Postcard from another wasted weekend...

Weekends. Where do they go?

I had a training sesh for the AEC call centre job of Friday. I have a feeling this gig is going to cost me a lotta petrol and patience. Then I remind myself why I'm doing it: to save for next year's Norway exchange (and the inevitable side trip) and somehow it all seems worth it. I dunno if that's a good thing: that two times in my life when I can say I most profoudly experienced purpose were in the planning stages of trips to faraway places. But hey, we take what we can get in this life, right? :)

Norway should be fantastic. Summer, mountains, hiking, the Arctic circle, the midnight sun, Vikings and other Nordic gods... bring it on! If I had to name one thing I was most looking forward to it would be that whole twenty four hours of daylight thing--I can't get my head around it: a whole month made up of one endless day...

In my dreams of travel to faraway places, it seems my only decision of consequence is whether to spend a few days in Edinburgh or Amsterdam before heading back to Oz afterwards. Visiting just one country on an overseas ticket is a WASTE when you live in the antipodes, I say! The lure of Amsterdam needs little explanation (no, I'm not just talkin' about hash ;P It's the...vibe, man. The laid-back nature of the place, the sunny greens where people meet, the guy who wheeled an upright piano for miles to busk in a park (a scene recalled from a travel doco), the beer, the cheese, the tulips... and OK, the fact that you can buy ganja tea in cafes--more because I like the IDEA of that than the accessibility :))

But Edinburgh is a tempting possibility too. I am absolutely in-lust-from-afar with Scotland, always have been. I blame the accent. And the landscape. But mostly the accent. And if I'm not mistaken August is Fringe Festival time in Edinburgh. Which is like gathering up every festival Melbourne has ever hosted --- film, comedy, writers, fringe and the non-committal "arts" festival held in October --- herding them into the eternal, glamourous spiegeltent and towing them north to Scotland, cannae you imagine?! I'm a huge afficianado of that lower strata of arts'n'culture--not high enough to be high brow, not so low brow as to be pop (in the Big Brother/ Kylie sense of the word). One of the things I love best about Melbourne is its festivals and one of the festivals I've alwaysalwaysALWAYS wanted to go to is Edinburgh.

So, what to do? After the course wraps up in Norway I won't have a lotta time before semester 2 of my final (I hope) year begins back home. I think I'll end up letting the travel agent decide for me: whatever's cheaper and logistically neater and tidier But I'm havin' fun thinking about the alternatives in the meantime... ;)


** Its already looking like I'll have to take a flight with three stopovers to get to Bodo, because its $600 cheaper than the alternative. And I promised myself that I would neverNEVER do that again, after our nightmare flight back home over the Pacific from Canada *shudders* Twenty-six hours, four flights (including one uttery fucking STUPID stopover where we had to disembark, re-check our bags and walk through an entire airport in Honolulu to get back on the same fucking plane because of paranoid American security measures)... and as for the obese, overly-gassy passenger who slumbered in the aisle seat preventing escape or even bathroom visits for six hours of that nightmare trek home--well, I still don't wanna talk about him...