CZECH IS CZHEEP

Aylwin:

I love this place

The czech republic is great pulled in a couple of days ago, at 2200, got a hostel, cheap as chips. Got up the next day in our huge room, got out at about 1130. Chilled around town, got a huge steak lunch with lots of drinks for about 11 quid. This place is amazing. We did our cultured part of the day by going to this huge cathedral/castle, proper bo. After a sketch (which was applauded by a bunch of japanese tourists) We went out to eat for dinner as well, an out for a few bevvies after, all of which cost about a tenner. We dropped off to sleep around midnight with matter shout the word, "mer" in his sleep for no apparent reason, strange lad. Today we got a takeway bagel, yummy, an now we are preparing to go on a 17 hour trip to italy but before hand we gotta burn all this spare cash. Its quite hard in a place like this.Peace out.


Aylwin

ZOO!

ZOO!
Originally uploaded by matt_milhouse.

Fried Eggs & Lack Of Sleep Dreggs

Aylwin:
So we got up quite satisfied as we came down from our self contained room to have egg on toast, the best breakfast so far. Leaving the weed drenched hostel (due to some japanese "stoney malonies") at about 9:30 we set off on our first excursion, this was finding the Van Gogh gallerie. We reached our destination feeling quite cultured that we went to an art gallery of our own accord. On completion of this back-aching-over-priced-tour - which was thourghly enjoyable, we got some lunch, by this time it was about 15:00 and too late to visit the Heinekin Exerience -big dissappointment, oh well, we headed for a recommended bar, had a few top heavy pints then got our bags and headed 4 the station.

This was to be our first over night excursion (hopefully free of matts now notorious snorring) and proved to be one that lacked one vital ingredient, sleep. This was for one reason, Germans are loud! We were sharing with two German strangers who soon hit it off and turned into best buddies within five minutes. When they fell asleep, we managed to although it was only to be for four hours. We also had to change before this and spent two hours in an underworld known as Duisburg. We pulled into the station at five, slept til six on cold metal seats then went on the hunt for MaccyDees.
We ended up sleeping till seven-when it opened then having, "doo (2) baaacon un eeegs" meals - that was Matts accent by the way. He seems to think that if u say something slowly with a french accent everyone, no matter what the country, will understand you. I laughed. A lot.

The rest of the day included checking into the best hostel in the world (so far), shopping, watching some crazy break dancers and eating at a turkish-italian-german pizzeria.
I ordered a peperoni pizza with no cheese. Apparently in german peperoni means spicey pepper, BOLLOCKS!
I sent that pizza back and got one with meat on much to the managers annoyance. But if your gonna own an italian resturant at least know peperoni means meat. Dooshbag.

Anyways after that interesting and hilarious escapade, we ended up back here... The best hostel in the world. We have had a few pints-our first proper pints of the tour and can now decide between doing our laundry or chilling in the sauna, probably the wrong descriptive word.
peace out.

Sympathy For Mary & Joseph

Milhouse: Amsterdam... The land of dope & glory.

I have to say, as much as it is slightly stereotypical to think that all Amsterdam has to offer is hemp, hookers & a number of canals, it is quite amusing that the first fragrance to hit your nose once the exit Centraal Station is that of a burning marijuana plant. And as for the infamous red light district, you're virtually plonked right in the thick of it before you can say "Big Neon Sign".

Needless to say, we soon learned what a "Coffee Shop" really sold when you're experiencing life a la Amsterdam. Of course, this wasn't the reason that I goaded Aye that Holland would be a beneficial landmark to our month's trip.
Oh no, no, no, no.
As well as it's fairly liberal side, Amsterdam is a beautiful & peaceful city with a hugely higher ratio of bicycles to cars, enough canals and little roads to almost rival Venice and last but by no means least

...Heineken.
Lots & lots of Heineken. There's a bar in pretty much every direction you look. Mind you, they still can't pull a decent Pint.

Since we hadn't booked a hostel before hand this time, I had a little look in the very handy 'Europe on a Shoestring' travel guide I was so kindly given as a birthday present and found 'Bob's Youth Hostel' to be a fitting solution to the problem. 'Cheap, clean, & only 5 minutes from the station', Bob's Youth Hostal would of been ideal.
But Bob was nowhere to be seen.
We looked for Bob.
We searched high & low for Bob - & Amsterdam is bout as flat as the come - but no luck came our way.

I personally put this down to two things... Either Bob has had enough of all this Dutch malarky and instead opted to pursue his life long dream of joining the circus, OR, it really is best for the both of us that I don't continue to give lame-ass directions that lead us a 1/4 of a mile in the wrong direction.

Anyway, cutting a long story short, things were starting to get a little hairy around the time it came to 9 O'Clock and we still hadn't found a half decent hostel that wasn't full. You could kinda feel a little tension building up and I even found myself getting slightly worried about where we were going to sleep.
We sure as heck weren't going to be sleeping it rough in Amsterdam... who knows what mite of happened!

Luckily, as a last resort we found a dodge-looking hostel (complete with big neon sign) called "My Home"... how nice.

We were greeted by a 30-something year old Canadian woman. To describe her, she looked exactly how you would imagine a 30-something year old Canadian woman to look... if that's any help. We managed to end up getting a room to ourselves which was phat, & the breakfast was awesome. But we ended up paying through our nostrils (€28 each for one night!), which was in this case,necessaryy, but that was when werealizedd we were spending way too much money. I think that's been our biggest problem so far; we've gotta keep an eye on our daily budget.

When we get to Prague though, me thinks things will be a whole lot cheaper. And everyone knows that means more spending money for Beer!

YYYYEEEEEESSSSSSSSS! : )

"Ok, Its Gig Time... What T-Shirt Am I Going To Wear?"

Milhouse: I Can't believe we're actually doing this...
It's only just sunk in that here we are; me & Aylwin - 2 Skinny blonde Brits with 2 oversized rucksacks, a map of Europe & enough under-garments that strictly should last us all of 3 days (if we're lucky) - & we're on a train travelleling towards Amsterdam Centraal Station with little to no idea of where we are sleeping tonight, feet that could suffocate a skunk & shoulders so worn out, you can literally see the quality stitching left from the strapmarks.

I will admit, we've spent a good few days in Paris though. The two of us are just getting used to travelleling life. It seems best that we only plan things a couple days ahead, as so many things can affect the day's events.

I've found that getting lost in any major city is one particular example of how one's "fun-packed-schedule" can fly right out the window, & into a bed of ajecent shattered dreams, broken promises and drunken resolutions.

You see, for some unknown & bewildering reason, Aylwin has left me predominantly in charge of reading the map. As nice a compliment as this my be, clearly this is a mistake only a kind but foolish young man would make. This is because in all the time that we have been in Europe we've spent it, predominantly getting lost.

Can anyone else can a connection here?

I guess it's all part of the fun & games of travelling though (& plus it's really funny watching Aylers try to keep a cool & calm exterior when we're blatently more lost than a deaf batin a soundproof box!).

Our first hostel was plesent enough. Many of the travellers seems to be from America, including the 3 girls from California & 1 from Brazil that we shared a dorm with. All of which were (without sounding too brash) very easy on the eye ; )

Paris is a flippin big place.
In many respects, it's not that disimilar from London. For example there is a half decent Underground, some posh parts, some tacky parts, a lot of pigeons & a number of monuments & attractions that look very suspiciously like they were stolen from us.

One difference I would say though, is that the French people DEFINATLEY have some major funky body odor problems.

My Gosh.

We went to a Hennes at a nearby shopping centre and Sacre Blu, the whole store smelt of nothing but hairy armpit. I'm not kidding either!

Another difference we've noticed is htat Europeans are crap at pulling pints. First of all, they don't drink out of pint glasses at all - oh no, it's half pints by defult here - also, once you get youre half pint of whatever, there's about 3 inches of head on the top... Guys... What's up with that?!?!
I dunno.

Oh yeah, "did you know at McDonalds, you can buy a Beer, and they don't call it Big Mac they call it Le Big Mac."

... Classic.

Aye & Mill Doo Europe

Aye & Mill Doo Europe
Originally uploaded by matt_milhouse.

Nice Gurn, Aye?

1st Day, Feeling Fine

Milhouse: Hey, well the first problem with France is the keyboard.
Some silly bugger has swapped all the keys round. If I typed like i nornmally would it would look like this qnd then nozone zould understqnd zhqt the hell I zould be tqlking qbout:

Aylwin: yo peops, this is phat, cracking open the champerz on the eurostar then snoozin, then walkin round aimlessly an bein evacuated from a station, then more bevvies!

Milhouse: So yeah, so far this has been quite a nice little booze fest, infact since it took us about 2hours to find the hostel we are staying at we've been approached by one guy threatening us with chopsticks asking for a smoke, another guy trying to sell us "hashishé" and plenty of that wonderful French B.O. in the wonders of the French Underground.

Aylwin: peace out, gimme sum comments my woodland friends xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Back Online, Feelin' Fine

Well it’s certainly been a while hasn’t it?

To the unknowing reader, it could almost have looked like I had packed the whole thing up ready to life a life of all things non-bloggerish.

But never fear – much to your personal delight (or horror) Milhouse is STILL here...

…Living an odd, odd life in a world of oddities, surrounded by a mass of odd thoughts, odd people, odd occurrences, and big, bright signs saying the words, ‘This Is Odd’ on them : S

Yes, I apologise in advance if the literature comes off a bit creaky today – it seriously has been a long time since I last wrote anything even remotely legible (it’s gotta be at least 4 months since my last real blog now, rite? Even then, it was suspect of being 90% Gibberish).

Being the student type that I am (or was), I, like many others had enjoyed the luxury of having a months worth of holiday in which to fill with as much dossing, chilling & bumming around as possible. I found my attempts on this particular mission to be largely successful (You can congratulate me later). Despite keeping alcohol levels to a fairly reasonable standard, so much has happened on the social agenda - in terms of going places & meeting new people - that I feel almost inebriated to the point where it's hard to remember what I actually did 5 mins ago.

Mind you, I guess most of you might think what's new.
(U Cheeky Bastads)

I mean, the earliest memory of the spring break has to be waking up to a text message on March the 31st at about fifteen minutes past 8am. To give you a bit of coverage on this particular event in mind, I would have to tell you that during that week, I had been busy arranging a load of friends to join me in a day trip to Thorpe Park. This was to be a celebration of my 19th birthday.

Seeing as it's never an easy task to invite a bunch of people to be at any one place at any one time - unless the invite contains the words 'Free', 'Booze', 'Round' & 'Mine' - I figured it would be important to make sure everyone knew when & where they we're supposed to meet up so that there would be as little waiting around as possible.

April the 1st - A Saturday & a whole 96 hours ahead of my actual Birthday - was to be the appropriate date for which to make the journey. So I texted & I called & generally bugged all the peeps that said they might come and narrowed it down to the eventual 9 or so people that did turn up. Some were to meet up at the Station, while the rest of them would come to my house in the morning to leave together.

Strangely though, a certain Dominic Christie - ever the thrill seeker - got the impression that we were in fact actually going to leave a day earlier than planned (so to skip the queues of course). After knocking at the front door of my house for a good 5 minutes he was greeted by my slightly bewildered mother and realised that maybe all was not as it seemed... Which is when I got my text:

I'm never gonna live this one down! Who has just turned up at your house thinking it was April 1st?! I'm an idiot! Apologies to your folks! - Dom C.

What can I say..? Clearly April Fools Day isn’t strictly a 24hour occasion. Nice one Dom : )

Well after that slight hic-cup, Dom fortunately did swallow his pride and buck up enough courage to come back the next morning and join the gang & myself in what was to be an absolutely wicked day out in Thorpe Park. In total, 12 of us went down there, including my brother & his two mates Ryan & Mark Baber (brother of Ian), Ashleigh, Aylwin, Collet, Dom, Justine, Newman, Myself, Renée & the ever elusive Ruth. A nice bunch of people you may agree. I don't need to tell you that the rides were awesome, and my Top 3 were definitely 'Detonator', 'Colossus' & the mighty 'Tidal Wave' - all of which resulted in me screaming like a little girl or laughing like a mad hatter.

I brought 2 disposable cameras on the day for everyone to snap with, so you can all take a look right here at the best ones and see for yourself if you like. The night was nicely round off by hitchin' to Aylwin's crib having him fix us a blindin’ pasta dish creation, and playing the meanest game of Jenga I have ever encountered. 29 STORIES before the final piece collapsed the whole structure!

Truly amazing I'll think you'll agree.

After that, there was of course my 19th on Tuesday. (That's The 5th Of April Everybody!)Which was complimented with a nice wad of cash and a pucker amount of chocolate to keep me going after I brutally underwent going cold turkey soon after this Easter's confectionery ran out.

& After that…Well that bit’s kinda fuzzy. Although I’m pretty sure it involved some kittens, lots of coffee, a trip to the Hayward Gallery & a girl named Justine.

Of course, since then, even more has changed and things are all gearing up for the Great Summer holiday that Alywin & myself have planned.

As of this Monday coming, the two of us will be Hostelin’ it round West Europe for a whole month! I believe we're gonna call it 'Aye & Mihouse's Europe Adventures' or something stupid like that. I dunno, I want something a bit snappier myself. Something with Sshnaz (Any suggestions anyone?).

So yeah, ‘This time next week!’ we’ll be taking in the sights, admiring the culture, sipping fine wine and wearing pegs on our noses in case we catch a whiff of our socks that haven’t seen a wash in weeks. I don’t know about you, but I very excited!

We’ll be getting around by train equip with the tightest budget we can for the four weeks that we’re out there. Between us, we’ve already spent some £900 pounds on the tickets, insurance, and general necessities in able for us to survive (Though my Dad told me you won’t need a Machete to endure the harsh conditions of Western European Civilisation... What does he know?) And we haven't even left yet!

Luckily, I managed to borrow quite items including the rucksack that Cozin Kate sent me in the post today. Cheers, Lady Gillanders it’s just what I need. I owe you one.

Now there’s only a few more things to sort out such as a Europe Bolt-on to get cheaper calls on me mobile, a trip to the bank to get some Euros, & find a decent pair of shorts to accompany my decent pair of legs.

It’s all come so quickly, we’ve been planning it for ages but it was only yesterday that it finally hit me & what we were actually about to do.

I’m currently making a little list of some of the things we definitely have to do whilst out there. So far I’ve come up with hiring a tandem bicycle in Amsterdam, buying a fake Italian football shirt that leaves huge rashes on your back, a competition of who can find the ‘Oddest-looking man in Europe’ and also a compition of who can find the tackiest postcard in Europe.
Aye hasn't got a chance.

I’ll be hopefully keeping my blog up and running with the help of Aylwin during the time we’re sitting in the hostels overnight (I'll Post in Blue, Aye will post in Red so you know who's who) and posting a number of pictures from our travels. Make sure you check it out some time yeah?

Well I better be off for the moment, I’m about to attempt my second driving test in a couple of hours so problably best that I change out of my dressing gown & slippers! I hope I pass this time purly because it’s so flippin expensive to book up another test. I figure I’m going to play it Hakuna Matata and just drive like I drive normally. If I pass, that’s great, if I don’t then at least I have a month abroad to stew over how badly I cocked up that right turn into a main road!

C You later Peeps x

P.S. Shout out going to The Z... Howard Z!

Aylwin Is Calling

Check out this wicked blog 4 milhouse an aylwin do europe adventure diaries, coming soon from the 18th of july5.

A Little Birdie Told Me...

...Milhouse may soon be releasing some new posts eariler then planned!

Watch this space.

You heard it here first.