Biarritz

Welcome, dear bloggers, to today's entry from Biarritz. Those of you who having been following my adventures closely will wonder why I'm here, when the plan was to be in Bayonne. Well, I did indeed arrive in Bayonne "In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning" yesterday, but I arrived so early, I thought to myself, "Self, it's time for a bit of a walk." And walk I did, from 7am til 10am I walked the massively underestimated distance between Bayonne and Biarritz, along the coast of the South of France. Frankly, I think I now qualify for a place in the army, having done all that walking with a heavy pack. Oh, except that I respond really badly to commands.
I guess that's why I put programming under my belt - I like giving commands, not taking them.

On the bright side, after two months of this much walking, I'm going to have buns of steel.

Bayonne, Anglet and Biarritz have one thing in common - fantastic architecture. I wish Esme could be here to see them with me - tres picturesq.

But, however, the main thing distinguishing Biarritz is the fact that it is quite clearly a destination for rich, childless, dull people. If sleeping all day, casino-ing all night and buying the occassional silk shirt is your bag then it's ideal. For the rest of the world, it offers a fabulous beach, very friendly Artisan Patisserie's and not much else. I have enjoyed two days here, soaking up sun, sand and a general bonhomie, but it is time to push on. Madrid, I think, will be my next destination. Starting tomorrow. But for now, reflections on Biarritz are in order...

I suspect that there are more than a few of you out there thinking that the ol' Krismeister is swanning around Europe with not a care in the world. Well, you'd be half right. Swanning around I am, but frankly this finding yourself lark half involves leaving everything and finding out which bits you miss. And so that's half of what I'm discovering. Of course, dear reader, you'll be pleased to know that it's you that I miss the most, but in all honesty, as the saying now goes, "Yesterday, I cried."
I miss you all, and I wish I could be that much closer to you. But in being here, I'm learning what's important to me, if slowly and by turns. I lost touch with that far too much towards the end of last year - if it's possible, I hope I'm going to learn definitively what matters to me. If I can get that, even being away from you all is worth it.

Enough pathos.

Last night I slept with two Americans to raise money.
Strike that.
Last night I shared a room with two Americans to save money; Mike and Val. None of you will believe this, but they could actually quote Austin Powers more comprehensively than me. Even I had to stop and wonder how many times they'd seen it. I do have to confess though, there English accents were not up to par. On the bright side, they were very friendly, and have provided me with the comedy highlight of this week:

Kris, just waking up: [Yawn] Morning guys.
Mike See, he even has that accent when he wakes up -
Val - so he's not putting it on?!?

Good to see that England is still the envy of the World, eh ma'am?

Envying the world in mind, let me say another word or two in praise of the European schools. Clearly, however they teach languages over here, they are waaay ahead of us. When a garage attendant can speak better English than most people you know can speak French, then I think we Brits need to look again at our education system.

Enough politics.

Not that the French have it all sorted. Frankly, they are severly lacking in the computing department. Windows in French I can handle, even if opening a window 'dans un autre fenetre' is a bit much to ask, but to be honest, they suffer from two major disabilities. First is that their keyboards are designed by dyslexic loons who would be better off running Roller-Coasters. Second is that they are years behind in the tech-revolution, superhighway terms. Internet connections are both rare and expensive, and subject to the aforementioned keyboard limitations, which severely cramps the style of us touchtypists.

Style cramping seems to be a theme. This morning I woke up to find, apart from the fact that I still have this blasted English accent, that there was a strange man sleeping in our corridor. As it turns out, this was another guy from London who had checked out without returning the key, and so found himself a free place to stay. Or so he thought. This evening I returned to find a distressed man with all his luggage confiscated, and a 'pay and bugger off' order hanging over his head. Poor guy, he's probably roaming the beach of Biarritz as we speak, looking for somewhere to pitch his tent.
At least it's a warm night...

After a brief chat, he told me what he's doing at University next year. I'll give you a billion guesses, and you'll still give up... "Surf Science." There's actually a course in the science and engineering of surfing. Woah man, totally. I had to ask the crunch question, "Can you surf?" To which he answered that he's going to learn.

I fear he may be all washed up.

Wash up, or wash down, it's all the same. So this evening I have been washing down a few good beers with Rrrrobert from Germany, in the comfort of room 15. I'm not sure whether to tell you how good and moins cher the beer is here, so I'll stick to the fact that I've had the most interesting conversations I've had since this journey began. Much was said, but I should tell you that I managed to dispell his illusion that all English people talk like they're in a Noel Coward play, and he managed to re-enforce my illusion that all German women are curvy-scary-sexy. Huzzah, I think I shall include a few stops in Germany on my Tour...

My tour, I should fill you in quickly, at the moment goes like this - Tomorrow head to Madrid. From there go to Valencia, Barcelona and move back up through France to spend my Birthday in Paris. I think, at the moment, that Morrocco is a no-goer, because I'm a little concerned about safety for a lone traveller. That's weird in itself - I've never been worried about that kind of thing before... Then from Paris, I'm going to go through Germany as a prelude to the Eastern block.

I leave you with that thought that Rrrrrober digs Alanis Morrisette's, "Jagged Little Pig."
Phonetics, I love 'em.

Your everlovin' K.

PS - Mum and I can now both relax, she has discovered how to send and receive emails...

PPS - Vim Tip Of The Day
Write a line of text, and try this:

:.s/\<./\U&/g