Hostel horrors

Yesterday morning I left my hostel on a not so long trip to...the next hostel. When I finally arrived I was told that my booking had been cancelled because they couldn't charge my card and that I had received a mail which said I should have contacted them. Now of course the already expensive dorm room wasn't available anymore and my only option was to book a private room... which I did since at that point I had no internet connection to check for something else. So now I had to pay almost twice as much of what was already insanely expensive for a hostel. 

The room wasn't ready yet, so I went for the mall to buy a SIM card. I also used the opportunity to eat kebab(and was seriously disappointed). I got lucky  in a place called warehouse after being sent there by a cashier in a supermarket which heavily advertised that I could buy the SIM there but which didn't actually sell it anymore...

Finally I had internet access. I returned to the hostel, went to the room and checked my mails(first trying WiFi but that just didn't work at all and the quota is ridiculous being just a fourth of what I had in the haka lodge and more data would be way more expensive than on the phone...). The mail said that my booking shouldn't have been cancelled before 6pm on the day of arrival...  So I went to the reception and the receptionist said after some discussion that she would talk to her boss. 

Today I'll find out what the result of that was I presume. They should refund me, because this was completely not an error on my side, the account is fine and they shouldn't have cancelled the booking. It's also quite unfair that they didn't even bother to call and just immediately cancelled the booking. So from this experience I'd warn people to stay away from "The old country backpackers" in Christchurch. They have a very customer unfriendly attitude  and WiFi is unusable. 

After all that mess, i called immigration for news, but again nothing, i was told to ask the officer who worked directly on my case which i did only to get an automated reply saying that he was on holidays until the 16th. Great, time to book another hostel and wait.

I think I will probably buy a cheap car. That way I will have a cheap place to sleep and a means to get around. That would be much nicer if i wasn't traveling around alone, but oh well better than going broke.

Sunburn in Christchurch

When I entered the plane in Dubai yesterday, I expected the take off wouldn't be something I'd have to wait for all that much. However after waiting forever the captain informed that there would be delay of another hour or so, due to the fog. Now since the flight is super long without that additional sitting and waiting already this sure was not nice. Arse torture to the max.

Finally the flight commenced and like for the first flight I was lucky in that in the three seat column we were only two and so didn't have a middle man. On the other hand I had a guy in front of me who constantly managed to things more complicated for me, by adjusting his seat dropping his pillow and keeping lights on when everyone else was sleeping. So I didn't manage to sleep during the flight. If my memory doesn't betray me here, I think that klm wins in terms off comfort and somehow I could sleep without any problem.
Luckily I had checked in for my last flight in Dubai, and so didn't lose time for that in Sydney but how else could it be. Again the flight was delayed. When I boarded I was asked to provide a valid return ticket, which I did. This time I was surrounded families with children. The flight was much shorter and I had to fill out an arrival form which I was unsure about because of the visa thing. When I arrived I checked mails, because I sent a mail in Sydney, but there was no answer except from the nz post, saying they believed the parcel arrived. So I sent another mail to immigration saying I'd wait at the airport till I'd hear from them. However the area before customs didn't even have toilets so I waited until everyone else was done and then asked a customs officer. She looked at my papers asked someone and then asked me to walk through control and wait on a bench. A while later another officer showed up and told me he'd give me a regular visitor's visa and I should check back with immigration the next day how things stand. Since I didn't want to do the checkup again as the immigration officer I had mail contact with told me I'd have to, I told the officer that. He then said he didn't believe that was the case, checked back with immigration and then gave me the visitor's visa.Then I booked the cheapest hostel I could find, going by the name of haka lodge. Looked for a bus to the center and then walked for another eternity to the hostel which turned out to be really nice with a garden and generally nice atmosphere.
I also had a nice slightly quirky roommate. I then went to the next supermarket and decided that I was lazy so bought chips, fruits and 'scorched almonds' simply because that sounded awesome.
She wanted to sleep early and I was tired as well, so that's what we did.
I woke up at 6 am but thought hey if the supermarket here opens at 7 am that's not such a bad time to get up. I said goodbye to my quirky roommate and planned to go to an electronics store to buy a usb power supply since I forgot a part of my charger for the phone. However my Spanish/Madrid heuristic (just keep walking at some point you'll find what you need) didn't work out. My day netted me the power supply and a sunburn, but no SIM card. I wanted to extend my stay at the hostel, but too late - booked out. So tomorrow I'll switch to twice the price for less quality according to reviews. Still no news about the visa.

Walking through Christchurch I learned two things, first people here actually give proper directions (unlike in Spain, where people send you to random directions) and second that Christchurch is still considerably damaged from the earthquake and very much in progress, oh and yeah there really are loads of churches here.

In Transit

Waiting to board at Dubai airport. Free WiFi here doesn't work. So far not many things worked out.

First yesterday there was a traffic congestion. That wasn't much of a problem as the driver took an alternate route and we were like 2 minutes late. I was in luck since the bus stop was at the right terminal. Everything went smooth until I was at the point of baggage drop off. I was told I'd already need to have my visa. Oops. The clerk said she couldn't let me fly without one and wondered why immigration didn't tell people because she had a similar case recently already. After some discussion and calls I bought a ticket so that I could enter on a regular tourist visa. I guess this means I'll have to redo the x-Ray and additional medical checkups. Great. The 100 or so euros for the x Ray wasted. They tried to talk me into a cheap ticket, but I bought a full price one so that I simply can cancel it without incurring a financial loss one I have my wh visa. So finally I could move on to security. Apparently one of the guards had been eyeing me from afar, because as soon as I came closer she started to ask me about my vibram five fingers and was rather flirty. I already had forgotten that people do that and while I answered the five finger questions the rest of the security joined in. At some point after jumping around a bit and answering most of their burning questions. I suddenly realized that I was spending an awful lot of time there and moved to the gate. I was still earlier than the personnel for the boarding though.

Then I waited. We started late because of a shift change in the fueling company.. um yeah. The flight was uneventful I ate salmon and watched movies. Then we arrived late in Dubai and after going through immigration and waiting for the bus I was in my room at 1:xx am local time. Little time for sleep got up at 6:30 am had a super short breakfast, showered and then proceeded to the airport in order to wait. Finally the WiFi sort of works... a little. It is 9:44 the (again) delayed boarding should commence soon. I wanted to book a place to sleep from here but WiFi doesn't work for that. Oh well stopping to write now.

Trials and Tribulations ... will I not have a Visa?

Not much time left. What is definitely going to be my biggest and longest trip will begin on Monday and I am still not completely done with my preparations. I don't even have a place to sleep yet.

After my long stay in Madrid I left Spain, after some not so nice things. Finally free from all the mad rental situations I was still waiting forever for my last (and seriously terrible) landlady to pay back the security. Finally when I was already considering legal options and after a last (unanswered) mail she paid up and I thought things would go a bit smoother now. However I waited a bit long since I was considering to go visit one last city in Europe before leaving the continent. In the end I booked a flight with three stops and almost 40 hours in total.
When I finally did that I filled out the Visa application and learnt that I had to do a chest x-ray and send the image to the immigration office within 15 days. This is a tough deadline since the image has to go around half of the world and I had to get an appointment to get it done first. All that just because I travelled too much within the last 5 years.

The other thing is that you have to go to one of the doctors on the list you get from the immigration office. So I also had quite some distance to cover just to get to the doctor. My appointment was last Tuesday and I got up at 5:15 to be able to make it because the only bus connection on time was rather early. Then waiting at the bus stop for ever.. There were two girls waiting with me and said I'll go into the airport(the bus stop is at an airport) and ask. I go in and ask around finally at the information booth the clerk called the bus company. When I looked out I didn't see the girls anymore..

The clerk asked me whether I really had been all this time and if others were waiting there. It seems the people at the bus company were confused(they didn't even know about it) about the missing bus as well, but said it should come soon. I went out and was worried that I missed the bus, because the girls had disappeared and just when I was about to give up a bus came .. and the girls came out of the airport. We thinking this was the bus waited for the people to leave and then approached the bus.. With the driver promptly telling us that this was not the bus we were looking for. A similar exchange to the one with the clerk ensued.
The driver then called the company again aaaand told us .. the bus would come soon and then there was an accident and the other driver had just called in a bit late. After more waiting a bus came, but they told us the driver would come later it was just so we could wait in the bus. Then a driver came who drove us to the company headquater where the final driver then entered to tell us the truth:"This is the first time that I overslept this year!". I thought to myself "the first time? so the plan is for more times?" This(admitting it) was obviously not very bright of him to do, because this meant the company was liable in case someone would have gone legal. I was just annoyed that I got up so early just to wait at a bus stop, because a slightly later start would have been perfect for me, well now it was a lot later.

When I finally arrived I didn't have enough time to get to the appointment on time having a relaxed walk instead I had to rush through the city and arrived 2-4 minutes because I didn't find the proper entrance to the hospital immediately. Then I had to wait a short moment and was called, entered the room, stripped down, got roasted in the radiation and then left to wait more. I guess that was about a minute. I waited 10 more to get the image and results and left. The image is huge so my plan was to go to the post office and send it off then visit the city a bit. So 1 1/2 hour later I found a sign at the door of the post office, which said: "We are closed today". They randomly decided to close on the Tuesday I wanted to send off something urgently. Oh well that was to be expected. I scrapped my plan, looked for something to eat, after a while gave up and took the first thing I had seen.

Then I went to the trainstation passed some time there and ultimately went for the next bus back. On arrival I went to the local post office and they didn't have a fitting envelope, then after a short odyssey through the whole settlement a foto store had something accpetable that they would have thrown away. So then just on time before the office closed I managed to send it off for a whopping 42 €uros. Add the X-ray and bus etc. That's a 100 €uros extra because I was honest. (the whole thing is a bit odd though it's to prove that you don't have tuberculosis, but then if they exepect someone to be honest about giving all this data in order to judge someone to be risky, then why the hell don't they just ask for signs of tbc directly, because if you wanted to lie about it you'd do it in the first step and avoid all this costly mess.)
Now I am waiting to see if the image arrives on time. If not I'll have to pay a lot more to redo the chest x-ray along with other examinations.

Another requirement is a health insurance and of course everybody knows that insurerers do everything to not do their job so you should research carefully... but at that point I was just out of time and tired of it all and just read through two different contract text. So without much further ado I just took the cheaper one was done with it.

I can't wait for the flight and it seems I'll be eligible for Dubai Connect, which means I get a free stay at a hotel there while waiting for my next flight.

How not to prepare for backpacking ..getting to know 'uncle rhabdo'

A while ago I thought hey, since I'll be traveling again and since I am my own mule it would appear smart to do some ..physical.. preparations. Being an office slave does not have the benefits of being a quarry kind of slave, i.e. you don't become super muscular and start on a quest to destroy the empire of your enslaver to then found your own kingdom.
So I thought it would be beneficial to do something for my back. Having done all this taxing mental work I retired the idea. However randomly a colleague was getting scared of his belly protruding too much and asked me if I wanted to join in with his program. I thought the stars had obviously aligned(but didn't check..!) and this was to be the first step to godhood. As such I agreed already seeing myself wielding .... insanely oversized backpacks. Of course the program was targeting the whole body, but I thought that was an acceptable price to pay and the people in the program plan with every muscle chiseled out didn't succeed to scare me off even though they do look exhausted and out of breath. The colleague assured me that he had started the program before, but then got sidetracked and that the insane amount of repetitions was ok.

After some delays we started midweek and then started all over again the following week. I was sceptical of training over sore muscles etc.. but yeah my colleague had done it before and it's all just bodyweight exercises. So that all went fine until we hit week three of the program.
That was the first time we were supposed to do pullups and 50 pullups at that. Now I thought like: "WTF!?!" .. but yeah colleague ..before. So we went ahead and I just went through with it, surprised it didn't seem as bad as expected. Then during the following 100 pushups, I started to not be able to go for the full range of motion anymore, i.e. I couldn't press myself up completely anymore. According to my colleague the fun would just begin with the sore muscles and that we would resemble T-Rexes. Indeed that was what happened, walking around with arms in a 90° angle, because that was the only option, but then this didn't go away and at some point we suddenly had swollen arms. It looked a bit like we suddenly had gone massively overweight.. in our arms only, but even then there would be some kind of arm shape whereas we looked more like we had some kind of stuffed to the brim giant sausages on our sides.
It took three weeks to disappear all in all I think and foolishly at some point we exercised even with those arms a few times.

So after some point we found out that this most likely had been rhabdomyolisis and we could have suffered renal failure and died.
In other words we had gone too far and caused too much damage to the muscles. Now it turns out this is not uncommon in the so called crossfit scene where this has been dubbed 'uncle rhabdo'. While some people have a disposition for this, the common technique to induce it via execrcise is copious amounts of negative repetitions. Pullups are one of the most efficient means of acquisition.
Of course after this I have completely lost motivation to continue this program ("freeletics") since the program motivates people to keep going no matter what and that everybody could do it. There was no warning at all. For people reading this but who still want to continue their high volume training, please be careful and maybe limit the amount of additional negative only reptitions to no more than the amount full repitions you can do (i.e. 10 full + 10 negative repetitions). Also even if your program says so, don't go with insane amounts of repetitions for a new exercise, instead work your way up. Should you desire to kill yourself, there are way better ways than renal failure!

Now after that it took forever(more than a month) for me to be able to do even a single pullup again, and I am not yet back to the way I was before(in amount of pullups).

So I learned from this, that people I barely know see me walking around all the time in the city(with sausage arms), whereas I rarely see anyone. Further I am weird because others doing this kind of exercising say they feel so great after completing on of those workouts whereas I am just glad it's over. I also don't quite understand how people enjoy to inflict this kind of torture on themselves - what's the fun in having sore muscles every day? And what's the point of all this training when you never have the strength left to do other things after a session?

Camino de Santiago: Day Zero

So the train started and I quickly realized that sleep was going to be hard to come by that night. Uncomfortable seating, people talking loudly and then ... a baby ... the edition that screams .. a lot ... and that is the story of that night. I sat there, drank water, fell asleep for brief moments but largely stayed awake sipping away the water from one of the many bottles of water I carried in my way too oversized backpack for the camino.

I mustered people in the train and identified a girl who looked like a professional/seasoned camino hiker with walking stick and everything. Also people in the train were talking about the fact that this train was used by the peregrinos(pilgrims) and somehow my backpack betrayed me, so I was labelled as one of them.

Finally the time of arrival was approaching and I put my five fingers on. Since I had never really worn them for longer periods of time(I basically had just bought them) I thought it was wise to have a pair of regular shoes with me especially considering all the warnings that as a beginner you shouldn't wear them for extended per..blalala.

I was ready to go and the train soon came to a stop. It was 6 am and dark. Most of the people who left the train headed to the cafeteria at the station. Mistrusting as I am of places close to 'people hubs' I thought a tea would be nice, but it would be horrible and overpriced in that place and I kind of wanted to get started as well so I got out my pile of printed out pages describing the camino and thought: "Oooops, maybe I should have done some kind of preparation"(I literally just printed out that guide - not reading it - and bought tickets. It didn't say anywhere where it starts.
I decided to just walk on, but after following a dark road for a while I thought that this was possibly not the best approach and decided to head back to the peregrinos who were chilling in the cafeteria. Luckily the professional looking girl from earlier was about to leave and after pondering that it would seem weird to silently stalk a girl down a dark street .. I bested my fears of getting into a crazy religious debate about my lost soul and chatted her up in a very sparse way with my broken Spanish. She turned out to be from Madrid as well and had a good pace for a girl.
Further she had attempted the camino before and had to give up after a while, saying that she hadn't been properly prepared. Another oooooops-moment. I started to be worried, but it was just walking! I In the end however she didn't really know where it started either and we just pressed on cluelessly for a bit, finally we walked around in the streets until we encountered someone who was able to give us directions.
Following those directions I realized that my initial dark street was spot on.
We left the village and suddenly encountered a lot of walking christmas trees ... walking in our direction. Hmm something was not right here they were peregrinos coming from where we were headed... ok we gave in and asked them and yup same plan, only they were obviously christmas trees. In the end we followed their light and noticed that we missed a little bridge to the right. Darkness began to be driven away by the sun so we surpassed the christmas trees and were able to see the markings of the camino, a stylized scallop.

After walking for a while my trapezius muscle began to hurt since the whole weight of the backpack weighed on it, but I didn't want to adjust the straps, so I fought against the pain by holding the backpack up with my thumbs and shifting it around to not have the same area affected the whole time.
We passed a chatty old lady who seemed interesting to talk to, but alas the professional pilgrim girl I had chosen as a walking partner didn't seem willing to talk to people, so I gave up on conversation attempts.
We arrived in a small village and the girl told me we had to get stamps, also her father came from there. Another thing I had no clue about, you have to get at least three stamps inbetween albergues in order to be allowed to use a public albergue. Good thing I hadn't dashed on on my own... For a moment I panicked since I didn't find that pilgrims passport I had to buy in Madrid, but thankfully it showed up after some searching. I also saw that I was already one stamp short, everyone else got one in the cafeteria. Oops again. We got our stamps and kept walking past a lot of people.
Finally I thought the pain was getting too much and .. I adjusted the straps. Woah awesome. I could have avoided a whole lot of pain, but at least now I just had to survive this day and the next day would be better. So we walked on and I think we didn't really rest even once. Then roadside advertisements began to appear advertising hot and 'deserved' showers after all this hard walking and even massages. At that point I began to realize how big an industry this whole St. James way thing is, especially in this first stage(afterwards a whole lot of people realize that walking is too much of an effort).
Finally we arrived in Portomarín and uh my quiet companion headed to the funky looking church.

I was afraid that this would be a religious moment and she would start to talk about faith, but luckily she just entered for a moment and kept to her regular quiet self. I think we arrived at the albergue about an hour earlier before it opened, but there were like 4 people before us and we all had to neatly line our backpacks up so that everyone got his rightful spot in the line to get the abono for the albergue. When it opened I was quite surprised at how many beds there were in one room. It might have been 40. Since we were among the first we were able to pick and I decided to pick an upper one in the far corner of the room, wisely thinking that that way I would avoid having the noise of someone above me(although I had heard that on the camino you'd get so tired that you'd be sound asleep no matter what).
A little group of Italians arrived after us carrying an ukulele, yup the typical kind of 'artist' using an instrument in order to score girls. So they sat outside doing their little show to harvest the attention of most of the girls, forming a party to besiege the village. Well this was the part I was utterly unprepared for, whole afternoons of nothing to do in small villages. I had a book and sought refuge in my bed reading a scifi story. Then I received a few angry SMS from the person I care most about(making me be worried for the rest of the trip) and afterwards checked out the village a bit. Being hungry I tried a pilgrim's menu -expecting a fulfilling and savoury meal - and ended up with a weird joke of a meal (it was a small portion of spaghettis with ketchup and a fried egg).
Somehow I got into conversation with a 'bicigrino' which is a pilgrim on bike who told me it was awesome to do by bike you just have to cover twice the distance every day. Then I went out to finish my book(unfortunately) at some point my quiet companion showed up and we went to a small supermarket to buy food for the evening and morning and she told me she loved cold cuts and asked me whether I liked them as well. I found that to be an odd question, because what the hell it's a category of food. I then decided to 'rest' and in the bedroom overheard the Italian gang planing to party and keeping a window open to overcome the curfew. For a brief moment I considered to be mean and close the window but then thought that I couldn't be that cruel and so decided to ignore it.
Little was I to know about the menace that would bring over my nighttime.

Camino de Santiago .. or the party, fuck and religiuos nut trail (and the camino in vibram five fingers)

The tale begins on Friday the 31st of September (2012) henceforth to be referred to as day -1 and I start the camino in Sarria, not just because I am a lazy bum, but also because of lack of time.

Day -1:
I took a free afternoon and hurriedly started to prepare everything to embark on the Camino de Santiago.
Originally the plan was to do this on Sunday, but for various reasons(one of them being the potential change of weather lurking in a not so immediate future), I changed my mind.
The first issue was that the food I had left, was originally supposed to last until Sunday, so I decided to prepare a pizza stuffing as much on it as possible. This consumed a large part of the time(preparation and consumation and afterwards being slowed due to over-eating). Add to that a couple of mails to write to inform people that my lack of answers to their mails would not be a sudden demise on my side and ultimately it was a rush to get to the train station to buy a ticket and catch the train, which to my shock only departed from the station in the north that's half an hour away with the metro instead of the one that's 10 minutes by foot.

I made it to the station on time and immediately used a machine which in the final moment bailed on me: "Failure to print, your booking has been canceled". I thought: "Yeah that was to be expected." Another attempt, didn't help. So I tried the only other machine. That one however didn't even like my debit card and I was almost convinced, that it wasn't meant to be, that I'd board the train that day. Yet I had one last option: human interaction. There was one woman at the counter and she was organizing some things.. I approached her and said I need a ticket for the train to Sarria, then I patiently waited, so she could finish her work, while my time was ticking away. Finally she was done and managed to conjure forth a ticket .. in time. I was about to dash away when I remembered that I should ask for the platform (something which I'd normally forget to do), forgetting to thank her I dashed away and made it.

Yet the torture was only to begin. I entered the train and an old woman was sitting on my seat. I informed her of that and offered that I could just as well take her seat when her 'friendly' neighbour offered the same thing and immediately got up and took her real place. Now this 'friendlyness' was born in the fact that we are talking about the horrible seats where 4 seats face each other (2 vs 2) and in tourist class for RENFE this means that the space in between is really just enough for one row. So I had to squeeze my legs into an unnatural position sitting very uncomfortably on a train ride of 7 hours and 10 minutes. Add to that, I still had sore muscles from abusing my legs for biking the days before (remember originally I had some more days for regenaration but then again, hiking is just walking..right?).
Waiting for the train to start, this was to be the prologue of my journey.

Image courtesy of: http://www.espormadrid.es/2010/10/los-otros-caminos-de-santiago.html