the homecoming committee

Re: Heading Home.

Mainly I worry that my excellent Italian Greyhound wont remember me. And that I'll have to get some boring job. And that I'm returning to yet another winter. But now I can move back into my old house again which is really great. Its a bit of a rickety old place, but I like it there nonetheless. I am so excited to see my friends (!), have all my things around me again, cook something in an oven, see how tall my cactus has grown,  watch crazies on trams, eat breakfast in my overgrown backyard, decorate my room, start some serious veggie growing, and do the million other things that are only able to be done properly in Melbourne.

same same but different

  

Sooooo, my 25 hour bus ride turned into a 32 hour bus ride complete with a pervy mustachioed bus driver that kept making kissy noises at me and touched my butt no less than 4 times. Nightmarish. Also, I've now been in Italy for one whole day and have not yet eaten pizza; a serious violation of basic human rights needs to be ended IMMEDIATELY (along with the groping, duh). 

No photos here yet, so instead heres a few from my last roll of film: three kind of average and entirely unrelated images but for a shared colour palette, see?

leaving

I'm leaving Utrecht in 21 hours! This is sometimes good, sometimes bad. I guess I'm neutral? I hardly took any photos of this here city so the above few will have to do. In all honestly all but the last photo were taken within maybe 25 meters of my bed aha (and you can even see my roof in the last one)! Is that considered cheating? Whatever, I make the rules around here. Tomorrow I board a bus and with any luck will end up in Italy 25 hours later. I-T-A-L-Y PEOPLE! Not even 25 hour buse rides or the prospect of packing can crush my excitement.

zomer

Last weekend should have been my last in the Netherlands (wow?!), but word on the street said that the ghentleman and lady were hoarding a small stash of that genovese pesto I'd heard so much about. It is rumours such as these that a lady such as myself must investigate. And so I did.

The low-countries have been treating me uncharacteristically well this week, with day after day of glorious sunshine. As such this entry will too remain uncharacteristically snark free- Im not even going to poke fun at the above 'beach'! Gent is a really nice city, those Belgians seem a pretty swell bunch, Mojito's rule & the Pesto really was amazing. The end.

chicken fever (its kind of like the bird flu except way better)

So anyway, about Chickens? Im crazy for them. They turn your food scraps into delicious things to eat! Sometimes those things are blue! They're hilarious! They poop out garden fertilizer! They say "bawk bawk bawk"! Some have boofy hairdo's! They strut! Their butts are fluffy! They help get rid of snails and slugs and grubs and things! They're Cute! They're Cute! They're Cute!

This is to say that the part of my brain that should be focused on things like, oh I don't know, finishing my degree or organizing ways to ensure Im not entirely broke, homeless and unemployed when I return home (a month today!) are busy considering crafty coop designs and hilarious chook name combinations. Doomed.

produce

Do you love markets? I do! One of my favorite things to do in a new city is go check out the pretty/crazy/weird produce on offer at a local market (plus stall holders are always a bit loopy and, thus, the best fun to talk to). In Holland its about flowers, all the time & its pretty hard not to be cheery about that. Same goes for any market containing morel mushrooms or fancy cheeses. In other cities, depending, you could find fancy spices, salted mango, scorpians or seahorse skewers (alas, i cant find my picture of that right now!), crickets, dildos, tiny birds, big birds, bunnykitten combos, fish, fish and more fish or mountains of meat. Yep, you might have to hold your nose along your judgement, but thats all part of the adventure, no?

swans

All's quiet around here. So - just because I can - I give you.... Swans.