Al's Adventure: Part Two

Meet Al

Hi folks, my name's Al. I've taken up residence on Alex's travel blog as I made the decision to spend my inheritance on travelling the world for a few months, and I'll document my exploits from time to time as I go. Sometimes I'll be travelling alone, sometimes with friends, and sometimes just crashing at somebody's flat (cough Alex and Lachy cough) - it's going to be interesting, as I'm not one to often leave my comfort zone. My journey starts with a tour of the US, followed by some time in Fiji, a few weeks in Australia, and ends with a brief stint in New Zealand. Let's do this.

Part Two

It's been a busy second week. Travelling up from DC to New Haven, Connecticut, I had to walk through the centre of New York City. A pretty daunting task for a guy on his own with a big old backpack on a hot day. However, it also happened to be the day of the largest climate change march in history; thousands and thousands of eco-warriors stormed through the streets, demanding a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This, combined with the closure of the one subway line I needed to take, made my journey to Grand Central Station a tough one - but still, good on the folks marching. You could tell the rest of the city was thinking "why the hell are these smelly hippies clogging up the roads?" though.

I made it to New Haven eventually, a name that conjures up an idyllic New England town. However, when my friend Louisa picked me up from the station, I was told that this part of town has recently seen muggings at both knifepoint and gunpoint - oh boy! Clinging my belongings to me, we headed to the safer part of town, where I was treated with a proper sit down meal, the Great British Bakeoff, and wine. That's what I'm talking about.

Over the next few days I felt like a student of Yale as I followed Louisa to classes, employment seminars, and study sessions. As a neuroscience graduate, I was interested in going to her neuroeconomics lecture, led by a Nobel prize winner nonetheless. He put so much emphasis on all this neuroscience he claimed to barely understand, yet when it came to the economics stuff he just skipped past it. Strange. I enjoyed the neuroscience, but I don't think all the management students did. Nothin' wrong with some synapse talk at 8:30am, y'know?

A special highlight of my time in Yale was watching Netflix in the School of Law, while everybody else studied like suckers. They never guessed that I was an imposter, feeding off their internet, and claiming the free pizza offered at the end of an employment talk. I ended my time at Yale by being taken to Pepe's Pizza and the drinking raspberry beer at the campus bar - it's a cool place.

The next couple of days I found myself walking the streets of Bahstan, Massachusetts, and what a cool city it is. I learned all about the American Revolution, and JFK's term as president; I explored Harvard campus and got mistaken for a student by some tourists who wanted to photograph me; I walked around Quincy Market to see all the awesome different foods they have, as well as Boston waterfront; most importantly, I ate well. A food truck in the park sold the best veggie wraps I could have asked for, and I got to eat them in a square with a public piano - meaning people would play relaxing jazz music while you sat. Also, I ate Subway, which is always a win.

I spent one night in a fancy Boston apartment block, staying with my university academic dad's wife's brother (complicated, I know). We'd never met, but he informed the doorman to let me into his apartment. Yep, doorman. We ate some pizza, drank some beers, watched some TV, it was cool of the guy to host like that for a stranger from Britain. I finished my first stint in Boston at the opera house, watching the Lion King; I don't think I could have been sat further away, and hearing the American actors try and be British as Scar and Zazu was weird, but it was still pretty damn good.

I finished my week in Maine, in a town called Orono. My academic dad lives there with his wife, doing research and teaching at the university. It's a small town, full of trees and college kids, and they offer beer, pancakes, burgers, hot dogs, pizza -just great stuff that I came to this country for. It was here I went to my first American mall, truck stop and liquor store, all the highlights. These people have never seen a British passport before so they spend 10 minutes checking what countries you've been to when they ID you, because why not I guess.

If you get to go to the Acadia National Park, then do. It's on an island off Maine called Mount Desert Island (who knows.) and it's full of lakes, mountains and forests, meaning I was pretty lucky to visit during Autumn. Dotted around the island are little villages, one of which we visited so I could try Maine lobster. So yeah, I took a break from being vegetarian so I could see my dinner alive minutes before they killed it and I cracked it open and ate its flesh, but it WAS Maine lobster... Don't judge me.

Stay tuned for next time, when I ride a train across the entire country, coast to coast.

~

(I'm judging.
-Alex)

Al's Adventure: Part One

My good friend Al Morgan recently set off on his world travels, and we thought it'd be pretty neat if he became a guest blogger here to tell us all about his adventure. I'll let him introduce himself.

-Alex

Meet Al

Hi folks, my name's Al. I've taken up residence on Alex's travel blog as I made the decision to spend my inheritance on travelling the world for a few months, and I'll document my exploits from time to time as I go. Sometimes I'll be travelling alone, sometimes with friends, and sometimes just crashing at somebody's flat (cough Alex and Lachy cough) - it's going to be interesting, as I'm not one to often leave my comfort zone. My journey starts with a tour of the US, followed by some time in Fiji, a few weeks in Australia, and ends with a brief stint in New Zealand. Let's do this.


Part One

So then, my first week. It's been pretty hectic. I left all my packing until last minute, and I even had my friend Callum take a photo of each unread page of my book the day before I flew so that I could read it on my iPad rather than bring the book with me (he offered, I'm not some slave driver). I met a guy named Hal on the plane, who made the whole 'flying into New York City on my own at night' process a little more bearable by being a decent guy who I could chat nervous ramblings to.

I arrived at the hostel at around midnight local time - so 5am frickin' me time - and got into my bunk, when the guy next to me who I'd introduced myself to offered me some food. How could I say no to late night dunkin donuts on my first night in New York? Me and Jay from South Korea proceeded to eat and chat in the cafe, and thus ended the first night of my world trip.

The following day the hostel ran a 12 hour 'grand tour', led by a local retiree named Jerry. I saw Brooklyn, crossed Brooklyn Bridge, visited Ground Zero, rode the Staten Island Ferry, saw China Town, Little Italy, Grand Central Station, and finally Times Square. It was a long day, I'll tell you that. And Jerry was insane, he sang 'Run Rabbit Run' three times in succession for no reason, and put on an Asian accent whenever he spoke to this one Turkish guy. Also, his motto was "when you looky looky, don't walky walky, or you'll hit something."

In the next few days I walked the length of Central Park twice (TWICE, it's massive!), went to the top of the Rockefeller Centre, had birthday drinks in Greenwich Village with a Brazilian bloke named Rodrigo, met my school friend Jenny for MORE birthday drinks, wandered around some museums etc., but the biggest highlight? Seeing Billy Joel live in the Madison Square Garden. Holy crap, why can't I do that every night? He was the tits, cracking jokes and getting the audience to vote-cheer for different songs. One highlight was him cracking out the electric guitar to play ACDC's Highway to Hell, while some bloke screamed the lyrics before dropping the mic and walking off.

I could talk about Billy for a while, but I won't. I then visited Washington, D.C. for a couple of days. It's a chilled, tidy city, full of free museums and huge monuments dedicated to everything and everyone ever in American history. The holocaust museum was a highlight, very moving. It was pretty damn crowded in there, and I saw a bored lady bust out a few moves to some onscreen Nazi parade music. I don't think she realised what she was getting jiggy to, but it was inappropriately entertaining for a few seconds. Next stop, the even norther-east US.

~

Al is in fact the best.
More coming soon.
-Alex

Melbourne: The First Month

So, I've been here in the great nation of Australia for coming up on four weeks now. This morning, my good friend Katharine asked how it was treating me. I was preparing to say 'amazing, but...' except that once I said 'amazing' I started listing the reasons for the amazing-ness and sort of got sidetracked and forgot the 'but'. I remember it now, so I'll go into that very quickly before moving onto the lighter topics...

I graduated from St Andrews a few months ago which not only means I finished my degree (yay) but rather more importantly, and often forgotten in the excitement of the lead-up, I moved away. Not just from the UK - I can deal with that (I'm not really sorry to be missing post-referendum tension) - but from the friends I'd been living with, day in, day out, for four years. It didn't really dawn on me that I was moving away from them until we were in the taxi on our way out of St Andrews, and it sucks not seeing their faces every day. I was also putting a lot of pressure on myself to find a job immediately, no matter what, but today I had an epiphany when Lachy told a friend that we were here at least three years - three years is a long time. How could I be feeling pressured about three and a half weeks of joblessness?

And on to the amazing parts. You (dear reader) may know that I am something of a country mouse. I studied the Latin text of the country mouse and the city mouse in year nine, and basically the country mouse got really freaked out by the city mouse's dogs and ran away home. Not a great dinner guest.

Yeah, there are a few dogs in Melbourne that freak me out. There are Bulldogs which are basically places I wouldn't want to walk after a certain time at night, which is new. But there are also some really cool dogs like Huskies or Great Danes, and by Huskies and Great Danes I mean the art scene and the apartment... (this is getting complicated). There are a few events every single night I wouldn't mind attending. The Melbourne Fringe is currently taking place. We went to an erotic art exhibition on Friday where people were rolling around naked on the floor throwing glitter over themselves. On Saturday we went to a workshop day at the Victorian College of the Arts about the business end of being a professional arts practitioner, which we left an hour early to attend a performance of a play by Lucy Prebble (The Effect: amazing). In the coming week we're going to the book launch of a street artist we love. It's like all the things I loved about university, but they're going on constantly, and people just organise these events independently and yeah. It's amazing.

I also love our apartment which is bare brick and exposed beams and polished concrete floors and very much like Monmouth Manufacturing is in my brain, if you've read The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater (if you haven't, you should. MM is where an eccentric young explorer lives and plots to find a sleeping Welsh king). We have an OFFICE with a WHITEBOARD and a framed print from the comic Saga. How could anyone fail to be creative in an office like this? Also office chairs from Ikea with dodgy wheels that won't move unless you're sitting in them. And I have my framed autograph from Neil Gaimain instructing me 'Dream!' in typical Gaiman style. Plus we were looking after Lachy's brother's dog, who is a Kelpie, an Australian dog that looks like a dark Border Collie, and she made us feel very at home in our apartment.

I'm not sure when the next update will be since this is now my life and not so much my travels. But there's plenty of Australia I still have yet to see. I'll no longer be spamming Facebook with these posts, so if you haven't already, click follow by email over there (->) and be my friend. I'll leave you with these two photos. I haven't got my camera out yet! Okay? Okay.

Monmouth Manufacturing (pre-furniture)

Lachy with a work by Kaffeine (the street artist)

Melbourne Life, Week One (and a bit)

My new life in the Southern Hemisphere had a bit of a rocky start when I touched down in Melbourne. After eating the much-anticipated avocado on toast and sleeping until a more reasonable hour (10am) I spent the whole of my first day vomiting into a sink, and then retching into a sink, and then trying desperately not to fall asleep while watching Friends and Seinfeld.

On day two I was keeping my food down (well, my popcorn and toast) but still not much was accomplished. I bought a crummy Nokia phone which I put my UK sim card in for emergencies, and stuck an Aussie sim in my older (but comparably better) phone. Lachy and I went to take a look at the flat we were going to be living in and gaped at the space we had no furniture to fill.

On Saturday we went to Ikea and bought a chair. That chair is currently sitting in the centre of a very empty-looking living area. We bought two desk chairs which we don't yet have a drill to assemble and a bedframe which it turns out doesn't fit Australian-sized mattresses, one of which we had already bought. We bought the basics, too, like plates and cutlery and salt and pepper.

Then it becomes sort of a blur of waiting for electricians and phone technicians who never arrived, waiting for post to prove my address and open a bank account, waiting for the mattress to be delivered... Celia came to visit (we went to school together, now she is also engaged to an Australasian and moving to Melbourne, yay team). Our mattress arrived and we started sleeping in the flat and it began to feel like we were actually living there. But only yesterday did it actually feel like we were properly living there, because we got internet, and were connected to the rest of the world again.

Job hunting is a pain, because it's sort of an urgent issue and so far unfruitful. Let's leave it at that. Over the weekend we bought some fresh veg and cheese at the Victoria Market and then spent an hour volunteering with Second Bite, collecting up perishable food from the stallholders who can no longer sell it to pass it on to people who need it. Fun was had all round. I also discovered the local library is around the corner. Books and internet and work spaces. I like it. The State Library is a more impressive version and fun if we're in the city, which is fortuitously only a tram ride away. As a matter of fact we're a short distance from lots of cool things, like my favourite restaurant, Vegie Bar, and a supermarket whose motto is 'eat your ethics'.

The other day on the tram Lachy and I sort of got trapped in this group of British travellers with dreadlocks and posh accents and it was a bit of an Inbetweeners 2 situation. They were talking about getting married to Aussies in order to get a visa and I wanted to laugh and shout at them because doing three months of farm work to get a second working holiday visa would be infinitely easier than trying to provide evidence of a phoney relationship and also marriage visas are expensive and they were just so dumb and I felt unusually hostile towards my countrymen. But we weren't actually in their conversation, just surrounded by it, so I kept zipped.

On a brighter note, this morning I set out at 6am to a nearby dance studio, which is in an attic, and did some barre fitness looking out over the rooftops of Fitzroy while the sun rose. It was a pretty damn cool way to start the day and I'm feeling hopeful. Melbourne is a very cool city and I think we are going to love living here.

Coming soon: pictures.