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Whats wrong with me?

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

14:58 / 10.05.02

ok, so reading through the thread on beer, and others in the past, all my images of fellow lithers (mostly the euros) is of jet setting playboy/girls tryin out oll these great othe country things that i will never have the money to try

Is everyone in europe rich? or is it just cheap to get around?
Or am i just thinking anyone with an accent is james bond?

15:03 / 10.05.02

I know nothing of beer and Im just fine

*twitch*

15:11 / 10.05.02

Yeah I sometimes get the impression that everyone on here is rolling in it, but I'm sure thats not really the case. I guess most of it the year out after uni travel around the world sorta thing.

And I think it is quite cheap to travel in Europe....

15:12 / 10.05.02

It's cheap to travel in America too. Its called hitchhiking.

15:12 / 10.05.02

It's not that cheap to get around, but the places you can get to relatively cheaply and quickly are different to where you started.

You Americans have my sympathies. You have to travel for ages and spend large sums of money before you can get away from being surrounded by yanks. Must be terrible.

15:14 / 10.05.02

elijah - you can get around europe very cheaply. especially if you're a student or under 26. in my younger days i used to go camping - for a relatively small sum you can see much of europe/scandinavia. it didn't feel very jet set at the time (overnight train rides, coach journeys and ferry rides being the order of the day) but i appreciate being lucky enough to be able to do such stuff.

i work part time and don't have a huge amount of money. i try to visit berlin as often as i can because my best friend lives there - so basically i don't go out much in london unless it's for free, i don't buy clothes unless the ones i'm wearing are falling apart. i spend money on airfares and train tix.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:14 / 10.05.02

What's wrong with you? Your damned ethics. Your damned integriy. A whole army of fine words dragging us to our *DOOM*.

Oh, sorry. Thought you were someone else.

In general, I think Europeans are more well-travelled than Americans. One reason for this is that our passports are pretty well our only universally acceptable form of ID and thus everybody has one. Another is that countries are a) much closer and b) much easier to get to. Also (c) booze and cigarettes are so much cheaper on the Continong that a fortnight's stay in France pretty much pays for itself for any tab-smoking brit.

pointless and uncalled for

15:50 / 10.05.02

I'm by no means rolling in it. I may talk about my travel experiences a bit but this is because I cram a lot into a short space of time and mooch off of my parents when they go travelling. My parents aren't that loaded either, they are just good at economic vacations.

What I have managed in travel and the like has been paid for by not really owning everything. I have very little furniture, a matress, and a couple of cheap shelving items from Ikea. I own nothing like a stereo or a TV or a computer or anything like that I own a handful of books and maybe 20 CD's. I've lived in a string of cheap rent accomodation and have been contantly in debt for three years.

Not that I'm complaining about my life, on the contrary I enjoy it a lot. I guess we live differently but if you take a look at it then you'll probably see that things are fairly balanced, give or take.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

18:43 / 10.05.02

You Americans have my sympathies. You have to travel for ages and spend large sums of money before you can get away from being surrounded by yanks. Must be terrible.

It's not so bad. You meet all sorts of interesting people over here, if you walk or hitch everywhere you go. Granted, you've got to walk at least eight hundred miles to get to a place where people speak a different language (unless you count the american southern slang another language).

Money? Bah. Money's not an issue. I was stuck in Italy for a few days without a lira to my name (I had spent the last bit to see a Vivaldi concert in Venice. Funny story: All I knew was that it was held in a small cathedral "near a really big bridge", and my party and I went to three different cathedrals that had baroque concerts going on before we found the right one. Venice kicks ass), and I got along fine. It's even easier in america, so long as you don't have any qualms about taking food from a supermarket chain without technically paying for it.

pointless and uncalled for

19:16 / 10.05.02

I hate making those technical payments.

19:19 / 10.05.02

My American friends are convinced that we all live in castles in England and take tea at three. I try to explain to them that we actually take tea at four, and have tails, not castles, but no one ever understands. Apparently, I am the only person to remember 'The Box of Delights'.

19:23 / 10.05.02

shame on you for teasing the americans!

...whats a tail?

19:23 / 10.05.02

A waggy thing, or a fluffy thing, depending on whether you are a pirate or a ninja...

pointless and uncalled for

19:28 / 10.05.02

You would be there Cholister, I also remeber the Box of Delights, albeit vaguely having not seen it in nigh on 12 years.

I don't suppose you would have a link for that? I would google it but I'm at work and I suspect that Box of Delights would throw up way too much porn for the liking for my IT manager.

19:34 / 10.05.02

reviewy stuff
BBC stuff

Buy the videos from the BBC shop, if they do overseas ordering?
Or buy the John Masefield book from Amazon.com

19:38 / 10.05.02

A waggy thing, or a fluffy thing, depending on whether you are a pirate or a ninja...

der. and here I thought Id stumbled onto a british slang word I hadnt yet heard

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

19:40 / 10.05.02

thanks for all the responses, i really wished i lived somewhere where my options for cultural diversity were the 2 chinese markets or the occasional mexican gang driveby

next question---is all of london walking distance from all other of london, like Sunnydale in buffy the vampire slayer?

20:04 / 10.05.02

not unless you have extraordinarily long legs, like trees

there is a fairly effective if filthy public transport system. Actually, the whole city is filthy.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

22:47 / 10.05.02

Apparently, I am the only person to remember 'The Box of Delights'.

Are you bollocks. "The wolves are running! The wolves are running!"

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:02 / 10.05.02

is all of london walking distance from all other of london, like Sunnydale in buffy the vampire slayer?

*Falls off of chair, laughing*

Soooo not. When I first moved here I ended up in the wrong bit and found that I had a 2-hour journey from shitty temp home to shitty temp job. Yes, the transport is okay, but they roll up the tube lines after midnight and you have to either spring for a cab or brave... the night bus.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

03:20 / 11.05.02

"The Box of Delights!" Man, that rocked.
Walking in London? Depends how drunk you are. And how much time you have. Generally I find that if I'm pissed enough, I can walk from anywhere to anywhere (even if I don't know the way- the God of Booze looks after his own, y'see). Just takes a LONG time. Otherwise, it's buses and tubes all the way.

07:47 / 11.05.02

I think the part of London that you can actually walk around in is like Manhattan for New York. You can cross central London fairly easily with about an hour's walking, but central london is just the innermost ring of the huge London onion.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

12:17 / 11.05.02

mmmmm london onion
so, if i can con the older members of y fam to donate to the "send elijah and his lady friend to europe" fund ill need some of you all to show me around then.

12:22 / 11.05.02

well if you want to see the city (financial) area or don't mind hanging out with a bus geek, then i'm your girl.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

13:23 / 11.05.02

rock, gonna see if i can convice them i deserve a trip at summers end

13:29 / 11.05.02

I've never had lots and lots of money and neither have my friends, but I come from a strange social circle wherein we all love to and feel strongly about The Importance of International Travel, so we all just save a ton of money in America and then go someplace else. Once you set your mind to it, you can do it. The main problem in London (besides the annoying omnipresence of other Americans you were trying to escape) is the fact that you made dollars and now you're spending pounds, and everything appears to have the same price on it except in pounds instead of dollars.

Everyplace else in Europe however (and granted I've only been to France, Germany, Holland and the Czech Republic) the prices are very reasonable - and of course in Prague you can party hardy Marty and you're still not spending a lot (except for your hotel room that is).

Go for it my friend, it's worth it!

18:08 / 13.05.02

Elijah: it's possible to travel cheap if you travel a bit off the beaten path. ignore standard hotels for cheap rates & hostels. invest some time in looking up deals on the internet. use priceline.com whenever possible.

lonely planet guidebooks can be your best friends, and they're at most libraries.

fridgemagnet:there is a fairly effective if filthy public transport system. Actually, the whole city is filthy.

Spoken like someone who has never ridden the NY subway, or the Miami Metrorail.

18:12 / 13.05.02

Ah, but try blowing your nose after travelling on the Tube in London. It's not a pretty sight... toxic dust, everywhere. Everywhere I tells ya...

The Return Of Rothkoid

18:13 / 13.05.02

I thought that was how you could tell you were a true Londoner: black snot.

Eck.

22:57 / 13.05.02

Meanwhile on the other side of the planet...

In Ozland distance is a real bitch, and the rest of the world is far, far away...

The Return Of Rothkoid

07:56 / 14.05.02

Which is why there's so fucking many of us overseas. If you've got to go far to get anywhere, y'might as well go the whole damn way.