Bryce’s Notes

Gday All.

I’ve added pictures now - It’s a link on the right hand side of the screen. Have a gander if you get a chance.

Cheers,

Bryce.

Hooray!

I now have my Passport with Visas for Hungary & The Czech Republic. I was starting to get a bit nervous, so I’m glad that it ended up getting here with time to spare. I can now leave the country.

Woohoo!

Bryce.

My plane takes off from Brisbane airport on Wednesday 4/9/02 @ 16.15 (4.15pm). The airline is Garuda and my destination is Bali.

I have to arrive 2hrs before to get through customs. If you wish to see me off, meet me at 2.15pm (14.15) at the latest at the airport.

Cheers,

Bryce.

My small gathering for my going-away party was rained on a lot. In fact, the rain didn’t stop for the whole evening. This required plans to be moved from a lawn BBQ to a shed BBQ.

Not much to say about it really. It was designed so that I could see most of my friends before I left, and, as almost everyone I invited attended, it accomplished that. Copious amounts of food was consumed and even more copious amounts of food was provided. I had a good time and I thank everyone who attended for coming, and thank you to those who brought presents along. It was a shame that I picked the wettest night in a 6 month window of fine weather, but it was fun nonetheless. I hope other people had fun too.

Cheers,

Bryce.

I land at Frankfurt: 6:40am 6/9/02 (30mins-60mins for customs).

This is the email of my travel agent: jason_zaviska@flightcentre.com

Jason has gone out of his way to help me and I recommend him to anyone who needs a travel agent!

Bryce.

I have just found out about the raut on Europe’s trains. First of all I have to pay a whole sh!teload of money for a number of days travelling ($715 for 10 days). Then if I want to travel overnight and lie down, it’s between $50-$100 for a friggin bed on the train on top of the $715.

It’s a bleeding outrage.

Sympathise with me.

Bryce.

Dean’s new camera’s early shot.

This weekend was Rhys’ 21st birthday celebrations held at the Gold Coast. I got an electric shock from mains power. Yes, I am still alive. Yes, I’m still writing. Yes, I’m very tired. Yes, I’m sorry if this post doesn’t make sense.

Wow, what an introduction. I should be a writer.

Saturday dawned cloudy. This was the first cloud that I’d seen in the sky for about 2 months. Brisbane’s weather recently has been glorious. A few coulds didn’t worry our hardy souls, as Rhys swung by my place (the Rhys-standard 30 minutes late) to pick me up on the way to the coast. We quickly stuffed my bags into the boot of the car and manically sped off (as only Rhys can) to pick up Rhys’ girl-friend, Anneke. We parked in the middle of an intersection madly gesticulating to Anneke for her to dive dolphin-like into the back seat of the car. She daintily slid across the back seat and over the supplies where her feet should go before we sped off to our next rendezvous. Oh wait, we stopped in the middle of another street first to rearrange the boot luggage.

Off we go to pick up Katherine & Bronwyn from *Birkdale* station. For those who know geometry, we were at one non-right-angle point of a right-triangle, our destination was an the other non-right angle point, with our ideal travel going along the hypotenuse, and Birkdale is at the right-angle. For those who don’t know geometry, it was a long detour. Several minutes later we arrived at Birkdale, and after a drive-by and a wrong turn into a driveway that went nowhere, we found the girls. What followed was a rather uneventful drive to Surfers Paradise. Uneventful, except for the bright lads whose entire wheel became disconnected from their trailer and careened down the street, causing general havoc and enormous mirth to both bystanders and participants alike. Fortunately for them, the wheel bounced off a fence and rolled some of the way back to them, shortening their fetch somewhat.

We arrived at Surfers Aquarius, in Surfers Paradise at about 11.45am for a 12noon check-in. We were told that one of our rooms (we were getting 2 rooms) might be ready at 12.30pm. Check-in is advertised as 12noon. Rhys said, ‘That’s OK as long as the other one is ready before 3pm’, to which the feisty receptionist muttered ‘You might be lucky’, or something similar. We decided to use this time to get some lunch. Blah, blah, blah - lunch is over, nothing special there except pleasant conversation and company. We did some shopping, had a nap and watched some tellie. During this afternoon, our numbers increased to the full complement of 9, with the arrival of Rhys’ work-friends cohort. These were Ryan, Rachael, Jacob & Callan. Cocktails came and went before dinner. I use the term ‘cocktails’ very loosely for some of the concoctions that emerged. Dinner arrived in two shifts. The ‘first course’ came an hour after we phoned for it. This course was Chinese food. The ’second course’ was Indian food and it arrived a further half an hour later. Of course, by this stage we where quite drunk and some of us slightly queasy after our dubious cocktails (namely Katherine, who so generously donated me her ‘curdled-cream cocktail in a friggin huge tall glass’ after announcing that ‘this is making me sick’). The Chinese food didn’t sit very well with the cocktails, so most of the drinking died out after that. The Indian food killed any lingerers drinking, except for Rachael, who was remarkably resiliant. The rest of the evening was filled watching bizarre movies on Foxtel’s comedy channel. On of the most delightful scenes was when a granny started sniping the entrants in a ‘Purity Contest’, whose air had been laced with heroin and who had an unnatural propensity to be topless or jump into water whilst wearing white clothes. This was closely followed by the final scene. This scene was an alien giving a head-job to a chauffer, who thought he was the a star-trek captain. And that was how the movie finished. Really weird stuff. I think the comedy channel must be Foxtel’s answer to SBS.

On preparing to go to bed, I reached down behind my bed in the dark to see why the lamp wasn’t working, thinking the power must be off at the wall. It was actually because the cord had been completely severed from the power outlet, leaving two live wires poking out of the socket, which my finger managed to find. Note that this was plugged directly into 240V mains power of a 40 storey apartment complex. It felt like a warthog was lying in wait behind my bed and decided to take part of my finger. I now have two little fang marks left on my hand from the two live wires. Katherine & Bronwyn used a plastic lunch-box lid to bash the power switch to off. I have decided to keep the broken outlet in my bag. After confirming with Bronwyn (our resident final semester nursing student) that because I was still breathing and walking then I was fine, I watched some more bizarre TV and then went to bed.

At about 7am the next morning, the sun decided that I should wake up. This is even after I had the presence of mind the evening before to ensure that the curtains to my room were shut. Alas, it made no difference. I brushed my teeth to remove the remains of rancid cocktails from my mouth and then chatted with Katherine and Bronwyn, who were also awake, before breakfast. Breakfast was leftover Indian food, which took a bit of effort to send and then keep down. Fortunately the cavalry decided that brunch for early risers (this included me apparantly) and breakfast for late risers was going to be McDonalds pancakes. I must say that I despise all McDonalds food, except for their pancakes, which are very good. Brunch was followed by packing up, and heading off to Mt. Tamborine for a scenic lunch. It was raining again today, so we had lunch at a cafe that we found in the suburb of North Mt. Tamborine. I shared a fishermans basket with Rhys. After much frivolity over lunch, we split the convoy of cars and headed for home. I have just got home.

Thanks for a great weekend Rhys! For those who don’t know, Kathryn, Katherine, Bronwyn & myself chipped in for a bottle of Chivas Regal, the domain name www.rhysie.net & webhosting for a year. It now has something on it, and will get progressively more on it.

Until next time, fair readers, I bid you adieu.

Bryce.

ps. Remember to leave a comment so I know who’s been here.

Long time since last update - Sorry, been very busy. My train options are thus, comments are welcome.

Travel within German, Switzerland, Italy, France & Spain within 2 months.

5 days: $473 - $94.6 / day
6 days: $528 - $88 / day
8 days: $621 - $77.625 / day
10 days: $715 - $71.5 /day
15 days: $929 - $61.93 /day

Cheers,

Bryce.