Drum roll please...

Well hello to my few yet faithful readers… or should I say Heyup, all reet? Get t’ pub, y’ divvy. Eeh by gum, gi’ over, y’ jammy bastard. Wha’s up wit ye? Nout. Got a right bollocking didn i? Oh aye. Pack it in, steady, calm down.

That actually doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, even if you can speak Yorkshire… which I really can’t, try as I might. The only even vaguely Yorkshirian thing I ever say is “yer what?!” Other than that, I suspect Otliensians are picking up more Aussie than we are Yorkshire… I notice quite a frightening proportion of locals say the f word like an Aussie (because of Paul of course; I’m a lady, and would never use such language). And for whatever reason, I find Australian accents really funny now. I don’t know what it is, but watching Steve Irwin or Water Rats or even Aussies playing rugby has me in absolute stitches!

So in my last post I promised to have more weekends away and tell you all about them. I lied. I haven’t been anywhere or done anything. Adam now lives in Liverpool; Helen is harassing me to go to Edinburgh; and I haven’t still haven’t been to Coventry to see Jacky and Clarky or Plymouth to see Ang. All round pretty average effort on my part.

BUT, on 26th April I will be flying into Budapest, the city of spas. After a couple of days there I will take an exceedingly long train ride to Istanbul, stopping in Brasov (Romania - gothic architecture and scenic mountains) and Sofia (Bulgaria - the second oldest city in Europe. FYI - Cadiz, Spain is the oldest).

I’m hoping to spend a week in and around Istanbul, Canakkale, Gallipolli etc… and then spend another week on the Med coast working my way from Fethiye to Marmaris (or vice versa). All up will only be away for about 3 weeks, but am so excited!! Flights are booked, and I started looking at my lonely planet yesterday… right giddy!

And yes, Mum’s already given the talk about being sold into sex slavery in Turkey. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have said “so what? Nice way to meet new people… besides, I’ve never tried heroin before, I might like it…” Sorry mum, just winding you up. I promise not to go into any strange taverns with men promising to show me “the real Turkey”.

So that’s my news.

While I’m here, I figured I’d answer the question every second English person asks me… “why are you here? Why would you leave Australia and all that sunshine for this?” I could write an essay, obviously, but to sum up - its pretty; its weird; people are lovely; and even though we mostly speak the same language and have the same stuff and do the same things, living here is completely different to living in Darwin. I think I expected the big stuff like weather and lack of twisties, but the everyday different names for things, different childhood tv shows and celebrities (I recently joined a facebook fan club of Peter Russell Clark, which I think is hilarious, but no one over here gets it) and different general outlook on things still surprises me a bit. Even after a year. Still not feeling any real pull to go home (even though I miss you all terribly) and still no more plans for what's next...

That’s it for now… next blog from, or at least about, Budapest!

In a bit
xx

PS - meant to post this about 3 weeks ago, but something shiny caught my eye...

---

---