Is it a bird...? Is it a plane...?

No! It's an update! It's taken me by surprise too.

I am no longer full and filthy (well, slightly filthy as I've just returned from helping to sand the floor of the yoga studio I go to and am kinda covered in sawdust) and I am no longer travelling (for the time being...). I'm quite sure that most of the people who read this blog are aware of the fact that I'm back in Melbourne now (I returned in October), but just in case: I'M BACK IN MELBOURNE! The capital letters and exclamation mark are a little misleading, as I'm finding that being back in Melbourne isn't all that exciting. I'm over the initial shock of of being back, of course, but I'm still feeling a little lost and unsure of what to do with myself. Any suggestions...?

It was strange seeing Melbourne again after such a long absence. Everything looked so...colonial. I'd never noticed before just how many roofs and verandahs were made of corrugated iron! It's not just a stereotype! The amount of space, trees, seeing so much of the sky through the sparsely situated (single-storey!) buildings. The quietness. The casual, laid-back, slow pace of life. The sound of an easy wind on a warm and otherwise still and quiet day. These are just a tiny handful of the things I'd never consciously noticed before about Melbourne. Never noticed, or forgotten.

Sometimes I try to look at Melbourne again through that same lens that I viewed it on my first few days back, to capture those sensations, the effects of those observations. But the moments have inevitably passed. Those few days were fleeting and therefore precious. It was only during those first few days that I could really experience Melbourne afresh (or refreshed?), juxtaposed against my memories of all the other places I had seen, against living in Berlin. It left me feeling a lot of (strange) things, but above all, I think it left me feeling a little uneasy. I don't think this unease has left me yet and I haven't quite worked out what it means. Perhaps it's just a result of my not feeling 'settled' yet? No, it's definitely more than that.

I feel I should give a very brief outline of where I had travelled to after writing my last post. Don't worry - I wont go into descriptive detail of any of the places (this post would turn into a novel if I did). I'll just mention the places I travelled to, the paths I took. Like lines and dots on a map. So this can be something of an exercise in cartography (for beginners).

So. I think I wrote my last post in Piran, Slovenia. Yes, Piran. Full and filthy. I remember now: the buffet breakfast.... From Piran I embarked on a twelve hour bus journey (with changes at Koper and Rijeka) that took me down the amazingly gorgeous Adriatic Coast in Croatia, to finally finish up (at about 9.30pm) in Split. Arriving in the evening was great. The centre of Split is built in and around the remains of Diocletian's Palace, which is lit up at night and swept me off my feet. I felt like I was in una Roma piccola.

After a few days and nudie swims in seaside Split, I continued south along the Adriatic Coast to Dubrovnik. Upon disembarking the bus at the bus station I was attacked by a gaggle of women offering me sobe zimmern camere rooms. I haggled with a highly amusing little old hunch-backed woman named Rosa, who took me back to her place where I enjoyed a private double room. Dubrovnik is one of those cities where you find yourself taking a ridiculously excessive amount of photographs (I'll eventually get myself together enough to post some of these, in absence of any written description on my part).

From Dubrovnik I rather spontaneously decided to catch a bus to Sarajevo, Bosnia. This was one of the most worthwhile things I did throughout my entire travels. I could write essays on the bus trip (sometimes incredibly beautiful, sometimes unbelievably war-damaged) and my four days in Sarajevo, but I promised I wouldn't. Suffice it to say, that Sarajevo was the only place I visited in my two and half years in Europe where I felt that this was turf not well-travelled, that this was a city that was still trying to figure out how to deal with western tourists - indeed, tourism at all! - where the locals looked tired, spent, beyond tourism. I guess recent war does that.

Back on the bus. Back to Split. Straight onto the overnight ferry to Ancona, Italy, where I still didn't stop, but cotinued north by train to Bologna (where I would have liked to have stopped, but my arrival there coincided with the International Trade Fair and there was not a reasonably priced bed anywhere in the vicinity of the city) and spent a couple of stressful hours at the train station: all of the trains to my ultmate destination - Verona - were sopresso - cancelled - so I frantically chose a different, random destination, begged strangers for money, bought a phone card, booked a bed, bought a new train ticket and hopped on a train to Padua.

Shakespeare territory. Lovely. My third separate visit to la bella Italia. Oh, the food. The morning coffees and pastries al banco. Yum.

A couple of days in Padua, then on to fair Verona, which is very fair indeed. Something corny, but fun that I did in Verona: left a love message on the (unbelievably love-message grafittied) wall of the Capulet's house (pics to come).

Verona to Milan. My second time in this city. I didn't much like it the first time (the only place in Italy I didn't like), but I found a one cent flight (evil fossil fuels, evil me) from Milan to Oslo, so there I was again back in Milan. Totally different experience this time: I stayed with a local family, the son of which I met in Spain months back. Home-cooked Italian meals, the woggiest apartment in the world, cats, cats, cats, and getting around town on a Vespa! Weaving through peak hour traffic in Milan on a Vespa - so frightening, but so exhileratingly fun!

Then a bit of plane hopping: a flight from Milan to Oslo, another one from Oslo to Stockholm, a third flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen and finally from Copenhagen to Berlin (and then the mega flight back to Melbourne...). My travels through Scandinavia were brief and I'm reluctant to call that kind of plane/city hopping 'travelling' at all. Unfortunately I was running thin on time, money and energy at this point and a few days in each of th capitals was all I could manage. My five days back in Berlin before the flight to Melbourne were simultaneously wonderful and sad. I remember a moment during that time when I was waiting for the U-bahn at Goerlitzer bahnhof, looking down at the tiny wine bar on Skalitzer Strasse, at the major intersection where Skalitzer, Wiener and Oranien Strassen meet, further along at how the new mosque was coming along, at the ever-present grafitti and realising how much I loved this city. Berlin. More familiar to me then (and now?) than Melbourne.

Yet here I am. Pining. Berlin (constantly) on the brain.

I wonder if anyone still checks this blog. Hello out there in etherland!