On-the-go updates = neato!

Dear bloggy friends,

In our never-ending bid to make this blog as brilliant as possible, we have now added a nifty new addition to the blog sidebar family – on-the-go updates.

If you cast your eyes slightly to the right, you'll see the green box where these updates live. Courtesy of the latest online-networking craze, Twitter (seriously, everyone from Barack to Britney is doing it), these teeny chunks of info are there to keep you satiated and in-the-know in between the regular blog posts you all know and love.

Signing off,

Lisa and Craig x

Holy Hogmanay, Batman – it's 2009!

Whether you were sitting on a rug with an esky on Sydney Harbour, chillin' at a low-key barbecue or getting wasted with your mates at your local, one thing's for sure – your New Year celebrations ain't got nothing on ours!

While you were knocking back Bacardi Breezers in your friend's backyard, we were Superstylin' with Groove Armada while fireworks filled the sky over Edinburgh castle. Such is Edinburgh's Hogmanay.

Our Edinburgh adventure kicked off on December 30, when we met up with Jackie and Fiona for our four-hour train ride from London's Kings Cross station to the Scottish capital. I had been struck down with a monster flu the day before, so I used the journey as an opportunity to catch some much-needed shut eye.

Once we arrived, we walked about 12 minutes to our accommodation for the next four nights, Ardenlee Guest House. Run by a charming Scottish couple (Kenny and Kay, could hardly understand a word they said, but they were cool), our four-person room plus en suite was not only cheaper per person than staying in a 14-bed hostel room, it included a full, cooked breakfast daily to boot!

With Edinburgh as our oyster, we took off to walk the famous Royal Mile, catch a glimpse of the castle and try some minced sheep's heart, lungs and liver mixed with onion, oatmeal and spice – or as the Scots would call it, haggis. Yes, we were four walking, talking cliches, and damn proud of it!

By the time New Year's Eve rolled around, Craig had come down with my aforementioned monstrous flu. But despite our foggy heads, runny noses and chesty coughs, we were determined to soldier on. This was our only chance to experience Edinburgh's famous New Year's celebration, and we were gonna make the most of it!

So once we had put on about five layers of clothes each, we joined Jackie and Fiona and headed to a pub for a few sneaky beers and vodka and Red Bulls. Once the Red Bull had done its job, it was time to fill some almost empty bottles of Coke with vodka and head to the street party.

While the street party was all well and good, we were just a little bit too cool for school. While there are plenty of live acts on tap, this year, Groove Armada was where it was at. Since we had paid good money to watch them live at the Concert in the Park, we quickly headed down to their stage and scored ourselves a sweet possie about 15m from the front.

The rest of the night was a blur of dancing, singing and kick-arse fireworks. Groove Armada were brilliant, and it was a truly euphoric way to ring in 2009!

Happy New Year!

How we rolled in Amsterdam

How we got there...

It was EasyJet all the way, baby. £50 each and just over an hour in flying time – too easy.

Where we slept...

Clean, basic and super central. For just 60 euros a night, we stayed at Hotel Cafe Corner House. After staying at camping grounds on our short-lived van tour – where you are forced to trek miles into the centre of town each day – it was great to just walk out the door and be smack-bang in central Amsterdam. Situated above a pub, the staff were super friendly and helpful, plus the lingering scent of pot was complimentary! We highly recommend it to the budget traveller.

What we ate...

We really stretched our palettes with traditional Dutch culinary delights such as Big Macs and these weird crumbed chicken pieces from a cosy local haunt called KFC.

Sarcasm aside, in a city where prices are aimed solely at cashed-up tourists, our budget often left us with no other option but to brave the bright lights and beeping tills of McDonald's. We did, however, tuck into hot chips covered in mayonnaise (a Dutch fave, for real), and treat ourselves to a pizza near the Red Light District.

What we did...

While it may come as a shock to the harder partiers among you (and probably a relief to our parents), this was not a pot-smoking, hash-cookie-munching, magic-mushroom-eating trip – we were too busy leering at prostitutes for those kind of shenanigans!

For those not clued up on the ways of Amsterdam's Red Light District, it's basically a few streets filled with windows that are hired out by prostitutes. Each tiny window is equipped with a bed (and a curtain for modesty) and, if you want, the girls will do their business with you there and then. We did devote at least a few hours a day to 'window shopping' – rating the hot, cringeing at the not, laughing at the old men who would come out from their 'appointments'.

While our nights were filled with skanks and hoes, our days were filled with more demure activities. On top of many hours of walking around, there was a trip to Anne Frank House, which was a true highlight – to be standing in Anne's room, looking at the pictures of film stars she had pasted on her wall, and then to see her actual diary, was something special – there was also an afternoon spent whizzing around the compact, canal-filled city on bicycles, and an entertaining canal cruise which allowed us to see Amsterdam from a completely different perspective.

It's such a shame that all our photos were stolen along with our camera when our flat was broken into in November. Amsterdam was a really beautiful, eclectic city and we had a brilliant time there. Now, all we have left are our memories, and, of course, a fridge magnet!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

When he heard reports that it was set to snow in London this week, the news didn't exactly rock our socks – our previous experiences of 'snow' here have consisted of a bit of ice on windscreens in the morning. So we were shocked when we peered out the window last night to find inches of the stuff covering everything. Turns out, it's the largest snowfall in London in 18 years.

With the capital brought to a standstill, a 'snow day' was called at both our works (I thought snow days only existed for school children who eagerly sat around radios on American sitcoms).

Even though we had only just returned from a week on the slopes in France (blog post coming soon, promise), we couldn't help but get among the soft white stuff for a good old-fashioned frolic!

London – the good, the bad and the ugly

A working holiday in London has long been a right of passage for twenty-something Aussies. For over three decades we've been coming over by the planeful, cramming ourselves into flats south of the Thames, pulling pints in pubs (or whatever we can to keep the pounds rolling in) and complaining about the shithouse weather.

2008 was the year that me, Craig and 13,062 other Aussies decided to do our requisite stint in the UK on a Working Holiday Visa (WHV). It was also the year Britain started spiralling into recession and the almighty sterling hit all-time lows.

In other words, the worst possible time in history to come to the UK on a WHV.

After miraculously finding ourselves some work, we managed to get ourselves off Jackie's floor and into a bed – words can't describe how wonderful it felt to put our clothes in drawers! – sharing with another Aussie couple in Clapham South (er, sharing a flat, not the bed).

With the current 'credit crunch' sending Australians home in droves (over 1,500 a month are fleeing the Motherland), this could mark the end of the traditional London stint.

After three months of braving the Tube, donning scarves and gloves as a necessity rather than a fashion statement and calling potato chips 'crisps'. Here's what we rate and hate about living in England's capital.

The good

Travel. The novelty of being able to jet off abroad on any given weekend will never wear off. An overseas journey from Australia requires weeks of planning, at least a week off work, and a few grand in the bank. Here, you just log onto EasyJet's website and you're just a few clicks away from cheap weekend in Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Budapest, Berlin, Dublin, Munich, Prague, Lagos, Brussels...

Transport. While Londoners are quick to moan about their public transport system (and everything else, for that matter), they've never lived in Sydney. Nab yourself a Tube map and a Oyster card and you've unlocked the key to getting around London with relative ease and minimum fuss. Sure, there's the occasional signal failure or suicide jumper on the tracks, but with trains running every couple of minutes (as opposed to the once-hourly weekend bus to the city from Drummoyne), timetables are obsolete – just rock up and go.

Metropolis. Sydney's CBD feels like a ghost town compared downtown Oxford Street, when you're in London, there is no mistaking you're in a truly global city. It's easy to lose yourself in hustle and bustle, and it's exciting to feel like you are a part of this unflagging metropolis.

Entertainment. You could spend weeks in London and still not get around to doing everything. In fact, we've been here for three months and our 'to do' list is still quite impressive. There's the usual tourist fare — Oxford Street, Trafalgar Sqaure, Piccadilly Circus – along with galleries and museums galore, plus infamous attractions such the London Eye and Madame Tussauds. The West End is where it's at for theatre and shopping, then there's the famous Portobello markets and nearby Notting Hill to explore. If that's not enough to satiate your appetite, there's always a plethora of sporting events to pick from.

The bad

Weather. It's true, the weather really does suck... hard. While we are currently experiencing the coldest winter recorded in England for 13 years, summer sucked, too. Over summer, I only bared my legs for a total of 11 measly days, the rest of the time the temperature hung around the 17 degree mark, forcing me to sport clothes usually reserved for an Australian winter. The weather really does drag you down — getting up in the dark and getting home in the dark, with grey clouds and icy winds in between, does not a happy Couchsitter make.

Crime. As avid readers will remember, we were broken into shortly before Christmas. Yes, this could happen anywhere, but it didn't, it happened in London. And while our experience may have made us slightly biased, the crime statistics speak for themselves — in 2008 alone, 30 teenagers died from knife attacks.

Transport. I know I said the public transport here truly rocks, which it does. But I just have one gripe — the morning cram. Cramming onto a Tube in peak hour is total hell. It's hot, it's stuffy and you're pressed up against total strangers for the entire duration of your journey.

The ugly

Economy. The current global crisis has definitely brought out the uglier side of London. With the UK said to be the hardest-hit nation, doom and gloom has set in over the capital like the constant grey skies. With the papers constantly drumming into you that you're bound to lose your job and end up like the thousands of others in the dole queue, it's hard to maintain any form of optimism. Though, we all know that Londoners are secretly loving the current recession, it gives them something new to moan about!

In five short weeks we plan to leave London and continue on our travels. It was hard and downright depressing at times, but totally worth it. Having earned our 'I've lived in London' badges, it's time to move on. It's just too bloody cold!

PS...

NOTE: Catch-up post

We ended up selling Ace for the same price we bought her for to Alice, a twenty-something chick who told us, "I wasn't even planning on buying a campervan, but I was bored at work and started looking at Gumtree and decided I wanted one."

She didn't even ask us to start the engine, nor did she try and haggle us down at all.

How's that for an impulse purchase?!

Back to the UK

NOTE: Catch-up post

One thousand six hundred and fifty five – the number of freckles on Lindsay Lohan's stomach, the amount of times per day Craig thinks about food, and the distance (in kilometers) we travelled in two days to get from Cesky Krumlov to the UK.

Like bats outta hell we drove across four countries (five if you count the UK), praying we would get back to England incident and accident free. 

God musta been on his lunch break, cause just a few hundred meters after we crossed the border from the Czech Republic into Germany, we drove past a German police car parked on the side of the freeway. We'd seen lots of the green and white patrol cars on the super-fast German highways, and we'd shat ourselves every single time – we'd heard plenty of stories about the German police screwing over foreign motorists for teeny misdemeanours such as not having 3cm of tyre tread. So when this particular cop car started tailing us, and then proceeded to pull us over, you can imagine we were pretty freaked out.

Surly and authoritative – just the way I like my police! We scrambled around frantically when they requested our passports and registration papers, jumped out and eagerly unlocked the van doors when they asked, ripped out the entire contents of our backpacks so they could see there was no drugs or weapons inside, and stood there patiently while they searched our van and ran passport checks on us.

Eventually, they let us go – fine and jail-term free. But the whole event just confirmed we were doing the right thing by abandoning the van trip.

Other than a stop overnight in Frankfurt and some seriously painful traffic jams on the German motorways, the rest of the journey was pretty uneventful – the Big Guy Upstairs musta finished his Chicko roll and choccy Moove.

The relief we felt when we hit the road in the UK was akin to that felt by the entire world when George Bush handed over the keys to the White House. We were back to driving on the left side of the road, we could read all the signs, and if anything horrible were to happen (like a ball joint breaking and careering off into a ditch), we'd be able to communicate to passers-by and mechanics alike. 

But it wasn't all fun and games. We had planned to live in a caravan park just outside London until we sold the van. But when we arrived at the camping ground in Chertsey, we realised that not only were we in an absolute hole about 50 kilometers outside of London, we were also paying £15 a night for the privilege of staying there.

This was not on. So after a few frantic phone calls to my London-based pal Jackie, we arranged to stay at her place in Clapham for a 'couple of weeks', until we found jobs and our own place to stay. Our London experience was about to begin....

Down on our luck and dossing on an friend's couch – doesn't get more Aussie-in-London stereotypical than that!

Coming soon...

Life in London

What living in the English capital is really like.

Carving it up in France

We pull some, er, ultra rad moves on the slopes.

Us in Amsterdam

Our photos were stolen, but we can still post a story, right?

Holy Hogmanay

We ring in the new year with our pals Groove Armada.

Cesky Krumlov, a police encounter and the beginning of the end

NOTE: Catch-up post.

If I had to describe the town of Cesky Krumlov in three words, I'd probably go for quaint, charming and picturesque (thanks thesaurus.com!). Cesky is the ideal pit-stop for the travel-weary backpacker, a place where they can simply stop, relax and take their time exploring the cobblestone streets of this pretty little town.

But for us, Cesky will forever be tainted with the title of The Place We

Decided To Ditch The Van – or something to that effect...

Completely exhausted from our Oktoberfest adventures, we packed up our tent, said goodbye to The Tent and journeyed into the third country of our van tour, the Czech Republic.

Grey skies, dodgy roads and a high percentage of people who looked like serial killers – our first impressions of the country were pretty crap to say the least. Driving down the narrow country lanes, we both played hypotheticals – 'What the hell would we do if we broke down here?', 'What if a ball joint broke now?', 'What if those people standing there with rifles see our Great Britain number plates and want to kill us?'... sure beats number-plate bingo!

There's nothing like a policeman coming up to your vehicle's window in a foreign country to put you at ease. Since the main area of Cesky is a vehicle-free zone, we drove as far as we could and I jumped out to go find us some suitable accommodation for the night – since we were both really sick from four freezing nights in a tent, we decided to treat ourselves to a decent night's sleep in a hotel. While I was running madly about the town, some police saw Craig illegally parked and decided to pay a visit. Luckily, they were very nice about the whole situation (and spoke English to boot) and directed Craig to a nearby carpark. Unable to find anything in our price range (cheap), I stumbled upon a van-less Craig searching for me.

Over it, we decided to head into the nearest hotel and, luckily for us, the prices were somewhat bearable. A warm room with real beds, our own en suite and a TV that had 471 channels in every language but English was exactly what the doctor ordered. After lying around and showering, 

we decided to loosen our purse strings that extra bit further and treat ourselves to pizza for dinner – justifying it by telling ourselves that we were kitchen-less and had no other choice.

'You don't want to go back to the van now, do you?' joked Craig the next morning after after sleeping in an actual room in an actual bed.

'No!' I started crying, the thought of ever having to drive anywhere or sleep in that horrid van ever again filled me with dread.

A serious conversation about how much we hated the van and were struggling to enjoy ourselves because of the constant worry about our safety ensued. I just knew that if something Bellebrune-esque were to happen again, I just couldn't cope. We saved up for two years and gave up our jobs so that we could have the time of our lives, not to watch our bank accounts plummet while we eagerly counted down the days before the trip was over.

The decision was made, a 'for sale' ad was promptly put on gumtree.com

and a huge weight was lifted from our shoulders. We were gonna head back to the UK the following day, sell the van and postpone our travels until summer, after a stint of living in London – and all this was decided over the free hotel breakfast, we Couchsitters don't mess around, y'know.

So, sorry Cesky, we did think you were beautiful, but we couldn't really take it all in – we kinda had more important things on our minds.

Craig likes big butts...

...and making a fool of himself at the office Christmas party!

Check out this vid of Dish clearing the dance floor, stealing the DJ's mic and belting out a stirring rendition of Baby's Got Back while busting some Chris Brown-worthy moves.

While impromptu karaoke would usually be an office-party etiquette 'don't' – especially when you've only been there for eight weeks – this cringeworthy performance somehow catapulted Craig to 'office legend' status, with people clamouring to chat to him at the printer.

Go figure.

Legend or loser? You decide.

Disclaimer: From Couchsitters to Globetrotters accepts no responsibility for any neck problems caused by watching the video. View at your own risk.