Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Crazy Belgian, Fruhstuck Express (now with added SOO abuse)

QUEENSLAND ARE CHEATING GOULDING GOULDS*!!! The sycophantic Victorians need to decide whether they are :
a) Tasmanians on their way to NSW or Queensland,
b) Queenslanders on their way to Tasmania
c) Opportunistic Sydney wannabees.

Its simple, you soggy cybernetic cyborgs from the sad city! Get your own fucking State of Origin!

Yez can all go and get fucked!!!

*I have previously explained what a Gould is. If you need to know you can troll through posts by myself or Dr Yobbo. Otherwise drop him a line. He knows how much of a self-important cunting wanker Phil Gould is.

Now, back to the blog.

Luckily I took notes during my travels, otherwise I wouldn't be able to recount this with any degree of accuracy. Seeing as I don't have the journal at hand, inaccuracy will remain. Its mainly the place names I'll have trouble with so don't set a lot of store in their being accurate over the series of Doug'n'Dave tales which I'll be recounting for a while.

The Crazy Belgian

We'd lobbed up at Neuchatel after farnarkling around that part of Suisse all day, booked into the hostel, checked to see if the Irish girls we'd met in Basel were around and then strolled into town.

We hit the first bar we came across and commenced that evening's business. After an hour or so we'd started getting a bit raucous and felt it may be an idea to go and lower the tone of other establishments. Particularly when the barman started giving us the evils and shaking his head over the mess we were creating. Somewhere between cooking up a scheme to rendezvous in the near future for Dave's birthday and finding some Midnight Oil on the jukebox we managed to add a few points to the share price of the local brewers and explain cricket to Doug. (That was like trying to explain sensible discourse and the Art of the Pisstake to the likes of SJS).

Eventually we made our way back to the original bar which also had a jukebox. Just to annoy my Canuck and Pommy mates I put on a few INXS tracks. Whilst these were playing we realised we'd missed curfew at the Youth Hostel. Oh well, may as well stay and have a few more.
Which we did. Fortunately the barman had allowed us to stay, realising that we weren't all that dangerous, just silly drunken twats.

At around 1.00 a.m. and well after curfew we went back to the YH. Knock on the door, no answer. We circled back to the front and could see our dorm window on the first floor. The roof reached back a couple of meters to said window, forming a serviceable landing. Right, break and enter time. We figured that Dave, being the smallest would be the climber. Doug and I hoisted him up onto the lip of the roof and stood back and watched our brave Brit clamber up and walk over to the window and open the fucking thing! Woo hoo!

"Dave, go and open the front door!" no response from Doug's entreaty.

"Dave you dopey pommy bastard, go and open the fucking front door!!!" nothing from my request either.

What was the silly bugger up to? After a few more luckless attempts to get Dave back on track we decided that Doug would hoist me up. Now I'm a biggish bloke and that was a great feat on Doug's part. It got better. When I hauled up and turned around, Doug had jumped up, grabbed the edge of the rough and was lifting himself up.

"Wanna hand?"

"No, I'm okay."

Fuck me if he didn't manage to get up on the roof landing. He was some sort of super athletic type. Apparently he'd done well at such things at college. (I made a mental note that I was going to have to bring him back down to my level and be sharpish about it too). When we got into the room we found that one of the spare beds housed a sleeping figure which we decided not to disturb. That ended up being a good move. We turned to Dave who was grinning idiotically and seemed well gone. He didn't respond when we asked him about not opening the front door so we wrote him off for the evening.

Next morning, Dave was the first of us awake and was in conversation with the room's other occupant, a Belgian. It was a broken English thing and Dave tried his schoolboy French but with little success. I could make out some of the Belgian's French but wasn't going to let on. Doug had learnt some in school as well, being a Canuck and all. He kept shtum and we watched Dave battle on. Fuck him, the previous night he'd been as useful as one of SJS' s comments at Blunty and we weren't going to help. Besides, Doug's gorilla hangover theory was proving itself correct once again. It seemed as though the entire crew of animal extras from "Gorillas in the Mist" had been on the rampage in the wee hours and we felt and looked like the bits of lint you find in washing machines after a heavy wash, except way dirtier and even more linter.

Then we saw the Belgian's face! Man, I baulked at it like I'd just seen someone discard a full bottle of single malt. It was some sort of freakish nightmare of a thing which made me wonder if the gorillas hadn't gone around slipping microdots into our mouths during their hangover rampage, or had given him nightly serves with a cricket bat for the past decade. His forehead was a mess of scars and the rest of his visage was running a close second to it in the Belgian Buttugly stakes.

This got me a little curious but very concerned. I was figuring angles of escape and whether or not we could use Dave as a live sacrifice while Doug and I did a runner. Well, Doug still had his bicycle (he was after all supposedly doing a cycle tour of Europe), so he'd escape a bit quicker than me. I looked at Doug, Doug looked at me and we both shook our heads. Dave looked beseechingly at both of us and we ignored him, just continued packing up and alerting our arm and leg muscles that they may be needed for an emergency "fight or flight" exercise.

Well, the Belgian's story unfolded in a scarifying way. In some sort of manic race with himself he'd introduced his Euro sports car to a fence. His girlfriend had tragically died in the passenger's seat. He'd subsequently had a couple of other vehicular arguments and seemed to be driving around Europe looking for answers and/or victims. That weren't gonna be us. He'd lost it and there was stuff all a Commonwealth Drinking Games group could do for him when Europe was supposedly stiff full of top notch psych specialists. Sure, we could have attempted to knit a strand or two together but at best it would have been a half-arsed attempt and probably would have made things worse for the crazed gargoyle.

Dave was still in bed looking very ill. The Belgian was looking a bit leery so Doug and I asked Dave if he was coming with us. Dave said no. He must have been really, really ill given the circumstances so we hung in waiting for Crazy Belgian to go. CB eventually packed up while we kept guard for Dave. CB even asked us if wanted a lift anywhere. The Weird Therbs was prodding, "Yeah, this could be fun. One of those interesting adventures, just like Hunter S."

Sensible Therbs then approached The Bench saying "Milord, look. You and Doug decided that a boat trip over to Yverdon at the other end of the lake was in order. Besides, Doug's bike wouldn't fit in CB's Euro buzz box."
Doug just flat out said no and Dave groaned in his hungover agony. I succumbed to non adventure. CB took off and after we'd made sure he hadn't crashed into anything or anyone we left Dave moaning in his bunk, telling Dave to see us in Yverdon that night.

We then hit the local Co-op and loaded up on six packs, bread and cheese; the staples of ratsacking around Europe. The ferry trip took most of the day with a couple of side excursions involved and we landed at the YH, signed in and sat outside hooking into our beers and a bottle of rough red we'd finagled from somewhere. A Tasmanian married couple sat with us for a while taking notes about avoiding crazy Belgians, hangover gorillas and how to manage Fruhstuck Express.


Fruhstuck Express

Fruhstuck Express was unveiled in Basel, the morning after DaveDoug' n'I's first night together on the turps.

That morning we abluted and RV'd in the eating area of the YH. To get the included breakfast (fruhstuck) you had to show your YH card and were given a Fruhstuck voucher. This voucher entitled you to a bread roll with jam and a hot chocolate. I saw Kiwi Chris mournfully attempting to eat his and enquired,

"Is that shit any good?"

"The bread's a bit stale and not worth it. I could fucken murder some paewa fritters and a can of L and P!" He looked dejected about the whole thing and sounded homesick. Doug'n'Dave's facial expressions were demanding a translation of Kiwi-ese from me. I couldn't be arsed explaining our Kiwi cousin's language to them and simply said, "We need other options."

The Icelandic crew appeared to be enjoying their fruhstucks, were big lads who could do with another breakfast each, so Doug was promptly despatched to do some trading. We ended up getting enough cash to hit the Coke machine and get us some bubbly caffeine colaness inside us. Just what we needed, not some retarded version of a contintental breakfast.

From then on Fruhstuck Express, (Don't Leave Home Without It) became a by-line with us. Whenever we scuttled out of hostels we'd check with each other to make sure we had our Fruhstuck Express cards. One time when we RV'd at Montreux I'd been solo for a couple of days and had left my YH card at the previous night's stop. When I saw Doug I had to admit that I'd lost my Fruhstuck Express. He launched into one of his traditional howls of laughter. Bastard. I ended up wasting a few hours on a return train trip retrieving the fucking thing. By the time I got back he'd nabbed Cherri, another Canuck but of the female gender who had way superior looks and bumps to Doug. We'd been drooling over her for half an hour like Kiwi Chris would moon over paewa fritters and L&P. But that fucking Canadian bastard had slipped his Ontarian hooks in and she wasn't budging. Bastard.

Did I mention how much of a bastard Doug was? He was a ropey Torontonian who'd cut another bloke's lunch without a by your leave. Bastard. Never did like him anyway.

I'll have to tell you about the rest of our Montreux jaunt another time. Oh yeah, and Yverdon, where we'd just left the Tasmanian couple before going on about Fruhstuck Express.




11 comments:

  1. looking forward to hearing the rest of the stories

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  2. If you had half as much fun going through this as me reading it, you've had a ball. Onwards and upwards.

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  3. Gold Therbs! You really needed Warnie to come along and undercut the Canuck bastard.

    V wise move escaping the CB - can't believe that you even considered it for a second!

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  4. Barnes - there's a couple more to go yet and I haven't even touched on the USSR.
    Bangar - it was a pretty good time
    Lermie - Warnie would have been a brilliant addition to the cast. The Greatest Living Cricketer and psych out merchant extraordinaire would be a fantastic wing man.

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  5. More Gold!!!

    I am definately having a beer with you before I die!

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  6. Naut - thanks mate, any time. I'm always up for a couple of settlers.

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  7. Fkn awesome Therbs. Not sure Warnie would have been much of a wingman unless you were happy to subsist on his slops!

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  8. Doc - thanks. Warnie's cast offs would probably be a reasonable result.

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  9. Re State of Mate against Date - Ken Oath. The Vics fucked AFL Origin through their clubs refusing to release players, and now they want to co-opt the League's version because of some misguided allegiance to Banjo Land. Probably as half the fucking state emigrated to SEQ immediately after voting Bloody Jeff Kennett into power and realising that not having any schools or hospitals was a bit crap really. I'm not watching it any more now Roy and HG aren't calling it. No fucking way am I listening to Gould for that length of time, even if he IS supposedly on our side. That and our team are fucking rubbish and will be until we find something resembling a halves partnership and a forward pack you don't want to punch repeatedly in the face on principle.

    But anyway, a big hand for Queensland. With that many fingers it'd be big in anyone's reckoning.

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  10. Dr Y - I was in mourning without HG and Roy. First time in over 15 years. I went to a local club and watched it there over a few settlers and then a few more. Then I added the Sweary Mary anger comments to this blog. Fuck I was angry! With good reason.
    I wasn't that disappointed with the Blues. They were ripped off badly early on and almost recovered. Queensland were jammy cunts as usual.
    Just had an enquiry on arranging a courier to Maclean. That's pert near your old stamping ground, innit?

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  11. Yup went to school there. I'll invoice the bastards for six yrs of my life I'm never getting back one day. MHS is surrounded by a graveyard and backs onto a rainforest which was infested with bats (flying foxes - stripped the fuck out of the entire place) - very gothic experience.

    What the hell would you send to Maclean? Atmosphere? A nightlife?

    FYI just put my tips in at Bedes, got yours in too.

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