My Travels

I have been incredibly lucky to have travelled to the US, Europe, all around Australia and even to New Zealand… anyways, on this page I’m going to do my best to regale you with stories that spring to mind from the different places I’ve been, that will not only be entertaining (not even) but maybe even informative and life changing! (actually I highly doubt either of those) So maybe lets just wait and see what i can come up with…

Italian Train Trip

“I remember when we first arrived in Italy, Nathan, Rohan and I went to a small bar for a couple of Peronis. While the Peroni on tap was indeed superb, the locals were also in fine form. There appeared to be some kind of karaoke going on but most of the rather boisterous (read drunk) crowd were singing louder than the man up front. When he reaced the chorus however, the place just exploded.

Now I should at this point state that I don’t know much Italian, in fact if I had a million bucks for every Italian word I know I’d be pushing it to afford a split level in the inner-west. But the chorus was catchy, especially these four syllables that they yelled especialy loud. The next day Nath and I were standing on a packed train heading into Rome. We had been warned about pickpockets roughly four thousand times so I’d worn my army issue trech coat, placed my valuanbles in its DEEP pockets and then held onto them tightly. Mind you, after growing a beard and the incident which I am about to recount, I doubt even a pickpocket would have come near me.

Chatting about the night before Nath mentioned the song and how crazy everyone went, I laughed and in an impulsive moment yelled those catchy four syllables at the top of my lungs. The train stopped dead. Every single person in the car, probably roughly a hundred jaws, just hit the floor and stared. Apparently the song had been a little high on the…profanity scale. I’d just laughed at Nathan then screamed “F&*% OFF!!” at him. Honestly, the Italian public transport system is really going downhill…”

O what a night in Nice

I can’t say I don’t regret not singing. It might have been one of those special occassions when you rise to the challenge, but then again, maybe not. We were staying in the lovely little french city of Nice and, apart from an upcoming trip to Monaco, I wasn’t expecting too much.  So we all headed down to a little restaurant for a dinner then ended up in this dark bar. Try to imagine walking into a place that is purpose built for drinking. WIth a huge bar on the side of the place and an area for standing/waiting in line, then down a few stairs (comedy gold for those a little unsteady later on in the night) and long lines of what looked like picnic benches. These benches were the key, from the side of the bar you could quite easily step onto the top of the bench and make your way around easily, even if the place is packed.

And that is what the bargirls did, “Don’t get up” They’d say “We’ll get it for you, just say what you want and we’ll arrange everything else.” Now I know what some of you are thinking, this is just another “drank too much on a contiki tour story” actually it’s nothing like that. The story involves the other end of the joint, with a stage and band setup; besides a schooner was 5 Euros or about $11 at the time, I didn’t have a single drink all night! Instead, I soon realised it was a karaoke bar! Now being a man with Golden tonsils, or so I’m told, the chants went up straight away.

But this wasn’t an ordinary karaoke bar.

There was no machine, no B grade Japanese actors walking on the beach and bouncing ball telling you where you were up to. Instead a couple of scruffy looking guys walked up to the mic and asked “who’s first?” Now I should have given it a go, I know I should have. The problem was the words, how many songs do you know word for word from beginning to end? If I’d had some advanced warning maybe, but I simply couldn’t think of anything.

Instead, I danced.

After a few people got up and gave singing a go (atrociously I might add), the guys just went through their usual set. Trying to dance in such a crowded place was not much fun, but jumping on top of the benches for extra room to move, definitely was. After a couple of songs I managed to encourage a couple of others to get up with me and we spent the next 3 or so hours showing France how its done, Aussie style.

Dinner in Nice: 18 Euros,

Bar Tab: 0 Euros

Singin ‘Lola’  at the top of your lungs while dancin on a picnic bench: Priceless.

Disneyland Adventure

In 1999 I went on an exchange porogram to the United States for 6 months. I lived in Colorado with the Dierschows for 6 months, attended Wheat Ridge High School and had an (almost) white Christmas. On the way back we stayed for a week in Los Angeles and went to the usual places, the aquarium, Universal Studios and of course and Disneyland!

Disneyland was awesome, just surreal, ordinarily I wouldn’t have been impressed; what with growing up near Australia’s Wonderland and all. But somehow I WAS impressed, and to top it off the “it’s a small world after all” ride was closed for renovations! Anyways, after an amazing day of rides, shows and good old American tucker, I found myself in the line for Splash Mountain.  I’d like to say what happened next was totally out of character, but if that was the case I wouldn’t have done it. In front of us in the line was the typical American family, mum and dad in their matching ‘tourist’ outifts and a chunky spoilt only child. Just to top it all off he was munching away on a ‘candy bar’. Probably a snickers or baby ruth, but the brand doesn’t matter, what the little punk did next, was.

The Splash Mountain queue was actually indoors, it was supposed to be like being in tunnel in the heart of the mountain, with fake rocks on all sides, all jutting out and crevices here there and everywhere. So this spoilt little kid, (who’d obviously enjoyed candy bars a fair bit by the speed in which he engulfed it)  just reaches out and shoves his wrapper into one of the crevices. Usually I’d mutter something about kids and keep walking but something just clicked.

Reaching out I picked up the wrapper and waited a few moments before tapping the little guy on the shoulder. “Excuse me?” I politely interjected, “I think you dropped this…” The look on his face, priceless, he took the wrapper back and mumbled something to himself. The other exchange students I was with stifled laughter and for the next ten minutes I watched this guy like a hawk as he kept looking back to see if I was still there. Hopefully he learned a valuable lesson that day, I highly doubt it, but at least I had a laugh and did my bit to save the fake, artificial mountain environment of Splash Mountain.

While in the US, I lived in Wheat Ridge, a suburb about a 40 min drive from Littleton. Columbine is the local High School for Littleton residents, the school that was home to the worst massacre yet seen at a school in the continental US. I was not the first Wimble to go to the US on an exchange, my sister actually attended Columbine for 6 months in 1997, her exchange partner Kristen, who stayed with us in 1998, was at school when the shooting occurred. The Columbine Football team had lost two of its better starters in the shooting and not much was expected of them in the 99 season. They dedicated their games to their lost team mates and despite all expectations made it to the final of State.

Columbine is in the 5A competition, which is for schools with the highest population of students. They’re actually at the lower end of the population scale and beat out a few much larger schools to get to the final. Their opposition was Cherry Creek High School, something of a football institution who had won 7 of the last 9 Championships. One of the girls in our exchange group went to Columbine and invited me to see the game.

We were late and the game had already started by the time we walked into the stadium, the first thing i remember thinking was this was a HIGH school? The stadium was massive, I remember the guy next to me telling me Cherry Creek had 3,000 students from yr 9 to yr 12! The place was so packed we couldn’t actually find a seat and ended up spreading out and sitting on the steps, there was a lot of media there hoping for a feel good story so close after the massacre.

It ended up being a close game, Columbine were definitely concentrating on a running game which Cherry Creek were struggling with late in the third and fourth quarter and Columbine had fought their way to a slender lead which they held on to to take home the championship! As the siren sounded the stadium just erupted, the crowd rushed out onto the field and I got right in there and just soaked up the atmosphere. What a moment for a guy from Heathcote High to experience! Thousands of cheering guys and girls surrounding the plaeyers who were holding up their replica trophies and picking each other up as the media held their cameras above their heads and just snapped photo after photo after photo. It seemed surreal, almost like I was taking part in some teen flick rather than being pushed and pulled as the crowd ebbed and flowed in celebration, just an absolutely amazing thing to experience.

Back in 2004 I was lucky enough to travel over to Europe for 6 weeks and go on a Contiki tour for two weeks. The trip was in December, during a pretty mild winter so it was perfect with small crowds at the biggest attractions like Michaelangelo’s David and the Trevelli Fountain (have no idea how to spell that!), we literally walked straight into the Museum housing David and bumped straight into a guy we knew from back home!

But by far my most favourite part of the trip was Mt Pilatus in Switzerland. The picture above was taken by me from the back of the Hotel we stayed in at the top of the Mountain! You literally took three different cable cars from the foot of Mt Pilatus up to the top where there is an older, orginal hotel and a much newer and modern hotel.

If I close my eyes I can take myself to the moment this picture was taken, there was maybe 5 of us sitting under the concrete over hang, somebody had secured some beers from somewhere and we just sat there in silence. It was cold but not freezing, crisp and still, almost as if you are the only people alive after some Apocalyptic event. But as I open them again, my little boy is sitting up on the corner of the couch and my wife is blowing rasberrys at him, life is good!