Day 14 – July 14, 2003
Shirt Shopping
Not only was Puntigammer my favorite beer of the trip, they also were the sponsor of a local pro soccer team. During the Homeless World Cup, I had seen several children wearing either bright green or bright orange Puntigammer shirts. I was confused about the colors since blue is the color of the beer’s label. Anyway I thought, "I gotta get me one of those."
So Gabi and the boys took us around to try and find what we thought were fairly popular shirts. Two of the stores we tried to go to were out of business. So we made our way back to the main part of town. In the last store we looked they had them, but they were €55.00, A bit to pricey. I would have felt like too much of a tourist at that point. Maybe I’ll go back on the off season and they will be cheaper.
Oh, did I mention how people were recognizing us on the street. This made me feel like a grade a rock star. That is until I got back here and reality put a pin to that ego bubble.
 The butt of the Kunsthaus |
 Here she is stretching above the trees |
Eric and Hilary went hunting for some genuine Absynth and I stopped into the local CD store to get my copy of "Border Confusion" by the Sandy Lopicic Orkestar. As we walked through the streets to the different markets, the presence of the big Kunsthaus was felt everywhere.
Goodbye Snake!
We decided to have lunch at one of several cafeteria style vegetarian eateries in Graz. These are great places with a variety of food that makes you forget there is no meat. As with most every place else, it was very affordable and healthy.
Then was the time to say goodbye to Gabi and the boys. At first Cosbo and Beno were very quiet. I could feel what they felt because I knew how much I would miss them too.
Cosbo played a game that morning chasing Hilary and I around the house with a 6 foot stuffed snake. When the snake hit you, you had to say, "Thank you snake."
I rubbed Cosbo on the head and said, "Goodbye snake." He did not respond. As we were walking out, just before we got to the door we heard, "Goodbye snake! Goodbye snake!" coming from deep in the restaurant. It grew louder as Cosbo ran after us smiling and yelling some more. "Goodbye snake!", we yelled back. I got pretty choked up.
London Calling
Now came the hardest part of all. Leaving Graz.
Norbert drove us and our massive luggage to the airport. This time we did not have to walk over the tall wooden bridge. I almost wished we had for nostalgic purposes.
The Graz airport is tiny to say the least, but today it was remarkably crowded. As it turned out, we were on the same flight to London as the UK Homeless Street Soccer team. Norbert advised us not to talk about the World Cup. They had come in second to Austria and did not seem to have a sense of humor about it.
After a couple of last beers in the lounge, we went through security, and my whole body was screaming, "I don’t want to leave!" Norbert waited until we were out of sight before walking out of the lobby. I felt like a child being ripped from his family and dragged to an orphanage. It was heart wrenching but we finally made it to the plane.
As I eluded to on Day 2, Ryan Air is like flying on a city bus. No assigned seating. Today this worked to my advantage and disadvantage all at the same time. I got to sit next to two very cute Austrian girls. However I was in front of several loud and rowdy English soccer players.
It was clear that they don’t fly much. I mean they are homeless after all. They were singing and having a good old time. That is until we hit a bit of turbulence."Oh I felt me stomach rise with that one," one proclaimed. "My God! Look at the bloody wing moving up and down!" This one made the girls a little nervous. I gave them a smile and we laughed at the chaotic folly going on behind us.
Arriving in the UK, the plane slammed down on the ground in usual fashion. One particularly loud player whips off his seatbelt and says, "Right boys, off the plane." This while we were still racing down the runway. Again this made us laugh.
Stansted Airport is a fairly new, fairly modern facility. I do feel that the endless maze of glass hallways and stairs to get to baggage claim seems a bit overkill.
Cranky Travelers
We all started to feel the irritability level rising in ourselves. None of us wanted to leave, but here we are. After some delicate moments of debate, we made our way to the train back to Liverpool Station. We had returned to London at the beginning of it’s record breaking heat wave. A drastic change from our first night in the cold, misty metropolis.
The train ride was a bit longer than usual due to the over heated tracks. For safety reasons they needed to take it slow. This wasn’t too bad, even though I decided to stand the full 60 plus minutes. We were still traveling fast enough for a breeze to slip through the windows to smack my sweaty forehead with a cooling touch.
Upon arriving at the station, and after a few more delicate moments of debate, we hopped into a taxi and headed off to the Westminster Days Inn. We decided to try a new area since our potential final gig in UK fell through.
As the driver pulled into the driveway of the Days Inn, we realized that it was the wrong hotel. As it turned out, we needed the Days Inn Victoria. the driver explained to us that the hotels play this game of saying their in Westminster so as to not be associated with Victoria which is not as popular of an area. They get away with this because technically Victoria is part of Westminster.
He kindly took us to where we needed to go even though at this point our funds were dried up and gave us a brief geography lesson about the area. One thing that I was told to do was to tap these guys for information. They train 6 years and need to pass an intense exam before even getting behind the wheel.
Thai Me Up
We settled into our room after a frightening trip up an very old, very slow lift. It was time to eat so we found this cool little place called the Thai Cafe & Restaurant on Charlwood Street. Delicious food and ice cold Singha Lager. Another one of my favorite beers. In keeping with our Austrian training, we took our sweet time eating, talking and smoking.
Lingering under the surface were more moments of delicate debate, but that was understandable. Not only were we not happy with the thought of going home, we were now in an area that was more typical of London. Everything closes at 11:00. So we grabbed a couple of beers from the corner store and sat in the hotel room watching bad comedies and the BBC.
There was this terrible "funniest commercial" type of show hosted by an unfunny American comedienne. Thinking this was just one off, canned laughter bad TV thing, we forgot it. That is until I saw here on magazines and in the newspaper. I can’t remember her name. I must be locking it far away in my mental vault with other painful memories.
I fell asleep in the chair, sweating. The bad thing about a heat wave in Europe is there is a shortage of air conditioning. A luxury that is usually not needed here.
 July 2003 |
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| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
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| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | Graz Links | |||
