Home at last

To paraphrase from the last entry:
"I can't imagine anything exciting will happen". What a crock!

• We got confused about which tickets to buy at Frankfurt train station to get us to the airport, so we waited in line for half an hour at the information desk and were helped by a chap with the most stereotypical German accent you've ever heard.
  
• We ended up getting on the wrong train anyway!
  
• Our flight out of Frankfurt was delayed by two hours due, according to the sign, to 'ship rotation'. We still don't quite know what that means.
• The bottle of duty-free port that Owen purchased with his last Euros (only after being assured that it would not cause troubles with security, so long as it remained sealed in its bag) made it through security at Frankfurt with no troubles, but was not allowed onto the plane when we changed at Tokyo - apparently the Japanese airport security don't trust the German airport security (feel free to insert your own WWII joke here!). He was required to enter Japan (going through customs etc) in order to have it placed in the hold as checked baggage. Fortunately there were two others in the same situation, and a Japanese airport official was able to accompany them all through the process. It was exceedingly fortunate that, even with the two hour delay from Frankfurt, there was enough time to do this, otherwise the port would have gone the way of the vegemite, sunscreen, toothpaste and insect repellant.
  

That about wraps it up for this trip. Thank you all for reading and commenting, and a special mention must go to Adam, for his daily quotes.

Until OX fun times goes aborad again (don't hold your breath), it's sayonara, auf wiedersehen, tot ziens, au revoir and goodbye from Owen and Xavier.

Day 23: Homecoming

It is now the morning of Day 23. The day for going home. We have a train to Frankfurt, and then our flight leaves from there tonight.

We may manage to get in a last round of spiral stair-cases as well :)

This may be updated if anything exciting happens...

I can't imagine it will - 40 hours of travelling doesn't lend itself to that kind of thing.

We get back to Canberra at lunch-time on Friday. See y'all soon.

Day 22: Fun and Games

So we had a solid plan for today, but they got stuffed around a bit this morning by the opening times of the various things we were going to see. In the end, however, we got to everything we intended to.

We went to a maze this morning. Made of Hemp plants. I have photos, but no time to upload them this morning. We were the only people there who were not either under 10-years-old, or supervising people who were under 10-years-old. But because we can't speak any German, we had fun!

You get a little brochure thing on the way in, containing a list of questions and a slection of coloured shapes. The idea is to find, inside the maze, signs that give answers to the questions, and hole punchers of different colours which punch appropriate shapes into your card. Once you have all the holes punched and questions filled-in, you hand it back in at the shop - possibly to win a prize or something, who knows.

Because of our lack of skills in the German language, we had great fun trying to match words on the signs with those on the questions to get the answers... no idea how we went, but we banked on having the right answers :-)

The it was to the water slides!! The place we went was part of Therme Erding (http://www.therme-erding.de/de/100682/100888/english.html) - but we only went to "Galaxy Erding" - a dome-shaped building filled with about a dozen water-slides. Everything from 4 foot-high kiddy slides, to "extreme" slides. We tried out all of them except the kiddy ones that we thought we might get ordered off if we tried to get on them!

There was a central stair-tower that all the slides came off - some from the second storey, with the highest ones up as high as 8 storeys.

Pretty much every slide had it's own theme or novelty to make it totally different from all the others, for example:

The slide with uphill parts - where there were jets of water to push you uphill (you had to have an inflatable donut thing to go on it)

The Extreme Faser - "reach speeds of up to 72km/h"... and it timed your run, so you could see how quick you go. Owen (4.75 sec) defeated Xavier (4.77 sec) in the duel by the barest of margins.

I could tell you all about every slide, they were all awesome! It was such a good fun way to finish off the trip espacially given we were both pretty much ready to go home.

If anyone every asks me what to do in Munich... I will recommend the slides!!!!!

Day 21: Bikes, Food and Cameras

Today we made a 4 hour cycling tour of Munich take up pretty much the entire day. By the time we slept in, walked (the long way) to the start point of the tour and bought our ticket, went on the tour which went overtime, and then challenged ourselves to find our way home without using the map, it was after 5pm.

The tour was good fun and the guide did a good job - but we had a slight problem with lunch. We were supposed to stop at a beer garden for food and drinks, but the one they usually took people to was closed. So she led us all on to another place nearby... which was also closed. After getting on the phone back to base, asking them to organise us something, we got to go back to the original beer-garden, but only to go into the restaurant that was there. All of this turned the 4-hour tour (which they actually claimed would be about 3.5 when we set out) into about 4.5 hours.

We also had all sorts of troubles with cameras and memory cards today, which is really not interesting enough to tell about, but ended up with Owen's memory card being stuffed and all of the pictures from today being lost.

Dinner was at an Italian restaurant where Spagetti Bolognaise was ordered all-round (I'm not sure why anymore... but I think there was a reason). For dessert we had Spagetti Bolognaise and Pizza. Made of ice-cream. If only we had the pictures of them.

Owen's SpagBol was soft-serve ice cream that came in long strands, like it had been pushed through a salada biscuit or something. It was piled up with raspberry sauce and coconut on top for the Bolognaise Sauce and parmesan cheese.

Xavier's pizza was... HUGE! It came out on a dinner plate, and covered it right to the edge. It was a reasonably thick layer of vanilla ice cream for the base, raspberry sauce for the tomato paste/sauce, and then bits of fruit PILED on top, as the toppings. Again, coconut on top represented the cheese, and there was chocolate sauce around the very edge on the plate.... maybe the burned crust???

It really didn't look that big in the picture on the menu!!!

But we trooped through it, and walked back to the hostel rather than taking the train to get rid of as much of that dessert as we could!!!

Day 20: "Best Decision Ever"

OMG... the train was hot!!! We walked into our 6-bed cabin on the train and were struck with hot, stuffy, unpleasant air. Opening the window was fine, the cool fresh air rushed in - until we were trying to sleep. The sound of air rushing in the open window of a vehicle travelling at 200km/h (I made up that speed) is not exactly the soothing lullaby you want to be dozing off to.

So it was quite un unpleasant ride with minimal sleep all round. Katie met us at the train station (much appreciated given it arrived at 7:16am) and layed out our options for the day. With storms forecast for all the days we are here, but not starting until about 5 o'clock this afternoon we decided to take possibly our only opportunity to go hiking in (or near) the alps.

We chose a 2-and-a-half hour walk which would take us up into the foothills (or foot-mountains) of the alps, to a hut for lunch and then across the hills/mountains to get a cable-car back down to the bottom.

The journey upwards was fine - nice weather, nice views, nice walk, nice lunch. As we ate lunch the dark clouds began to appear over the distant mountains. As we left the hut after lunch, the clouds were moving in, and there was occasional lightning in the distance. It looked like it was going to miss us, though.

Following this walk, there was an option to take a detour and climb to the top of one of the peaks, and come back down. We decided not to go this way, and instead forge on towards the cable car... just in case the storm did come over us...

Best decision ever.

As we continued walking, we got some cracking views of storm-cloud covered mountain-tops - lightning flashes over the alps... all the while closing in on us. Literally minutes after arriving at the cable-car building, all hell broke loose.

The wind raced through, looking like it was going to rip the flag off its pole. Clouds appeared to be falling from the sky as the rain swpet across the valley towards us before the downpour began up on our peak. The occasional thunder crash and lightning bolt added effect. People who were still out on the walk when the rain came were emerging from the end of the walking trail drenched (and then had to push through the wall of people in the doorway who were all standing around taking photos of the people being poured upon!).

Then the hail. Big hail stones came down at just as acute an angle as the rain was sheeting in. More people emerged from the trail, moving as fast as they could without risking losing their footing on the sloping, rocky trail - and covering heads with arms for whatever protection they could get from the hail stones.

The building we were in, which housed a large waiting area (for cable-car riders) and a cafe quickly became very crowded - with people arriving faster than usual to get out of the rain, and with the cable-car not operating due to the wind.

It was a ripper of a storm, but it swept over us in minutes leaving no sign that it had ever been, except for the layer of hail covering the ground, and a lot of wet people. The sun was out, shining brightly.

The cable-car soon started up again, and the train we through we had missed at the bottom of the hills was in fact just very late - so all ended well.

The two photos below are taken facing the direction the storm was travelling. So it's looking out over the sunny part of the mountains just as the storm got above our heads.

Day 19: More spiral stairwells, and Amsterdam

Today we took a tour of the Dom Tower (the one mentioned two posts previously), where we discovered that the nave of the cathedral had been destroyed several hundred years after its completion by a tornado 335 years ago to the day. We also found out that the rubble had been left there for over 150 years before it was cleaned up!

Here are some images of the view from the top of the tower, after climbing the 465 steps, mostly in the form of a spiral stairwell. However, unlike the previous instances of this particular style of ascention enabler that we have encountered thus far, there was no need to squeeze past anybody. This was primarily due to the fact that everyone in the tower was part of the tour group, so we were all going in the same direction at the same time.

Also part of the tour was the area where the bells of the carillon are kept.

The church that used to be attached to the tower

The City of Utrecht. Leela's house is somewhere in the top 5th of this picture, next to the canal.

The bells of the carillon.

After lunch, we went to Amsterdam to board our night train to Munich. We took a tour of the canals of that city and saw, amongst other things, a giant cruise ship just leaving port, and several floats (oh, there was pun intended) in the Gay Pride parade that happened to be on the Amsterdam waterways today.

Day 18: A different mode of transport

After a rather leisurely start to the morning, we walked into town to hire a couple of bicycles for the day. We then went out for a ride. We basically rode alongside the canal until we stopped for lunch, and then looped back and rejoined the canal on the way back to Leela's place. We were out for the best part of 6 hours, and by the time we got home, we were glad we didn't have to do any more cycling. At least it beat walking for 6 hours - gave some different muscles a work out.

Leela's flatmate has a parrot (actually, she's just looking after it for someone else). It's large and green and, fortunately, not pining for the fjords. It likes to eat banana.

True story.

Some pictures:

A castle in just outside of Utrecht. According to our tour guide (Leela), the family who owned it knocked down most of the defensive structure and replaced it with comfortable rooms. In every conflict since then they've had to bribe all sides to not attack their place.

A boat passing under a raised roadbridge.

Waiting for boats to pass so that the bridge can be lowered and we can be on our way. The chap in blue jeans and white shirt just to the left of the bridge is holding a pole with a string on the end (click on the picture for a large version). At the other end of the string is a clog, into which the passing boaters would put money.

Day 17: LOX Fun Times in Utrecht, or Amsterdam Shmamsterdam

We took the train from Paris to Amsterdam. The most exciting thing to happen was that two American tourists fell foul of the rail system, and tried to get on using just their Eurail passes. Unfortunately for them, this particular train required reservations (or something) and they'd have to pay some large number (I can't remember the figure) of Euros. This didn't actually come to light until we were well under way and the ticket collectors came around, by which time it was too late to just get off the train. Their other option, and what they ended up doing, was to only pay 96 Euros each and get off at the first stop (Brussels).

We were met at the station in Amsterdam by Leela (who you may remember from Edinburgh) which was a pleasant surprise - we were planning to have to make our way to Utrecht ourselves and meet up with her there. After dumping our stuff at Leela's place, we went for a wander around downtown Utrecht, which was lovely. The largest building in the city (by law, apparently) is the Dom tower. It is across the road from a church. It used to be part of the church, but the folks that built the place concentrated on the tower and the church-y bit, but ran out of money when it came to the bits in between, so it was built poorly, so it collapsed. In the end they just put a road through it.

Good times.

Day 16: Troisième Jour à Paris

We went to the Louvre. It was big. We saw everything. Well, we’ll say we did – we went to every section and saw “a representative sample” of each. Soooo much stuff to see. Some of it was awesome; like us. Some of it was stupid; like the hostel we’re staying at......

Top 10 reasons to stay anywhere other than “The 3 Ducks Hostel” in Paris.

10. Headlice – The only reason this isn’t the number 1 problem with the hostel... is that we made it up. There’s no headlice – we just wanted a nice round number of problems.

9. Lockout time – You cannot be in the rooms between midday and 4pm. Hasn’t been a problem for us, but I imagine it could be a real inconvenience in some situations.

8. Number of toilets – Just the two toilets. Between everybody.

7. Breakfast – A bread roll and/or a croissant. Some butter and jam. And orange juice. It’s a pretty piss-poor effort that.

6. Bells – The hostel is across the road from a church whose bells chime on the hour, and sometimes on the half-hour as well.

5. The Friendly Service – The guy(s) at the front desk like to ignore you for as long as they can until you actually go out of your way to get their attention. Usually they are distracted because they’re talking to one or more girls at the bar at the reception desk.

4. The Lack of Organisation – Recall the story about 7 people being booked into our 6 bed room!

3. The Layout – The common area at The 3 Ducks is an outdoor courtyard. A very nice place indeed for people to sit around having some drinks and a chat with the other guests until the wee hours... unless you are a person who is in their room trying to sleep. The rooms are all open directly onto this courtyard. The room doors are quite literally just metres away from where people are sitting and talking at night. And the doors are simple wooden-frames things with glass panes which do nearly nothing to cut out the noise. Along with noise, you also get people’s cigarette smoke wafting into the room.

2. The Key System – There is one key per room. You pick it up if from reception if you need to get into the room, and drop it off if you are the last person to leave. Clearly this relies on everybody doing the right thing. But you know people... in general, they don’t. They do have a spare key per room for when someone runs off with the first one. But what if, like last night, a bunch of people in a room get drunk, and pass out in the room with the door locked and both keys inside? Well, then half the hostel gets woken up by the person who is locked out smashing on the door and yelling in a futile attempt to wake the others up. At 2:30am. For 15 minutes. Eventually someone got in through a window for him.

1. The Showers – Classic stuff. You get in the shower and you get a totally puddle-covered floor (for a reason which will become apparent), and very minimal space to hang stuff up – so inevitably almost everything you want to keep dry gets wet. You get in behind the shower curtain and turn the water on... errr, how do you do that? There’s a few levers around attached to pipes. They do nothing. Hmmm, there’s a little silver knob on the silver pipe here. It doesn’t really look like anything, but maybe it’s ... OH MY GOD, WATER!! It blasts out like a firefighters hose! Full power. It’s quite painful really. This is why the floor is wet – the shower curtain gets blasted outwards, and does nothing to keep the water contained to the shower recess.

Oh, yeah, and the water is cold.

Fortunately it doesn’t last long. 12 seconds in fact. Then you have to press the button again to continue your shower. Fun times. There’s 2 showers on our floor, that open (like the rooms) directly onto the courtyard. And one of them doesn’t lock.

And the light switch is outside the shower room, and is hidden behind where the door is when it's open. And it really only just wide enough to stand in. Really top-notch stuff these showers.

OVERALL
OX Fun Times hostel rating: 1/10
It scores its only point because it doesn't have headlice.

Day 15: Deuxième Jour à Paris

Well, the 7 people in a 6 berth room situation was rather anticlimactic. The first 5 people to retire to bed got the 5 clean beds, and the last person to check in returned to the room significantly after midnight, saw that all beds were taken, said “Goodbye room”, picked up his stuff and walked out.

Today saw us exploring the Catacombs of Paris and the Musee Griven (the Parisian equivalent of Madame Tussard’s). I will let the photos speak for themselves. Tomorrow has been set aside for the Louvre.

One of the 1.7km of tunnels we walked into and out of the catacombs

The well of eternal youth... actually we can't remember what this was. But the photo turned out well (no pun intended)

Dem bones dem bones

Playing a duet with Elton... but I think he's more interested in checking out his playing partner

Xavier gets offered "The Standard Rich and Famous Contract"

Day 14: Premier Jour à Paris

We left the Oxford Backpackers Hostel and arrived in Paris without incident, using the exorbitant prices of the buffet on the Eurostar as a convenient way to spend those pounds that we would no longer need.

After some initial confusion, (due mostly to the low resolution of the map showing the location of the hostel that we had) we found the place that we will be calling ‘home’ for the next three days. We dumped our bags and made for the Eiffel Tower (by chance we happened to pass a place called Promenade d’Australie) with the intention of climbing as far towards the top as you can get without the assistance of an elevator. This was the optimal solution, as it minimised both queuing time (both for getting onto the structure in the first place, and for the elevators that take you to from the second highest platform to the very top) and price. Interesting fact: they paint the Tower every 7 years, using 60 tonnes of paint.

On the way back to the hostel, we had dinner at a place called “le Shanghai”, which was basically a Chinese take-away pick-what-you-want-from-the-bay-marie place. However, once we had picked what we wanted, it went straight into the microwave to heat it up – presumably the temperature in the bay-marie was set for optimal bacteria growth rather than good serving temperature. I’m quite sure that spring rolls shouldn’t be chewy. If we get sick in the next day or two, we’ll know who to blame!

Our room at the hostel has 6 beds in it. One of those beds appeared to be in use when we checked in. There have now been a total of 6 other people (including us) who have come in to claim a bed. Either management cocked up (which wouldn’t be a complete surprise) or someone didn’t take all their stuff when checking out, and so the cleaning staff haven’t made the bed up for a new guest. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Day 13: The Cricket Match

And what a cracking game of cricket we had here today!

The match was 35 overs per side – but with the possibility of a draw built into the rules. If either innings was not complete (either all-out, or beaten the score of the opposition), the game is to be declared a draw.

Yes, hopefully that should make sense to people who know cricket. If you don’t I’ll explain more as we go along.

At the bottom of the post there is a link to pictures of the full scorecard for the match, if you just want to jump straight in and see how it went – but reading the blog entry will provide much more excitement... it’ll be like being there watching the game. And believe me... it was a thriller!

Rest Of The World XI

Here we go...

The Rest Of The World batted first with Phil Clark and Xavier Halliwell opening the bowling. The RoW were in trouble from the outset, with Clark knocking over one of their openers in the first over. A good catch from Charlie Lowson, running backwards and taking the ball over his shoulder, gave Clark and Australia their second wicket. When Halliwell picked up an LBW in the next over, and wicket-keeper Trudgian claimed a skyed top edge in the over after that, the RoW were reeling at 4/15 after 5 overs.

This brought Dip Das and Owain Williams, captain of the RoW team, together, and the Australians struggled to make more progress. Das and Williams piled on the runs for the next 12 or so overs, plundering a partnership of over 100 runs. The Australians cycled through their bowling options, but without success.

It was only after a team huddle and some words of wisdom and inspiration from captain Halliwell that the breakthrough was made. Well, that, and bringing Clark back into the attack. Tim Trudgian took a sharp catch standing up to the stumps to dismiss Das, after he chased a ball wide outside off stump – a ball that the bowler himself described as “terrible”.

From there, the Australians got back on top – Clark took yet another wicket, making 5 for him before the drinks break at 20 overs. Even though he had to leave at that point to meet other commitments, the rest of the Aussie bowlers finished off the RoW tail-enders. Williams remained undefeated on 68 at the end of the innings, but ran out of partners – the last wicket falling in the 32^nd over.

The RoW had made a good score of 161, but apart from Das and Williams, none of their players made double figures!

Australian XI - back: Charlie Lowson, Jesse Dore, Xavier Halliwell (c), Berian James, Owen Dive, Matt Penfold - front: Alex Grant, Will Usher, Tim Trudgian (wk), Chris Knowles, Albert Alla

The Australians went into bat, and it looked like being a carbon copy of the RoW innings. Wickets fell so quickly at the beginning of the innings that the batting order had to be changed around several times based on who happened to be ready to go! It was 2/1 after opening batsmen Berian James and Will Usher fell quickly. Tim Trudgian and Albert Alla looked to have things under control for a while but fell before either of them could reach double figures.

Just as with the RoW innings, the fifth wicket partnership was the highest of the innings. Halliwell and Matt Penfold combined to see off a good number of overs, although had no intentions of scoring at the same rate as Das and Williams had earlier in the day. Just before drinks, the partnership was broken when Halliwell miscued a pull shot and was adjudged LBW for 14 from 22 balls.

The sixth wicket held on for a while longer after drinks. It was clear at this point that Australia were playing for the draw. Penfold at one stage facing 20 consecutive dots balls... before breaking his streak by hammering the ball over backward square for the only 6 of the day.

By the time Penfold was dismissed for 16 he had faced 46 balls, and given the tail enders a chance at seeing off the rest of the overs to salvage a draw.

OK - a pause for those of you who need some explanation. The situation is that Australia were in a position where there was no way they were going to score as many runs as the RoW team. But, because the RoW lost all of their wickets when batting, if Australia did not lose all of their wickets before the end of the match, it would be a draw (Not a tie. A tie is where both teams make the same score. A draw is where the game is declared incomplete, and no one wins or loses)

Alex Grant fell soon after, Charlie Lowson lasted just 3 balls, and Jesse Dore (the first of 3 number-elevens in our side) only 2.

And so it was 9/76 with 8.5 overs remaining. Chris "Knowlesy" Knowles and Owen Dive were at the crease. The two guys who had each spent the last few days trying to convince the team management that they should be the number 11 batsman.

With paceman Gavin Sourgen now having bowled 2.1 overs with figures of 2-0 (he had cleaned bowled both Matt and Charlie), he decided to change it up and bowl some spin to this pair. Owen did himself proud, coming well forward to the first ball, and safely defending it away. A play and miss at his second ball – but importantly, not out. And so it went for 3 more deliveries, and Owen had seen off his over. The crowd loved it. But still 8 overs to go.

At the other end Knowles was doing himself equally proud. After spending the week talking up how terrible he was, he wielded the bat like he had all the experience in the world, seemingly having no trouble in seeing off deliveries from Das, who had now been brought into the attack.

Just as the Australians had used 10 bowlers, so the RoW now made more changes to the attack, including a change of wicket keeper to bring on their 9^th and 10th bowlers. Dive and Knowles continued to see off deliveries. The RoW were powering through the overs, Darren Lehman style, and before anyone knew it, there were just 4 overs left in the match.

In the next over, Dive got an edge on a ball from Williams, which flew wide of first slip and away for a single. The crowd roared... but Dive himself roared louder, raising his bat in triumph as he got off the mark!

With 16 balls to go, Knowles had a swing... and successfully drove the ball down the ground through long-off... for 4! Tim Trudgian, who was out on the field doing the umpiring, reminded his team mate of the state of play: “Just 15 balls left in the match. Perhaps you should keep that in mind when making your shot selection.” Knowles justified the shot by explaining that he had no intention of finishing with 0 runs to his name.

And so it was back to defending. As the balls counted down, the field was brought in closer and closer, and for the final 2 overs, the RoW returned to two of their top-line bowlers. Spinner Singh came on for penultimate over. On several occasions Dive popped the ball into the air just to either side of the wicket... but on each occasion, it fell safely out of reach of a lunging fielder. Singh’s special change-up is the faster delivery. Late in the over, he tried a few of them out, leaving Dive playing (safely) at the ball after it was already in the ‘keepers gloves.

And then there were just 6 balls. Opening bowler Douglas steaming in to bowl to Knowles. He blocked. He played and missed. He was struck on the body... but they were unable to claim his wicket!

The Australians had held on... the final wicket partnership had seen off 53 balls, 2 scoring shots, 5 runs, but unbeaten. Immediately after the match, Dive announced his retirement from international cricket – perfectly happy with his career batting stats.

Dive and Knowles celebrate their 10th wicket heroics post-match

Scorecards are below...

Day 12: Wedding Day

With Tim’s sister and her boyfriend and housemate staying in the same room as us at the hostel, there was much preparation being done in our room through the morning. We caused a line-up at the ironing board, where Owen and some random guy engaged in an extensive conversation offering each other ironing tips.

We met with Berian and Julia again this morning to go and buy a wedding card, and go to “Shake Away” – a shop offering over 100 flavours of milkshake. It’s kind of like the Goodberry’s of milkshakes, but with more flavours to choose from. They of course have the full range of fruity, chocolatey and other standard flavours. They also have an extensive selection of lollies and chocolate bars – including Aero, Jelly Beans, Skittles, Tic Tacs... Next add a variety of cereals such as Weet-Bix, Coco Pops, Blueberry Nutri-Grain... And finally, a few totally random things, like the one Owen ordered – Carrot Cake. Yes, it’s actually just bits of carrot cake blended up into some milk. Xavier carried over his Goodberry’s favourite by ordering a Banana and Mint Aero shake.

This is all possibly old news to Melbourne people, as apparently there is an outlet there as well.

The awesome foursome also went to a museum to look at a totally nerdy mathematics, measurement and science apparatus display (can't remember what it was called actually, but that's what it was about). Trust me, it was far more interesting than it sounds.

And then it was time – back to the hostel to get dressed, and off to The Wedding!

I will give a brief description of how the afternoon went, but will then let a selection of photos do most of the talking. Further questions are welcome and will probably be answered. I also believe that the “official” photographs (and possibly video) from the wedding will be made available online at some point.

The ceremony was at 2 o’clock in the Balliol Chapel, followed by drinks and finger food in the lovely garden just outside. Around 4:30 or 5:00, we all got called to make our way into the dining hall, where the reception was held. 3 courses, plus cake and coffee – speeches from Di’s brother, Tim’s brother, Di herself and Tim himself – piano performances from a couple of different people – general good times and plenty of wine. At around 8pm, people headed outside into the Balliol College grounds for family photos. There was croquet for some, a game of cards for others – both of which lasted until it was too dark to continue. Darkness (from about 10:00) saw people slowly starting to head off, but the tab at the bar kept plenty of people around for as long as the barman was going to be willing to stay on for.

The dining hall in which the reception was held was of the classic Oxford University College dining hall style – that is, it was like the one from the Harry Potter movies. The movies were filmed at one of the other colleges, but I think they’re all pretty much the same setup. It was pretty awesome!

For those of you wanting to know about fashion, flowers and food, here’s some introductory comments before I direct you to the photos to see things for yourself:

Fashion – There were no bridesmaids or groomsmen – up on stage it was just Tim and Di, with Tim’s brother as best man, and Di’s brother. There was a fairly small number of guests, most of which were male (therefore just suited up in the standard way). Di was not wearing a standard style wedding dress, which probably provides the most interesting fashion point of the ceremony.

Food – The menu and pictures of each course are in the photos. Also shots of the dining hall.

Flowers – Apart from the College gardens, there were very few to be seen. Di had a bouquet – but the only time I ever saw it was when it was being thrown. I think that was all.

To the pictures – a selection of Xavier’s photos from the wedding day may be found here:
http://s758.photobucket.com/albums/xx227/xueyam/

Until the Trudgian photos are available for all to see, you will have settle for the best of what I took. (And as much as I was able to upload using the poor internet facilities at this hostel)

PS - I've not time to write titles or comments on the photos - so if you don't know who is who and what is what, give it a day or two and there will be descriptions for all.

Day 11: Still in Oxford

This morning took us to St Mary’s Cathedral for a look around (can’t come to an English town without checking out the local olde church(es)). This included a climb up the 127 steps to the top of the tower. Plenty of tight squeezes up the spiral stone staircase, and also around the narrow balconies at the top – very similar to the kinds we experienced at the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. Some more wanderings took us past various olde buildings, colleges, libraries, as you would expect.

Lunch we had at a place called “Eat As Much As You Like” – or EAMAYL (presumably pronounce “e-mail”) – and we did just as the name suggested we should. It was just a self-serve Asian-food place with all the stuff you would expect to see... boiled rice, fried rice, various noodles, various meats and vegetables in various sauces, soups, spring rolls, prawn toast, hot chips... errr, what?

Yes, it appears that the English believe chips go with everything. Certainly I disagree on this occasion – I tried out a few chips, just to see how they went down. It didn’t work... the chips just tasted weird in that dish...

Mr and Mrs Berian (aka Berian and Julia) arrived in the afternoon, and with their lack of enthusiasm for going boating on the canals we instead had a quiet afternoon eating and drinking at various places. Drinks at a little cafe in an Oxford back-street, dinner at “Pizza Express”, supper at a pub.

We were supposed to again be meeting Tim this evening – same place as yesterday. The four of us showed up around 15 minutes after the scheduled meeting time, on the assumption that Tim would be late. 25 minutes after that, having seen no sign of Tim (or anyone else who was there to meet him) we left.

This was when we went to supper. Fortunately we chose the correct pub to do this, since shortly afterwards, a bunch of recognisable faces came past us, who pointed us towards where the ‘party’ was happening, and all was well.

Drinks and discussions were had, and upon returning to the Hostel we found that Tim’s sister and her boyfriend and housemate – all of whom we had just been hanging out with at the pub – were staying in the same room as us.

All in all, a day lacking in real excitement, but I’ve no doubt this is the proverbial calm before the equally proverbial storm. Tomorrow is wedding day – the day after that, the much talked-about cricket match.

BIO!!

(That’s “BRING IT ON!” for those not in the know)

Day 10: Spooks In Oxford

Let’s start today with a classic quote that was left out of the write up about last night’s robbery story. While the Swiss chap was having a go at our wacky-robber, trying to get him to own up, thief-boy decided that he was only being accused because “this is just some kind of payback for the war.”

“Hey, I’m from Switzerland... we weren’t even in the war”

Classic.

And now, on to Day 10...

In the morning, we went to the Oxford Museum. It seems Tony Robinson has become to history and archaeology as David Attenborough is to wildlife and nature – with the 15 minute looping video at the museum narrated by the great Baldrick himself. We also learned of the great feast of boxing day 1251 – which took 6 months to prepare and consisted of at least 68,500 loaves of bread, 170 boars and 25,000 gallons (151,000 modern day bottles) of wine.

Next there was a quick trip to the local Virgin Mobile shop for a replacement mobile phone. At the bargain price of £10. By the way, anyone who thinks that we may need to contact you in the next 2 weeks, feel free to email through your phone number so it can be added to the new phone :-)

Following a brief bludging/familiarising-with-phone/emailing session, it was off for a walk to investigate the possibility of hiring a boat and doing some rowing or punting down the canals. The walk took us past a length of canal, 2 boat hire places, a house that looked like a boat, a door that was not a door, a field of hay bales, Christ Church Cathedral/College, and a squirrel! What more could you ask for?

We also investigated the place we were to be meeting up with Tim that evening – just to make sure we knew where it was. All we found was a guy sitting in a booth at some kind of guard gate. But apparently, according to the guy, that was the right place. We just had to drop the name “Timothy Trudgian” before he would tell us about it. More name dropping to appear later today as well.

In the evening, it was off for another dose of The Spooky Men’s Chorale. This time we had the right date. We rocked up at “doors open” time, only to be greeted by a different group of people to whom we were expecting to be on the door! They didn’t know that we were “on the door”, and should be allowed to just waltz on in to the sold out show for free. So they told us to come back in half an hour and “see if there are some spots available”.

So we did. When they saw us come back, there were whisperings and pointings, and they came to investigate further... “Was it Stephen said you could get in?”... you bet it was!! The head honcho himself!!

Moments later, the Spook-meister was at the door:
“Yeah, let ‘em in!” he called, to the consternation of the other people who were also there waiting ‘to see if there were spots available’. To them it looked as if we had just appeared, joined the back of the line and been let in – of course even without our special treatment, we knew we had still had been there before them.

So we were in! Third Spooky Men event in 3 days, at a total cost of zero. Including one that was sold out! Clearly this even impressed The Men themselves, with several of them noting our re-appearance and having a quick chat, either at the interval, or on the way out at the end.

The performance tonight was at the Holywell Music Room (no relation) – said to be (by those that were there last night) the oldest performing arts venue in Europe. The acoustics were fabulous! The Spooky Men were made to sound even more Spooky and more wondrous than usual. Adding to the awesomeness was the multiple pieces of impromptu and/or unintentional comedy which left many of the Men unable to keep up their stone-faced character.

The standout among these was when someone up the back of the room made a quick blast into their tissue, blowing their nose, and with barely a pause, Stephen pulled out his pitch pipe, tuned it appropriately, and blew the same note as the nose had just moments before.

“That’s a G, for future reference.” He said, and at least 4 of the Spooky Men on stage behind him had to turn away in fits of laughter.

Despite all of this, surely the highlight of the night was when our own names were dropped. Towards the end of the show, our ol’ mate Stephen mentioned, among plugging their own merchandise, tour and website that “We have Owen and Xavier in the crowd tonight, who entered the Spookyclip Competition a while ago, which you can also find on the website”. Then he couldn’t find us, so there was no way of being discreet about our identities, as we had to raise our hands for him and everyone else to see us.

With the Spooky Men finished for the night (and for us for this trip), we headed down the road to the Holywell Manor to meet with Tim. There were drinks to be had and past times to reminisce about. I’m sure these things were done – but the writer of this paragraph wouldn’t know, as he called it a night very soon after arriving, looking to make up for the string of bad nights’ sleep, including last night’s 5am robbery-induced-bed-time.

Tomorrow is another day chillaxing in Oxford, before the big two days of the trip are upon us – The Wedding and The Cricket Match.

Special Report/Breaking News: Cops and Robbers

by Xavier Halliwell

It’s 3:00am. I intended to have an early night tonight. This is the story of why I am still (very) awake. It’s going to be long – so let me get your interest from the outset by giving you the main points in the story:

1. 1. I got robbed
2. 2. The guy who robbed me was very dumb, very drunk, and therefore extremely strange
3. 3. It has a (mostly) happy ending

It is hideously long just because I want to get it all written out while it’s fresh in mind – not because I like the sound of my own... fingers on the keyboard... or something...

OK. Here we go...

It was time to go to bed. I was very tired, having not slept particularly well on any of the nights I’ve been here – mostly because the sun comes up at 4:30am making my brain think it must be time to be awake. I took my clothes to go and get changed in the bathroom. I went into one of the toilet cubicles, got changed for bed and returned to my room. I went so far as to switch off the light and climb into bed before reaching for my mobile phone – but it was not to be found. Not in my pockets, not among the pile of clothes I had brought from the bathroom. Nor was my wallet. Perhaps I had not had it with me then. Is it in my bag? Maybe I left them in the common room while I was using the internet earlier.

No – I remember – I had taken them out of my pockets to get changed and left them on a shelf in the toilet cubicle. It had only been a couple of minutes, so I returned to the bathroom to get them, but found someone using the cubicle I had been in.

I waited. Just a minute or two, a young guy emerged and left the bathroom. If I hadn’t been so tired I would have realised that I should have asked him then and there if he had seen my stuff in there. But I didn’t. I instead simply had a look into the cubicle, saw nothing – no wallet, no phone – and left the bathroom again. Maybe I hadn’t left them there after all. I was pretty tired. Maybe I didn’t look properly in my room.

I returned to the room for another look, and again found nothing. I really was very tired – I considered leaving it until the morning to worry about. I quickly decided that was silly. I couldn’t find my wallet – not something one should “leave until the morning” when you’re staying in a youth hostel. So I left my room again.

At the far end of the hallway, I spotted the young guy I had seen coming out of the toilet. So I went down and asked him if he had seen my stuff while he was in the bathroom. A wallet? A mobile phone? He paused, as if thinking what to say, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a couple of bank notes. An Australian $5 note, and a Japanese 10,000 yen. Clearly these had come from my wallet – not many other people would be wandering around in Oxford with those two currencies on them.

For a moment I was confused – was this all he had found? Or had he actually found everything else as well?

He reached into his pocket again, and pulled out a wallet. My wallet. My empty wallet! No cash, no cards, no coins, not even my Boost Juice card or my 10-Pin-Bowling vouchers!

“What about the rest?” I asked, not really sure if I was accusing him of taking the rest or just asking if he had seen the rest. “What about a phone?” I decided to ask. Again, he went into his pocket and pulled out a phone – this time it was not my phone. It was far too new to be my phone J

So I questioned him some more – asked him if there had been anything else with this stuff. After asking him only a few questions, it became clear to me that this guy had taken my stuff. He avoided answering – I began asking him direct Yes-or-No questions, like
“Was there any more money with it?”
“Are you sure there was no phone with it?”
“Have you seen my credit card?”

and he replied with things like:
“Why would I take your money, I have my own”
“Here, what about this phone?”

There was a girl sitting in the corridor as well, who evidently knew this guy. Once she worked out what was going on, she immediately stepped in, clearly highly suspicious of this guy. She asked him why she had seen him hurrying back into his room a few minutes ago, why he had been in such a rush, and had he been going to hide stuff in his room.

As the conversation went on, he got more defensive, she started speaking to him like she was his mother, and both of us became more and more convinced that he had taken my things.

Then it got weird – he started trying to give me his passport. I have no idea why, but he seemed to be claiming that he wouldn’t be doing it if he was guilty. As if my knowing exactly who he was, and having his passport in my possession would mean that I could find him again if it turned out he was guilty... or something.

“Take it. Why would I be doing this if I had stolen your stuff?” he would say
“What am I going to do with your passport? I want my own stuff, not yours!” was the general crux of my replies.

We continued to ask questions, speaking to him as if it was a well known fact that he had my stuff, and eventually the girl suggested we go and see whoever was the boss at the hostel at the moment – again, she spoke as if she knew this person, calling him by name, and telling me she would take me to him. Our suspect stepped up his defensiveness another notch at this point, even mentioning the police.

“No, we’re just going to report that there has been a theft.” But even when we weren’t actually accusing him of anything, he felt the need to defend himself.

Things now moved out into the common room. I told my story to a few people who obviously had some kind of authority at the Hostel. Just the facts – I never said that this guy had stolen my stuff, just that I had seen him come out of the toilet where I had left it, and that he had had the empty wallet in his possession.

It wasn’t long before a small crowd had gathered to watch proceedings. The accused was sitting on a couch on one side of the room, myself on another, with other people randomly scattered around. He stepped up his strangeness by throwing his passport on the ground at my feet – still convinced that it was some kind of peace offering that would make me leave him alone.

And then up another notch. He called the police. By this point, I was (and I’m sure everyone else in the room was also) absolutely certain that he had been the thief. But he called the police.

We tried calling my mobile, but it was “unavailable” – presumably turned off.

A Swiss guy soon arrived and took some kind of control. He also seemed to know the suspect, and after hearing my story, immediately jumped to the conclusion that this guy was guilty. The discussion went on for probably 20 minutes more. On our side there was a lot of:
“Just give him his stuff back – he’s travelling, and needs his ID and cards to get on with his holiday. Keep the cash, just give us the rest of it”
“No, I’m not interested in the police, they’ll just have a situation of statement against statement, and won’t be able to do anything.”
“You only called the police because you know you’ll get away with it one they show up – they won’t be able to prove you’ve got the stuff”

From him there were things like:
“If I did it, why would I call the police?”
“Here, have my passport!”
“This is just between me and him. Come and talk to me yourself and we’ll sort it out. I’m still not sure what you want me to do for you”
“The police aren’t coming – they said they’re not interested”
Then he called the police a second time

Through it all, he never said straight out that he didn’t have my stuff. Never said straight out that the wallet had been empty when he found it. Never said straight out that he didn’t know where my stuff was.

The icing on the cake was when he flat out refused to empty his pockets when someone pointed out that “there sounds like a fair bit of cash in there, and I reckon anything more that about 20 quid total is not yours!”

Next thing, a police officer arrived. I think most people in the room were quite surprised, as most of us had assumed that he had only pretended to make the call.

The first thing our young robber did was request a private chat with the officer. The hostel people showed them into the office behind the service desk, and after a few minutes, the policeman emerged.

And here’s the best bit of weird behaviour... he had confessed, and handed over a wad of cash to the police. The officer told me that the guy had confessed, and given him what he believed was my money. As for the rest of the stuff, the guy had apparently dumped it. But he “couldn’t remember where”. In the bathroom certainly – maybe down the toilet.

The officer accompanied us into the bathroom, but the thief clearly had no idea what he was talking about anymore, and less idea of what he had done with my stuff. A short search yielded nothing, and we concluded that he had indeed flushed the things. Including my phone.

The thief then pulled a final bit of whackiness by holding out his hands, wrists together, and asked “Are you going to handcuff me now?” When he was told “Not yet”, he stood there with his hands in the same position, just waiting.

While I finished looking in the bathroom, the officer took him away. Apparently “not just regular handcuffs with a little chain between them, these were big chunky things!” A pity I didn’t get to see them!

Ten minutes later, another pair of police arrived to take a statement from me and collect the guy’s bags. So I told them the details of the story, what I had had in my wallet, what my phone looked like. I believe they were also going to later check his bags to see if there was more stolen property in there.

So I signed a statement, and the police gave me my cash back and left just after 2:30am. At which point I still had to call to cancel my bank cards, and of course, write this tale while it is still fresh in my memory.

Wow. So it’s now 4:20am – yep, really early night for me!

In conclusion I would like to say:

• · This was quite easily one of the most un-nerving experiences of my life. It takes a hell of a lot to get me on edge, but sitting there with my empty wallet in hand in a room full of people who are focussing their attention on the guy that everyone knows has stolen my stuff, but who is avoiding being found out by being a complete nutcase – all magnified by how tired I was before this even began – well and truly got me there! The point at which the first officer said the guy had confessed was bliss!!!!
• · The thief was young – very early twenties, maybe even only 19 – short, mildly pudge, with very short (possibly shaved) hair. He didn’t have the face of a theif, it was too young looking. He perhaps looked a bit derro/bogan/lower-class/mild trouble-maker, but not steal-someone’s-wallet material.
• · It is quite amusing that Owen missed this entire thing. He was in bed before it ever began. A cracking tale to tell him tomorrow.
• · To all you people who tell me I need a new phone – you will get your wish. (Apparently it’s best to get a cheap temporary one for the rest of the trip)
• · Although my cards and stuff being gone is an inconvenience, I still have my passport, and the only out-of-pocket expense I have is... a new phone J
• · This is the second consecutive overseas trip for me where someone (either me, or travelling with me) has been robbed
• · Now that I’ve finished writing, I am really really tired