Rapoldipark

After 3 weeks in Eastern Europe road-tripping with the family, it was time to say farewell.
Their way of saying goodbye was ideal for me, as it will leave a lasting reminder of how lame and hilarious we can be.
On our last night in the Morty campervan, Lisa and I were the sole audience to a Cat Stevens parody song. The lyrics had been cheekily switched to fit the current situation 'If you want to stay - take good care'. It was a good moment.

AUSTRIA
So suddenly, we were backpacking on our own! We were to stay in Innsbruck for a further 3 days.  Hence I will bring you a mashup of our Innsbruck experience with many sentences that MS Word would suggest revising. Bought eurail passes from a grumpy lady who wanted to go home. Ended up with 1st class tickets, though we discovered that much later. Steph, Lisa's long time exchange friend came to pick us up, and to celebrate, we went to a burrito-only place for lunch where you can name your food. I named mine G'Tag as I am confident this will still catch on as a greeting. Though the phrase wasn't so popular in Germany. We went to have our 3rd coffee for the day and were greeted by several large, self-proclaimed "top city lawyers" who were drinking beer at 2pm on a Friday. They decided to hit on me (and the two girls) and bought us all drinks, which I was asked to help finish. We went to Steph's SECRET BEACH and broke into a construction site. Swam in freezing water. I got back into my dry clothes on an offshore rock, unaware of the rapidly rising tide. I was almost stranded, but managed to climb my way out. The massive storm hit hard on our way home. Alternated between dancing in the rain and taking cover! Went out to a popular bar, an irish pub suprise suprise! Told some "short version" stories. Carefully planned sleep-in for operation "all-night".

Steph took us on an expert city tour. Included some great adages such as "I was once told something interesting about this statue... hmmm..." and "This building has some historical significance which I cannot recall". Carefully planned midday nap to progress operation "all-night". Made some epic sandwiches which were described as "very strange" and later "really good". We were on our way to Nordkette for the mountain festival. Stuffed our sleeping bags and tent full of beers, but didn't smuggle so many in to the festival (we got thirsty en route). Sat up on the ridge above our campsite to soak up the atmosphere, and then a brief burst of rain (the last for the night). Two big bonfires and two stages kept us busy for many hours. We had an amazing midnight cheese strudel mit sauerkraut. Lisa finally crashed around 2am, a heroic effort. The rest of us danced and partied on in remembrance. We had decided to climb the mountain for the sunrise around 4am, a "tough but achievable 40mins" walk. Steph commanded Lisa to join us, her sense of adventure easing the waking process. As we were on the south side of the mountain we began to traverse the track that slowly circled the mountain. Really slowly. We saw the eastern ridge rise above us, and climbed vigorously to see that it was not "eastern" enough. And again. And again. By the time we had walked for two hours we were still not anywhere near the elusive ridge. We parked ourselves and looked down over the town of Innsbruck. The view almost identical to that at the festival grounds we had walked from. Stephanie complained of having to walk back in the dark after the sunrise. We watched the not-sunrise over the town. A not-sunrise is like a sunrise, but instead of seeing the sun rising, you observe your surroundings becoming gradually lighter. We all stumbled home and crashed. Minutes later we crawled out of our tent-ovens in search of food and water. We were served a monstrous amount of cheese gnocci and packed our tent away for the first time and went home to rest some more.

We went to an amazing nepali restaurant after a non-existant pub quiz. The obligatory "day-after beer" was consumed at a moustache themed bar, which had a great portrait of the one and only Tom Selleck. Our multiple but uncertain car share options meant that we were to rise at 7am to check Stephs phone and then return to sleep until 10. Then we were to be suddenly awoken at 8:30 to "Guys get up you are leaving in 15mins". Turns out the earlier ride share was a go.

SWITZERLAND
We hopped in to the large van with the driver now on his way to pick up a package "of any size" to deliver from Austria to Switzerland. It was soon made apparent that a small hatchback would have suited just fine. The driver did not frequently look out the windscreen, instead spending more time searching youtube to show us documentaries about Istanbul. I regret asking where he was from. Once we arrived in Bern I was ready to try hitchiking for the first time! A post - festival dude with an old school BMW drove us to the town of Frieburg. We had requested a fuel-station, but instead were dropped at a roundabout on the on-ramp towards Lusernne. It did not turn out as such a problem even in the sweltering heat as many cars were passing by. Our handwritten request "Aussies vers Geneva S.V.P" was speedily accepted, and thankfully by a car that did have air conditioning! We chatted with the man most of the way, even though he apologised: "English is not my cup of tea!" This time we were dropped at a fuel station 25km from Geneva. Now at 4pm we were halfway to our ambitious one-day destination of Rosieres (in France!). Now our sign was to say "LYON S.V.P" It was not to be so simple - We saw another couple also hitching, holding a sign for Lyon. Not to be too competitive we introduced ourselves. Fortunately they offered us to stand with the other lane of traffic (in essence allowing us to hitch with half the cars) this was much better than waiting for them to get picked up first. 2 hours went by. And with those hours went our hopes of reaching Lyon that night. Fortunately, Lisa has middle-aged or elderly friends in nearly every corner of the globe. And our current location was no exception, just 15mins to the south was Nyon - the homely home of Freddy! Lisa made touch with them over skype for the first time in 2 years, and 1 hour later we were welcomed into their apartment. Their family was just about the politest and friendliest I can remember meeting. The town of Nyon was the host of a very large festival "Paleo". Not the spanish horse race, a large week long music festival with 80,000 tickets sold. I wandered down with Freddy to have a look. There was a large ticket-free aread with dozens of stalls, vegan food, bars, shops and a few stages. Within an hour we had covered everything between AI and geopolitics, the universe and the social zeitgeist.

Our ride share the next morning required us to be up at 6:30am to travel to the Franco-Swiss border. I told him we would be holding a red towel. It was a good system as he only just spotted us, we were on different sides of the border! The balding french driver did not trust his Philippino wife. Every few minutes he would grab her phone and see who she was talking to on facebook. The air conditioning was of the "windows-down" variety. As part of our arrangement we were paying for three seats to be driven to the door of the farm. After another five hours in the car, on our second day driving, we were at our WWOOFING destination - Domaine de Mercoire!

Im doing my best to break the conventions here. A typical blog might post up-to-date updates, live stories and the rest. Hope you enjoyed the time capsule update, from 7 weeks in the past.

JoelRead more