Europe 2009 - Missive Home

I'm currently in Europe, Paris to be precise. I was here four years ago, a short trip spent wallowing in all that the likes of Amsterdam, Paris and parts of the UK have to offer. I spent a lot of that time writing, as I have been this trip, and recently came across what I'd penned then, a series of oddball missives to myself, to friends back home, to nothing and no one in particular.

Before I begin to post what I've written this time around, a trip down memory lane seems to be in order.
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Notes back home…

Dudes… greetings once again, this time from outside a coffeeshop in the middle of Amsterdam where it’s quiet and relaxed, where even the most hectic fuckers are slow-walkin’ and steady talkin’, a place where time doesn’t even move because it just doesn’t have the inclination… which is fine with me.

So, Paris was cool… fast-paced and crazy, a good place to visit, but more than a week or so and you’d lose yr mind, leave it on a café table with the dregs of beer and the red wine, never to be seen again.

Been here since Wednesday night.  Beer is cheap, 12 euro for a slab of Grolsch, 8 euro for a bag of Northern Lights, 3 euro for a kebab, 2 euro for a cup of black coffee – things are good.

Getting a fair bit of writing done – couple of thousand words on the journalism front, about the same in random European Ramblings, about 600 on the book – not as much as I’d have liked by this late stage in the game, but you can’t complain too hard, you are stoned in Amsterdam, after all. 

From here, this coming Wednesday, it’s over to the UK, a couple of nights in the middle of nowhere with an uncle and family, then four days in the even-more-middle-of-nowhere with the entire family, 22 of us, which should be an interesting experience, perhaps as far removed from where I am now as is physically possible.  Cool.

Thanks for the words back y’all, nice, will divert words yr way once more no doubt, but if not, back in Melbourne on the 5^th of October for fun times, and hopefully a jam – my guitar fingers are itchy as hell.  Until then,

S