I know I am ugly, but I glow at night

Berlin is bathed in colour. It’s the Festival of Light and all the major landmarks are lit up with the hues of the rainbow. Such a simple idea but it completely changes the atmosphere. You walk around in the cold smiling with glee at each new building, dodging amateur photographers and wayward screaming children. The title of the post was written on a building, and I think it describes it perfectly.

I left Berlin in a t-shirt and arrived back to chattering teeth and breathing fog. My dream of avoiding cold weather this year through timely hemisphere changes has been shattered. Autumn is full of crisp days and outrageously beautiful clouds, or spattering rain, bitter wind and oppressive cloud cover. The trees look amazing though – explosions of red and orange and yellow against the grey.

But colours don’t keep you warm at night. I’ve learnt that 2 skivvies, 2 t-shirts and 3 jumpers does not equal one winter jacket, and if you pay 4 euro for an umbrella it works better in inverse form as a rain-collector.

For the last week or so I’ve been staying with Andrew, a good friend from Melbourne Uni. He’s doing his final semester in Law at F.U., the same as me. Last week was Orientation week and it was a whirlwind of early hours and hectic Erasmus student parties, the latter I tagged along to (and the former I gave my fondest regards to from the comfort of my 10-hours-a-day sleeping habit).

The exchange crowd is full of Spanish and Italian students this semester and it’s got a different flavour – not just more Mediterranean, but crazier and more reckless. It takes a bit to get used to the 2am – 7am nightlife but we had some great nights on the d-floor.

The only downside has been the construction workers at Andrew’s flat. His whole building is covered in scaffolding. They start drilling and hammering at 8am with what must be the very tools of the devil – they sound like they’re chipping away on the inside of your skull.

The last week has been full of farewells. Most of the people I knew have left so this time around there’s been a lot of farewells to the permanent fixtures. I’ve been revisiting places where legends were made and doing those things on my to-do list that never got done.

Berlin is home to Spreewald, an abandoned amusement park a couple of stops outside the city. The details surrounding its demise are sketchy but rumour has it that the owner got in trouble, fled to South America (as naughty Germans do) tried to import drugs back to the country, and somehow his son is now shacked up in a prison somewhere, serving time for the crimes of his father.

The park has been sitting there unused, rusting up and growing over, for the last 10 years. But there still must be something of value there because two full-time security guards patrol the fence.

On the day we broke into Spreewald we didn’t get out of bed until 2.30pm, so by the time we reached the fence it was almost dusk and the rain had started. Not ideal but too late to turn back. We found a hole in the fence and squeezed in and went for a wander.

All the rides were exactly as they were left – the Ferris wheel, the spinning tea cups, the rollercoaster, the floating swan boats – except with a decade’s worth of weather damage and evoking a skin-crawlingly eerie feeling, rather than one of unparalleled joy. We would be walking along through a forest and then suddenly stumble across a dinosaur zoo or a squat inside a former planetarium.

Suddenly it was dark and we started to feel miserable so we made a beeline for where we thought the fence was. Guided only by Andrew’s phone flashlight and ever-watchful for the guards, the atmosphere were tense. We were passing behind a couple of sheds when we heard a menacing growl, followed by a bark. Followed by the sound of something big running towards us.

Being the unflappable adventurers that we are, we immediately lost our shit and leapt up onto the fence. Out of the darkness came the horrible visage of a foot-high, overfed pug dog. It continued to growl and slobber at us as we beat a hasty retreat, making disparaging comments about its size. We scrambled (I would like to say “vaulted” but it simply isn’t true) over a high fence and I ripped my trusty black jeans beyond repair, but it was worth it. A true Berlin experience.

For the last 8 months I’ve avoided the authorities, but my luck has come to an end. On my second day here I decided to buy a weekly ticket for the public transport, as my free student pass is now a thing of the past and my heart isn’t up to the low-level adrenaline that comes with constant fare evasion.

In a gesture of goodwill towards the not-so-fortunate Berliners, I bought a crumpled second-hand ticket from a scalper at the station at a price that was a steal for me and a jackpot for him. It looked legit, he was happy, I felt good about myself.

But barely 24 hours later I was ordered off the train by a grim set of BVG ticket inspectors. These guys are the definition of black letter. Pleading, flattery, emotion, the stupid tourist trick, appealing to their humanity – nothing worked. They handed me a 40 euro fine with a shrug of the shoulders and told me that it was my problem.

After discussing it with Andrew over dinner we decided that the best option was for us to promptly burn it on the balcony. I don’t think the debt collectors are going to hound me when I’m overseas. All I need to do is clear the border tonight and I’ll be free.

This last week of Berlin has gotten my head into the right space to come home. Putting aside the question of money, all signs indicate that it’s time. The planes in the sky are always Qantas. Crowded House and Nick Cave are on unusually high rotation on my ipod. I’d got the feeling that I’d run out of people to see and things to do in Berlin, which, as it is technically impossible, indicates a prepared state of mind.

As I count down the hours until my departure, I’m feeling happy and peaceful. But it’s been a tumultuous eight months. I’ve struggled a lot with what feels like a lack of direction and meaning, of having too much time and not enough purpose. But being forced to stop and look around has made me think about what these things mean to me. I haven’t taken time to do that before.

On my last exchange, I grew up. This time, I grew out. I mean, I’m not talking about physical size (although two weeks on pastries and felafels definitely qualifies me for a few brisk jogs in the upcoming months). Out in terms of breadth. It feels like I have more space in my mind and in my heart. And I feel like my life is a closer fit.

As I wandered through the duty free this evening at Tegel Airport, I realised that I don't need to buy myself anything to remind me of Berlin. I already have my most important souvenir.

Griechenland

I arrived into Greece around midnight in a jet-lagged stupor (quite possibly the worst I’ve experienced) and went straight to my hostel, where the complimentary shot of ouzo and a few cheeky beers did nothing to put me to sleep. The next day was just as grim. You know you’ve got it bad when you arrive in a brand new country and your only thoughts are of sanctuary in the touristy part of town, where you’ll pay treble normal price for bad coffee and the privilege of sitting among people as disorientated as yourself

But a few pastries later I was feeling greatly revived, and went for a wander around some pretty spectacular sights. The Acropolis, with its outstanding view over Athens; the Parthenon, covered in scaffolding; the Temple of Zeus with one pillar toppled over like a stack of pikelets.

Athens to me resembles an eastern European capital city, which I guess technically it is. Commenting on the poor reviews that the town gets, a friend said that people come expecting a stylish and cosmopolitan Western-style capital (which it actually calls itself in tourism material) when it’s really a chaotic, unpretentious and polluted city with, you know, some of the greatest relics of civilization spotted here and there. Often in train stations. Or in the middle of roundabouts.

This leg of my journey I’m doing solo, and given the recent history of single Australian women travelling in this part of the world I’m particularly on my toes re: personal safety. The overly affectionate manner of some Greek men hasn’t helped. Many women resort to wearing a ring on their wedding finger. That seems like overkill to me – I’ve just reinforced the frostiness of my fuck-off face instead and am grateful that as far as the language goes, it’s all Greek to me…

Athens gave me an unforgettable welcoming. It was shortly before 8pm and I had dragged myself out of my room and into the bar area to make talk with the punters. Just when I was wondering how to extricate myself from a conversation about the relative merits of Melbourne suburbs with the typical Aussie crowd, there was an enormous !!!!BOOM!!!! The entire building shook and the sound of breaking glass was everywhere.

There was total stunned silence before someone said “That’s a bomb”, and suddenly car alarms were going off outside and people were yelling. We hurried on up to the reception area. The receptionist was ghostly white and on the phone with another two ringing nearby.

Being the stupid souls that backpackers generally are, we snuck down the stairs for a look around, but the police were onto us and shouted at us to get back inside. A couple from America remarked dryly that despite spending six months in Israel, they’d had to come to Athens to get close to an explosion.

Eventually we found out that in reaction to the massive election rally happening at the end of the street, someone had put a bomb in a bin down the road and timed it to go off just before the President’s speech. Apparently the police got word of it and had cleared out the street, so no-one was hurt. But it aptly captured the frustration of the population, expressed in a markedly more democratic way a couple of days later when the government was sent packing.

My next stop was a few days of Total Relaxation on the island of Santorini, a piece of paradise about 7 hours from the mainland. Peak season has ended and October is the last month before the place effectively closes down for the winter. Many parts of the island resemble a ghost town. Deck chairs are vacant. Restaurants are lonely places. Even the happy hours look depressed.

But this skeletal quality made the place even better. I’ve never known such peace or happiness doing so little. Most days I would wake up late, eat breakfast and mosey on down to the pool, where I’d spend most of the day swimming, reading, eating and drinking Pina Coladas. If I was feeling energetic I could stroll down to the famous black sand beaches for a dip in the ocean, or go hiking in the hills around the town, or take the bus to the other side of the island to watch the most beautiful sunset in Greece and get giddy from the romantic/sexual tension exuded by 200+ couples.

Santorini could have had me in its clutches for weeks, but I was destined for greater things. So 24 hours and a ferry, a taxi, a hostel and a train later, I met my friend Eleni in Thessaloniki, Greece’s 2^nd largest city. Eleni is a curly-haired, perpetually smiling Greek lass who I met in my language course. For the last 2 days I’ve been living at her family home and being lovingly pampered by her mother, who spoke no English but force-fed me Greek pastries and coffee, showed me how the shower worked, and slipped tissues, water and a spare jumper into my bag when I wasn’t looking.

A two-day visit is ridiculously short, but we fit a lot in. There was a late-night Erasmus party beside the harbour (bringing back all types of memories not yet committed to nostalgia), a language exchange and birthday party at a co-op bar, drinking icy frappes, climbing up and down ancient fortifications, hanging out with her beautiful and funny friends, learning some rudimentary Greek, and my personal highlight, eating four types of cheeses at one sitting.

And before I knew it the time had come and I was back on a train to Athens, and now I’m on the plane back to Berlin for one final week in Europe. My visa inconveniently expires on the 15^th and I’m leaving on the 18^th – I’m sorely hoping this is overlooked by the powers that be so that I can spend my final days climbing the Reichstag and going to the top of the Fernsehturm and having other touristic delights, rather than disrespecting myself in the immigration queues.

A more formidable obstacle to overcome before my departure is War and Peace. I haven’t touched Russian literature since Crime and Punishment got me into the few conversations I’ve had with sober strangers on Melbourne trams, albeit because they mistakenly believed me to be enigmatic and learned, with a masochistic kink.

I bought War (we’re on a first-name basis now) for 2 euro, knowing that the page:cent ratio was probably the best on the market. That was 10 weeks ago and the score is now 1094 pages to me and 480 to Tolstoy’s long-winded genius. The cover is long gone, the dedication and table of contents pages ripped off last week, and I’m rushing to finish it before I lose the introduction to the dark forces at play in my hand luggage.

If I don’t finish it now, it’ll never happen. There’s no way I’m taking that literary anvil in my checked luggage and forfeiting precious kilograms better suited to snow domes and beer steins. 

I wanna be a part of it

Something about New York sets my heart a-flutter like nowhere else on earth. It could be the sheer number of people, the way that you have to keep moving or get swept under in the torrential pedestrian traffic. It could be the communities of every stripe crammed into every nook and cranny of the city. It could be that allure of raw power - that a handful of skyscrapers in the downtown area can make or break entire economies. It could simply be Central Park, or how art sits hand in glove with ordinary everyday life. It could be a million things. And it probably is.

New York breathes ambition. I’m not talking about the grasping, backstabbing ambition, that ugly kind that comes from greed and fear (although I know that’s here in spades). I’m talking ambition that comes from people wanting to “better themselves”, to follow their dreams, to think big and see it through. And that buzz that comes from putting all these people together.

But I don’t know if that’s just me projecting. New York is so ingrained into my cultural subconscious that I’m not sure where my imagination ends and reality begins.

Manhattan is also a temple of consumerism. Women skitter around in must-have heels made famous by gratuitous references in Sex And The City. Abercrombie and Fitch employ identical baby-faced male models to hold the doors open at their Fifth Avenue store. In this megacity of 12 million consumers, it’s a matter of survival to express your personality through the stuff you have.

I get the feeling that if it were allowed, advertising would expand to cover every spare bit of space. And it isn’t like the Henty Field Day ads on rural Victorian TV, constructed using little more than photos of tractors, a $50 budget and a creative application of Microsoft Powerpoint. It’s the frighteningly clever stuff that’s been focus-grouped to death and hints at a multi-million dollar budget behind the glossy and uncomplicated final product.

It’s designed to hook the professional earners with too little time and too much money. And it gets you down. On one train carriage I counted three ads that used the concept of “happiness” (and your desperate lack of it) to flog nighttime philosophy classes, long-term storage and (of course) whiter teeth.

My cousin, an Australian engineering graduate, has been living and working in New York for a year. During that time he’s swung from loving it to hating it and is now languishing somewhere between apathy and affection. He’s not quite sure how he ended up here - sharing his Greenwich Village apartment complex with celebrities, watching hard-won deals collapse during the financial crisis, working punishing hours week after week. I think he misses Australia’s somewhat slower pace, where the stakes aren’t as high and the games aren’t as crafty.

Last Friday was Grand Final Night, and we did what thousands of expats the world over do – go to a bar with hundreds of other expats, drink excessively, swear filthily and generally get their Aussie on.

Back home the importance of football was lost on me. The strongest allegiance I can claim is a disposition towards Geelong, inherited from my grandma. But Friday night was no night for fence-sitters.

The crowd, mostly St Kilda supporters, erupted at every goal and groaned at every point. The game was streamed over the internet and very poor quality: slow, pixilated and occasionally interrupted by Skype messages (such as “Oh hey boss! I didn’t know you were still up”). The fare was meat pies and slabs of Coopers Pale. The uniform was distinctly Australian: shorts, printed art t-shirts and thongs for men; long straight hair and denim skirts for women; and team colours everywhere.

And after it was all over and final insults exchanged with the screen, we went home and ate vegemite on toast, and then went to sleep just as the sun was rising. It was a surreal cultural experience; a preparatory taste-test three weeks out from my return home.

“Cheap”, or even better, “Free” have been my key words. So I got my jollies from walking a lot. In Brooklyn I saw a free production of The Tempest against the backdrop of decrepit Coney Island theme parks and the beach that European explorers landed on 400 years ago this year. It was Yom Kippur and there were Orthodox Jews reading their prayers out to sea and families dressed going out to dinner to celebrate. We caught the Museum of Modern Art’s Free Friday and jostled for space with the thousands of others.

I watched the Masters of the Universe on their lunch breaks at Wall Street, where things seem noticeably more subdued than they were in 2007. Counted the number of romantic dates underway in the rowboats in the Central Park lakes. Took the Staten Island Ferry to get out on the water and came straight back once I’d got there (I’d made the mistake before of thinking there was something on Staten Island worth knowing about). Caught up with Kate and her family for the third time and third location in a month, and said our final final goodbyes.

Everywhere I went in New York – and throughout the entire States – I saw people’s names attached to things. Private donations seem to make the world go round. The wildlife exhibits in the Natural History Museum are adorned with bronze plaques bearing the name of the patron in a font just as large as the name of the actual animal. The UC Berkeley campus is covered with sentimental, cringeworthy posters designed to get wealthy alumni reaching for their wallets.

Giving is next to godliness, and the virtue of the benefactor is celebrated loudly. It seems to me that this type of thing would never fly in Australia, since a) governments are expected to pay for projects in the public good; b) private donations often signal private interests, with strings attached; and c) this type of recognition would be seen as self-aggrandising ego-stroking and would be torn apart.

But perhaps this culture is worth cultivating. The USA has some incredibly cool shit because of it. Readers? Instead of celebrating great people by naming freeways after them, should we be celebrating the millionaires whose generosity got it made?

So I am leaving North America behind after nine hectic weeks. It’s been epic and amazing, rocky and blissfully calm, like it is now. Thanks to the generosity of family, friends and complete strangers, I’ve only paid for about a week’s worth of accommodation. I’ve got a glimpse at the trends Australia will be infatuated with in a year’s time, such as FREE wireless everywhere - in cafes, laundromats and chinese restaurants. And the rise to fame of the space-age Kindle, the electronic book from Amazon.

My love and hate relationship with the USA continues, but despite our differences our partings are always sad.

Next stop – Greece. Then Berlin. Then home. Two weeks left of Eliza Goes To Germany. Requests, faithful followers?

West coast dreaming

I was certainly lucky to land in Berkeley. It’s one of those towns that revolve around the university. The radical edge that made it famous worldwide in the 60’s is still around. There are hundreds of students shamelessly wearing the blue-and-gold merchandise and there are spooky restricted-access buildings high up on the hills where the secret experiments are carried out. But there is something young and electric and slightly wild in the air. I’ve spent the last two weeks of lovely Californian weather with no plans and time in plentiful supply.

Leah is currently living at the Cloyne Court co-op. Co-operatives are a type of student accommodation that sit shoulder-to-shoulder to the Berkeley fraternities and sororities in the hills behind the campus. But that’s where the similarities end. Co-ops are student run and student owned and there are as few rules as possible. Through buying food in bulk, sharing rooms and weekly work shift for cooking, cleaning and other essentials, they’re hands-down the most affordable way of living. They’re not exclusive and will take anyone without demanding initiation rituals or family connections. But they end up attracting easygoing, open-minded kids who are as fiercely dedicated to partying as they are to studying.

The freedom that co-op living brings can be seen everywhere. There are giant art murals and literate graffiti on every wall. The open kitchen is buzzing at every hour of day and night. When dinner is served, there is no such thing as queuing, only a survival-of-the-fittest type rush with 150 kids elbowing to get a serve.

There are band nights, hula-hooping in the courtyard, drinking and dancing on the tables and bongs made from plastic flamingos and didgeridoos. There are also naked pizza parties, watching sunsets from the roof, flea outbreaks, broken crockery in the bathrooms and lots of happy hooking up. Leah reckons co-op living is the answer to Australia’s student housing situation. I think she’s right.

The other half of my time in California I spent on Frances’ couch in Oakland. I met Frances when I was a fresh-faced exchange student in Sweden in 2006. Only days after returning to Australia, I’d bought a ticket out of there, this time to the States. Exactly two years ago, my friend Nikki and myself spent three glorious weeks on the Cali coast.  2009 was the sequel.

And it was a blockbuster. We spent our time together raiding Berkeley’s thrift stores, eating Nikki’s baked goods, scoring free coffees from Frances’ work and drinking at student-discount prices. We occasionally took the train across to San Francisco for photo shoots, glitzy late-night museum visits and high-octane tourizm at Alcatraz. But all good things must come to an end. Nikki left for a conference in Niagara Falls and Frances has flown to Las Vegas to see Britney Spears with a hand-made “Toxic” costume in her carry-on.

And I have left the East Coast with a thwarted vegetarian burrito addiction, a worrying dependence on Mad Men and my heart in my mouth. I’m writing on the downward descent into La Guardia Airport, New York. My goodbye hangover has finally slithered off and I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. 

I’ve waited two sweaty-palmed years to get back to New York. It’s a cliché, but it feels like the centre of the world – like everything is happening here all the time and anything is possible. I can’t wait to get outside and see what will slap me upside the head today.

Afterglow

Now that I’m here, let’s get down to business...

Myself and my travel companions drove from Vancouver to Nevada in Betsy, a massive van masquerading as a colourful moving mural. Betsy looks like she’s straight from Woodstock and, we were convinced, a moving target for the US Border Security, especially when driven by Yossi, its dreadlocked owner. Yossi spent the last few hours before our departure Spray-And-Wiping the interior clean after hearing news that the border guards had sent another Burner packing after discovering smoke residue on her vehicle’s windows.

Despite being completely clean and technically having nothing to worry about, we’d heard about the border guard’s capriciousness and so it was a tense crawl up to the boom gates. Marti had told us that they had high-tech surveillance that could pick up conversations from miles away, so we stayed suspiciously quiet. The border guard asked the driver whether he’d ever smoked weed, and after he was answered in the negative asked sarcastically whether the driver knew what weed was. But within moments our passports were back in our sweaty hands, the guard had bid us farewell and we were free and clear into the USA.

My fellow road-trippers were a group of Kate’s friends – a friendly bunch of self-proclaimed hippies. Despite their easygoingness and positive vibe, for the first half of our road trip I was squirming in my seat as the conversation flowed from personal contact with extra-terrestrials to shared consciousness to the benefits of crystals to theta meditation (which, I scoffed to myself, was a trumped-up version of Socratic questioning at $50 a session). But as the hours ticked by and as I bit my tongue on another logical debunkment, I started to question why I was so stand-offish to these ideas I’d never heard of and why I was refusing point-blank to understand them.

I hate to use my formal education as my whipping boy, but more and more I’m seeing how it’s shaped me. Studying law makes you a sceptic. You crave logic, demand proof, destroy arguments and dismiss concepts that you think don’t stand up to criticism as half-baked fuzzy thinking. It makes you a finely-tuned adversarial machine, but it also closes your mind and can make you a righteous little shit. I realised that if I was going to get to Burning Man and get through Burning Man, I would have to leave my prejudices behind. So I did. And it was so easy.

Burning Man is impossible to explain without using a mass of seemingly contradictory and hopelessly inadequate descriptions. It’s a hedonistic visual and aural extravaganza in one of the harshest environments on earth. It’s radical self-reliance within a generous and selfless community. It’s both art expo and orgy, yoga summit and dance festival.

It’s summed up by the experience of standing alone in the centre of the city in the hours before dawn, in the middle of a kilometre-wide empty space called the playa. In the distance there is wall after wall of sound and light and humanity, but where you are is the quietest, darkest and most solitary place on earth. If you go looking for something at Burning Man, you’ll find it.

The physical side of Burning Man is what most people baulk at. Every day is a battle against dehydration – you have to drink at least a gallon to keep the hallucinations at bay. While portaloos are plentiful, there are no showers – you either bring your own or, like myself, you do without for a week (beating all personal records, thank you, thank you). Dust storms strike frequently and fiercely, gritting up your eyes and ears and depositing a fine layer of dust throughout your respiratory system. The alkali ground causes a condition called “playa foot” where the feet get painful cracks and can only be prevented through daily bathings in vinegar and liberal use of moisturiser. But within a couple of days it becomes normal, and you get down to the more important business of living.

The beauty of Burning Man is that it’s user-produced, a kind of Life 2.0. The residents are also the artists, the performers and the gurus. Integral to this is the idea of a gift culture - that everyone comes to Burning Man with something to contribute. Apart from ice and coffee, nothing can be bought or sold. Despite this, there’s hundreds of bars, restaurants, clothing depots, massage therapists and bicycle repair shops operating out of tents, running on nothing but generosity. When you head out to party at night, all you need is a warm jacket and a cup.

But my favourite part of the festival was the people I met and the connections I made with them. Recently, the process of meeting people has made me weary. I’m sick of small talk, of having shallow, seemingly pointless conversations with people who will leave my life for good tomorrow. But, as Leah pointed out to me during a particularly eye-opening night, the content is up to me. So I started asking questions that I really wanted answers to. And I got answers I’d never dreamed of. People were so open, so willing to discuss deeper issues, so generous with their views and so accepting of mine. I think it’s ruined me for the world of employment-based networking, but I don’t really care.

Nakedness has featured prominently and exponentially since my last post. The first thing Kate and I did in Vancouver was go to Wreck Beach to drink beer, catch up and get naked together for the first time in our six-year friendship. At Burning Man clothing is optional and in the desert heat, honestly a bit of a burden. No-one stares and no-one cares. One of my favourite parts of the week was CRITICAL TITS, a 3,000-women strong topless bike rally through the festival in celebration of empowerment and beauty, ending in an all-female dance party with women hugging each other, laughing and screaming “WE LOVE OUR BODIES!”

On the way home we took the joys of skinny-dipping to blissful new heights at the Harbin Hot Springs, spending an entire day hopping in and out of hot and cold pools, lolling around in the sun, making friends with the regulars and enjoying having dust-free skin for the first time in a week.

I know there’s a time and a place but, you know, I reckon there should be more times and places. It’s not just how free it feels, it’s also the education you get from realising that nudity is separate from sexuality, seeing that everyone looks different, hardly anyone looks like a porn star or underwear model, and that everyone is beautiful.

The Burning Man ole timers (“Lifers”) nod sagely when you explain that you’re a “virgin”, and inform you that your life will never be the same. People have moved cities, quit jobs, ended relationships and changed their beliefs after their first time. It was definitely an epic experience for me and probably the best decision I’ve made all year. I hope that I can hold onto this feeling as I adjust to the “default world” which is significantly less colourful. But I’ve landed Berkeley, California, one of my favourite places in the States, and I think my chances are pretty good.

Pre-burn

Tomorrow I'm getting in a van and driving for two straight days to the Burning Man festival in Black Rock, Nevada. Burning Man is a 50,000 people week-long party/alternative art festival/community/nudist camp/mutant vehicle racecourse/spiritual awakening held in the middle of a desert, with temperatures regularly reaching above 40 during the day and below freezing at night. You have to bring everything you need for a week, including 7 litres of water a day, every single bit of food, every last splash of facepaint. There is no commerce there - nothing can be bought or sold. There are frequent dust storms where you can't breath, can't see and everything is covered in a fine powder dust for months afterwards.

I have spent the last part of this week, and a hefty chunk of my time in Vancouver, preparing for it. I'm sick of shopping, and I wouldn't have the faintest clue about anything touristy here. But I have a camel costume. I have German volkslieder to unleash upon the unsuspecting public. I have a guitar that I got off Craigslist for a song. I have rebar stakes two feet long to stop the tent blowing off into the distance. I have a bike that consists of mostly replaced parts following my 3 hour stint in the community repair shop yesterday. And in between everything I've caught up with Kate, my ex housie, for lovely times. She feels like home in the midst of this chaos.

So I'll write again in a week and let you know if I came out alive. Until then, mes amis!

Southerly

With Georgia long gone to Argentina, Leah’s eventual departure from New Orleans on Friday and myself awaiting my flight to Vancouver, the epoch-defining Ginnivan Sisters Adventure has come to an end. We did so much and saw so much that the thought of trying to do justice to it makes me queasy, even more so then the lukewarm serve of Red Beans n’ Rice (the only vegetarian meal airside at the Louis Armstrong International Airport) has already done. But I’ll see what I can do.

For the last week I’ve been in New Orleans, Louisiana. We took the Amtrak (a luxurious step up from Greyhound) from Memphis, and walked out of the station and into a humid inferno. Most of what I know about New Orleans I learned after Hurricane Katrina, aside from some vague prior understanding that it was important for jazz and blues. Birthplace or some such. But I was really looking forward to stopping for a while, and the Lonely Planet entry said that New Orleans had it all – good music, astounding food, an insane party scene, touristically orientated, multicultural, history by the buckets. And it’s been great, definitely a highlight of the trip.

The best thing about couchsurfing is that you have an inside guy from the moment you arrive in the city. On our first night, our host Justin (artist, thinker, sometime-conspiracy theorist and burrito maker) placed us in the back of his friend’s ute - apparently legal in Louisiana - and drove us to the best music venues in town. We left him to do the more touristy things – a swamp cruise to see alligators and other wildlife, eating beignets (weird donut things laden with icing sugar) take the ferry across the river, walk around the touristy French Quarter, avoid the trashy Bourbon Street. After the sisters left I couchsurfed with a chemistry PhD studying Russian couple, who entertained me with red wine, fresh watermelon and Russian comedy classics.

New Orleans is fighting a losing battle against the forces of nature. Across town, tree roots push up the footpath or simply break it in two. Houses abandoned after Katrina are entirely covered in ivy. Some are half-sunk in canals. Spanish Moss appears out of nowhere and hangs from the trees like a greenish-grey mist. The town is crawling with little jumping geckos, squirrels and cockroaches. And when it rains, streets become rivers, rivers become seas and umbrellas become farcical. But we got used to it. After Leah and I got caught in a deluge and soaked through to underwear, we left our valuables somewhere safe, I waited for Leah to put on her bathers and we went for a wet and wild adventure through the newest parts of the Delta.

At some stage during the last week, the Ginnivan Roadshow suffered a casualty. My much beloved Macbook, which has seen me through almost 2 years of commutes to university on the back of my bike and an entire season of Guilty Radio, is inching closer and closer to meeting its maker. There’s a nasty crack in the top right hand corner of the screen which is currently outlined in pixilated blue and black. With every keystroke the screen ripples and the crack grows ever so slightly. Twice repaired under warranty and that safety net long gone, I think our time together is almost up.

Before New Orleans, there was Memphis. Memphis is named after an ancient Egyptian city, and about 20 years ago some rich crackpot took this to heart and built the world’s 3rd largest pyramid there. Unbeknownst to us, we’d rolled into town in the middle of Elvis Week. It was creepy spotting impersonators around the town in casual dress, but not as weird as the cash cow that is Graceland, Elvis’s former private residence. We did the tourist thing and went on a tour, were amazed and repulsed, bought a mug.

We stayed with Jeremy, a generous and slightly disenchanted college graduate halfway through his Teach for America program at a disadvantaged school out of town. We caught busses everywhere, much to widespread disbelief. Went to the National Civil Rights Museum and got inspired. Explained to some sceptical country kids from Mississippi that the earth had two hemispheres, and it was actually winter where we came from. We were told quite frankly that the white people lived in the good parts of town, the black people in the bad parts, and felt like we’d offended everyone and crossed some invisible social boundary when we found ourselves in the wrong place.

And before Memphis, there was Chicago. Our couchsurfing requests had come to nought – our one almost-certain guy pulled out a couple of hours before we arrived at his place because he was, as he explained in a barely intelligible text message, “cooking soup”. But using Hotwire we scored three-star hotel rooms for a cheaper price than hostel dorms. While it was a pain in the arse to schlep our luggage all over town each night in the humidity, watching The Colbert Report in overconditioned rooms with crisp sheets, sucking on ice-cubes from our private ice bucket, swimming in rooftop pools and checking out at noon was more than enough recompense.

The world’s first skyscraper was built in Chicago and the skyline is crowded by them, giving the downtown a constant air of industry and progress. The great Sears Tower was the biggest in the world for a while until the Asian countries started getting all uppity and prosperous and decided to show it in phallic displays. Chicago’s skyscrapers rise straight up from the banks of the river, which cuts a winding aquamarine path right through the city, criss-crossed by rust-coloured bridges and patrolled by tour boats.

I am a great believer in public spaces, particularly if they are grassed, and I was deeply impressed with what Chicago had to offer. Between downtown and Lake Michigan is an incredibly stretch of parkland, which was being cleaned from the revelries of Lollapalooza the morning we arrived. This park became our base. On one night we joined thousands of other Chicagoans in Grant Park (the Grant Park of Obama victory speech fame, swoon) to watch a free screening of Psycho; on the next we took a bottle of wine to Millennium Park to listen to an open-air orchestra.

The people that inhabit the US of A must surely be this country’s defining feature. Last time I travelled the States, my contact with natives was pretty much limited to friends of friends, family, and members of the service industry. But this time has been different. Couchsurfing has taken us right inside their homes. Budgets have placed us right on their public transport systems. Accordingly, I feel better equipped to make a few observations (or denigrating generalisations, depending on your allegiances).

Americans love to talk. With anyone, about anything, at anytime. For the first couple of days I was taken aback by this friendliness, particularly since Germans will only talk to strangers if the situation absolutely demands it (such as if someone is standing on your toe or the imminent death of a bystander). And their favourite topic? Themselves.

In many Americans that we met, there is this anxious desire to be listened to and understood – a need to define themselves as individuals. Often, you’ll ask an American a question and they’re off and away. Once they’ve squeezed all they can from the topic, there will be an uneasy silence while they wait for you to ask the next question. If the conversation happens to swing to something else, their eyes will glaze over and you can tell that they’re waiting for a chance to direct it back on course. I realise that this may sound a little bitter, but it does get tiresome. My love of asking questions has definitely taken a battering. I just don’t want to know anymore.

Last time I came to the States I was taken aback by the weird politics surrounding race and how monolithic cultural groups (mainly White, Black, Hispanic or Asian) are a key source of identity and stereotypical indicators of socio-economic status. Travelling through the Mid West and South and learning about segregation and slavery and the horrifying relationship between white and black Americans cleared a lot of things up, but left a lot of things cloudy.

For instance, I never got around to understanding why black men on the street (and no-one else) would invariably greet us with a “Hello ladies, how’s it going?” – not in a sleazy way, just as an acknowledgement. And how racial divisions are still so strong in Memphis and New Orleans, even though they both claim to be centres of black empowerment. And what appears to be the undesirability of integration from all sides. It’s frustrating to be classified as “White” on sight and being inevitably dragged into the fray, even though I’m Australian and had nothing to do with anything.

I definitely prefer Australia’s approach, which seems to embrace multiculturalism by bringing everyone into the fold, rather than leaving groups on the margins. Well, with the glaring exception of our indigenous population, which probably disproves this argument entirely. Thoughts and comments, readers?

As I finish this post I am high up in the air somewhere above North Dakota, where the Ginnivan Sisters Journey began all those weeks ago. I’m on my way to Vancouver to spend some time with my ex-housie Kate, check out her new life and ply her with duty-free alcohol (as yet unfound). Reading back over this post, I’m realising how much I’ve left out and how it really doesn’t do justice to what’s happened. You may have to use your imagination.