The Kilbot Factory

BsAs Traveller Tips: Don’t forget your credit card

Argentinian ATM’s steal your cards. It’s a conspiracy, it has to be. In the first two months here I left my card in the machine three times. Three! As el ex presidente George Bush would say; …  fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — You can’t get fooled again.

Granted, I have foolish tendencies, but leaving credit cards behind is not usually one of them. In the last year I’ve travelled through USA, Canada and Mexico and not left a single card behind. (Well… there was that one card I left behind the bar at MezzanineSF, but that’s because it was holding a $160 bar tab. Plus it was maxed…. so it doesn’t really count.)
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BsAs Traveller Tips: Learn a little Spanish

I didn’t know any Spanish before I got to Buenos Aires – nada. It was a little rude really, but I booked my ticket less than a week before I arrived so it didn’t leave me much time for classes. Luckily most people speak a little English and I didn’t starve; I managed to do my shopping, wash my clothes and rent an apartment with perhaps five Spanish words, a lot of hand gestures, Google Translate and the kindness of the porteños.

The first week would have been a lot more enjoyable – and a lot less embarrassing – if I’d learn at least some basics. I had many cringe-worthy moments, many blank stares, even a few shakes of the head (but don’t worry, I was always sure to wear my Obama shirts so’s that they would think I was American). And so, in the great tradition of don’t do what I did advisitorials, here is some basics to get you started.

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First Impressions: Buenos Aires

Argentinians are Italians who speak Spanish, dress French and think they are British. At least, that’s what they say… I’ve never been to Italy, Spain, France or England, but it sounds pretty good so I’ll run with it. Not being able to compare Buenos Aires to any European city is a good thing of course, you’ll not hear “the bars are just like Barcelona” or “the pizza was worthy of Naples” or “the sidewalk is reminiscent of Rue Truffaut” with phoney French accents in my first impressions, no Sir … this is Buenos Aires: unadulterated. But first I should give a little disclaimer: it won’t be Buenos Aires the province; that’s a big place about the size of Arizona. I’ll be talking about the Federal Capital, one area to be exact, the barrio of Palermo – I haven’t really seen much of anything else. As far as travellers go, I’m a bit strange like that, I find a place I like and stay there. Kinda reminds me of San Francisco actually …

I’d been in San Francisco for over a year before I learned that there were trams that could take you under the hill to a strange new world where bars served non-Mexican beer and there were university students who played drinking games involving ping pong balls and it rained fog and sure you might meet some new people … but really, what’s the point? I lived in the Mission. I chose to live in the Mission so I wouldn’t have to go to other places like that. Likewise, when I got to Buenos Aires I walked through Recoleta, Centro and San Telmo, back through Villa Crespo, Palermo and the lower side of Belgrano … by the time I finished I knew I would live in Palermo, somewhere between Plaza Serrano and Plaza Italia to be exact, and I haven’t left.

OK, enough with the disclaimers, on with the first impressions of Buenos Aires:

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Sicily.

I am in Vigliatore. It’s a tiny and relatively new (100 years old) Sicilian town in the north west corner of the island, by the sea. The place is basically a suburb with a few farms in it, but not far from here are some hot spots.

Tindari – stuck up a near by mountain – used to be Tyndaris, a Greek settlement about 3000-3500 years ago. The theatre is still there from those days which in the Summer still gets used by locals for staging plays. The Roman temple around the corner, gymnasium and houses are still in relatively good shape. The town itself is tiny, and is also host to a 400 year old church which houses a 900 year old Madonna and baby Jeebus from the Eastern Roman Empire which washed up on the beach below.

Barcellona (our Barcellona) and Milazzo are both crackers of towns. Milazzo is famous because Garibaldi landed on its beach in 1860 with a thousand troops with the intention of kicking arse and chewing gum. As it turned out he was all out of gum and as a result Italy was a united country by the end of 1861.

Siracusa used to be Archimedes’ home town. Zareen and I spent two nights there checking out the sites. Archimedes helped keep the joint and independent Greek city state for a while, but eventually the Romans swept through it like a storm, killing and maiming. Fortunately most of the resulting mess was mopped up and it is now a picturesque holiday destination.
We checked out the temples of Apollo and Athena, as well as bits of Greek wall and a Roman arsenal. On the first night a big 16th century silver statue of Santa Lucia was paraded through the streets in a procession similar to that in The Godfather II when Vito kills Fanucci, completely with brass marching band, but with more impressive fireworks at three different stops. The statue is solid silver and is complete with a dagger through the unfortunate young lady’s neck. I saw some folks rub their kid on it for good luck – we’re so much more advanced than Pagans! Since it’s solid silver it took 6 hours for the procession to make it from St Lucia’s place to the temple of Athena, which has recently been turned into a Catholic church. (this is even worse than what they did to the big old Commonwealth Bank in Perth!)

Plenty of good grub is being consumed, especially at my zio and zia’s place. My cousins are an energetic bunch and say hilarious stuff like
“It’s hot in Australia, when I visit I will come nude, without underpants.” Frikkin Torres. Little Maddalena, aged 5, put on a headband with a fork stuck in it and announced she was an Indian, with the intention of making Zareen feel at home. While we are on the subject of Ms Kuriyan feeling at home here, four different people have believed her to be Sicilian. I guess Dennis Hopper was right.

K-Bot, tell me how to post photos.

Selah!

GT

ESPANA

I’m in Barcelona.

Top tip – stay the hell away from Mickey’s Tapas Bar on La Rambla. The paella is crap and they charge 21 Euro for a pitcher of sangria, which in the case of Mickey’s is some red goon and fanta with a few bits of orange.

(One highlight of La Rambla was Zareen’s dancing upstaging the Michael Jackson impersonator who, coincidentally, was a Spaniard considerably darker than MJ himself and stubbornly refused to molest the nearby kids.)

Instead, go to Marcelino’s on Muntaner street. The grub is good and cheap and glasses of wine go at 90 euro cents (about $1.60), as do coffees. The rabbit with garlic sauce is a Catalan favourite, apparently.

Paris isn’t as plagued with dog turd as rumoured, and it a swell town. Hanging with my ex-housemate Joey was rockin, and we saw some terrific jazz. The picasso museum is hot stuff, as is the museum di carnival, which has a lot of revolutionary and napoleonic era art and artifacts. French people are exceedingly friendly by the way. And you can smoke in hospitals.

Tokyo is crazy. Interestingly you can occassionally detect traces of a proud and noble culture under all the Hello Kitty, neon and school girl mania. It was obviously this proud and noble culture that inspired me to get rotten drunk at Gaspanic – a 10 square metre underground hip hop club populated with African American ex-pats and local girls in tasteful costumes.

I will write a full report later.

Props to Pakistan for flogging England by an innings and 100 runs even without ‘that man’ Afridi.

Highlight – double century to no namer Mohammed Yousef (WHO?-sef).

Adelaide to Perth

The easy bit is over, tomorrow morning I will catch a bus north, then hitch through Port Augusta, Ceduna, across the Nullabor to Norseman, Coolgardie and Perth. My deadline is 12 noon Christmas Day which gives me about 48 hours to cover 3000km, an unlikely equation but this is the one time of year when it can happen… lots of cars on the road, people driving interstate to see family and everyone full of Christmas cheer.

I have no doubt that I will make it on time but it is going to be hard. Hard because it is going to be stinking hot. Hard because I don't like my chances of finding a place to sleep once I'm out there. Hard because mobile range will most definitely drop out and cambot will be idle from time to time. Hard because I have already blown my budget of $100 and run the risk of going over the absolute maximum, $210 ($210 is the cost of a plane ticket from Melbourne to Perth). Hard because South Australia has been strangely kind to me and I fear that it is saving the weird shit till the end… I'll keep you posted.

I can not believe it

I just spent an hour writing out the story of Melbourne to Adelaide and the mother fucking thing logs me out. I'll try again later once I have a safety beer.

It begins…

This will be my last news post until I hit Adelaide. I have been scrambling around all day doing things that could have and should have been done days ago… I'll be glad to get out in the afternoon sun, smoke a cigarette and relax. It will be about 5pm by the time I get out to a good position, some would say that is leaving it a bit late but when hitchhiking you can't get too caught up on time… or common sense. It is a sense of fate that governs my hitchhiking, cosmic forces have made me late and it is cosmic forces that will deliver me into a combi van of Norwegian drinkers who just happen to be doing an all night drive to Adelaide. I wouldn't trust anyone so organised that they would be on the road before 5pm anyway.

I have two little bags for the journey, no doubt you will see them in the cambot from time to time. Important things to pack have been; reading material (Benang by Kim Scott and Vanity of Dulouz by Jack Kerouac… Kim Scott is a West Australian author, and a Kerouac novel is mandatory), bottle of wine (Lindemans Cawarra… great red for $7 and necessary for sleeping on concrete), Anna'a hat (still dirty from Meredith) and a 200Gig hard drive (which contains all my music).

The first leg will be on public transport out to Melton, then a walk out to the Western Highway. From there it's thumbing a ride through Ballarat, Bendigo and Bordertown to Adelaide.

The future is soon

Above the shoutbot you will notice a new addition to the already cluttered front page of the Kilbot Factory. The little photos are taken on a Nokia Fun Camera PT-3 (which was my first eBay purchase at $21 + $15 postage, that is it on the right), I transfer the images to my mobile phone, then attach a message and send both via MMS to an email address. A great little script by Tony Wenzelhuemer grabs the photo and message from the email account and displays it on the page (the ancient art of moblogging).

Now for the important bit… the cambot(TM) will allow me to update from the road as I hitchhike across the country. Each post has a date and time (Perth time), but to save confusion the age of the photo is also given. I will try to update as often as possible when I am in mobile range… which may be mildly interesting to the regular viewer and at least give you an idea of my progress.

The script was jammed in at the last minute, so apologies in advance if something goes wrong.

Start the Crazy Insanity

Last night I passed on my parent’s last offer of a plane ticket home for Christmas. This locks me into another cross-country hitchhike. I will leave Melbourne on the 20th of December, which gives me five days for a flat-out burn through Keith, Kimba and Caiguna to Perth, hopefully rolling up to the family home on Christmas Day (for dramatic effect). Naturally the journey will be covered here.