:45pm - The bill comes. I hand it to Milo. He finally realizes that I'm not kidding.
12:49pm - Milo finally stops swearing at me.
1:45pm - Milo and I are sitting at Len's house for some reason. I'm demanding beer from everyone around me, and everyone's ignoring me. Big surprise.
1:52pm - Milo shamelessly hit on a chick that had a moustache at Taco Del Mar. I didn't realize something could be horrifying and hilarious at the same time, but that was.
2:11pm - I make it out of Langley alive. I'm as surprised as you are.
2:31pm - I crawl into my own bed, having been totally defeated by the chaos and insanity of Langley.
2:52pm - Lisa calls me and tells me we're going to the pub. Jesus fuck, it never ends. NEVER!
5:15pm - Our pregnant waitress brings us a jug of beer in Samz...but not Samz. I had no idea there were two Samz pubs. We were at the other one, in Poco.
7:10pm - Juhl shows up. We start making fun of each other .2037 seconds after he sits down.
7:32pm - Aaron and Nicole show up. Aaron immediately starts teasing Lisa about not being able to throw a softball well. Lisa wants to fight back, but she knows it's true so she just takes it.
8:11pm - Aaron sets his phone alarm for 10:50pm, so he won't forget to go to the beer store before it closes. I'm extremely impressed with this thinking ahead stuff.
9:05pm - We give Lisa the nickname "Sure Thing". She's not as impressed with it as me, Mike and Aaron are.
10:08pm - Two random girls just sit down at our table and ask us for beer. One looked like the star of a deleted scene from The Goonies, and the other looked like one of the dudes from the Columbine school shootings. I think you can guess how we responded to their beer request.
10:11pm - The chicks are going from table to table, and we're watching with morbid fascination.
10:25pm - They've finally settled down at the table next to us with 2 guys who are clearly not into it but seem to be too nice to tell them to hit the bricks. One gets up and goes to the bathroom and we all start yelling "RUUUUUN! RUN WHILE YOU CAAAAN!" as he walks by. He thinks it's pretty funny. Goonie and Klebold? Not so much.
10:45pm - Aaron and Lisa head off to the beer store, even before his alarm went off. I told you, he's the man.
10:52pm - Aaron comes back and starts ordering scotch. Game on.
11:55pm - We all head out. Aaron and Nicole live up the street, so we walk/stumble over there while Juhl wisely goes home to his family.
11:57pm - Lisa starts demanding pizza.
Sunday
12:04am - Lisa's still demanding pizza.
12:15am - Aaron decides that me and him should go get pizza for Lisa and Nicole. There are 2 close pizza places, but the cops were in front of one of them and we're gassed, so we chose the other one.
12:23am - Aaron stops two people walking back from the pizza place and tries to buy their pizza off of them so we didn't have to walk any further. I'm laughing so hard that I fall down.
12:28am - I decide that it's probably not a good idea to walk into the pizza place with a Pilsner in my hand, so I leave it on a ledge across the street to grab on the way back.
12:33am - We get to the pizza place, but we're completely useless. The guy behind the counter has to hand Aaron and me the menu, open it up for us, flip it over for us when we weren't reading the right thing, and pick all the ingredients on our pizzas. We just laughed, then went outside to drink the extra beers Aaron had in his pockets. He's like a beer boyscout...always prepared.
12:48am - We get our pizzas from the guy who obviously hates us, and leave. Right next door to the place is a 7/11, and what seemed like a homeless guy rode up on an old-ass bike and went inside.
12:49am - For some reason I say "We need to steal that guy's bike." Aaron agrees immediately.
12:50am - I say "Okay, you go steal the bike, and I'll meet you at the Pilsner". I'm pretty sure no one has ever used that sentence before me...ever.
12:51am - I walk across the street, and Aaron rides by me on the newly stolen 50 year old bike, laughing. I once again fall down from laughter, pizza and all, in the middle of a street. I look back, and the guy's just leering at us through the 7/11 window, not doing anything. Just staring in shock.
12:55am - We're unable to talk to each other because we can't stop laughing.
12:56am - We leave the bike in a bush up the street (and somewhere where the guy could obviously see where it was) and attempted to run away. But we're laughing so hard we're not covering much ground.
1:01am - We've spent the rest of the time walking back to his place alternating between laughing, and trying to find some shred of logic in stealing some dude's bike. Aaron's logic won out: "Did you see that guy? He had to be homeless. He probably stole that thing from somebody else like 20 minutes before we stole it from him."
1:08am - We get back to their place. We're completely unable to tell Nicole and Lisa what happened because we can't stop laughing.
1:12am - We finally manage to tell our story, and now we have two girls with very disappointed looks on their faces standing in front of us. Amazingly, they don't find it as funny as we do. In fact, they think that we're completely retarded. And they're completely right.
1:13am - We counter that logic with "But, we went and got you pizza!"
1:35am - Nicole shows me the spare bedroom and says I can sleep in there, because Lisa's already on the couch. Aaron wasn't having any of that though, so he just dragged her onto the floor. And tried to do a headstand on her. And I stole the couch. Yeah, I have no idea why.
2:02am - Aaron had gone into his room to pass out, but he ended up coming back out and passed out in a chair. Lisa's passed out on the floor. I'm beached on the couch. There are beds all over the place, so why are we all passed out in the living room? Who knows.
8:25am - I wake up, and Lisa's twitching on the floor and making noises. This happens to my dog all the time when he's sleeping, and I'm pretty sure he's just having a nightmare, so I usually just wake him up and he's fine. This clearly looked like the same thing, so I kicked her and woke her up. And said "You were having a nightmare." Her response? "FUCK YOU!".
8:45am - After Nicole got up and me and Lisa were somewhat awake and alert, I tried to explain the dog/nightmare/kicking thing to Lisa in more detail. Her response? "FUCK YOU!".
9:32am - We begin the trek back to the bar where Lisa's car was parked. I reminded her of the the new "Sure Thing" nickname that we gave her. I think you can guess her response.
10:04am - Home. Finally. Never doing this again. Yeah, sure I'm not.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Europe Trip, Part 2 - Riga
So, I didn't get smacked in the head by the angry Latvian. I managed to survive the flight unscathed and as we landed in Riga, I started to get genuinely excited to be there. I like going to the last outpost-type places that everyone says "Where the fuck is that and why are you going there?" when you tell them about it. On my original Europe trip, it was Montenegro. This time, Russia-lite. And as soon as I stepped outside, I had my first taste of Russified Europe. The airport had a huge sign above the door in cyrillic, which I obviously couldn't read. And it was about -13. I wasn't at home anymore, that's for damn sure.
I took the airport shuttle into town and got off at the designated stop, a hotel. Even though I had directions AND A compass, I still got hopelessly lost trying to find my own hotel. I just wandered around in the snow with my bags, going in circles and getting completely disoriented, until I finally just went into the hotel where I got dropped off and asked where my hotel was. The guy walked me outside...and pointed up the street. Oh. There it was. Dammit. I fucking hate my broken sense of direction.
The hotel I asked for directions in was right on the very edge of the old town, and my hotel was inside it. After a few steps, the concrete road turned into what was to become my new nemesis: cobblestone. People, if you've never had the opportunity to walk on cobblestone, be happy. It's fucking shit, and I hope whomever designed it was forced to spend eternity endlessly walking around on cobblestone in the snow until he broke both his legs and died of thirst. Yes, I hate it that much. It's insanely slippery when it's wet or covered in snow, and Riga's old town had a whole lot of wet snow.
I made it exactly 11 paces before I slipped and fell.
The first time. Not even close to the last.
I managed to make it to my hotel by pretending I was walking on ice, and just skidded my way there. It was worth it though - my hotel was pretty fuckin nice. I had a HUGE hotel room with a big flatscreen TV, gigantic bed, and stocked minibar. For the princely sum of 48 dollars Canadian. I like. After dropping my stuff off and having a shower, I was hyped to go exploring. First thing's first though...I had to put 3 socks on one foot because of the hole in the bottom of my shoe. It was kinda wet outside.
The old town is really nice, despite the cobblestone. All the streets are really narrow, with tons of small businesses and hotels covering the majority of the place. There were sidewalks, but they were usually covered with a foot of snow so everyone walked on the street, and just stepped to the side when a car went by. The snowblowers were constantly keeping the streets snow-free, but it was totally at the expense of the people that lived along these roads. Everyone's door had like 2 feet of snow in front of it. It was pretty amusing to see people open their door and flip out, even though I was told that it happens every day. They still flip out every day, like they're gonna wake up and it's magically gonna be different that morning. It's the Soviet way.
For those that keep wondering about the Russian/Soviet comparisons, I'll take a short couple of paragraphs to explain some history. Latvia was a part of the Soviet Union until it broke up in the early 90's, and is still very Russian. The 3 Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) were the most progressive remnants of the broken empire and created ties with the West almost immediately. So much so that they're all members of the EU less than 20 years later.
Once you go there though, you realize that it takes more than a democracy and a Westernized economy to truly adapt into a Western society. They're stuck with a Western/Russian hybrid culture, which is bewildering and amusing at the same time. It has all the modern feel of a first world country, but it's completely lacking in the finer points of first world culture. Like customer service. And happiness. And sobriety. The entire place seems like a gigantic contradiction. But it sure made things interesting.
Anyway, I spent a few hours just walking/sliding around. The old town is small, but it's like a huge maze, with small streets and alleys going in every which direction. And there would invariably be some cool church or building down a dead-end street to check out, so you'd have to backtrack to continue on your way. I loved it, because it was unlike any place I had ever been before. I've been in a few different old walled cities like this in other parts of Europe, but none felt like that. It was awesome.
The funniest moment was some chick dressed to the nines in fur walking by me and not even trying to hide how revolting she thought my taste in clothing was. She gave me the full head-to-toe stare and offered up her best look of disgust as she walked by. Which made me laugh. I know I'm hardly a fashion model, but the fact that she did nothing to hide her distaste was so typical of everything I've heard about Russian women, I couldn't help myself. My laughter made her even more disgusted, which made me laugh even more. I could take a dump on your living room carpet and you wouldn't be able to match the hatred in this chick's eyes. She wanted me, I know it.
Anyway, after a while my biggest problem was that all the snow was getting wedged in the hole in my shoe and made walking pretty uncomfortable. So I decided to grab some lunch and chill in my killer hotel room for a bit. And watch some strange TV. There were only 7 channels in Riga. Eurosport, CNN, and 5 that were either Latvian or Russian (I can't tell the difference). The best one, by far, was the music channel.
I was mesmerized by some Russian girl group...the music was horrible, but the girls were fucking gorgeous. Unfortunately, I couldn't write down the name of the group...because all the descriptions were in cyrillic. Other than a brief experience with it in Montenegro, I had never dealt with another alphabet before. So I spent the next hour watching some crazy, and I do mean CRAZY, Russian/Latvian music videos, and not knowing who any of them were. Except one. DJ Smash.
For some reason, his name was written in the Roman alphabet. And I'm glad it was, because this music video might have been the weirdest/funniest/awesomest/saddest thing I've ever seen. Here, see for yourself. It's nutso. It looks normal until he runs into the ocean about 30 seconds in. Then shit goes sideways. Keep a lookout for the guy in the cat suit singing. And playing the drums. Yeah.
After all that insanity, I headed back out to grab some food. I walked out of my hotel, turned left, and saw a Guinness sign. Sweet. The pub was precisely 21 paces from my hotel door. I sat down in a booth, and was promptly ignored for 10 minutes, despite being right next to the bar and the waitress station. I got up and stood at the bar...and still got ignored. I said "excuse me" to the bartender girl, and she sighed like I had done her the biggest injustice in the world by talking to her. And yelled DA? (yes?) at me. Uh, okay. I asked for a pint, and waited. And waited. Finally, she got around to pulling me a pint, and made it very apparent that I was horribly inconveniencing her by having the gall to ask her to do her job. She wasn't even hot, which made it worse. Obviously this was a one-pint-and-go pub. Eff this bitch.
Luckily, my fortunes changed a few minutes later. A really short but really cute chick walked in and went straight to the waitress station. Then straight to me. This was my new waitress, who's shift had just started, and she was super nice. Spoke really good English, chatted with me about a few different things, and actually acted like she enjoyed her job. I changed my mind quickly, and one-pint-and-go turned into most of an afternoon and an undisclosed number of pints (because I forget the number). I do know that fish n chips and many pints worked out to about 18 bucks Canadian. And the waitress girl said this was probably the most expensive pub in the Old Town. She told me about a bar a few minutes away that was less than half the price of this one. God damn, Latvia's cheap!
My inebriation was telling me that it was a perfect time to go sightseeing. Logic was telling me that it was 6pm and pretty close to dark, but inebriation always trumps logic, so I went looking around some more. I took a bunch of pictures and stuff (in the dark - ???), and just enjoyed sliding around, until I made my way back towards my hotel...and the pub. I had burned off most of my buzz and didn't really have anything else to do since it was dark now, so...I had a few more pints and watched a soccer game. Hey, at least I'm predictable. At around 8:30pm, I was completely done. It had been a long day, so I headed back to the hotel for the night. If it were only that easy.
I had managed to slide around town all day without falling, other than that one time when I first got there. But now it was dark, with no streetlights, and my coordination completely failed me. I walked out, took 3 steps, and slipped and fell on my ass. That wasn't pleasant, because my ass was now soaking wet. I got up, brushed myself off, and skidded another 3 steps or so...then BLAM. Slid right into a stone sticking up, fell straight forward, and sprawled out on the street. I wasn't even past the front window of the pub yet, and I had fallen twice. So now the front of me was all muddy and wet too. I got up again, and looked in the pub window...at the cute waitress, who was staring right back at me with a big look of pity and amusement. Greeeeat. Stupid cobblestone.
I managed to make it back to the hotel unscathed after that, despite one more slip where I almost went down but didn't. Once again, I'd like to point out that than my pub-to-hotel journey was short. It would take you longer to walk to the bathroom and back from where you're sitting and reading this right now. And if you fell down twice on your little trip, you'd get some odd looks. Probably like the one I got from the concierge when I walked into the hotel, dirty and wet. No one said I was elegant or classy, okay?
After all that excitement, I had another shower and laid down in my huge bed to watch some more crazy Russian TV. And the next thing I knew, it was 5am. I must have fallen asleep like 11 seconds after I laid down, and slept for a full 8 hours. That was nuts. I tried to go back to sleep, so I could wake up at a normal time, but noooo...I was wide awake. The music video station wasn't on, so I watched CNN and played on the internet for a while.
Once it started to get light out again, I went for another long ass walk, out of the old town to get some perspective on the city. I walked across a bridge that went over a huge, completely frozen river. There was a walking path the whole 400m or so across the thing. Right beside a bridge. Why the fuck would you walk across a river when there's a BRIDGE right beside you? Weird. The further I ventured out of the Old Town, the more bleak the surroundings became. They certainly weren't stick huts or anything, but there were a lot of places in a pretty bad state of disrepair. It was actually kind of depressing, but it's a fact of life in the post-Soviet Russian states everywhere I guess.
After heading back, I had plenty of time to gather up my stuff and walk up to where the shuttle left for the airport, but it wasn't that much more expensive to take a cab, so I decided to do that. The concierge called one for me, and I waited for about 5 minutes before a car showed up...that didn't look like a taxi. But, a ride's a ride, so I got in. As soon as we started to move, I regretted my decision immediately. The driver, who spoke no English, had a big, open bottle of vodka sitting in his lap. Greeeeat. Could anything be more stereotypically Russian than that? He took a few swigs during the trip, and drove really fucking fast, but we managed to make it there alive. Crisis averted. After security, I headed directly to the bar to get a nerve-calming beer, then headed off to a place I wasn't actually all that excited about seeing (at the time) - Berlin.
Overall, Riga was pretty awesome. Like I said, the culture is so fractured that it's tough to explain with a keyboard. I came across some really hardened, angry people, yet I met just as many who were kind and compassionate. Latvia was the fastest-developing country in Europe until last year, but the adjustment period has been so short that some people just can't keep up. The old guard is fiercely Russian, while the younger generations want to leave that all behind and fully embrace western society. In 10 or 20 years it will be a completely different place, so I'm glad I got to go now, because Latvia's position is truly unique in the world right now. And the women were hot. Angry, but hot.
I took the airport shuttle into town and got off at the designated stop, a hotel. Even though I had directions AND A compass, I still got hopelessly lost trying to find my own hotel. I just wandered around in the snow with my bags, going in circles and getting completely disoriented, until I finally just went into the hotel where I got dropped off and asked where my hotel was. The guy walked me outside...and pointed up the street. Oh. There it was. Dammit. I fucking hate my broken sense of direction.
The hotel I asked for directions in was right on the very edge of the old town, and my hotel was inside it. After a few steps, the concrete road turned into what was to become my new nemesis: cobblestone. People, if you've never had the opportunity to walk on cobblestone, be happy. It's fucking shit, and I hope whomever designed it was forced to spend eternity endlessly walking around on cobblestone in the snow until he broke both his legs and died of thirst. Yes, I hate it that much. It's insanely slippery when it's wet or covered in snow, and Riga's old town had a whole lot of wet snow.
I made it exactly 11 paces before I slipped and fell.
The first time. Not even close to the last.
I managed to make it to my hotel by pretending I was walking on ice, and just skidded my way there. It was worth it though - my hotel was pretty fuckin nice. I had a HUGE hotel room with a big flatscreen TV, gigantic bed, and stocked minibar. For the princely sum of 48 dollars Canadian. I like. After dropping my stuff off and having a shower, I was hyped to go exploring. First thing's first though...I had to put 3 socks on one foot because of the hole in the bottom of my shoe. It was kinda wet outside.
The old town is really nice, despite the cobblestone. All the streets are really narrow, with tons of small businesses and hotels covering the majority of the place. There were sidewalks, but they were usually covered with a foot of snow so everyone walked on the street, and just stepped to the side when a car went by. The snowblowers were constantly keeping the streets snow-free, but it was totally at the expense of the people that lived along these roads. Everyone's door had like 2 feet of snow in front of it. It was pretty amusing to see people open their door and flip out, even though I was told that it happens every day. They still flip out every day, like they're gonna wake up and it's magically gonna be different that morning. It's the Soviet way.
For those that keep wondering about the Russian/Soviet comparisons, I'll take a short couple of paragraphs to explain some history. Latvia was a part of the Soviet Union until it broke up in the early 90's, and is still very Russian. The 3 Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) were the most progressive remnants of the broken empire and created ties with the West almost immediately. So much so that they're all members of the EU less than 20 years later.
Once you go there though, you realize that it takes more than a democracy and a Westernized economy to truly adapt into a Western society. They're stuck with a Western/Russian hybrid culture, which is bewildering and amusing at the same time. It has all the modern feel of a first world country, but it's completely lacking in the finer points of first world culture. Like customer service. And happiness. And sobriety. The entire place seems like a gigantic contradiction. But it sure made things interesting.
Anyway, I spent a few hours just walking/sliding around. The old town is small, but it's like a huge maze, with small streets and alleys going in every which direction. And there would invariably be some cool church or building down a dead-end street to check out, so you'd have to backtrack to continue on your way. I loved it, because it was unlike any place I had ever been before. I've been in a few different old walled cities like this in other parts of Europe, but none felt like that. It was awesome.
The funniest moment was some chick dressed to the nines in fur walking by me and not even trying to hide how revolting she thought my taste in clothing was. She gave me the full head-to-toe stare and offered up her best look of disgust as she walked by. Which made me laugh. I know I'm hardly a fashion model, but the fact that she did nothing to hide her distaste was so typical of everything I've heard about Russian women, I couldn't help myself. My laughter made her even more disgusted, which made me laugh even more. I could take a dump on your living room carpet and you wouldn't be able to match the hatred in this chick's eyes. She wanted me, I know it.
Anyway, after a while my biggest problem was that all the snow was getting wedged in the hole in my shoe and made walking pretty uncomfortable. So I decided to grab some lunch and chill in my killer hotel room for a bit. And watch some strange TV. There were only 7 channels in Riga. Eurosport, CNN, and 5 that were either Latvian or Russian (I can't tell the difference). The best one, by far, was the music channel.
I was mesmerized by some Russian girl group...the music was horrible, but the girls were fucking gorgeous. Unfortunately, I couldn't write down the name of the group...because all the descriptions were in cyrillic. Other than a brief experience with it in Montenegro, I had never dealt with another alphabet before. So I spent the next hour watching some crazy, and I do mean CRAZY, Russian/Latvian music videos, and not knowing who any of them were. Except one. DJ Smash.
For some reason, his name was written in the Roman alphabet. And I'm glad it was, because this music video might have been the weirdest/funniest/awesomest/saddest thing I've ever seen. Here, see for yourself. It's nutso. It looks normal until he runs into the ocean about 30 seconds in. Then shit goes sideways. Keep a lookout for the guy in the cat suit singing. And playing the drums. Yeah.
After all that insanity, I headed back out to grab some food. I walked out of my hotel, turned left, and saw a Guinness sign. Sweet. The pub was precisely 21 paces from my hotel door. I sat down in a booth, and was promptly ignored for 10 minutes, despite being right next to the bar and the waitress station. I got up and stood at the bar...and still got ignored. I said "excuse me" to the bartender girl, and she sighed like I had done her the biggest injustice in the world by talking to her. And yelled DA? (yes?) at me. Uh, okay. I asked for a pint, and waited. And waited. Finally, she got around to pulling me a pint, and made it very apparent that I was horribly inconveniencing her by having the gall to ask her to do her job. She wasn't even hot, which made it worse. Obviously this was a one-pint-and-go pub. Eff this bitch.
Luckily, my fortunes changed a few minutes later. A really short but really cute chick walked in and went straight to the waitress station. Then straight to me. This was my new waitress, who's shift had just started, and she was super nice. Spoke really good English, chatted with me about a few different things, and actually acted like she enjoyed her job. I changed my mind quickly, and one-pint-and-go turned into most of an afternoon and an undisclosed number of pints (because I forget the number). I do know that fish n chips and many pints worked out to about 18 bucks Canadian. And the waitress girl said this was probably the most expensive pub in the Old Town. She told me about a bar a few minutes away that was less than half the price of this one. God damn, Latvia's cheap!
My inebriation was telling me that it was a perfect time to go sightseeing. Logic was telling me that it was 6pm and pretty close to dark, but inebriation always trumps logic, so I went looking around some more. I took a bunch of pictures and stuff (in the dark - ???), and just enjoyed sliding around, until I made my way back towards my hotel...and the pub. I had burned off most of my buzz and didn't really have anything else to do since it was dark now, so...I had a few more pints and watched a soccer game. Hey, at least I'm predictable. At around 8:30pm, I was completely done. It had been a long day, so I headed back to the hotel for the night. If it were only that easy.
I had managed to slide around town all day without falling, other than that one time when I first got there. But now it was dark, with no streetlights, and my coordination completely failed me. I walked out, took 3 steps, and slipped and fell on my ass. That wasn't pleasant, because my ass was now soaking wet. I got up, brushed myself off, and skidded another 3 steps or so...then BLAM. Slid right into a stone sticking up, fell straight forward, and sprawled out on the street. I wasn't even past the front window of the pub yet, and I had fallen twice. So now the front of me was all muddy and wet too. I got up again, and looked in the pub window...at the cute waitress, who was staring right back at me with a big look of pity and amusement. Greeeeat. Stupid cobblestone.
I managed to make it back to the hotel unscathed after that, despite one more slip where I almost went down but didn't. Once again, I'd like to point out that than my pub-to-hotel journey was short. It would take you longer to walk to the bathroom and back from where you're sitting and reading this right now. And if you fell down twice on your little trip, you'd get some odd looks. Probably like the one I got from the concierge when I walked into the hotel, dirty and wet. No one said I was elegant or classy, okay?
After all that excitement, I had another shower and laid down in my huge bed to watch some more crazy Russian TV. And the next thing I knew, it was 5am. I must have fallen asleep like 11 seconds after I laid down, and slept for a full 8 hours. That was nuts. I tried to go back to sleep, so I could wake up at a normal time, but noooo...I was wide awake. The music video station wasn't on, so I watched CNN and played on the internet for a while.
Once it started to get light out again, I went for another long ass walk, out of the old town to get some perspective on the city. I walked across a bridge that went over a huge, completely frozen river. There was a walking path the whole 400m or so across the thing. Right beside a bridge. Why the fuck would you walk across a river when there's a BRIDGE right beside you? Weird. The further I ventured out of the Old Town, the more bleak the surroundings became. They certainly weren't stick huts or anything, but there were a lot of places in a pretty bad state of disrepair. It was actually kind of depressing, but it's a fact of life in the post-Soviet Russian states everywhere I guess.
After heading back, I had plenty of time to gather up my stuff and walk up to where the shuttle left for the airport, but it wasn't that much more expensive to take a cab, so I decided to do that. The concierge called one for me, and I waited for about 5 minutes before a car showed up...that didn't look like a taxi. But, a ride's a ride, so I got in. As soon as we started to move, I regretted my decision immediately. The driver, who spoke no English, had a big, open bottle of vodka sitting in his lap. Greeeeat. Could anything be more stereotypically Russian than that? He took a few swigs during the trip, and drove really fucking fast, but we managed to make it there alive. Crisis averted. After security, I headed directly to the bar to get a nerve-calming beer, then headed off to a place I wasn't actually all that excited about seeing (at the time) - Berlin.
Overall, Riga was pretty awesome. Like I said, the culture is so fractured that it's tough to explain with a keyboard. I came across some really hardened, angry people, yet I met just as many who were kind and compassionate. Latvia was the fastest-developing country in Europe until last year, but the adjustment period has been so short that some people just can't keep up. The old guard is fiercely Russian, while the younger generations want to leave that all behind and fully embrace western society. In 10 or 20 years it will be a completely different place, so I'm glad I got to go now, because Latvia's position is truly unique in the world right now. And the women were hot. Angry, but hot.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Europe Trip, Part 1 - Stockholm
This will become clear quite quickly, but I wrote this shortly after boarding my flight in Oslo to come home (via Iceland).
Let's get this sumbitch started. After two of the most expensive pints in the world in the Oslo airport (14.50 or so) I'm in a writing mood. Yes, that wasn't a typo. 14.50 Canadian. Each. Oslo's all sorts of cool, but it really is the most expensive city in the world. It's not even a race. They're leading by 26 lengths. Price-wise, Norway is Usain Bolt, the rest of the world is white people. When people in Denmark say "You're going to Oslo? It's expensive there!", you know you're gonna be in some trouble. Okay, I think you get it. But that was the end of my trip. Let's go back, back through time...back to the beginning...
I've had to tell this story probably 60 times in the last few months, but I'll tell it again. We've all known the Olympics were coming for a long time. I have nothing against the Olympics at all, they're usually pretty cool. My issue was that I had to try and go about my regular life in a city that was going to have an extra 300,000 people in it for 2 weeks. That didn't sound appealing at all, considering Vancouver's infrastructure can't handle it's current population, much less a whole shitload of new people. So I asked my boss for the 2 weeks off, so I could fuck off to colder pastures. By this, I mean Northern Europe.
I had zero doubts at all that this was the right decision, even as I boarded my flight to Seattle to get the trip underway. I was going on the trip of a lifetime to your regular joe. To me, it's a little less than that because I've been on a few of these already, but it was still pretty fucking cool. After Seattle for a night, I was hitting a shitload of places in 17 days - Stockholm, Riga, Berlin, Budapest, Amsterdam, Brussels, Leeds, Copenhagen, and Oslo. Your average person probably wouldn't enjoy 13 flights in 18 days, but I'm not a normal person. I think you've realized this by now.
***tangent***
It's really hard to concentrate on writing this out when supermodels keep walking by me. I'm on a flight from Norway to Iceland, two of the countries with the highest hot-woman-per-capita ratios in the world. Every time I get halfway through a paragraph, I look up and get mesmerized by the new love of my life, and forget what the hell I was writing about. Then she's gone, and I have to re-focus. For about 45 seconds, until it happens all over again.
In case this wasn't clear, I LOVE SCANDINAVIA.
***tangent over***
And we're back. So, it was game time. My boss drove me to the airport 3.5 hours early (after a stop for a Coors Light tall can, he's cool like that), expecting the airport to be a zoo. Maybe arrivals was, but departures? Not so much. They completely re-did the American departures area, and it's fucking insane now. I had my passport checked ELEVEN times between checking in and getting through security. Unreal. I also got to be one of the guinea pigs on those huge scan-your-bones machines. The lady give me a little smile afterwards, so I think she liked what she saw. Heeeeey.
I'll condense the rest of it. Airport bar. 9.42 beer. Eek, pricey. Canucks game on PPV, but Justin TV saves the day. Tables around me all want to know how I'm watching the game on my computer. I inform them. They love me. A beer is bought for me, for which I'm thankful. Easy flight. My hotel room still has the last person's garbage and breakfast in it, which is a little weird. Oh well. 7/11, Fat Tire, Jack in the Box, happy camper.
Got to the Seattle airport early the next day, had a couple of beers and lunch. The book store had a copy of Blood in the Cage, which entertained me for most of my flight to Iceland. I had a row to myself on both legs of my flight (10 hours total), which was so awesome. Go through the usual Icelandic overkill (re-screened at security, talk to a few pointless people, etc). Customs guy was cool:
"Where are you going?"
"Stockholm"
"I hear they have pretty girls there"
"You have pretty girls here too"
"You've been here before? *flips through passport* "Ahh, you have! Swedish girls are more pretty though"
"If they're better than here, this will be a great trip"
"It WILL be a great trip! Enjoy Europe!"
Why can't customs guys at home be that nice?
So, onto Stockholm. Land, get my bag, and...go to the train. No one even checked my passport. Once you're in the EU boundaries (Iceland isn't a member yet, but is a part of the travel treaty that handles "border crossings"), no one checks your passport anymore. It's a very odd feeling, just breezing through airports like that. The best thing was that as soon as I got off the plane and into the terminal, before I've even seen a person yet, I see a TV...with hockey on it. I already loved Sweden at that point.
The hot girl distractions kicked in as soon as I got down to the airport train. I was standing right beside a train, but thought it was on the wrong track. I just stood there, watching blonde after blonde walk by me...onto the train...not realizing I should have done the same. About 20 seconds after it left, I looked up at the screen...yup, that was going into the city. Nicely done, Tim. 20 minutes later, the next one showed up and I headed into the city.
My hotel was 4 or so blocks from the train station, and it was the most awesome 4 block walk of my life. It's simply astounding how many hot women were walking past me. They were with all guys though, which didn't really make much sense to me until later. I just assumed if they're all hot, they all have boyfriends. As I turn down the pedestrian walkway towards my hotel, a group of girls were standing on the street offering free hugs to everyone. I've seen this before, but these girls were hoooot. Not like the sea donkeys at Harvard offering to smother someone for free. This is me though, it's pretty obvious I was too intimidated to hug a random hot Swedish girl 5 minutes after getting to Stockholm. But I'd be back!
Get to the hotel, and my room is small, as expected. They get about 7 channels, and 3 are showing the Olympics. I was starving, so I went looking for food straight out of the gate. More wandering, more girls, more happy. End up at, of all places, a restaurant/bar called Texas Burgers. Eff off, I immerse myself into new cultures slowly. The food was pricey, maybe 25 bucks for a beer and a beer, but nothing too outrageous. It was on the 3rd level of a mini-mall, so I just sat against the railing and people-watched. It was then that I FINALLY clued into why every girl was out with a guy.
It was valentines day. Duh.
I had a couple more pints at the bar there, and headed back to the hotel for a nap (I had been awake for 24 hours or so at this point). I was buzzing, so the walk back was even more entertaining. It was probably -3, but I didn't feel a thing. I went around the corner to go back to my hotel, and literally bumped into one of the free hug girls. She was looking in the other direction, and we did a pretty good job of startling each other. I was halfway though an apology when she just decided to hug me. Uh, okay. That ruled. I hugged her back, while the one of the other huggers asked where I was from. I told her, and she wanted to hug me too. Sure, cool. After that, I just walked around and hugged the other 4 too. None of them said anything, but it amused me, so I just continued till I was out of huggers. And then realized that was probably a little weird, especially since no one was saying anything. So I just took off, a little embarrassed. No, I'm not exactly a stallion, but we all already knew this.
So, back to the hotel. There was no hope for non-pub beer, since Sweden has strict regulations when it comes to selling alky. Sort of like BC's liquor stores, but no beer stores to supplement that. And they're closed on Sunday. And some of them only sell wine...
Aaaand another hot girl just walked by. Who would have thought a plane would be a bad place to write? What's the world coming to?
Anyway, I ended up doing the one thing I didn't want to do - I fell asleep. For 8 hours. Oops. I had neglected to buy any food in the mean time, so I woke up at 1am on a Sunday night, hungry. Not a good thing. I was in the busiest part of the city though, so something had to be open, right?
Nyet. I walked around forever. Found four 7/11's, all closed. Restaurants, bars...all shut. Finally, FINALLY I found a McDonald's that was open. I walked in, and it was like the music stopped. Everyone in the place turned and stared at me. As I discovered, it's the only place open, so every misfit in Stockholm with nothing else to do at that time of night hung out here. It was quite the crowd. If I thought I was an outsider on the streets...in this place, I was like an asian dude at a country bar. A little weird.
I walked up and ordered my food and got out of there PRONTO. Turns out 2 McChickens are 12 bucks in Stockholm. Great, insult to injury. Thanks, you bastards.
After going back to the hotel and wolfing those down, I...fell back asleep. For another 8 hours. What the hell?
Oh well, at least I was on a regular schedule now (or so I thought). The next day was all about being a dorky tourist. I walked around everywhere, took dorky pictures of architecture, and creepily stared at women. Even the guidebook says that's what you're supposed to do in Stockholm, so it was okay. Stockholm is an archipelago. It basically means the city is on a shitload of islands. It's cool in theory, but islands were bigger than I thought, as was the distance between them, so exploring wasn't easy.
After walking around forever, I had a couple of drinks in a couple of pubs, but nothing really all that inviting. Add a major dose of freezing temperatures to that, and...yeah, I was kinda lame. I scheduled a rest day anyway, so this was it. Went to the systembolaget (liquor store), bought a bunch of different stuff, and chilled at the hotel. I didn't need a fridge in my room to keep the beer cold...I just left them on the windowsill with the window open. I'm versatile like that.
The problem with that was...I fell asleep at 5pm again. Dammit. One good thing did come out of it though, because I woke up at 2am and was able to catch the Canada/Norway game. After that ended, I...slept again. Jetlag's a whore, apparently.
For my last day in Stockholm, I was determined to check out some of the bigger islands that I hadn't got around to yet. They were kinda far away, but I could handle that. I have a strict no public transportation rule when I travel. If I can walk there, I walk there. So, I set out to discover some new islands. I got to the "furthest" one, and walked all around it. It was pretty fucking nice, and there weren't many people there so it was pretty peaceful. There were 2 problems with this though:
1. I stepped on a huge pointy rock and tore a hole in the sole of my shoe. On the 3rd day of my fucking trip. And it was snowy and wet everywhere, so my foot was soaked;
2. I wasn't on the island I intended to go to.
After walking all the way around it and checking out some cool shit, it turns out I wasn't looking at the shit I thought I was. It was all pretty nice, but I felt like a pretty big dumbass when I got around to the other side and saw...my intended destination, another km or so away. Dammit. I'd already walked like 7km, and my foot was fucked, so I bailed and headed back. Laaaame, I know.
I tried a couple other pubs, but there just wasn't a lot goin on. Stockholm is a lot more conservative than I thought it was. And, for all my searching, I couldn't find a store that sold hockey jerseys. AND, I didn't make it to the Eriksson Globe,
because I'm a jackass and didn't want to take the metro.
Overall, Stockholm was really nice and the women are unreal, but it was kinda boring. I found Swedes to be nice people, but not super approachable. They just kind of do their own thing and they come across as kinda serious. And the women intimidated the bejesus outta me. So, I didn't exactly start the trip with a bang. Oooh double entendre!
As sometimes happens with my trips, my favorite part of Sweden actually occurred at the airport when I was leaving. I got there at 6am, and...there was a pub open. A Boston-themed pub, for some odd reason. And there were a few people in there drinking already. Well, I didn't want them to be lonely, so I joined them. The bartender girl was one of the few non-blondes I had seen, but she was stunning. After she ID'd me, she asked me a few questions about Canada (like the usual "Why aren't you at the Olympics?") and I chatted with her for a bit, which half-paying attention to the Russia/Latvia game. This becomes important in a bit.
Eventually, an older Swedish guy sits down beside me and starts talking to me in Swedish. Uhhh...oorky boorky Timmy no speaky. His English sucked, but he was happy to switch to that. He was on his way to the Canary Islands, and we bullshitted until he asked where I was from. Canada, Vancouver, Olympics...blah blah, same line of questioning. But this guy was funny. He called over his entire family, who were waiting at the gate across from us, to "meet the Vancouver guy". So about 12 people come over and I have to introduce myself and get inundated by questions. The hot bartender even gave us free beers, which was very cool. Everything was going fine, until...
"AAAY! *unintelligible nonsense* AAAAAY Rushhhhhin!"
I didn't pay any attention at first, until the bartender said "I think he's talking to you." Before I could even turn around to figure out what was going on, a hand slapped my back. Hard.
"AAAY! Ruuuuhhhh" That was all I understood, but a lot more was said. In a language I didn't understand. This dude was standing behind me, tugging on my jersey. I finally turned around, and this guy isn't sober. I tried to talk to him, but he just interrupted with more babbling. I told him I didn't understand. He started tugging on the front of my jersey this time, and started pointing at the TV. The bartender said "I don't think he likes your shirt". Then another guy comes running over from across the gate towards us both. He got there quickly and tackled his buddy, and explained the situation while holding onto him:
Latvia was playing Russia on TV, and I was wearing...an Alexander Ovechkin jersey. Oops. This guy was clearly unhappy with this, since AO had just scored and it was 3-1 Russia. And he was drunk. And LATVIAN. Like a dumbass, I did just about the worst thing I could have done when the light bulb came on and I figured it out - I started laughing.
Bad idea Tim.
Drunk guy starts SCREAMING now and trying to tear himself away from his friend so he could destroy me. It didn't take me long to stop laughing and to start explaining that I was Canadian. NOT Russian. His friend apologized profusely, while I chose to just stand there, dumbfounded by the whole thing. I showed him my passport to verify my nationality, which probably made no sense to him because there's no maple leaf on it and it's obvious that he can't read English. Finally, his buddy managed to drag him away, still mumbling.
The whole Swedish family stood right there and watched the whole thing, and they all just looked at each other, as confused/amused as I was. It all happened in a matter of 20 seconds or so, but it definitely woke me up. Who needs red bulls when drunk Latvian dudes want to kick your ass at 6:30am for no reason!
I went back to my beer and the Swedish family, and the drunk guys friend came over and offered to buy me a beer, but I told him it was no big deal. "I have a flight to catch anyway", I told him. The bartender chicky says "Where did you say you were flying?" "Riga, why?" A couple of silent seconds tick by. Then...DING. New light bulb. I have to get on the same flight as this fucking dude! How I had ignored that tiny fact up till then is beyond me. Two seconds after that, while I'm absorbing all of this and everyone is quiet, the TV starts blaring. Russia scores! Fuck, that's some timing right there! Everyone just started laughing when that happened, but I didn't. I looked right at drunk guy, and he looked right at me. With hate in his heart. Uh oh. I don't think I've ever put on my hoody faster in my entire life.
After saying my goodbyes to everyone at the bar, I slinked my way over to the gate and sat as far away from drunk guy as I could. Occasionally I glanced over at him, and he was staring at me. Every. Single. Time. Creeeeepy.
Luckily for me, his friend got him on board quickly and they were sitting at the back of the plane, so I didn't come in contact with him again. I sat there for an hour on the plane though, waiting to get slapped in the back of the head or something. Kinda jumpy. I looked back down the aisle once, and there he was, leaning into the aisle, staring at me. What the fuck! This was my introduction to Latvia? Really? What the hell was I getting myself into?
Find out when I get around to writing part 2.
Let's get this sumbitch started. After two of the most expensive pints in the world in the Oslo airport (14.50 or so) I'm in a writing mood. Yes, that wasn't a typo. 14.50 Canadian. Each. Oslo's all sorts of cool, but it really is the most expensive city in the world. It's not even a race. They're leading by 26 lengths. Price-wise, Norway is Usain Bolt, the rest of the world is white people. When people in Denmark say "You're going to Oslo? It's expensive there!", you know you're gonna be in some trouble. Okay, I think you get it. But that was the end of my trip. Let's go back, back through time...back to the beginning...
I've had to tell this story probably 60 times in the last few months, but I'll tell it again. We've all known the Olympics were coming for a long time. I have nothing against the Olympics at all, they're usually pretty cool. My issue was that I had to try and go about my regular life in a city that was going to have an extra 300,000 people in it for 2 weeks. That didn't sound appealing at all, considering Vancouver's infrastructure can't handle it's current population, much less a whole shitload of new people. So I asked my boss for the 2 weeks off, so I could fuck off to colder pastures. By this, I mean Northern Europe.
I had zero doubts at all that this was the right decision, even as I boarded my flight to Seattle to get the trip underway. I was going on the trip of a lifetime to your regular joe. To me, it's a little less than that because I've been on a few of these already, but it was still pretty fucking cool. After Seattle for a night, I was hitting a shitload of places in 17 days - Stockholm, Riga, Berlin, Budapest, Amsterdam, Brussels, Leeds, Copenhagen, and Oslo. Your average person probably wouldn't enjoy 13 flights in 18 days, but I'm not a normal person. I think you've realized this by now.
***tangent***
It's really hard to concentrate on writing this out when supermodels keep walking by me. I'm on a flight from Norway to Iceland, two of the countries with the highest hot-woman-per-capita ratios in the world. Every time I get halfway through a paragraph, I look up and get mesmerized by the new love of my life, and forget what the hell I was writing about. Then she's gone, and I have to re-focus. For about 45 seconds, until it happens all over again.
In case this wasn't clear, I LOVE SCANDINAVIA.
***tangent over***
And we're back. So, it was game time. My boss drove me to the airport 3.5 hours early (after a stop for a Coors Light tall can, he's cool like that), expecting the airport to be a zoo. Maybe arrivals was, but departures? Not so much. They completely re-did the American departures area, and it's fucking insane now. I had my passport checked ELEVEN times between checking in and getting through security. Unreal. I also got to be one of the guinea pigs on those huge scan-your-bones machines. The lady give me a little smile afterwards, so I think she liked what she saw. Heeeeey.
I'll condense the rest of it. Airport bar. 9.42 beer. Eek, pricey. Canucks game on PPV, but Justin TV saves the day. Tables around me all want to know how I'm watching the game on my computer. I inform them. They love me. A beer is bought for me, for which I'm thankful. Easy flight. My hotel room still has the last person's garbage and breakfast in it, which is a little weird. Oh well. 7/11, Fat Tire, Jack in the Box, happy camper.
Got to the Seattle airport early the next day, had a couple of beers and lunch. The book store had a copy of Blood in the Cage, which entertained me for most of my flight to Iceland. I had a row to myself on both legs of my flight (10 hours total), which was so awesome. Go through the usual Icelandic overkill (re-screened at security, talk to a few pointless people, etc). Customs guy was cool:
"Where are you going?"
"Stockholm"
"I hear they have pretty girls there"
"You have pretty girls here too"
"You've been here before? *flips through passport* "Ahh, you have! Swedish girls are more pretty though"
"If they're better than here, this will be a great trip"
"It WILL be a great trip! Enjoy Europe!"
Why can't customs guys at home be that nice?
So, onto Stockholm. Land, get my bag, and...go to the train. No one even checked my passport. Once you're in the EU boundaries (Iceland isn't a member yet, but is a part of the travel treaty that handles "border crossings"), no one checks your passport anymore. It's a very odd feeling, just breezing through airports like that. The best thing was that as soon as I got off the plane and into the terminal, before I've even seen a person yet, I see a TV...with hockey on it. I already loved Sweden at that point.
The hot girl distractions kicked in as soon as I got down to the airport train. I was standing right beside a train, but thought it was on the wrong track. I just stood there, watching blonde after blonde walk by me...onto the train...not realizing I should have done the same. About 20 seconds after it left, I looked up at the screen...yup, that was going into the city. Nicely done, Tim. 20 minutes later, the next one showed up and I headed into the city.
My hotel was 4 or so blocks from the train station, and it was the most awesome 4 block walk of my life. It's simply astounding how many hot women were walking past me. They were with all guys though, which didn't really make much sense to me until later. I just assumed if they're all hot, they all have boyfriends. As I turn down the pedestrian walkway towards my hotel, a group of girls were standing on the street offering free hugs to everyone. I've seen this before, but these girls were hoooot. Not like the sea donkeys at Harvard offering to smother someone for free. This is me though, it's pretty obvious I was too intimidated to hug a random hot Swedish girl 5 minutes after getting to Stockholm. But I'd be back!
Get to the hotel, and my room is small, as expected. They get about 7 channels, and 3 are showing the Olympics. I was starving, so I went looking for food straight out of the gate. More wandering, more girls, more happy. End up at, of all places, a restaurant/bar called Texas Burgers. Eff off, I immerse myself into new cultures slowly. The food was pricey, maybe 25 bucks for a beer and a beer, but nothing too outrageous. It was on the 3rd level of a mini-mall, so I just sat against the railing and people-watched. It was then that I FINALLY clued into why every girl was out with a guy.
It was valentines day. Duh.
I had a couple more pints at the bar there, and headed back to the hotel for a nap (I had been awake for 24 hours or so at this point). I was buzzing, so the walk back was even more entertaining. It was probably -3, but I didn't feel a thing. I went around the corner to go back to my hotel, and literally bumped into one of the free hug girls. She was looking in the other direction, and we did a pretty good job of startling each other. I was halfway though an apology when she just decided to hug me. Uh, okay. That ruled. I hugged her back, while the one of the other huggers asked where I was from. I told her, and she wanted to hug me too. Sure, cool. After that, I just walked around and hugged the other 4 too. None of them said anything, but it amused me, so I just continued till I was out of huggers. And then realized that was probably a little weird, especially since no one was saying anything. So I just took off, a little embarrassed. No, I'm not exactly a stallion, but we all already knew this.
So, back to the hotel. There was no hope for non-pub beer, since Sweden has strict regulations when it comes to selling alky. Sort of like BC's liquor stores, but no beer stores to supplement that. And they're closed on Sunday. And some of them only sell wine...
Aaaand another hot girl just walked by. Who would have thought a plane would be a bad place to write? What's the world coming to?
Anyway, I ended up doing the one thing I didn't want to do - I fell asleep. For 8 hours. Oops. I had neglected to buy any food in the mean time, so I woke up at 1am on a Sunday night, hungry. Not a good thing. I was in the busiest part of the city though, so something had to be open, right?
Nyet. I walked around forever. Found four 7/11's, all closed. Restaurants, bars...all shut. Finally, FINALLY I found a McDonald's that was open. I walked in, and it was like the music stopped. Everyone in the place turned and stared at me. As I discovered, it's the only place open, so every misfit in Stockholm with nothing else to do at that time of night hung out here. It was quite the crowd. If I thought I was an outsider on the streets...in this place, I was like an asian dude at a country bar. A little weird.
I walked up and ordered my food and got out of there PRONTO. Turns out 2 McChickens are 12 bucks in Stockholm. Great, insult to injury. Thanks, you bastards.
After going back to the hotel and wolfing those down, I...fell back asleep. For another 8 hours. What the hell?
Oh well, at least I was on a regular schedule now (or so I thought). The next day was all about being a dorky tourist. I walked around everywhere, took dorky pictures of architecture, and creepily stared at women. Even the guidebook says that's what you're supposed to do in Stockholm, so it was okay. Stockholm is an archipelago. It basically means the city is on a shitload of islands. It's cool in theory, but islands were bigger than I thought, as was the distance between them, so exploring wasn't easy.
After walking around forever, I had a couple of drinks in a couple of pubs, but nothing really all that inviting. Add a major dose of freezing temperatures to that, and...yeah, I was kinda lame. I scheduled a rest day anyway, so this was it. Went to the systembolaget (liquor store), bought a bunch of different stuff, and chilled at the hotel. I didn't need a fridge in my room to keep the beer cold...I just left them on the windowsill with the window open. I'm versatile like that.
The problem with that was...I fell asleep at 5pm again. Dammit. One good thing did come out of it though, because I woke up at 2am and was able to catch the Canada/Norway game. After that ended, I...slept again. Jetlag's a whore, apparently.
For my last day in Stockholm, I was determined to check out some of the bigger islands that I hadn't got around to yet. They were kinda far away, but I could handle that. I have a strict no public transportation rule when I travel. If I can walk there, I walk there. So, I set out to discover some new islands. I got to the "furthest" one, and walked all around it. It was pretty fucking nice, and there weren't many people there so it was pretty peaceful. There were 2 problems with this though:
1. I stepped on a huge pointy rock and tore a hole in the sole of my shoe. On the 3rd day of my fucking trip. And it was snowy and wet everywhere, so my foot was soaked;
2. I wasn't on the island I intended to go to.
After walking all the way around it and checking out some cool shit, it turns out I wasn't looking at the shit I thought I was. It was all pretty nice, but I felt like a pretty big dumbass when I got around to the other side and saw...my intended destination, another km or so away. Dammit. I'd already walked like 7km, and my foot was fucked, so I bailed and headed back. Laaaame, I know.
I tried a couple other pubs, but there just wasn't a lot goin on. Stockholm is a lot more conservative than I thought it was. And, for all my searching, I couldn't find a store that sold hockey jerseys. AND, I didn't make it to the Eriksson Globe,
because I'm a jackass and didn't want to take the metro.
Overall, Stockholm was really nice and the women are unreal, but it was kinda boring. I found Swedes to be nice people, but not super approachable. They just kind of do their own thing and they come across as kinda serious. And the women intimidated the bejesus outta me. So, I didn't exactly start the trip with a bang. Oooh double entendre!
As sometimes happens with my trips, my favorite part of Sweden actually occurred at the airport when I was leaving. I got there at 6am, and...there was a pub open. A Boston-themed pub, for some odd reason. And there were a few people in there drinking already. Well, I didn't want them to be lonely, so I joined them. The bartender girl was one of the few non-blondes I had seen, but she was stunning. After she ID'd me, she asked me a few questions about Canada (like the usual "Why aren't you at the Olympics?") and I chatted with her for a bit, which half-paying attention to the Russia/Latvia game. This becomes important in a bit.
Eventually, an older Swedish guy sits down beside me and starts talking to me in Swedish. Uhhh...oorky boorky Timmy no speaky. His English sucked, but he was happy to switch to that. He was on his way to the Canary Islands, and we bullshitted until he asked where I was from. Canada, Vancouver, Olympics...blah blah, same line of questioning. But this guy was funny. He called over his entire family, who were waiting at the gate across from us, to "meet the Vancouver guy". So about 12 people come over and I have to introduce myself and get inundated by questions. The hot bartender even gave us free beers, which was very cool. Everything was going fine, until...
"AAAY! *unintelligible nonsense* AAAAAY Rushhhhhin!"
I didn't pay any attention at first, until the bartender said "I think he's talking to you." Before I could even turn around to figure out what was going on, a hand slapped my back. Hard.
"AAAY! Ruuuuhhhh" That was all I understood, but a lot more was said. In a language I didn't understand. This dude was standing behind me, tugging on my jersey. I finally turned around, and this guy isn't sober. I tried to talk to him, but he just interrupted with more babbling. I told him I didn't understand. He started tugging on the front of my jersey this time, and started pointing at the TV. The bartender said "I don't think he likes your shirt". Then another guy comes running over from across the gate towards us both. He got there quickly and tackled his buddy, and explained the situation while holding onto him:
Latvia was playing Russia on TV, and I was wearing...an Alexander Ovechkin jersey. Oops. This guy was clearly unhappy with this, since AO had just scored and it was 3-1 Russia. And he was drunk. And LATVIAN. Like a dumbass, I did just about the worst thing I could have done when the light bulb came on and I figured it out - I started laughing.
Bad idea Tim.
Drunk guy starts SCREAMING now and trying to tear himself away from his friend so he could destroy me. It didn't take me long to stop laughing and to start explaining that I was Canadian. NOT Russian. His friend apologized profusely, while I chose to just stand there, dumbfounded by the whole thing. I showed him my passport to verify my nationality, which probably made no sense to him because there's no maple leaf on it and it's obvious that he can't read English. Finally, his buddy managed to drag him away, still mumbling.
The whole Swedish family stood right there and watched the whole thing, and they all just looked at each other, as confused/amused as I was. It all happened in a matter of 20 seconds or so, but it definitely woke me up. Who needs red bulls when drunk Latvian dudes want to kick your ass at 6:30am for no reason!
I went back to my beer and the Swedish family, and the drunk guys friend came over and offered to buy me a beer, but I told him it was no big deal. "I have a flight to catch anyway", I told him. The bartender chicky says "Where did you say you were flying?" "Riga, why?" A couple of silent seconds tick by. Then...DING. New light bulb. I have to get on the same flight as this fucking dude! How I had ignored that tiny fact up till then is beyond me. Two seconds after that, while I'm absorbing all of this and everyone is quiet, the TV starts blaring. Russia scores! Fuck, that's some timing right there! Everyone just started laughing when that happened, but I didn't. I looked right at drunk guy, and he looked right at me. With hate in his heart. Uh oh. I don't think I've ever put on my hoody faster in my entire life.
After saying my goodbyes to everyone at the bar, I slinked my way over to the gate and sat as far away from drunk guy as I could. Occasionally I glanced over at him, and he was staring at me. Every. Single. Time. Creeeeepy.
Luckily for me, his friend got him on board quickly and they were sitting at the back of the plane, so I didn't come in contact with him again. I sat there for an hour on the plane though, waiting to get slapped in the back of the head or something. Kinda jumpy. I looked back down the aisle once, and there he was, leaning into the aisle, staring at me. What the fuck! This was my introduction to Latvia? Really? What the hell was I getting myself into?
Find out when I get around to writing part 2.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Iceland, part 3
I feel kinda dumb that I've gone on a whole new epic trip and haven't even finished my blog from the last epic trip...6 months ago. I just happen to be in Budapest right now, and the world's biggest rainstorm has just descended on the city. I happen to have beer in the hotel room fridge, and the Chelsea/Wolves game on the TV, so it seems as good a time as any to finish this bitch up so I can start writing about THIS trip.
So, when I left you last time, Jess and Marissa had just left for a Geysir and Waterfall tour, and I had just fallen asleep...at 4:30pm. They got back around 11pm, which is pretty much when I woke up. Boo. We sat up for a while, drank a few beers, blah blah...Marissa went mental a couple of times about stuff that I don't quite remember, which was pretty amusing. Just like the night before though, I ended up watching movies all night while Jess was passed out on the floor. Yes, I'm a loser.
The whole time I was awake, I was looking out the window at the ever-changing weather. I don't think I've ever seen that sort of rain or wind...ever. And I've lived on Vancouver Island, where shit like the roof of our patio has blown away before. Multiple times actually. Sideways rain is amusing when you don't have to go out in it, I guess.
It did kinda fuck with the next day though. Jess and Marissa went off to the Blue Lagoon with her friend Kyle and his Icelandic friend. I think his name was Peter, but I'm not sure. I couldn't remember Kyle's name, depsite Marissa telling me a bunch of times, so for some reason I just christened them both Peter. For the rest of the trip, they were the 2 Peters. I think even called Kyle Peter a few times at the bar later, which was probably a bit confusing to him, but hey, I'm a different kinda cat, ya heard?
So, I spent a lot of the day...sleeping. Woo boy I'm a party animal. I should point out that the only good channel on Icelandic TV at this point was the music channel, but it only had a 2 hour loop, so we kept seeing the same videos over and over. One was a terribly awesome dance video which I thought was great and Jess...well, it made him angry. Naturally, I'd turn it up every time it came on, and even play it on youtube when he would try to nap. It drove him crazy, which was obviously my goal.
So, later in the day when I was awake and Jess was ready to go, we went and met up with Marissa and the two Peters at a bar called Cafe Oliver. It was good to get out of that room, because it STANK. We decided to take a cab over because of the weather. Cabbie turns on the radio...and guess what song is on? I thought Jess was going to get out of a moving cab, which was pretty amusing to me. I sang in the front seat while Jess stewed in the back, which confused the shit out of the cabbie. Good times.
Anyway, we get to the bar, and it was pretty nuts. We walk in, and to our left is a booth containing 6 girls. All blonde. All hot. I just stopped dead and stared, because it was pretty amazing. Jess was already at the bar with Marissa and the Peters, but I just stood there. Till a guy in a Coors Light hat bumped into me. Greeeat...this place had Americans in it.
The reason we were here was because it was cheap beer night...5 bucks a pop. Yes, that's the sale price. We managed to get a beer without much trouble, and I took a look around. The place was jam-packed with super-hot blonde Icelandic girls, Icelandic guys dressed like your favorite emo band, and a bunch of redneck Americans. It was an amusing scene for a while, but it got old reaaaal quick. The Americans were acting like Americans, which offended pretty much everyone there. They were standing near us, so when it came time to get a second beer, the bartender wouldn't come near us. He just stayed at the other side of the bar, serving everyone there. We couldn't go over there, because it was jam-packed. So we waited. And waited.
15 or 20 minutes later, one of the Peters finally managed to get the guy to come over and pour us a fucking beer, but the damage was done by then. I wanted nothing more to do with the pretentiousness or the Americans, hot girls or not. My theory was that if this was the first bar we went to, which sucked, and they were all hot, they're probably all hot everywhere else right?
Chalk up a party foul to Timmy. Sorta.
We said our goodbyes to the Peters and Marissa, and went looking for somewhere else to drink/stare at girls. Unfortunately, the next thing I saw was a casino bar...and I HAD to go inside. Normally Bitch is enthused by international gambling (because the bastard usually wins), but he was reluctant about this place. I couldn't figure out why, until about 10 minutes after we got in there. A freak made it quite clear.
I have no clue if this chick was homeless or mentally ill or what, but all she wanted was our beers. She was trying to tell us that, I think, but I couldn't understand a fucking thing she was saying. It was in english, too. She was just rambling on and on until she became impossible to ignore. Me and bitch just looked at each other, sort of astonished, and he handed the broad his pint. I'm way too hardened for that, so when she reached for mine too, I shotgunned it. She was not amused. And we made double time getting the FUCK outta that place. First thing I said when we got outside was "Holy shit! They have natives here too!" That got a laugh out of Jess at least.
We just walked straight out and down some side street, because Jess is bedazzled by blinking lights. I just realized his lights obsession would be way funnier if he had epilepsy. ANYWAY, the blinking light in this case was a sign for a strip club, which sounded like the greatest fucking idea on the planet at that point in time. What do Icelandic women look like naked? Are they all hot when they've got clothes on, but hairier than Chewbacca underneath? Do they really dance to Bjork? Is it so cold that they sometimes get stuck to the pole? So many questions were about to be answered...
Or not.
We get to the entrance...and there are two doors. TWO DOORS. It's like the fucking Matrix with the pills and shit. Which do we choose? There was a guy outside, and he pointed at one of the doors. It seemed logical that he would point at the door with naked whores inside, because...you know, he's a guy and he likes naked women, right? Wrong. We ended up in a pub. Not the worst thing ever, but still. It had women, but they had their clothes on, and there wasn't much hope of nudity in the near future. Fail.
I still can't remember why we didn't go back and try the other door. I think I just saw a beer tap and, like usual, forgot about space and time and everything else and plunked down right in front of it and started at the bartender chicky until I had beer in my face again. Jess might have been talking...I certainly wasn't listening. Once I was whole again, we sat there for a while and stared at the pretty girls playing pool and shot the shit. A few hours and Gulls later, we were kinda plastered, so we decided to head out. Only problem with that was...we had no fucking idea where we were.
As we all know by now, I'm fucking terrible with directions. Luckily Jess led the way in this case, and we headed in what turned out to be the right direction. After a stop at a gas station for some drunk food (Jess kept yelling "This is the best sub of ALL TIME!" about 30 times along the way, in between mouthfuls) and we made it back in one piece. Luckily it had stopped raining for the 20 minutes or so it took us to get back.
After making Jess laugh so hard he spit his beer all over the floor of our hotel room...twice!...we managed to pass out. I fell asleep a happy guy, finally getting a taste of what Iceland was like. Sorta. I can't exactly say it was a touching cultural experience or anything, but it was a shitload of fun at least. And there were hot blonde girls (almost) everywhere. What's to complain about?
We were both leaving the next day, but we were going to radically different destinations. I was going home via Seattle, and he was just starting his 2 weeks in Europe, so he was going to London. Despite having no money and less time, I spent 2 hours on the hotel computer trying to figure out a way to go with him. Anyone who says traveling isn't an addiction should have seen me at that computer. I wanted to go so fucking bad, but it was not meant to be. I flew back to Seattle, where I stayed in a suite at the Howard Johnson (talk about an oxymoron), and Jess went on to conquer a variety of places, including Egypt. That bastard. I get a small bit of satisfaction out of the fact that I'm writing this in Budapest though, and he's going to Columbus next week. I win!
So, when I left you last time, Jess and Marissa had just left for a Geysir and Waterfall tour, and I had just fallen asleep...at 4:30pm. They got back around 11pm, which is pretty much when I woke up. Boo. We sat up for a while, drank a few beers, blah blah...Marissa went mental a couple of times about stuff that I don't quite remember, which was pretty amusing. Just like the night before though, I ended up watching movies all night while Jess was passed out on the floor. Yes, I'm a loser.
The whole time I was awake, I was looking out the window at the ever-changing weather. I don't think I've ever seen that sort of rain or wind...ever. And I've lived on Vancouver Island, where shit like the roof of our patio has blown away before. Multiple times actually. Sideways rain is amusing when you don't have to go out in it, I guess.
It did kinda fuck with the next day though. Jess and Marissa went off to the Blue Lagoon with her friend Kyle and his Icelandic friend. I think his name was Peter, but I'm not sure. I couldn't remember Kyle's name, depsite Marissa telling me a bunch of times, so for some reason I just christened them both Peter. For the rest of the trip, they were the 2 Peters. I think even called Kyle Peter a few times at the bar later, which was probably a bit confusing to him, but hey, I'm a different kinda cat, ya heard?
So, I spent a lot of the day...sleeping. Woo boy I'm a party animal. I should point out that the only good channel on Icelandic TV at this point was the music channel, but it only had a 2 hour loop, so we kept seeing the same videos over and over. One was a terribly awesome dance video which I thought was great and Jess...well, it made him angry. Naturally, I'd turn it up every time it came on, and even play it on youtube when he would try to nap. It drove him crazy, which was obviously my goal.
So, later in the day when I was awake and Jess was ready to go, we went and met up with Marissa and the two Peters at a bar called Cafe Oliver. It was good to get out of that room, because it STANK. We decided to take a cab over because of the weather. Cabbie turns on the radio...and guess what song is on? I thought Jess was going to get out of a moving cab, which was pretty amusing to me. I sang in the front seat while Jess stewed in the back, which confused the shit out of the cabbie. Good times.
Anyway, we get to the bar, and it was pretty nuts. We walk in, and to our left is a booth containing 6 girls. All blonde. All hot. I just stopped dead and stared, because it was pretty amazing. Jess was already at the bar with Marissa and the Peters, but I just stood there. Till a guy in a Coors Light hat bumped into me. Greeeat...this place had Americans in it.
The reason we were here was because it was cheap beer night...5 bucks a pop. Yes, that's the sale price. We managed to get a beer without much trouble, and I took a look around. The place was jam-packed with super-hot blonde Icelandic girls, Icelandic guys dressed like your favorite emo band, and a bunch of redneck Americans. It was an amusing scene for a while, but it got old reaaaal quick. The Americans were acting like Americans, which offended pretty much everyone there. They were standing near us, so when it came time to get a second beer, the bartender wouldn't come near us. He just stayed at the other side of the bar, serving everyone there. We couldn't go over there, because it was jam-packed. So we waited. And waited.
15 or 20 minutes later, one of the Peters finally managed to get the guy to come over and pour us a fucking beer, but the damage was done by then. I wanted nothing more to do with the pretentiousness or the Americans, hot girls or not. My theory was that if this was the first bar we went to, which sucked, and they were all hot, they're probably all hot everywhere else right?
Chalk up a party foul to Timmy. Sorta.
We said our goodbyes to the Peters and Marissa, and went looking for somewhere else to drink/stare at girls. Unfortunately, the next thing I saw was a casino bar...and I HAD to go inside. Normally Bitch is enthused by international gambling (because the bastard usually wins), but he was reluctant about this place. I couldn't figure out why, until about 10 minutes after we got in there. A freak made it quite clear.
I have no clue if this chick was homeless or mentally ill or what, but all she wanted was our beers. She was trying to tell us that, I think, but I couldn't understand a fucking thing she was saying. It was in english, too. She was just rambling on and on until she became impossible to ignore. Me and bitch just looked at each other, sort of astonished, and he handed the broad his pint. I'm way too hardened for that, so when she reached for mine too, I shotgunned it. She was not amused. And we made double time getting the FUCK outta that place. First thing I said when we got outside was "Holy shit! They have natives here too!" That got a laugh out of Jess at least.
We just walked straight out and down some side street, because Jess is bedazzled by blinking lights. I just realized his lights obsession would be way funnier if he had epilepsy. ANYWAY, the blinking light in this case was a sign for a strip club, which sounded like the greatest fucking idea on the planet at that point in time. What do Icelandic women look like naked? Are they all hot when they've got clothes on, but hairier than Chewbacca underneath? Do they really dance to Bjork? Is it so cold that they sometimes get stuck to the pole? So many questions were about to be answered...
Or not.
We get to the entrance...and there are two doors. TWO DOORS. It's like the fucking Matrix with the pills and shit. Which do we choose? There was a guy outside, and he pointed at one of the doors. It seemed logical that he would point at the door with naked whores inside, because...you know, he's a guy and he likes naked women, right? Wrong. We ended up in a pub. Not the worst thing ever, but still. It had women, but they had their clothes on, and there wasn't much hope of nudity in the near future. Fail.
I still can't remember why we didn't go back and try the other door. I think I just saw a beer tap and, like usual, forgot about space and time and everything else and plunked down right in front of it and started at the bartender chicky until I had beer in my face again. Jess might have been talking...I certainly wasn't listening. Once I was whole again, we sat there for a while and stared at the pretty girls playing pool and shot the shit. A few hours and Gulls later, we were kinda plastered, so we decided to head out. Only problem with that was...we had no fucking idea where we were.
As we all know by now, I'm fucking terrible with directions. Luckily Jess led the way in this case, and we headed in what turned out to be the right direction. After a stop at a gas station for some drunk food (Jess kept yelling "This is the best sub of ALL TIME!" about 30 times along the way, in between mouthfuls) and we made it back in one piece. Luckily it had stopped raining for the 20 minutes or so it took us to get back.
After making Jess laugh so hard he spit his beer all over the floor of our hotel room...twice!...we managed to pass out. I fell asleep a happy guy, finally getting a taste of what Iceland was like. Sorta. I can't exactly say it was a touching cultural experience or anything, but it was a shitload of fun at least. And there were hot blonde girls (almost) everywhere. What's to complain about?
We were both leaving the next day, but we were going to radically different destinations. I was going home via Seattle, and he was just starting his 2 weeks in Europe, so he was going to London. Despite having no money and less time, I spent 2 hours on the hotel computer trying to figure out a way to go with him. Anyone who says traveling isn't an addiction should have seen me at that computer. I wanted to go so fucking bad, but it was not meant to be. I flew back to Seattle, where I stayed in a suite at the Howard Johnson (talk about an oxymoron), and Jess went on to conquer a variety of places, including Egypt. That bastard. I get a small bit of satisfaction out of the fact that I'm writing this in Budapest though, and he's going to Columbus next week. I win!
Thursday, December 24, 2009
The Ghost of Christmas Past
It's 10:45pm on December 24th. A friday night. I'm sitting at home, drinking an Old Milwaukee, and listening to some music. This is like any other friday night to me. Go to the bar after work with my boss, get home early, and stay outta trouble. The fact that it's Christmas Eve really doesn't mean a damn thing to me. I went to the strippers and the OT before this. Not exactly full of yuletide spirit.
There is one thing I do like about Christmas though. In my never-ending quest to be anti-Christmas, I usually end up doing some entertaining and/or retarded shit on Christmas Day. Your average person probably looks back on Christmas Day's past and remembers a pretty standard 24 hours:
2008: At my parents house. Mom and dad argued. I hate my brother. Who needs 9 ties?
2007: At my brothers house. The kids got a Wii, and I wanted to shove a controller down little Billy's throat by 4:30.
2003: At my parents house. Mom and dad argued. My sister didn't show. Major drama OMG!
1996: At my parents house. I asked for a portable CD player. I got a walkman. I hate life.
And so on. My timeline is a little bit more entertaining, at least to me. So, here's a brief synopsis of some of my more interesting Christmas Days. Sure, I spent some with family too, but other than a fire poker fight or 2, it was usually pretty boring. These are my memories of the times I managed to bail on that bullshit and do something interesting. Without further ado...
2008 - I wrote about it last year. But, here's the cliff notes version of the 25th, if you don't feel like reading: A 24 hour train ride to Jasper full o' booze on the 23rd/24th led to a massive hangover that spilled over onto the 25th. The only cure was Pilsner, of course, but this was not to be. Nothing in town was open. Even our hotel bar didn't open till 5pm, which led to me basically crying in public. After it finally opened, it was less-than-fulfilling, so Len and I got the bright idea to go to the fancy lodge up the hill where actual people hang out.
Too bad it was CHRISTMAS HELL and the Disney movie cheerfulness nearly made us commit a homicide or 23. 14 dollar ceasars finally broke the drunk camels back, and after a brief stop back in the hotel bar where I purchased a 27 dollar 6 pack, Christmas was mercifully put to it's death via Comedy Roasts and my best friend Pilly.
2007 - Me, Lisa and Len all have various reasons to hate Christmas, and we figured since none of us could go on vacation, the best thing to do was to get drunk at the best bar in town (which happened to be the only bar open)...the Cambie. 194 people were invited. 3 showed. Me, Lisa, and Len. We arrived at noon. 6 other people were in the bar...which was 5 more than we expected. We set a firm no shots rule, and went to work on some 10 dollar pitchers of shitty beer, while Len's Mr Hanky doll eyed us warily.
After 8 hours of playing pool with immigrants, picking terrible music from the jukebox, taking pictures of Mr Hanky shamelessly swimming in our beers, and downing like 24 shots (we're not good at following rules), we were finally escorted from the premises. Lisa yelled "LET'S GOOO TO THE CASINOOOO" pretty much the whole way home on the skytrain before passing out, and I honestly don't remember what happened to Len. Dumping Lisa out of a cab onto her lawn at 9pm on Christmas Day while her parents looked out the window disapprovingly is way better than any shitty Christmas present I could get. That shit was GOLD!
2004 - You can read about it here, if you feel the need. If not...
Pretend you're me (but not as cool), and picture this: I wake up groggy and cotton-mouthed and take a look around. After a minute or so, my surroundings start to come into focus. I'm in a Days Inn hotel. In Anchorage, Alaska. I look over at the other bed. The person I came on this trip with isn't in said bed. This is all amusing and stuff, but our flight to Fairbanks leaves in 2 hours and going alone wasn't part of the plan. I gradually piece together the night before at Chilkoot Charlies (the best bar in the WORLD)...I came back to the hotel after nearly hiccuping draft beer all over some angry native broad. By myself. Len chose to stay. Uh oh.
While this assessment is being made, the door swings open and a fucking toasted co-pilot is standing there. He manages to make it to his bed, explaining to me that he was helping some dude change his transmission in -20 degree weather at 4am. This is highly amusing, until I inform Len that he can't go to sleep because we have to fly to Fairbanks in 2 hours. Many curse words followed.
Me and the zombie manage to get ourselves to the airport and onto the plane. Len is completely done at this point. Talking and walking is rocket science to him. The flight to Fairbanks is ridiculously scenic, and I celebrate this awesome show with an Amstel Light at 8:30am. Len dry heaves at the sight of it.
Upon arrival, we are ripped off by the only asian guy in town, who drives the taxi to our hotel. Len is asleep 0.243 seconds after we get into our room. I went to buy beer, and realized it was -37. I thought that was cool for about 20 seconds, until my face, nose, snot and beer all froze at once on the walk home. Seriously.
After Len slept off his hangover, we decided that we're going to North Pole, where Santa lives! Honestly. It's a real town with a real Santa house, like 11 miles north of Fairbanks. I know, the scrooges heading towards the heart of Christmas sounds weird, but cut us some slack, what else were we gonna fuckin do?
The lady at the hotel said Santa's house would be open. One 40 dollar cabride later, IT WAS NOT. Len pissed on his house to show him who's boss. Another 40 dollar cabride back, and we're pissed. We go looking for a restaurant for dinner. No dice. Everything was closed. Every. Single. Restaurant. In. Town. We ended up at a gas station, and we bought burritos for our Christmas dinner. I think we were asleep by 9:30pm. Goooo Christmas!
2003 - It's just me and Mikey. Jay just moved home, so we're down a roommate. In his honour, our whole goal for the day is strippers and beer, because we know he would approve. Mikey kept telling me about a poster he saw at Mugs (same peeler bar I was at today, different location) that said something about an all-day stripathon on Christmas Day. Nuthin says yuletide joy like amateur boobies, so we walked all the way down there from here (5km, give or take) in the early afternoon. Just to find out that it was closed on Christmas Day. What the fuck?
Apparently Daly can't read and it was on Boxing Day. Damn him! Either way though, we had committed ourselves to debauchery, so we went to the only place that was serving beer in all of New West...the riverboat casino. We played some blackjack and somehow we both won, probably 100 total between us, which basically doubled what we had to start with (fuck off, this was when we were young and financially irresponsible!)...so it was ON. Booze in face, pronto.
Somehow day turned to night, and some old lady was following us around, thinking we'd spend money on her or something. Obviously she was delusional, but she did give us one nugget of info - Barfly was open that night! Barfly (now The Standard) is a terrible club in New West, but it was Eden to us that night. Mikey and me ran to a cab to dodge the old lady, but she was like a fuckin' drunk FloJo and kept up with us all the way there. We jumped in, and she attempted to do so as well...but it was kind of difficult with Mikey's hand on her forehead, launching her away from the door.
So we get to Barfly...obviously, no one's there on Christmas Day. Maybe 6 people. That didn't stop Mikey from shotgunning a beer and doing a ridiculous dance on the floor that some of you have probably seen if you've hung out with him for any length of time. Suddenly we were the center of an 8 person club party...for about 10 seconds. It was about to be 9, because guess who walked in the door! The old lady! And she was PISSED. Somehow, Mikey talked her out of homicide and had her dancing within a few seconds, which was even funnier because she was easily 30 years older than everyone there.
A whole lot more liquor was consumed, and I woke up on the living room floor the next morning. That's about all I can tell you..I have no recollection of much else. Mikey eventually came out of his room and we had the same conversation we'd had countless times..."What the fuck happened?" "I dunno man." "How did we get home??" "No idea." "Do you have any money left?" "I have 5 bottlecaps and a bunch of ripped up coasters in my pocket. No money. You?" "I thought I had like 30 bucks in change, but they're all quarters. I have 6 dollars, tops." "What do we do now?" "Call Lisa and tell her to pick us up and buy us breakfast, that's what!"
In approximately 12 hours, 2007 will be repeated. I think over 160 people were invited this time. 10 SAY they're coming, but we know who's gonna show...me, Lisa, and Len. And hanky. It's gonna be a shitshow, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Merry Christmas motherfuckers. If you want to do something a little different this year, we'll be at the Cambie. Come on down. Make this a Christmas you'll actually remember.
There is one thing I do like about Christmas though. In my never-ending quest to be anti-Christmas, I usually end up doing some entertaining and/or retarded shit on Christmas Day. Your average person probably looks back on Christmas Day's past and remembers a pretty standard 24 hours:
2008: At my parents house. Mom and dad argued. I hate my brother. Who needs 9 ties?
2007: At my brothers house. The kids got a Wii, and I wanted to shove a controller down little Billy's throat by 4:30.
2003: At my parents house. Mom and dad argued. My sister didn't show. Major drama OMG!
1996: At my parents house. I asked for a portable CD player. I got a walkman. I hate life.
And so on. My timeline is a little bit more entertaining, at least to me. So, here's a brief synopsis of some of my more interesting Christmas Days. Sure, I spent some with family too, but other than a fire poker fight or 2, it was usually pretty boring. These are my memories of the times I managed to bail on that bullshit and do something interesting. Without further ado...
2008 - I wrote about it last year. But, here's the cliff notes version of the 25th, if you don't feel like reading: A 24 hour train ride to Jasper full o' booze on the 23rd/24th led to a massive hangover that spilled over onto the 25th. The only cure was Pilsner, of course, but this was not to be. Nothing in town was open. Even our hotel bar didn't open till 5pm, which led to me basically crying in public. After it finally opened, it was less-than-fulfilling, so Len and I got the bright idea to go to the fancy lodge up the hill where actual people hang out.
Too bad it was CHRISTMAS HELL and the Disney movie cheerfulness nearly made us commit a homicide or 23. 14 dollar ceasars finally broke the drunk camels back, and after a brief stop back in the hotel bar where I purchased a 27 dollar 6 pack, Christmas was mercifully put to it's death via Comedy Roasts and my best friend Pilly.
2007 - Me, Lisa and Len all have various reasons to hate Christmas, and we figured since none of us could go on vacation, the best thing to do was to get drunk at the best bar in town (which happened to be the only bar open)...the Cambie. 194 people were invited. 3 showed. Me, Lisa, and Len. We arrived at noon. 6 other people were in the bar...which was 5 more than we expected. We set a firm no shots rule, and went to work on some 10 dollar pitchers of shitty beer, while Len's Mr Hanky doll eyed us warily.
After 8 hours of playing pool with immigrants, picking terrible music from the jukebox, taking pictures of Mr Hanky shamelessly swimming in our beers, and downing like 24 shots (we're not good at following rules), we were finally escorted from the premises. Lisa yelled "LET'S GOOO TO THE CASINOOOO" pretty much the whole way home on the skytrain before passing out, and I honestly don't remember what happened to Len. Dumping Lisa out of a cab onto her lawn at 9pm on Christmas Day while her parents looked out the window disapprovingly is way better than any shitty Christmas present I could get. That shit was GOLD!
2004 - You can read about it here, if you feel the need. If not...
Pretend you're me (but not as cool), and picture this: I wake up groggy and cotton-mouthed and take a look around. After a minute or so, my surroundings start to come into focus. I'm in a Days Inn hotel. In Anchorage, Alaska. I look over at the other bed. The person I came on this trip with isn't in said bed. This is all amusing and stuff, but our flight to Fairbanks leaves in 2 hours and going alone wasn't part of the plan. I gradually piece together the night before at Chilkoot Charlies (the best bar in the WORLD)...I came back to the hotel after nearly hiccuping draft beer all over some angry native broad. By myself. Len chose to stay. Uh oh.
While this assessment is being made, the door swings open and a fucking toasted co-pilot is standing there. He manages to make it to his bed, explaining to me that he was helping some dude change his transmission in -20 degree weather at 4am. This is highly amusing, until I inform Len that he can't go to sleep because we have to fly to Fairbanks in 2 hours. Many curse words followed.
Me and the zombie manage to get ourselves to the airport and onto the plane. Len is completely done at this point. Talking and walking is rocket science to him. The flight to Fairbanks is ridiculously scenic, and I celebrate this awesome show with an Amstel Light at 8:30am. Len dry heaves at the sight of it.
Upon arrival, we are ripped off by the only asian guy in town, who drives the taxi to our hotel. Len is asleep 0.243 seconds after we get into our room. I went to buy beer, and realized it was -37. I thought that was cool for about 20 seconds, until my face, nose, snot and beer all froze at once on the walk home. Seriously.
After Len slept off his hangover, we decided that we're going to North Pole, where Santa lives! Honestly. It's a real town with a real Santa house, like 11 miles north of Fairbanks. I know, the scrooges heading towards the heart of Christmas sounds weird, but cut us some slack, what else were we gonna fuckin do?
The lady at the hotel said Santa's house would be open. One 40 dollar cabride later, IT WAS NOT. Len pissed on his house to show him who's boss. Another 40 dollar cabride back, and we're pissed. We go looking for a restaurant for dinner. No dice. Everything was closed. Every. Single. Restaurant. In. Town. We ended up at a gas station, and we bought burritos for our Christmas dinner. I think we were asleep by 9:30pm. Goooo Christmas!
2003 - It's just me and Mikey. Jay just moved home, so we're down a roommate. In his honour, our whole goal for the day is strippers and beer, because we know he would approve. Mikey kept telling me about a poster he saw at Mugs (same peeler bar I was at today, different location) that said something about an all-day stripathon on Christmas Day. Nuthin says yuletide joy like amateur boobies, so we walked all the way down there from here (5km, give or take) in the early afternoon. Just to find out that it was closed on Christmas Day. What the fuck?
Apparently Daly can't read and it was on Boxing Day. Damn him! Either way though, we had committed ourselves to debauchery, so we went to the only place that was serving beer in all of New West...the riverboat casino. We played some blackjack and somehow we both won, probably 100 total between us, which basically doubled what we had to start with (fuck off, this was when we were young and financially irresponsible!)...so it was ON. Booze in face, pronto.
Somehow day turned to night, and some old lady was following us around, thinking we'd spend money on her or something. Obviously she was delusional, but she did give us one nugget of info - Barfly was open that night! Barfly (now The Standard) is a terrible club in New West, but it was Eden to us that night. Mikey and me ran to a cab to dodge the old lady, but she was like a fuckin' drunk FloJo and kept up with us all the way there. We jumped in, and she attempted to do so as well...but it was kind of difficult with Mikey's hand on her forehead, launching her away from the door.
So we get to Barfly...obviously, no one's there on Christmas Day. Maybe 6 people. That didn't stop Mikey from shotgunning a beer and doing a ridiculous dance on the floor that some of you have probably seen if you've hung out with him for any length of time. Suddenly we were the center of an 8 person club party...for about 10 seconds. It was about to be 9, because guess who walked in the door! The old lady! And she was PISSED. Somehow, Mikey talked her out of homicide and had her dancing within a few seconds, which was even funnier because she was easily 30 years older than everyone there.
A whole lot more liquor was consumed, and I woke up on the living room floor the next morning. That's about all I can tell you..I have no recollection of much else. Mikey eventually came out of his room and we had the same conversation we'd had countless times..."What the fuck happened?" "I dunno man." "How did we get home??" "No idea." "Do you have any money left?" "I have 5 bottlecaps and a bunch of ripped up coasters in my pocket. No money. You?" "I thought I had like 30 bucks in change, but they're all quarters. I have 6 dollars, tops." "What do we do now?" "Call Lisa and tell her to pick us up and buy us breakfast, that's what!"
In approximately 12 hours, 2007 will be repeated. I think over 160 people were invited this time. 10 SAY they're coming, but we know who's gonna show...me, Lisa, and Len. And hanky. It's gonna be a shitshow, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Merry Christmas motherfuckers. If you want to do something a little different this year, we'll be at the Cambie. Come on down. Make this a Christmas you'll actually remember.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Christmas Wish List 2009
I fucking hate this stupid holiday, but I'll get into the spirit this one time and offer the only thing worthwhile anymore - a little bit of advice. Specifically, advice to that rotund red-suited drunk that lives in a land about 11 miles north of Fairbanks. I know this, because I went to his house on Christmas Day once and he wasn't home. Len pissed on his house in retaliation.
Anyway...Santa, you fat bastard, here's how you could handle a few situations for me this year, okay? Some involve simply getting these people a present, some involve you getting off your duff and actually doing something about a situation. Without further ado...
Apple - Make the ipod designers attach something similar to a key tracer to the stupid things. Anyone remember key tracers? Where you clap or whistle, and the beeper thingy goes off and leads you to them? I need this for my ipods. I've gone through four shuffles this year. Four! At least make 'em glow in the dark/glow in the snow or something. Fuck.
Brittany Murphy - Oops. Scratch that one off the list.
Cambie Pub - Make sure they have plenty of shitty beer ready for us when we get there at noon on Christmas day. In addition, can you ask the bouncers to at least be gentle when they 86 us this time? Thanks.
DJ AM - Oops. Scratch that one off the list too.
Ex-girlfriends - Give them all coal.
Filipino lady that was singing along to her ipod at 6am this morning on the bus - Give her a swift kick in the babymaker and a right cross to the jaw. Please. No one wants to hear the "soothing" sounds of a howling cat that just stepped on a nail. At 6am. Because that's what she sounded like.
Georges St Pierre - Give him whatever he needs to so he can gain a little more weight and move up to middleweight. Believe me Santa, when he defeats Anderson Silva, you won't even need to stop in Canada next year. You'll have already given the entire country the best present EVER.
Hell -Santa, I don't know if this is in your power or not....but could you save me a nice, fiery seat down there? It's pretty obvious that all the retard/racist/sexist/filthy Jew jokes are going to catch up to me at some point.
Iceland - Just give the people of this fine country a little advice. Tell all the guys there that the rest of the world doesn't give a shit about Fall Out Boy or A-ha anymore, so you can all stop dressing like a member of those shitty bands. And for the ladies...tell them to keep being blonde and perfect. Seriously. You're all gorgeous. I love you.
Jess - I'm gonna need you to stop him from going anywhere new. Flying to Florida? Bird in the engine. Driving to North Carolina? Armed robbery around Atlantic City or so. Ferry to Nova Scotia? Sink that motherfucker, it's full of people who pay for their clothing and beer in cod anyway. In other words, don't let him wander. And try to keep his cousin's ego in check too. That one will be a lot tougher, I understand that..so Jess and I will do our best to help you out.
Kings - I know this is a tough one, but hear me out. Could you just find some way to enforce the laws of probability a little better when I play poker? When I pick up pocket kings, I'm supposed to win the majority of the hands I play with it. An ace isn't supposed to hit the flop every god damn time. I'm not supposed to be losing a shitload of cash with a hand this good. Fat guy to fat guy Santa, for reals...make this happen.
Luxembourg - You don't have to give the people of this fine country anything specific. I just threw it in here to make sure Jess knows that I'm going to Luxembourg and he's never gonna make it there! I win!
Miley Cyrus - Make her turn 18 faster so I can stop feeling so guilty every time I watch her videos on youtube. Over and over. And over. At least she's not Jojo, right guys? RIGHT?
NHL - Do everyone a favor and get Gary Bettman fired (and killed by something nasty, like scurvy!) so the league can stop moving backwards. Seriously Santa, you must have some appreciation for hockey, you live in the fucking cold. Does hockey belong in Phoenix? No. This one is high-priority, close in importance to the letter P one below.
Old Milwaukee - Give the makers of this delicious nectar whatever they ask for, because they are some of the greatest people in the world. They bring so many others so much joy. Even if they're asking for unethical stuff (immigrant children to chain up in their basement, the extermination of all Coors employees, etc), GIVE IT TO THEM.
Portugal - Nice and simple - a first-round exit from the World Cup. Highest priority.
Quinton Jackson - Just explain to Rampage that he's not an actor, he's a fighter, and all the whining in the world isn't going to make him an actor. Pick him up, carry him to the fucking cage, and let him humble Rashad Evans so I don't have to fucking hear from either of them anymore.
Roger Goodell - Pull his head out of his ass for him. And give him a sense of humor. The possession rules on catching a football shouldn't be more detailed than an Al-Queda plot to blow up a train station. Fining every guy that shows an ounce of personality is retarded. Pretend you're Chris Henry's fiancee, and throw Roger off a truck. Simple as that.
Ooh, that one was cold.
Sami Salo - Invent some sort of hybrid bubble that Sami can play in so he doesn't get hurt every 3 games. I'd say the same for Pavol Demitra, but he'd probably complain about the bubble not having Marian Gaborik in it, so he'd end up going home anyway.
Toronto - Separation. Banish the city from Canada. Banish the Leafs from my television. Before this though, make all the goofs that left the shithole for better weather and nicer people GO BACK so we don't have to hear about what a great place it is. If it's so fucking great, WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Uneducated debtors - Keep them believing their package will actually get there soon. And thank them for being deadbeats, because without these retards to find, I couldn't travel the world! You're dumb and I love you!
Village of Jasper - Wipe out every dingo-fucking Aussie that works there. Dude, they don't even know the 3 brands of Canadian beer they sell in their bars, and they're working...in Canada. Feed them to the moose, bury em in the snow, I don't care. Just make them gone.
Washington Redskins - Somehow, could you make the team hand the playcalling duties back to Jim Zorn? That "fake" field goal attempt last night was the ugliest football play I've ever seen. Ever. You guys are worse than the Lions and the Raiders COMBINED sometimes (that last comment was specifically aimed at Adam and Milo).
X - You think you could just get rid of this letter? It's fucking useless and pretty much grinds any alphabetical list to a halt.
Yellowknife - Prepare these people for the shitshow that awaits them when Len and I eventually make it there. And can you get Ice Road Truckers canceled? These tards don't deserve groupies, they're fucking truckers!
Zoos, specifically the Wellington Zoo - Make sure that animals don't stand up people who pay good money to come hang out with them. Stupid giraffe. You know what you can get him for me, Santa? A housing enclosure that's 2 feet shorter than he is. Then he'll know how I feel when I sit in the back seat of a car. Stupid giraffe.
Okay, that's enough venom for one Christmas. See y'all next year.
Anyway...Santa, you fat bastard, here's how you could handle a few situations for me this year, okay? Some involve simply getting these people a present, some involve you getting off your duff and actually doing something about a situation. Without further ado...
Apple - Make the ipod designers attach something similar to a key tracer to the stupid things. Anyone remember key tracers? Where you clap or whistle, and the beeper thingy goes off and leads you to them? I need this for my ipods. I've gone through four shuffles this year. Four! At least make 'em glow in the dark/glow in the snow or something. Fuck.
Brittany Murphy - Oops. Scratch that one off the list.
Cambie Pub - Make sure they have plenty of shitty beer ready for us when we get there at noon on Christmas day. In addition, can you ask the bouncers to at least be gentle when they 86 us this time? Thanks.
DJ AM - Oops. Scratch that one off the list too.
Ex-girlfriends - Give them all coal.
Filipino lady that was singing along to her ipod at 6am this morning on the bus - Give her a swift kick in the babymaker and a right cross to the jaw. Please. No one wants to hear the "soothing" sounds of a howling cat that just stepped on a nail. At 6am. Because that's what she sounded like.
Georges St Pierre - Give him whatever he needs to so he can gain a little more weight and move up to middleweight. Believe me Santa, when he defeats Anderson Silva, you won't even need to stop in Canada next year. You'll have already given the entire country the best present EVER.
Hell -Santa, I don't know if this is in your power or not....but could you save me a nice, fiery seat down there? It's pretty obvious that all the retard/racist/sexist/filthy Jew jokes are going to catch up to me at some point.
Iceland - Just give the people of this fine country a little advice. Tell all the guys there that the rest of the world doesn't give a shit about Fall Out Boy or A-ha anymore, so you can all stop dressing like a member of those shitty bands. And for the ladies...tell them to keep being blonde and perfect. Seriously. You're all gorgeous. I love you.
Jess - I'm gonna need you to stop him from going anywhere new. Flying to Florida? Bird in the engine. Driving to North Carolina? Armed robbery around Atlantic City or so. Ferry to Nova Scotia? Sink that motherfucker, it's full of people who pay for their clothing and beer in cod anyway. In other words, don't let him wander. And try to keep his cousin's ego in check too. That one will be a lot tougher, I understand that..so Jess and I will do our best to help you out.
Kings - I know this is a tough one, but hear me out. Could you just find some way to enforce the laws of probability a little better when I play poker? When I pick up pocket kings, I'm supposed to win the majority of the hands I play with it. An ace isn't supposed to hit the flop every god damn time. I'm not supposed to be losing a shitload of cash with a hand this good. Fat guy to fat guy Santa, for reals...make this happen.
Luxembourg - You don't have to give the people of this fine country anything specific. I just threw it in here to make sure Jess knows that I'm going to Luxembourg and he's never gonna make it there! I win!
Miley Cyrus - Make her turn 18 faster so I can stop feeling so guilty every time I watch her videos on youtube. Over and over. And over. At least she's not Jojo, right guys? RIGHT?
NHL - Do everyone a favor and get Gary Bettman fired (and killed by something nasty, like scurvy!) so the league can stop moving backwards. Seriously Santa, you must have some appreciation for hockey, you live in the fucking cold. Does hockey belong in Phoenix? No. This one is high-priority, close in importance to the letter P one below.
Old Milwaukee - Give the makers of this delicious nectar whatever they ask for, because they are some of the greatest people in the world. They bring so many others so much joy. Even if they're asking for unethical stuff (immigrant children to chain up in their basement, the extermination of all Coors employees, etc), GIVE IT TO THEM.
Portugal - Nice and simple - a first-round exit from the World Cup. Highest priority.
Quinton Jackson - Just explain to Rampage that he's not an actor, he's a fighter, and all the whining in the world isn't going to make him an actor. Pick him up, carry him to the fucking cage, and let him humble Rashad Evans so I don't have to fucking hear from either of them anymore.
Roger Goodell - Pull his head out of his ass for him. And give him a sense of humor. The possession rules on catching a football shouldn't be more detailed than an Al-Queda plot to blow up a train station. Fining every guy that shows an ounce of personality is retarded. Pretend you're Chris Henry's fiancee, and throw Roger off a truck. Simple as that.
Ooh, that one was cold.
Sami Salo - Invent some sort of hybrid bubble that Sami can play in so he doesn't get hurt every 3 games. I'd say the same for Pavol Demitra, but he'd probably complain about the bubble not having Marian Gaborik in it, so he'd end up going home anyway.
Toronto - Separation. Banish the city from Canada. Banish the Leafs from my television. Before this though, make all the goofs that left the shithole for better weather and nicer people GO BACK so we don't have to hear about what a great place it is. If it's so fucking great, WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Uneducated debtors - Keep them believing their package will actually get there soon. And thank them for being deadbeats, because without these retards to find, I couldn't travel the world! You're dumb and I love you!
Village of Jasper - Wipe out every dingo-fucking Aussie that works there. Dude, they don't even know the 3 brands of Canadian beer they sell in their bars, and they're working...in Canada. Feed them to the moose, bury em in the snow, I don't care. Just make them gone.
Washington Redskins - Somehow, could you make the team hand the playcalling duties back to Jim Zorn? That "fake" field goal attempt last night was the ugliest football play I've ever seen. Ever. You guys are worse than the Lions and the Raiders COMBINED sometimes (that last comment was specifically aimed at Adam and Milo).
X - You think you could just get rid of this letter? It's fucking useless and pretty much grinds any alphabetical list to a halt.
Yellowknife - Prepare these people for the shitshow that awaits them when Len and I eventually make it there. And can you get Ice Road Truckers canceled? These tards don't deserve groupies, they're fucking truckers!
Zoos, specifically the Wellington Zoo - Make sure that animals don't stand up people who pay good money to come hang out with them. Stupid giraffe. You know what you can get him for me, Santa? A housing enclosure that's 2 feet shorter than he is. Then he'll know how I feel when I sit in the back seat of a car. Stupid giraffe.
Okay, that's enough venom for one Christmas. See y'all next year.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Iceland, Part 2
Only took me like 3 months to get around to part 2 this time. Impressive! Might as well get right to it.
Bitch's flight didn't arrive till close to midnight, so he didn't end up getting to the hotel until just after 1am. I still wasn't dry from the mother of all rainstorms earlier, but the frosty hotel bar beers were helping me ignore it. 8.50 a beer though...god damn. The bar supposedly closes at midnight, but they stayed open to serve me until Jess got there. The hotel staff was quirky, but generally pretty nice.
So finally, bitch arrives. We took about 3 minutes to drop off his shit and load up our backpacks, and then it was pillaging time! We made our way over to the water, sat down, and cracked the first of many Icelandic beers. We were staying in an area that was fairly busy during the day, but absolutely dead at night. For the first hour that we sat on the rocks down by the water, I think we saw 2 cars total. It was dark, but not for long.
We had walked halfway to town along the Seabraut, but it was obviously dead and getting sort of repetitive, so we decided to double back and go the other way. After a while we came upon this strange structure. It's kind of hard to describe...it was a circular hill, with a building sticking out of the flattened top of the hill. Basically, someone built a hill over a building...or something. Here, a pic should clear it up a bit:
I know, Bitch looks extremely gay in the pic. You get used to it after a while.
So, we decided to climb the thing and sit up there and drink for a while. It wasn't anything really special, it was just...odd. We nicknamed it "The hatch", of Lost fame. If you haven't seen Lost...well, then the reference is lost on you. Pun intended.
Many more beers were consumed as we walked along the water, past more strange structures, a tiny-ass rock beach, and eventually right onto someone's property. There was a house there that amazed the drunks standing in their driveway (us). There were all sorts of carvings and gadgets and statues n shit all over the property. It was extremely odd. Somehow we never clued into the fact that we were basically trespassing and doing laps around someone's house at 3am. We're lucky the Icelandic popo didn't show up...but I don't think their tractors move very quickly, so we had ample getaway time.
After getting our fill of the house (which we labeled the Lost house, even though it has sweet fuck all in common with any house on Lost...go beer!), we wandered even further down the coast until the sun started coming up. In the same place it went down. At 4am. I still have trouble wrapping my head around that, and I saw it happen 3 more times before I left. We took pics and pondered intelligent stuff we had no business talking about with that much booze in us, then the moment stuck. The intellectual highpoint of the entire trip.
Birds!
We came across a big...uh, gaggle? of these weird-looking birds. Geese, but not quite geese. They weren't big enough. They were just standing around in a field, doing what pseudo-geese do, until Jess saw them. Jess has this thing about going fucking berzerk on animals. Don't ask me why. He just does. So, Jess sees them. He doesn't utter one word, he just charges and starts screaming. I know it sounds completely retarded, but I can't do it justice with words. I've seen it a few times already too...but this one was special, because who knows how Icelandic pseudo-geese will react to a chubby drunk berzerker, right?
Well, they ran. And they hissed. And they ran some more. Jess pranced after them, trying to go in 3 directions at once and falling down a bunch of times, until his energy reserves ran out. I fell down too...from laughter. Here are a couple pics of bitch in all his brilliance...
Around 6am, we decided to walk back to the hotel, after watching a HUGE ship go down some fjord and dock. Jess said cruise ship. I said cargo ship. We argued about it all the way back. Oh, and we fell down a lot, and spilled beer all over ourselves. We're classy like that.
What did we do when we got back to the hotel? Drank vodka and energy drinks for many hours until we were way too wired to sit in a tiny hotel room. Around that time, Marissa got to Iceland, but the person she was going to stay with didn't. So she ended up coming over to hang out with us. I don't think she was prepared for two drunken retards, but hey...at least we're entertaining. I started making fun of her about 3 seconds after I met her, and didn't stop until she left. I'm charming like that.
So, the 3 of us wandered downtown. We ended up stopping at a cafe/restaurant thinger called Cafe Paris, which just happened to have the hottest waitress of all time. I'm pretty sure she didn't really enjoy me staring a(nother) hole in her, but I was drunk and couldn't help myself. I'm writing this months later, and I still think she's insanely hot. Not as hot as the flybus ticket girl, but it was close.
After walking around for a while, we headed back down the seabraut to the hotel. Jess did flips on the grass and I threw his shoes into traffic. You know, man stuff. Marissa just looked on at our immaturity with disdain, but that's because she's from Buffalo and nothing fun ever happens there, so she didn't understand what she was witnessing. I think she would have left long ago...if she had anywhere to go.
Now that we had filled our day with Icelandic stuff and killed some time chillin, what was there to do? Drink at the hatch, that's what! We loaded up our backpacks and headed on over, climbed up the hill, and got drunk all over again. They talked nerd for a while, while I rolled down the hill a few times. I know some nerdspeak, but not like these two. They're both extremely fluent (and extremely lame). Whenever I'd get involved and try to steer the convo towards something not so fucking engineery, I'd get ignored while they argued over who has the nicer pocket protector or some shit. I had beer though, so it was all good.
This is the hatch lid:
That's how the polar bear got to the island.
When I finally got them to talk about normal stuff, I'd try to tell Marissa something about myself...and she'd already know it. I guess Jess decided to prepare her for possibly meeting me by doing what he does best...talking. And telling her EVERYTHING about me. I mean, I know I'm not supremely interesting or anything, but have you ever met a stranger and they already know your complete bio? It made for a pretty one-sided convo.
Me - "So, I guess you like the Sabres. I feel sorry for you."
Her - "I know you like the Canucks and you went to the World Juniors with Jess and yelled at Americans and you have been to a lot of other cities to watch hockey and you just got back from New Zealand and you like long quiet walks in the park and your birthday is July 30th and you're left-handed and you make fun of Jim a lot."
Me - "You know Jim?"
Her - "No."
Me - "Uh...I have no idea what to say now. You're chubby*."
*Before you get mad at me for calling a girl chubby, she weighs like 63 pounds. She's not chubby. I just like attaching completely unrealistic qualities to people to amuse myself. Like telling Jim he's smart.
So this went on for..a long time. Booze in face, fall down hill, rinse, repeat. Sun went down again, sun came up again...it was all somewhat routine the 2nd time around. We stagger back to the hotel. It's daytime again. Jess does what he always does when the entertainment stops for 10 seconds...he falls asleep. On the floor.
I try to fall asleep as well. Nyet. Not happening. Vodka/energy drinks + not adjusting to the time zone had Timmy Wide. Fucking. Awake. I watched The Hurt Locker (awesome movie) and tried to stave off the hangover. And fail miserably at it. I was hurtin for certain.
Jess slept until mid-afternoon while I laid there, wide awake, feeling like I was about to die. He got up and went for food and a walk with Chubby, but I couldn't move. Eventually he decided to take a tour out to a gigantic waterfall and Geysir (the geyser that all geysers are named after). I got all prepped to tough it out and go...and my body finally decided it was sleepy time. What the fuck? So, Jess and Marissa went on the 6 hour tour, and I fell asleep. At 4:30pm.
Yes, I know...I completely fucked this trip up to this point. So far I had seen barely any of Reykjavik, despite being there for 3 days. I hadn't gone on the main tour that every visitor takes. I hadn't been to a pub yet. I hadn't been to the main harbor yet. Hell, I hadn't talked to one Icelandic person that wasn't selling me something yet. This definitely wasn't a normal vacation for me. Did it get any better? You'll find out soon enough that it did not.
Bitch's flight didn't arrive till close to midnight, so he didn't end up getting to the hotel until just after 1am. I still wasn't dry from the mother of all rainstorms earlier, but the frosty hotel bar beers were helping me ignore it. 8.50 a beer though...god damn. The bar supposedly closes at midnight, but they stayed open to serve me until Jess got there. The hotel staff was quirky, but generally pretty nice.
So finally, bitch arrives. We took about 3 minutes to drop off his shit and load up our backpacks, and then it was pillaging time! We made our way over to the water, sat down, and cracked the first of many Icelandic beers. We were staying in an area that was fairly busy during the day, but absolutely dead at night. For the first hour that we sat on the rocks down by the water, I think we saw 2 cars total. It was dark, but not for long.
We had walked halfway to town along the Seabraut, but it was obviously dead and getting sort of repetitive, so we decided to double back and go the other way. After a while we came upon this strange structure. It's kind of hard to describe...it was a circular hill, with a building sticking out of the flattened top of the hill. Basically, someone built a hill over a building...or something. Here, a pic should clear it up a bit:
I know, Bitch looks extremely gay in the pic. You get used to it after a while.
So, we decided to climb the thing and sit up there and drink for a while. It wasn't anything really special, it was just...odd. We nicknamed it "The hatch", of Lost fame. If you haven't seen Lost...well, then the reference is lost on you. Pun intended.
Many more beers were consumed as we walked along the water, past more strange structures, a tiny-ass rock beach, and eventually right onto someone's property. There was a house there that amazed the drunks standing in their driveway (us). There were all sorts of carvings and gadgets and statues n shit all over the property. It was extremely odd. Somehow we never clued into the fact that we were basically trespassing and doing laps around someone's house at 3am. We're lucky the Icelandic popo didn't show up...but I don't think their tractors move very quickly, so we had ample getaway time.
After getting our fill of the house (which we labeled the Lost house, even though it has sweet fuck all in common with any house on Lost...go beer!), we wandered even further down the coast until the sun started coming up. In the same place it went down. At 4am. I still have trouble wrapping my head around that, and I saw it happen 3 more times before I left. We took pics and pondered intelligent stuff we had no business talking about with that much booze in us, then the moment stuck. The intellectual highpoint of the entire trip.
Birds!
We came across a big...uh, gaggle? of these weird-looking birds. Geese, but not quite geese. They weren't big enough. They were just standing around in a field, doing what pseudo-geese do, until Jess saw them. Jess has this thing about going fucking berzerk on animals. Don't ask me why. He just does. So, Jess sees them. He doesn't utter one word, he just charges and starts screaming. I know it sounds completely retarded, but I can't do it justice with words. I've seen it a few times already too...but this one was special, because who knows how Icelandic pseudo-geese will react to a chubby drunk berzerker, right?
Well, they ran. And they hissed. And they ran some more. Jess pranced after them, trying to go in 3 directions at once and falling down a bunch of times, until his energy reserves ran out. I fell down too...from laughter. Here are a couple pics of bitch in all his brilliance...
Around 6am, we decided to walk back to the hotel, after watching a HUGE ship go down some fjord and dock. Jess said cruise ship. I said cargo ship. We argued about it all the way back. Oh, and we fell down a lot, and spilled beer all over ourselves. We're classy like that.
What did we do when we got back to the hotel? Drank vodka and energy drinks for many hours until we were way too wired to sit in a tiny hotel room. Around that time, Marissa got to Iceland, but the person she was going to stay with didn't. So she ended up coming over to hang out with us. I don't think she was prepared for two drunken retards, but hey...at least we're entertaining. I started making fun of her about 3 seconds after I met her, and didn't stop until she left. I'm charming like that.
So, the 3 of us wandered downtown. We ended up stopping at a cafe/restaurant thinger called Cafe Paris, which just happened to have the hottest waitress of all time. I'm pretty sure she didn't really enjoy me staring a(nother) hole in her, but I was drunk and couldn't help myself. I'm writing this months later, and I still think she's insanely hot. Not as hot as the flybus ticket girl, but it was close.
After walking around for a while, we headed back down the seabraut to the hotel. Jess did flips on the grass and I threw his shoes into traffic. You know, man stuff. Marissa just looked on at our immaturity with disdain, but that's because she's from Buffalo and nothing fun ever happens there, so she didn't understand what she was witnessing. I think she would have left long ago...if she had anywhere to go.
Now that we had filled our day with Icelandic stuff and killed some time chillin, what was there to do? Drink at the hatch, that's what! We loaded up our backpacks and headed on over, climbed up the hill, and got drunk all over again. They talked nerd for a while, while I rolled down the hill a few times. I know some nerdspeak, but not like these two. They're both extremely fluent (and extremely lame). Whenever I'd get involved and try to steer the convo towards something not so fucking engineery, I'd get ignored while they argued over who has the nicer pocket protector or some shit. I had beer though, so it was all good.
This is the hatch lid:
That's how the polar bear got to the island.
When I finally got them to talk about normal stuff, I'd try to tell Marissa something about myself...and she'd already know it. I guess Jess decided to prepare her for possibly meeting me by doing what he does best...talking. And telling her EVERYTHING about me. I mean, I know I'm not supremely interesting or anything, but have you ever met a stranger and they already know your complete bio? It made for a pretty one-sided convo.
Me - "So, I guess you like the Sabres. I feel sorry for you."
Her - "I know you like the Canucks and you went to the World Juniors with Jess and yelled at Americans and you have been to a lot of other cities to watch hockey and you just got back from New Zealand and you like long quiet walks in the park and your birthday is July 30th and you're left-handed and you make fun of Jim a lot."
Me - "You know Jim?"
Her - "No."
Me - "Uh...I have no idea what to say now. You're chubby*."
*Before you get mad at me for calling a girl chubby, she weighs like 63 pounds. She's not chubby. I just like attaching completely unrealistic qualities to people to amuse myself. Like telling Jim he's smart.
So this went on for..a long time. Booze in face, fall down hill, rinse, repeat. Sun went down again, sun came up again...it was all somewhat routine the 2nd time around. We stagger back to the hotel. It's daytime again. Jess does what he always does when the entertainment stops for 10 seconds...he falls asleep. On the floor.
I try to fall asleep as well. Nyet. Not happening. Vodka/energy drinks + not adjusting to the time zone had Timmy Wide. Fucking. Awake. I watched The Hurt Locker (awesome movie) and tried to stave off the hangover. And fail miserably at it. I was hurtin for certain.
Jess slept until mid-afternoon while I laid there, wide awake, feeling like I was about to die. He got up and went for food and a walk with Chubby, but I couldn't move. Eventually he decided to take a tour out to a gigantic waterfall and Geysir (the geyser that all geysers are named after). I got all prepped to tough it out and go...and my body finally decided it was sleepy time. What the fuck? So, Jess and Marissa went on the 6 hour tour, and I fell asleep. At 4:30pm.
Yes, I know...I completely fucked this trip up to this point. So far I had seen barely any of Reykjavik, despite being there for 3 days. I hadn't gone on the main tour that every visitor takes. I hadn't been to a pub yet. I hadn't been to the main harbor yet. Hell, I hadn't talked to one Icelandic person that wasn't selling me something yet. This definitely wasn't a normal vacation for me. Did it get any better? You'll find out soon enough that it did not.
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