Some Cricket News

This is a little rich from a guy who has had the cricket authorities bend the rule to protect a developing nation .

And a bit of genuis about the Blond Falstaff .

Who's Excited?

Big Kev died and nobody told me. Shame on you.

New Pictures

Again my faithful readers (if there are any) you can scroll through December to see some of the new pics that have been uploaded.

A Museum John Howard Should See...

GDANSK: Just another day on the backpacker trail, this one in the coastal city of Gdansk. Up on the Baltic Sea, it was formally known as Danzig and played key roles not only for the Hanseatic League but was also important at the beginning of WWII. And more than that it was Ground Zero for Solidarity and the resulting strikes that would go along way to eventually loosening the grip of the Soviets on the Eastern Bloc countries.

Today we started the day at the Solidarity Monument that was erected in memory of workers who were killed in 1970. Then we made our leisurely way through the Solidarity Museum which was a definite highlight of all the independence museums we've seen on this trip. They even had the fantastic, if a little kitschy, recreation of the BHP Hall where all the various striking worker's leaders met. And a recreation of a circa 70's Polish deli so we could really experience what they were getting pissed about.

Then if the afternoon we wandered aimlessly through another old town trying to fight off our Old Town fatigue. We did see a crane that has stood since the 13th century, sitting on the river it used to unload the various cargo of the Hanseatic League ships. And we also saw another St. Mary's, allegedly the biggest church in Europe. One glance at the cavernous interiors seemed to confirm this.


GDASNK STREETS

Tonight we're going to see Broken Flowers down in the Old Town and maybe indulge in a liqeur flecked with gold. And debate the important questions, whether to go to Berlin or Prague on New Years Day.

The Continuing Saga of Chuck

GDANSK: More from the Chuck Norris files courtest of The Boner...

While playing the role of a Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris used live ammunition during all shoot outs. When the director explained that he can't do that, he replied, "Of course I can, I'm Chuck Norris," and roundhouse kicked him in the face.

It is common knowledge that there are three sides to the force: The Light Side, The Dark Side, and Chuck Norris.

Scientists used to believe that a diamond was the
world's hardest substance. But then they met Chuck
Norris, who gave them a roundhouse kick to the face so
hard, and with so much heat and pressure that the
scientists turned into artificial Chuck Norrisi.

God offered Chuck Norris the gift to fly, which he
swiftly declined for a +500 gain to roundhouse
ability.

Chuck Norris is the only male to give birth. His only
child; Vin Diesel.

Every time Chuck Norris does a roundhouse kick, an
angel gets its wings.

Chuck Norris can ejaculate through solid steel.

The letters in Chuck Norris' name can be rearranged to
spell "Doom" in twelve different languages, including
Esperanto, but not French.

Chuck Norris wears a live rattlesnake as a condom.

Chuck Norris burned down an entire forest when he was
experimenting with water.

Chuck Norris is the only person ever capable of
telling if an aircraft landed in soil by tasting it.

Chuck Norris has never blinked in his entire life.
Ever.

Chuck Norris can believe it's not butter.

If Chuck Norris had a dollar and you had a dollar,
Chuck would kick your ass and take your dollar.

We once had a bachelor party for Chuck Norris. He ate
the entire cake before we could tell him there was a
stripper in it.

Chuck Norris volunteers at retirement homes just so he
can push old people in wheelchairs onto the freeway.

Helen Keller's favorite color was Chuck Norris.

A man once asked Chuck Norris if his real name was
"Charles". Chuck Norris did not respond, he simply
stared at him until he exploded.

One of the greatest cover-ups of the last century was
that Hitler did not commit suicide in his bunker, but
was in fact teas-bagged to death by Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris does not see dead people; he makes people
dead.

When God said, "let there be light", Chuck Norris
said, "say 'please'".

The Palestinian Question

At one of the museums in Kazmieriz today it struck me that the techniques employed by the Nazis, to humiliate, alienate and dehumanise the Jews, were somewhat similar to the techniques the state of Israel employs against Palestine and the Occupied Territory.

Just as the Jews were herded into ghettoes, the Palestinians have found themselves ghettoised, deprived of the freedom of movement, subject to reprisals not against specific individuals but communities and generally fucked with.

At the Auschwitz-Birkenau, we were told the facility was a reminder lest this be repeated again. Now I'm not comparing the occupation of Palestine and the murder of Palestinians with the systematic, production line horror of Nazi genocide, but I would like to point out that everybody has the right to exist free of tyranny. Particularly in their birthland.

Winding Up in Krakow

So as we get ready to depart Krakow I might as well finish blogging these part of my Polish craziness.

Boxing Day saw another round of judging in the Just Another Aussie Bogan Pissweak World Tour. The contendor... The Salt Mines. With a fabulous website, UNESCO listing and a good reputation to boot, who would have thought this little battla would've been in contention? (We could have said that about the Kremlin though).

Maybe it was the guide - who looked like a bad Friday night double of Poirot with off ratings quality jokes too match - or maybe it was the lack of kitschy salt sculptures. Whatever it was, it sucked. There was one good salt cathedral but other than that it was a bunch of dull displays on how salt is mined and a pissweak man-made underwater lake. For future travellers I have two words of advice - don't go. And to add insult to injury it was about our fifth sunny day in the Northern Hemisphere and we spent half of it underground.

Still I spent the afternoon wandering aimlessly through the Old Town streets until I wound up on the banks of the Wistula River for sunset with stunning views of Wawel Castle.

The following day we visted Wawel Castle which sits proudly on a hill overlooking the river bank. That means you have quite a majestic walk up the hill looking at these massive walls that were built by the Austrians who hijacked the castle when Poland was repartitioned at the end of last century. Inside we visited the Cathedral and the State Rooms but that Hermitage fatigue was kicking in.

"If this is a State Room, shouldn't the ceilings be about fifteen feet higher?" If you know what kind of a wanker I am you know what I mean.

We finished off the afternoon by moving out of our beautiful apartment and into a hostel with four bathrooms for about forty seven guests. Hit up a few of the basement pubs and a couple of local type pubs before calling it a night.

Today we visited Kazmieriz which is the Jewish section of town made famous for its role as a location in Schindler's List. (Well I mean it probably had a role in history before that but everybody knows Hollywood film's legitamise the importance of a place. I mean wasn't Brisbane a whole lot cooler after they made Inspector Gadget 2?

Then in the afternoon we visited a cool museum that featured a Da Vinci and a Pieter Brueghel the Younger plus some serviceable Italian paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries.

And as a nice little postscript to our brown Christmas... it started snowing last night and didn't let up until it had finished dumping about half a foot by the middle of this afternoon.

paka and tomorrow we leave for Gdansk!

Bitched Up at Christmas

The Christmas Gang, Left to Right: Katie, Our Humble Narrator, Clare, Adam, Fiona, Jacqui


The afternoon after we arrived back from Auschwitz-Birkenau we had to stock up on Christmas provisions. Now the Poles celebrate a good part of Christmas on Christmas Eve so we knew we had precious little time to gather all the ingredients required for a bitchin' Christmas feed. One problem... we had no idea where to buy groceries from.

Our American friend who we met in Warsaw, Adam, had seen one so with his meager directions we set off with great haste. They say the hour of greatest darkness, is right before the dawn, well Paul Kelly does anyway, and so it was that we had almost abandoned all hope when we found the supermarket.

We piled the trolley with every kind of food we could find, with one single proviso: that it could be cooked in a saucepan or a frying pan on one of two hotplates. When the dust settled we were gearing up for Christmas brekky of a Coco Pops substitute, croissants and juice. This was followed by a soup course, a pesto pasta with grilled vegetables, plates of dips and cheese as well as all the other little accompaniments like M&M's and candy canes.

The biggest coup was when Jacquie and I found a deli still open and proceeded to order great chunks of sliced meat with no idea what we were actually ordering. When we finally got the slabs home we realised it was overkill but we were trying to compensate for an actual roast. Anyway it served well for a Christmas dinner of cold meats, packet mashed potato, frozen veggies, tinned carrots with honey, corn and packet gravy. Hey, I know it doesn't sound like much, but the greatest masterpieces have meager beginnings.

The days festivities were accompanied by beer, wine and a scrumptious punch lovingly prepared by Clare and myself that included a delicious apple vodka. There was also something that the shop assistant called, with the help of an English-Polish dictionary, "component" which, in the end, tasted like foul port.

We attended midnight mass with about 1500 hundred Poles in the historic St. Mary's Cathedral on the Town Square which was quite an experience. I'm not sure how much you can take out of a Polish homily but the cavernous interior of the church with it's stunning blue frescoes and paintings was something to behold.

Might I add that we spent four days in a beautiful apartment with a view from the living room overlooking the historic Florian Gates and the Barbican. Photos to follow.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Big Love.

paka

Genocide Tourism

Tastefully there were no "I Survived Auschwitz... And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" but some people just had to document the entire experience on camera.

While not as harrowing as I had imagined, the barracks at Auschwitz, and the eerie acres of destroyed bunkers and gas chambers at Birkenau was a moving experience. Birkenau more so because while it was largely destroyed, the area inside the razor wire is still visible at it hauntingly underscores the scope of the Nazi's atrocities.

There's not too much you can say about a day spent perusing the aftermath of evil, but a highlight, if you could call it that, was the cell where St. Maximilian Colbe spent his last weeks.

Finally, perhaps, it is worth remembering that while UNESCO and the Polish Government maintain the site as a reminder to ensure that "this kind of thing never happens again", it continues to happen around the world. In Rwanda, in the former Yugoslavia, in East Timor, in The Sudan and so it goes.

The other thing I took away was the sheer and absolute cowardice of the Nazis. When they realised that they would be overrun they destroyed the gas chambers which only emphasises how thoroughly they understood the crimes they were engaged in.

Bitched Up in Warsaw

Well this our seventh night in Poland but time seems to have flown, probably because Christmas and the accompanying festivities took up so much of our time.

But after crossing two borders (and Lithuania without so much as a sideways glance out the window) we finally arrived in the most beat up bus station of the trip. It was another two trains before we arrived at our travel oasis, Oki Doki Hostel, in Warsaw. We immediately noticed the change from Russia with people stopping to help us, checking our maps for us, smiling and generally being friendly.

After we got over our shock and unpacked we spent the afternoon getting haircuts and browsing a couple of Warsaw's historic streets. Our hostel had a bar in it with a happy hour that meant you could buy two pints for about $3!. You know what happens next.

The next day we visited the reconstructed Old Town, destroyed during the war and the Warsaw Uprising , and visited the Royal Palace. Signs of palace fatigue were evident though as Kate and I waltzed through the state rooms, looked at each other and said "It's not really the Hermitage is it?"

Then after visiting a couple of Uprising sites, including an awesome monument, we headed back down town to finish Christmas Shopping en route to The National museum where they had a fair to middling collection of Netherlandish and Flemish art.

Later that night we met an American who was on holidays from his job as a research assistant at a Washington law firm as well as an assortment of Aussies. The pattern established the previous evening at happy hour was repeated.

The Big Fella Goes Down

His contribution to international cricket aside, I wouldn't say I was the biggest fan of Big Kerry but I couldn't resist a chuckle at this story .

Beauty Killed the Beast

So while we were hanging out for the bus the other day we caught P. Jackson's new opus "King Kong" which left me thinking wow... I've been waiting all my life to see a giant ape battle three T. Rexs and I never knew it. Aside from a few hackneyed "Hearts of Darkness" moments it was absolutely everything a blockbuster should be and a whole lot more. And how fucking scary were all those insect dudes?

2005 Top 10

The Top 10 Movies for 2005

(in not too much of an order)

1. Closer
2. Oldboy
3. Beyond the Sea
4. Finding Neverland
5. Downfall
6. Million Dollar Baby
7. Hotel Rwanda
8. Batman Begins
9. Look Both Ways
10. Sin City

With honourable mentions to Revenge of the Sith, Brotherhood of War, Nobody Knows and King Kong. (And bearing in mind I've been out of circulation for two months!)

Some Thailand Pictures... A Long Time Coming

Check out Chiang Mai



Beautiful picture of Doi Suthep by the 'Rissa



The Bogan and the Hardster rocking it Doi Suthep Style

Daddy, is Sigulda Audacious?

Before jumping on our bus across Lithuania to Poland we had a lovely three days at a Latvian homestay.

We headed to Sigulda with nought in the way of a plan but when we arrived at the "Switzerland of Latvia" we stopped off at the Tourist Information bureau and enquired about the cheapest possible accomodation. The helpful assistant pointed us in the direction of Ludmina and her lovely, if grumpy dog, Ludwig.

The first day was spent doing very little. Soaking up the snowy ambience, chilling in a coffee and cake shop, those types of things. Day two we experienced what people have described as the fairy tale atmosphere of Sigulda.

First we caught a cable car across to Krimulda. At the corner of our vision, perched on a hill, on a sunny day was a beautiful castle. At Krimulda their were various ruins and we wandered around for a little bit, looked at our map and wondered how we were going to get to Tuiraida.


"I wish there was a bus," Kate said as we stood beside a deserted crossroads.

The view of Turaida Castle from the Cable Car

And then a bus appeared. I ran over to them with my map and asked them if they went to Turaida (Check out the story behind the Rose of Turaida here . The bus driver nodded and we jumped aboard with high fives worthy of the NBA.

Turaida castle was amazing. Covered in snow, with a completely restored main tower it was exactly like something out of a fairytale. And we were the only ones there.
Later in the afternoon we checked out a tiny little cave that Kate said sucked as much as the Aurora, but I thought it was okay. Then we caught our little bus back to Sigulda.

"Invade this muthaf$#a!" (Chuck Norris would...)

In the evening our lovely homestay host dropped us off at a fantastic Latvian restaurant on the edge of Sigulda. She picked us up an hour later and took us on a tour of Latvia's remaining sights including the Sigulda Castle, spectacularly lit, and the Olympic Class bobsled.

Oh and I copped the title of this entry from Christian TV. We had cable in the homestay with about 300 channels, only all but about 24 were locked and the only ones in English were the station promo channel and the GOD channel. So we watched some Aussie spruiking a Christian rock festival called Audacious for about an hour. No shit.

Paka.

Ps. I'm pretty sure if there is a God, he hates Christian rock as much as you or me.

From Russia, With Love Part 2

So we're safely ensconsed in our Warsaw bunker drinking too many dirt cheap pints with fellow Aussies but there were two poignant moments last night when I realised why I wouldn't miss Russians behind glass. (Bear in mind that Latvia is 50% Russian).

#1 Girl runs over to kiosk to buy something. Kiosk is closing. Russian kiosk attendant ignores girl and closes shutters. Girl tries to get Russians attention. Russian ignores girl. Kiosk shutter smacks girl in head.

#2 Bus is 20 minutes late. I ask ticket agent what time bus will come.

"You should wait."
"I am waiting. What time will it come?"
Looks at watch and then solemnly, "You should wait."

If they'd wanted to win the Cold War they shouldn't have built an Iron Curtain, a Glass Partition would have sufficed. Then they really would have frozen the world out.

Vale John Spence/ Leo McGarry

Vale John Spencer.

The hardest thing about being a fan of The West Wing is figuring out which character you like best. Leo was always the rock. The following are just a selection of quotes from the Great Man. If you don't have time just cut to the bottom one.

I know he was only a fictional character, but if only we had people like him...

Margaret: Can I just say something for the future? *I* can sign the president's name. I've got his signature down pretty good.
Leo McGarry: You can sign the president's name?
Margaret: Yeah.
Leo McGarry: On a document removing him from power and giving it to someone else?
Margaret: Yeah. Or do you think the White House Counsel would say that's a bad idea?
Leo McGarry: I think the White House Counsel would say that's a Coup D'Etat.
Margaret: I'd probably end up doing some time for that.
Leo McGarry: I would think. And what the hell are you doing practicing the president's signature?
Margaret: It's just for fun.
Leo McGarry: We've got separation of powers, checks and balances, and Margaret, vetoing things and sending them back to the hill.

Leo McGarry: [on the phone with the New York Times] 17 across. Yes, 17 across is wrong... You're spelling his name wrong... What's my name? My name doesn't matter. I am just an ordinary citizen who relies on the Times crossword for stimulation. And I'm telling you that I met the man twice. And I recommended a pre-emptive missile strike against his air force, so I think I know how...
C.J. Cregg: Leo.
Leo McGarry: They hang up on me every time.

Leo McGarry: We spent millions of dollars developing a pen that could write in space. Do you know what the Russians did?
Josh Lyman: Used a pencil?
Leo McGarry: Used a pencil.

Leo McGarry: I fought a jungle war. I'm not doing it again. If I could put myself anywhere in time it would be in the cabinet room on August 4th 1964, when our ships were attacked by North Vietnam in the Tonkin Gulf. I'd say, 'Mr. President, don't do it. You're considering the commitment of a massive number of troops and throwing in our lot with torturers and panderers, leaders without principles and soldiers without conviction, with no clear mission and no end in sight'.

Leo McGarry: Do you think that increasing the body count is going to act as a deterrent?
President Josiah Bartlet: You're damn right I do.
Leo McGarry: Well then, you're just as stupid as these people who think that capital punishment will act as a deterrent to drug kingpins. As if drug kingpins didn't live their day to day lives under the possibility of execution, and their executions are a lot less dainty than ours, and tend to take place without the bother and expense of due process. So, my friend, if you want to start using American military strength as the arm of the Lord, you can do that. We're the only superpower left. You can conquer the world, like Charlemagne. But you better be prepared to kill everyone. And you had better start with me because I will raise up an army against you and I will beat you.

Check out my new pics scatter below

paka

Riga Ain't Rigourous

This latest update comes from upstairs at a strip club just down the road from the Australian consulate. Well, strictly speaking, I'm not actually there now (I'm in an Internet caf) but when I go home tonight to rest my weary head that's where I'll be laying down my weary head. Despite booking it at a reputable hostel booking site, Paradise Hostel also functions as a strip club/brothel.

When I left to night, I kid you not, there were three or four of the most bored looking hookers you've ever seen milling around in the reception area that doubles as the strip club dance floor. Lucky for us Riga is absolutely dead so there's not much of a crowd to be had. Tonight we're going to watch Harry Potter after going for a few drinks last night in zero atmosphere.

But Riga has been good to us. It is like a larger version of Tallinn. After receiving more bombing during the Second World War the people have vigorously rebuilt parts of the Old Town and restorations are ongoing. It's quite a nice place though. Cobblestone streets, Christmas markets, ancient cavernous churches. A popular local site is the black cat which sits perched atop a spire on a building opposite one of the guild houses.

Riga Skyline

Last night we went to see a performance of some Gregorian Chants and the fourth largest organ in Europe. It was wonderful, if a little tiresome by the end. You know there are only so many Gregorian chants a guy can take. There's also a fantastic museum documenting the occupation of the Baltics first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets. There are also some fascinating displays on the various resistance movements including a Baltic Freedom Cruise in 1985.

The Dome Cathedral

If this entry sounds a little laconic, well we're enjoying the relative warmth (it hit the heady heights of 3 degrees yesterday) and chilling the fuck out after two weeks of Russian lunacy.

paka and much love

More Shit You Never Knew About Chuck Norris

Courtesy,again, of Leon...

If you ask Chuck Norris what time it is, he always says, "Two seconds till." After you ask, "Two seconds to what?" he roundhouse kicks you in the face.

Filming on location for Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris brought a stillborn baby lamb back to life by giving it a prolonged beard rub. Shortly after the farm animal sprang back to life and a crowd had gathered, Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the animal, breaking its neck, to remind the crew once more that the good Chuck giveth, and the good Chuck, he taketh away.

Since 1940, the year Chuck Norris was born, roundhouse
kick related deaths have increased 13,000 percent.

Chuck Norris has recently changed his middle name to
"Fucking."

There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is
only another fist.

There are two kinds of people in this world: people
who suck, and Chuck Norris.

In the movie "Back to the Future" they used Chuck
Norris' Delorean to go back into time and into the
future. When they gave it back to him with a scratch
on it he was angry and roundhouse kicked Michael J.
Fox, which years later they discovered is the cause of
Parkinson's disease.

Chuck Norris spends his Saturdays climbing mountains
and meditating in peaceful solitude. Sundays are for
oral sex, KFC and Tequila.

Chuck Norris always has sex on the first date. Always.
The only time he didn't was in 1941, otherwise known
as the beginning of the Holocaust.

Crop circles are Chuck Norris's way of telling the
world that sometimes corn needs to lie the fuck down!

There is no theory of evolution, just a list of
creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.

Chuck Norris once walked down the street with a
massive erection. There were no survivors.

In an average living room there are 1,242 objects
Chuck Norris could use to kill you, including the room
itself.

Chuck Norris has two speeds: walk and kill.

Chuck Norris is the only man to ever defeat a brick
wall in a game of tennis.

When Chuck Norris was born, the nurse said, "Holy
crap! That's Chuck Norris!" Then she had had sex with
him. At that point, she was the third girl he had
slept with.

It takes Chuck Norris 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.

Chuck Norris is not lactose intolerant, he just
refuses to put up with lactose's shit.

Chuck Norris can divide by zero.

When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn't lifting
himself up, he's pushing the Earth down.

Cemetarys and Toppled Sculptures

So here I am in an underground mall underneath Red Square filling in my last couple of hours in Moscow before we lump our packs across a town of 10 million people in peak hour and I thought I´d fill y´all in on my last couple of days.

Yesterday with the sun shining on us and a blue sky for only my third day since I´ve been in the Northern Hemisphere we went to visit the Nodovechy Convent. The trip gave us stunning views of the Moskva River and when we got to the monastery it looked beautiful against the blue sky. A series of buildings, several hundreds of years old, linked by snow covered paths with a couple of very peaceful museums. After a couple of hours strolling aimlessly in the gardens we were very chilled out indeed.

Two pictures of the Nodovechiy

Then we visited the adjacent cemetary that serves as the final resting place for Mayakovsky, Kruschev, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Eisenstein, Chekov and various other politburo heroes. Unfortunately without a map the only noteworthy person we could locate was Gorbachev´s wife.

And last night we went to dinner with our two hostel friends, Dave (an Aussie from Brisbane who went to school with Marcel and knows Kieran) and Morgan, to bid them godspeed.

Today we visited Gorky Park and the Sculpture Park next door. The Sculpture Park is one trippy place. It was built to house all the sculptures that were toppled after the fall of the revolution. So of course the ones we were particularly interested in were of Iron Joe but they had statues of Brezhnev, Lenin, the former head of the KGB and various other party functionaries.

Oh and they're playing Nora Jones, just like every other place I've visited on this trip.

The Metros

Stalin called them The Palaces of the People. In Moscow they dug them thirty metres deep and and employed them as bunkers during The Great Patriotic War. In St. Petersburg they burrow 75 metres beneath the boggy marsh so they could be utilised as nuclear bomb shelters. In both cities major transport hubs commemorate surrealist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. They are the Russian metros.

Undoubtedly two of the finest public transport systems in the world, using the Metro has definitely been a highlight of our trip. Not only are they relatively simple to navigate, extremely cheap but they are also decorated in a variety of bizarre ways.

Some of our favourites in St. Petes included the aforemention Mayakovsky which featured a beautiful red tile mosaic interspersed with a white mosaic portrait of the poet. At Dostoyevsky Station there are 18th century lamps similar to those that would have lit Dosty's seedy streets. At Pushkin there was the standard contemplative statue of the great Russian bard while Alexander Nevsky not only featured a statue of Peter's great defender but also a glorious mosaic depicting the big guy in battle.

In Moscow the Metro's are just as impressive. There is another Mayakovskya featuring beautiful frescoes and a bust of the ole surrealist. At Belarusskiya there are various statues and frescoes highlighting the revolutionary struggles of that proud Soviet, while at Ploschaad Revolutionary there are some awesome iron sculptures depicting revolutionary peasents, partisans and proletariats.

The Bread Queues Would Have Been A Gas

Whether it's to buy a train ticket, Internet access, or post a package. Russians love to queue. They're nuts for it. Love it like they love drinking ice cold Baltika beer on an artic St. Petersburg evening. I mean there are so many things they could do to restructure things. Simple things that would lessen the queues, but I swear to god these people just want to stand up, one after another and wait for stuff.

The Father of Modern Communism

We started the day as Lenin no doubt would've. With a meal at the first McDonald's in Russia which is also the biggest. With CD listening booths to entertain you while you wait, leather couches, multiple rooms and even aerobics on the video screens, it was the communist experience par excellence.

Then we cruised down to Red Square, deposited our bags and queued up to see the great man. We did the trip with a guy, Morgan, from our hostel. Morgan's an ex-US Army guy who served in Korea. For the last eight months he's been finishing off his undergraduate degree in Russia at St. Petersburg and a place called Sukdokar.

So the guard's usher us through and you're inside the mausoleum. With three guards in front of us, one of them motioned at me to take my hands out of my pockets. Then you go past another three guards, turn right and it's into the austere death chamber. To tell you the truth I didn't get too good a look at the old fella, I was to busy being spooked by the ultra solemn trios of guards standing in every corner. Then out in the daylight all three of us turned to each other and said "Fuck, that was the wierdest thing I've ever done."

Then we walked along the wall of the Kremlin taking in the graves of General Zhukov, Brezhnev and Stalin. Next stop was the Lubyanka, the infamous home of first the Cheka and then the KGB. Now it houses the Russian intelligence services. We weren't sure we'd found the right building until security guys told us we couldn't go in.

After that we checked out the Mayakovsky Museum which was a massive art installation featuring his paintings, notebooks, posters, all types of miscellania, creatively scattered over four floors. The top level had the room where he shot himself, faithfully preserved, minus the blood stains.

Then with Morgan's help we purchased our train ticket's to Riga and headed on down the famous Arabat. Finally I saw some of the bizarre Soviet stuff I've heard so much about. Nearly every stall was selling genuine MiG helmets, there were a couple of space helmets and even a complete space suit. Awesome!

Pushkin Was A Poet Not A Painter

So after we finally found our hostel, had a shower and cleaned up we cruised down to the Kremlin to eat lunch at the world's biggest McDonald's. Unfortunately we were so tired we couldn't find Red Square despite standing on the other side of the wall from it. So we gave up and ate pizza instead. We found out the next day that we were actually standing on part of it!

Then after lunch we headed over to the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum to take in the best Moscow had to offer. Let me start by saying I was absolutely, positively blown away. They had some beautiful Bonnards, some sombre Rembrandts, a great El Greco, maddening Van Gogh, awesome Kandinsky's, adjective-less Monets (yes, Monets that I actually enjoyed) and wait for it... Picasso's "Portrait of Vollard" which, as you may or may not know, is about my most favourite picture in the galaxy. And like all great art discoveries I had no idea it was there. And then there was also a fantastic painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder that I love as well.

With two of my favourite pictures, by two of my favourite painters, it was probably the most enjoyable day I've had in an art gallery since the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Oh and the rest of the gallery was filled with plaster casts of famous sculptures. Plaster casts... WTF????????????

100% Aussie Shame

Now's the time to get out the needle and thread and sew that Kiwi flag onto my backpack.

Bond James Bond

So yesterday we visited the Kremlin. With scary machine gun armed guards on one side and a bunch of fifteen century cathedrals on the other it promised to be something truly special. Sadly it wasn't. Not quite Pissweak World it's certainly been the biggest disappointment since we left St. Petersburg.

While it's totally impressive walking down the road towards Red Square with its multiplicity of spires rising up over the very cool walls inside its a collection of okay churches and a museum that you really need a guide to talk you through and me and Katie skipped out on the guide. The temples were okay with your usual assortment of gilted frescoes and dizzying spires but maybe we're just suffering from temple fatigue. The Church of the Assumption was definitely a highlight though.

And the grounds looked quite beautiful covered in fresh white snow. And we did see the world's biggest bell which was cracked before it was even tolled. Apparently it court fire and some well meaning firemen tossed water on it and cracked it.

For lunch we headed over to GUM, the Soviet department store, that is now a massive repository for some of the flashiest brands in the world. It's actually quite a beautiful department store. Then after lunch and window shopping we headed over to St. Basil's to check out the beautiful church.

Like all the beautiful Russian Orthodox churches it's got the onion domes on top only these are, along with the Church of the Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg, some of the most brightly coloured ones. Framing one edge of Red Square it looks magical. Inside there are beautiful inconistasis as well as a few cool little passageways left over, I guess, from the church's original life.

We finished the day off window shopping at a three story underground mall beneath Red Square. Communism is well and truly dead.

In Russia With No Love

Call me Bond, James Bond. After arriving in Moscow on Sunday morning, Kate and I (the super sleuths that we are), have already infiltrated Lenin's tomb, visited St. Basil's, scoped out Red Square, window shopped at GUM, strolled the Arabat, experienced the Mayakovsky Musuem, cowered in front of the Lubyanka, wondered at the State Pushkin Museum and, most importantly, inflitrated the Kremlin.

We arrived on Sunday morning after an overnight train from St. Pete's on which Kate failed to sleep at all. Don't ask me how she does it, she's a special one. Anyway we schleped our backpacks over to the hostel, followed all the directions and ended up behind this apartment block.

I was still tired from too little sleep while Kate was bouncing off the walls from having no sleep at all. To ice the cake it was pissing down snow. So we rang the door bell. Bear in mind there's no hostel sign, nothing, just an empty suburban doorway. No answer. We ring and ring and ring again about fifteen times. Literally.

If you ever want something to happen light up a cigarette. I did. It worked. Somebody answered the doorbell and let us inside. We shcleped our bags into the elevator, rose seven stories and found the doorway. Still no sign.

Then some German guy answers the door in his jocks. He tells us he's a guest and then goes off to find the manager but it turns out she went clubbing last night and still hasn't come home. So the German guy goes back to bed and we sit down in the kitchen. We are litterally in somebody's kitchen. It's your standard, albeit large by Soviet standards, residential flat with two bedrooms converted into dorm rooms. Everyone's asleep and me and Kate are sitting there going... what the fuck?

We were worried there wasn't going to be enough room for us so I grilled every single person as they got up to find out when they were going home. Lucky for us most of them departed that afternoon so when the legendary Tanya finally did show up, bleary eyed, we did score a couple of beds. And it has turned out to be one of the coolest hostels I've ever stayed in.

Writers Museums

This morning we spent some time staring at another part of St. Petersburg's dark heart. We visited the moving Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain Palace. The museum recreates the flat where she lived with art critic Nickolai Punin and various other families. We decided to do an audio tour and it was one of the best decisions we made all trip.

While part of the museum is an installation designed to capture the life and essence of Akmahtova's work poetically, the rest of the museum recreates the flat as it was in the 30's. With the added benefit of the audio tour the whole experience bought to life the terrible struggles faced by the Leningrad intelligentsia during the purges. Stories of the poet's friends secretly memorising lines of verse so they could be recorded later tore at the very core of my heart. It is humbling to think that the poet's of the thirties suffered so much, yet I can draw so much enjoyment, knowledge and inspiration from their verses.

After Akhmatova we found a local produce market and the Dostoyevsky Museum. The Dostoyevsky Museum was interesting but, like most writer's museums, a little hokey. I mean they had Dosty's hat, his kids toys and his last box of snuff. But I found it really didn't float my boat. Oh well it was a fun way to kill an hour. And turns out the miserable fella was quite the cheery family man after all.

paka

The Best and The Missed

With this being our last night in St. Petersburg before boarding the o'night train to Moscow I thought I'd nominate my highlights as well as the things I missed.

The Best in no real order
1. The Anna Akhmatova Museum (a real sombre sense of the struggle of the thirties)
2. The Hermitage (Pieter Bruegel the Younger, El Greco, Picasso, the State Rooms)
3. Madame Butterfly at the Marinsky
4. Seeing the ice thundering down the Neva (this only happened the day before we left when we'd given up all hope)
5. Church of the Spilled Blood - breathtaking mosaics
6. The Siege of Leningrad walking tour - esp. the memorial
7. Catching a train everyday from a station called Mayakovkya that features a mosaic by the author of "Cloud in Trousers"
8. The flat where Raskolnikov would have lived if he was real
9. The Bronze Horseman
10. Getting to see a band at Fish Fabrique

The Missed
The Museum of Political History (we did the Aurora, which was crap, instead)
Pushkin
Peterhof (it's winter)
The Gardens (ditto)
White Nights (ditto)
Novgorod (we just kind of ran out of time)

The Neva starting to freeze

Two Sods of Dirt

This city was basically built, at the cost of 90,000 lives, on a swamp at the behest of Peter the Great. So we started our second day with a walking tour of some of the famous sights connected to the city founder.

Well also because we had planned to do a walking tour on our own at some stage and the sun was shining! Apparently in Petersburg that's a big thing. There's only supposed to be 27 days of sunshine a year!

We started our walking tour near the Admirality, getting our first glimpse of the Winter Palace and the Victory Monument in Uprising Square. Then we crossed the river taking in stunning panorama of the might Neva. On the other side we visted the Kuntshammer.

Now the Kuntshammer was Peter the Great's attempt to convince the Russian people to renounce their superstitious ways and join Europe. How did he intend to do this? By displaying his private collection of deformed babies preserved in jars. I kid you not. We saw Siamese twins joined at the head, decapitated babies heads, babies with one eye, babies with deformed limbs and so, so much more. The rest of the museum has various displays on other cultures that fills, as one fellow backpacker put it, like a museum about how museums used to look.

Next stop was the Peter and Paul fortress where the attractions included the Peter and Paul Cathedral, a very informative museum on the history of St. Petersburg and an exhibit on the history of the Metro. To finish it all off we went for a freezing walk around the bastion to get an amazing view of the city. We also saw some mad woman ice swimming in the Neva.

A Gallery Full of Plunder

After my first day at the Hermitage Kate said I sounded like a bit of a wanker when I said something along the lines of...

"Well the buildings magnificent, the state rooms are amazing, but the actual art is kind of so, so. I mean a second rate Michaelangelo here, a third rate Tiepolo there, too much Matisse. I'd rather visit the Uffuzi."

But after going back twice, once for a whirlwind half an hour (student cards make these kind of things possible) and the second for a more relaxed stroll, I've kind of changed my tune.

I got a chance to revisit paintings by El Greco, Cannaletto, the aforementioned Tiepolos, the magnificent Rembrandt collection, the wonderful works from Picasso's synthetic cubist period and I even found a couple of pictures by Pieter Bruegel the Younger which really took my breath away.

So I guess on reflection it really is a fantastic art gallery, maybe not the duck's nuts but that's a judgement I'll reserve until I've seen at least some of Western Europe's finest. What made the Hermitage so special for me was the gallery itself, this gorgeous palace that housed so much history. While I was in Thailand I read Malcolm Bradbury's amazing novel To The Hermitage about a visit Diderot payed to the Palace at the behest of Catherine II. To think you're walking in the same halls as so much history is, like so much of our St. Petersburg experience, breathtaking.

And finally I feel, similarly to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that I'm only just scratching the surface.

A Night At The Opera

After a largely wasted day where we visited the Yasupov Palace to take part in the Rasputin tour only to find it canceled and then spent an hour or so searching for the Central Post Office (to send Christmas presents home), only to find it but to also find ourselves completely mentally and linguistically unfit to deal with the Russian postal system, it was pleasent to finish the evening in grand style at the Marinsky.

With tickets worth $60, much less than we would have paid for the same at the Lyric Theatre, we got to enjoy a splendid view of Madame Butterfly from the dress circle. Okay so a piece of ham on a tiny slice of bread cost $4, but the opera itself was like a sumptuous banquet. The Marinsky is a splendid theatre, stacked five stories high like an opulent wedding cake.

A Wedding Cake of Sound

The opera itself, the first for the both of us, was absolutely breathtaking. While I'd heard the famous aria on one of my Opera Classics CD to hear it as part of the whole performance, and to watch this magnificent tragedy unfold was definitely one of the highlights.

Oh and Mum, Nick and Shannon, don't worry we found a post office at the Hermitage to send the Christmas presents home.

paka

Don't Kill Rodya!

Today with Kate feeling sick I took the time to take the Dostoyevsky walking tour described in the Lonely Planet "St. Petersburg". Taking the train to the bustling Haymarket I then got promptly lost for an hour or so before I located the start to the tour.

The tour takes you past a house where Dosty wrote parts of the novel and the flat where Raskolnikov would have lived. To get to the flat I had to mill outside the gate to the apartment complex, wait for somebody coming out to open it, sneak in as though I belonged and then climb up five flights of stairs. There's loads of graffiti at the tops of the stairs from the hundreds of Dostoyevsky devotees who've taken the pilgrimage.

"Don't Kill Rodya"

Then you trace Rodya's footsteps as he set off to do the deed. According to the Lonely Planet you can get in to see the pawnbroker's flat but when I got there the gate was bolted shut.

Finally I headed over to the Marinsky to pick up our tickets for tomorrow nights Madame Butterfly and had my first experience with a truly Russian queue. Two people away from the front of the window, my window suddenly closed without warning. I then had to move to the back of the next queue where exactly the same thing happened again. Finally after 1 1/2 hours I had the bloody tickets.

No wonder they never went to war. Moscow would have been radioactive rubble before Kruschev had managed to punch out half the authorisation codes.

Little Known Facts About Chuck Norris

Leon sent this to me the other day. Awesome...

Little Known Facts About Chuck Norris:

Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never
cried.

Rather than being birthed like a normal child, Chuck
Norris instead decided to punch his way out of his
mother's womb. Shortly thereafter he grew a beard.

Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged
good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability.
Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck
roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his
soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't
stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming.
They now play poker every second Wednesday of the
month.

Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard
that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in
time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying
over the Pacific Ocean.

Chuck Norris won 'Jumanji' without ever saying the
word. He simply beat the living shit out of everything
that was thrown at him, and the game forfeited.

Chuck Norris's girlfriend once asked him how much wood
a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck
wood. He then shouted, "HOW DARE YOU RHYME IN THE
PRESENCE OF CHUCK NORRIS!" and ripped out her throat.
Holding his girlfriend's bloody throat in his hand he
bellowed, "Don't fuck with Chuck!" Two years and five
months later he realized the irony of this statement
and laughed so hard that anyone within a hundred mile
radius of the blast went deaf.

To prove it isn't that big of a deal to beat cancer.
Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for
2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only
to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes.
Beat that, Lance Armstrong.

Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down
until he gets the information he wants.

Chuck Norris was the fourth Wiseman. He brought baby
Jesus the gift of "beard". Jesus wore it proudly to
his dying day. The other Wisemen, jealous of Jesus'
obvious gift favoritism, used their combined influence
to have Chuck omitted from the Bible. Shortly after
all three died of roundhouse kick related deaths.

Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse... horses are
hung like Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and
Order are trademarked names for his left and right
legs.

Chuck Norris lost his virginity before his dad did.

When Chuck Norris has sex with a man, it is not
because he is gay, but because he has run out of
women.

The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.

Chuck Norris can make a woman climax by simply
pointing at her and saying "booya".

If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you
can't see Chuck Norris you may be only seconds away
from death.

Macgyver can build an airplane out of gum and paper
clips, but Chuck Norris can kill him and take it.

After much debate, President Truman decided to drop
the atomic bomb on Hiroshima rather than the
alternative of sending Chuck Norris. His reasoning? It
was "more humane".

There are no disabled people. Only people who have met
Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris once shot a German plane down with his
finger, by yelling, "Bang!"

Chuck Norris likes to knit sweaters in his free time.
And by "knit", I mean "kick", and by "sweaters", I
mean "babies".

Chuck Norris doesn't understand why you should consult
your doctor if your erection lasts for more than 4
hours. His erections have been known to last for up to
15 days.

The original theme song to the Transformers was
actually "Chuck Norris--more than meets the eye, Chuck
Norris--robot in disguise," and starred Chuck Norris
as a Texas Ranger who defended the earth from
drug-dealing Decepticons and could turn into a
pick-up. This was far too much awesome for a single
show, however, so it was divided into two.

Chuck Norris once ate three 72 oz. steaks in one hour.
He spent the first 45 minutes having sex with his
waitress.

When Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank
forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched
and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay
taxes. Ever.

A Churchy Sort of Day

It's almost impossible to tear yourself away from the hostel before nine especially when it's still dark outside. Today however we managed to get going reasonably early and jumped on a Metro and headed up to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. It's a working monastery but that wasn't the big draw. The bigger draw is actually in the cemetary at the front of the monastery.

All number of writers, actors, musicians and composers are interred there. Amongst the tombs we saw were Dostoyevsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Mussogorsky and other luminaries including Pushkin's mistress and Renaissance man extraordinaire Mikhail Lomonsov.

After taking a peak inside the monastery we headed back downtown to check out the Church of the Spilt Blood which marked the site of the assasination of Alexander II. This onion domed Russian orthodox church is definitely a local landmark but we first baulked at paying the admission fee. We got a sneak peak at the mosaics though and we were hooked.

Maybe thirty metres high, every square millimetre of this massive building, including the towering domes, was covered with jaw droppingly beautiful mosaics depicting various scenes from the New Testament. On each of the pillars were depictions of various Saints.

After the Church of the Spilt Blood we popped into the souvineir market where I scored a Soviet-era, (or authentic looking knock off), Zippo and a writers matroyshka doll feauturing, amongst others, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Tolstoy. You can also buy ones with Osama bin Laden on the outside (Saddam, Gaddafi, Arafat etc. on the inside), Harry Potter ones, George Bush ones, and even Russian leadership ones starting with Putin and moving backward through Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Krushchev etc.

With dark descending (what do you expect it was 2:55?) we made our way over to Falconet's near legendary statue The Bronze Horseman. Created at the behest of Catherine the Great, it depicts the grand monarch on a rearing stallion that is crushing a serpent beneath it's hoof. It took twelve years to make and by the time it was completed it's creator, Falconet, had become so disillusioned with the project that he upped stumps and headed back to Paris leaving his apprentice to finish the job. The statue sits in a lovely park overlooking the Neva so we got a wonderful view of the fabulous river as the day darkened.

Finally to finish off the day we walked up the top of another cathedral, St. Isaac's, and got a 360 degree panorama of the city as the night lights started coming on, illuminating the multiplicity of spires that decorate the city skyline.

We eventually made it back to our hostel, after a detour through Dostoyevskaya to pick up some groceries, at about 8:00 whereby I met some English travellers returning home and proceeded to guzzle the bottle of Vodka I'd just purchased.

My Trivia Team Won Without Me

Check out a photo of the cheeky little monkeys. Apparently they only one a single round, still it hurts to feel so worthless...

The 900 Day Seige

After finally finding our hostel and then hanging out in the common room for about three hours we decided to take one of the Peter's Walking Tours advertised by a handwritten sign posted in the lobby.

The Siege of Leningrad tour was a six hour extravaganza that included a visit to a Siege Museum and several different cathedrals. Starting at the siege museum we did an excellent guided tour before sitting down to watch a documentary at which point both Kate and I promptly fell asleep.

Then after lunch we took a Metro down to a park where our excellent guide, Mike was able to point out a number of points of interest including a memorial made out of a cart that was used to cart the dead off to be incinerated. (900,000 people perished so come summer thaw there were a few bodies lying around.)

He also peppered the tour with fascinating stories like the tail of the Feline Revolutionary Defenders of the Hermitage from Yekatrinburg. These cats, from Yekatrinburg, were shipped halfway across the country to deal with the rats that had infested the Hermitage during the siege. It was the brainchild of the museum's head curator who had been shipped off to Yekatrinburg at the start of the war. Apparently the ancestors of these cats still reside in the basement of the Hermitage to this day.

Then we continued walking stopping at a bunker nestled in between some post war apartment buildings, we saw some pillboxes that were used for fighting and a soldier's cemetray. Luckily for us the tour also took us past the Chesme Church which was built by Catherine the Great to mark the spot where she first received news that the Russian's had just defeated the Turks at Chesme Bay in 1770.



Next stop was a massive statue of Lenin that stood in front of the equally impressive House of the Soviets which was built with some high lofty purpose but now simply hosts the district administration. With towering Stalinist columns and an intricate stone frieze depicting the labour of the proletariat across the top it was more than impressive.

Last stop on the tour was a memorial built about nine kilometres from the front line which included another towering pillar, some beautiful sculptures, haunting music and some unreadable Russian text.

When I Grow Up I Want to Be Indianna Jones

By the time I got in to Krabi, found a room, then booked a bus ticket and a kayaking trip dark was fast approaching. But there was a wat in the Lonely Planet that had piqued my interest. With 1200 stairs and a cave complex how could it not. The only problem was that it was fifteen k's out of town.

There were directions for catching a sangtaew and I set off with the full intent of hitching a ride on the glorified minibus. However my resolve was tested by the first motorcycle taxi driver who accosted me. For only 300 baht I could arrive in style. Little did I know it would turn out to be the most extreme thing I did in Thailand.

So I held on for all my life and we tore off down the road towards the wat. A heart stopping ride later I was ready to climb 1200 stairs, some of them about a foot and a half high. But before I could get into the meat of the walk I had to contend with a troop of vicious monkeys. And the thing is with monkeys... they're smart. You can't just throw the rock in their general direction and hope they get the idea. You have to hit the little fuckers right between the eyes. So armed with a couple of rocks and a long stick they soon got the idea that I wasn't bluffing and fucked off leaving me alone to climb my stairs.

Here's the thing about 1200 stairs... it's a lot more than you think it is. Especially when there as steep as Everest in parts and you don't want to look behind you lest you fall victim to vertigo. But with deep puddles of sweat sticking my shirt to my chest I was finally rewarded with some cloud blocked vistas when I eventually made it to the top. There was a massive buddah, a couple of smaller statues and the loneliest soi dog in the world.

I was thinking this lonely dog must have lived up there but as it turns out the guy followed me down all 1200 stairs when I left leaving me to conclude that he must actually hike up the stairs everyday.

In addition to the stairs the lonely planet also pointed out a cave wat created by some sort of wacky Buddhist monk who was involved in some sort of serious cult of personality. So I found the caves, which were through another 200 or so stairs, and they were quiet cool if a little small.

Then I rambled around this jungle path in the fading light until I came across something called Snake Cave. Snake Cave, unlike the other caves on the circuit, was not lit up. I started to poke my head in but was then somewhat put off by the intimidating name. So feeling much like Indianna Jones I turned around and sent off down the path to home safe in the knowledge that I had avoided an encounter with a King Cobra.

A little further down the path, trodding along as happily as a Von Trapp, I felt the stick beside my foot move. Well if I didn't dance a tango to rival Tom the Chippy. Cut off my dick and call me a eunuch - there was an ugly little black snake at my foot. Suddenly the motorcycle taxi didn't seem like the most frightening part about my trip. Eventually I finished up along the park after a painstaking twenty minutes scanning every single twig in front of me before I set a foot down. The story ends though with a safe trip home before the taxi driver dropped me off at a night market for a cheap delicious street eat.

Bye Bye Eddie Jones

See you later to the wanker who auctioned off our trophies like a bankrupt pokie player. You contributed nothing to Australian rugby and are surely a more disgraceful coach than the one caught getting a rub n tug in a London public toilet.

Now if we can only lose George.

Vale Van Nyugen

Nobody, NOBODY, should ever be executed. Let alone for the lowly crime of drug trafficking. The Singaporese government ought to hang their heads in vile, barborous shame.

Tony Blair, The Man In Black and Dolly

Yesterday Raekoja plats (town square) in Tallinn was teeming with police. Down every winding side street there seemed to be three or four policeman stationed. As the afternoon progressed Katie and I were seriously starting to wonder what was going. Perhaps the Mayor was going to put in an appearance at the Christmas Markets.

Then we wandered up another street and were greeted by about ten policeman. "This probably isn't the best way", we both agreed and turned back towards the square. On the square, at a side street a little further down a hubub was breaking out.

"I guess we're about to find out what all the activity is about," I said.
Then a car with an English flag on the front of the hood appeared.
"Maybe it's the Queen," Katie said jokingly.
"Surely the Queen travels with a bigger motorcade than that."

So somebody alighted from their vehicle and we scrambled through the throng as they started to do a lap of the Christmas markets. As they turned at the tree and started walking back we got a side view of the ambassador or other dignitry that seemed to be at the centre of the fuss.

"Kate that's, that's, that's Tony Blair." And so it was. None other than the architect of the Third Way himself. George Bush's favourite limey bum chum, the Great Swindler. But before I could think of anything witty to say about missing WMD's I was closer than the yashiva student was to Yitzak Rabin and only armed with a camera.

So there you have it, the second most famous person I've ever photographed (after Madonna). Oh a Johnny Cash was playing in the background, and Tony walked by a small sheep that was a dead ringer for Dolly.