Those fabulous foons

Introducing.... Foons on Bikes. http://foonsonbikes.wordpress.com/

These awesomely fabulous ladies are riding to Scotland. No, they are not leaving from London. 

They are not even leaving from Paris. They are leaving from Thornbury, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia - well technically they have left. 

I was lucky enough to be part of the small gathering that accompanied them for part of the first day. After riding for 30 or so kilometers on the Warburton trail my legs were a bit sore but I feel I don't have the right to complain considering the first 'leg' of the foon's journey was to Sydney. 

Jude and Astrid (the foons in question), have an extraordinary kit all packed up on two custom made touring bicycles with four ortlieb panniers and some handle bar bags (see picture below). 

Before moving on to discuss the romantic and terrifying concept of riding around the world I'm going to define 'foon'. The definition varies depending on who you ask. Wiki, the font of all dubious knowledge says that: "A spork or a foon is a hybrid form of cutlery taking the form of a spoon-like shallow scoop with three or four fork tines.^[1] Spork-like utensils, such as the terrapin fork or ice cream fork,^[2] have been manufactured since the late 19th century;^[3] patents for spork-like designs date back to at least 1874, and the word "spork" was registered as a trademark in the US and the UK decades later. They are used by fast food restaurants, schools, prisons, the military, and backpackers". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foon)

However, Urban Dictionary, the source of all decent knowledge, describes a foon as "the proper defenition of foon (NOT AT ALL in fact having to do with anything sexually vulgar or "sporkish") comes from the description of a fast and therefore aerodynamic animal. The word was probably fashioned after fast andtyphoon or perhaps simply fuzzy. The word itself was invented in 1989 by two biracial linguists. A foon will have its ears laid back, flattened to its head while running or swimming and while in momentum is often seen waving head to toe in an undulating fashion. 2. v. foon can also be used as a verb to describe the action of the noun eg. The otter fooned through the water.; The otter is fooning through the water playfully. 3. A third usage of the word foon is when one would impose upon an animal or person into the appearance of being aerodynamic by laying back the ears or head manually or by force. eg. Four year old Shelia patted the head of her cat with such enthusiasm that she forced its ears back {fooned its ears back} and the cat remained fooning with annoyance as it swished its tail back and forth. (Can be used in present tense as well.)". 

Urban dictionary also has six other definitions (including the one about the fork spoon). However the spelling error in the first sentence makes me trust this source less - call me Gen x. Let's just settle with these foon being aerodynamic animals. 

Now back to the foons on bikes. Riding from Australia to Scotland is something to really wrap your head around. Aside from the obvious difficulties of being on a bike for hours at a time every day for years, YES YEARS, there are logistics. What do you do when the highway runs out of edge? Where do you stop for the night? Is this much water enough for today (although so far the foons seem far more obsessed with beer than water)? What if we end up in peak hour traffic in Sydney (yes this happened)?

Then there are the larger questions. How does one get from Australia, girt by sea, to anywhere else that is not Australia without flying? Why are we doing this anyway?

That last one is a curly one because I'm sure that as a foon on a bike you would start off with an idea in your head about why you had chosen to pack up your life and leave for years to ride a bike to the other side of the world. I wonder, though, does the answer change over time?

To quote a recent blog post from the foons: "Recently I have realised that it’s the distractions that make a journey great.  Whether it be a place, side road, people or experience".  So it's not the riding itself perhaps but the speed at which they are travelling that is making their 'dream come true'. 

The thing that is most obvious from reading their blog is the joy in the everyday that is occurring for them. They really seem uplifted somehow and their troubles immediate and practical rather than ongoing frustration which is so easy to slip into as a city dweller. This pace allows them to develop a rhythm that reveals the nuances of the landscape and their relationship with themselves, and likely each other. I'd love to hear from you both about this Jude and Astrid. 

Even with all the logistics and the philosophy behind such travel the thing that amuses me the most is thinking about the foons cruising into Scotland two or three years after leaving Melbourne, still wearing their 'borrowed' Melboure Bike Share helmets. Legends! 

So what!

I've just written the abstract for one of my honour's classes for the tenth time and each iteration is kicked off by the question - 'so what?'

It feels like my topic is hiding from me. I ask 'so what?' then re-write the abstract to answer this question and end up asking again 'so what?' ad infinitum. Why would someone care about this question? What are the broader implications for society?

Is my topic completely irrelevant to humanity?

I've now read Howard Becker's "Writing for Social Scientists" cover to cover (as promised) and the answer wasn't in there (although there were about a hundred other answers to very important questions that researchers ask). I'm about to start Becker's book "Tricks of the Trade" and I suspect it isn't in there either.

Booth et al may have the answer I'm after. Their book "The Craft of Research" has a section called  'From a Merely Interesting Question to its Wider Significance'. Bingo!

They suggest asking so what and suggest asking yourself the following:
    So what if I don't know or understand how snow geese know where to go in winter, or how     fifteenth-century violin players tuned their instruments, or why the Alamo story has become a myth? So what if I can't answer those questions? 

So I asked myself 'so what if I don't know how community gardens function in contemporary Australia?' And I found the answer occurred alongside a sensation of indignation.
Of course it is important to understand a phenomena that is increasingly occurring but understudied.

As the practice of setting up community gardens grows those who are doing the setting up will be looking for knowledge of the topic. They will find the the vast majority of the literature is not representative of the Australian context. A great deal of it is from north America (66% of papers in an extensive literature review by Guitart et al, 2011) and only a small slice is Australian (13% according to the previously mentioned study). They will also find that community gardens are described with such a diversity of characteristics that they are rarely explicitly defined in the research (Guitart et al found that 63% of the papers they studied offered no definition). Where does this leave the policy maker or practitioner? My research enables them to understand community gardens according to what they currently are rather than according to old, redundant ideas of what a community garden is.

So here perhaps, I have my 'so what' answered and I can move on to the next steps in my research and stop torturing myself.

Documenting notes from books and articles

In the interests of sharing with my fellow Honours crew I'm using the following template to take notes on journal articles for my literature review. 
It is adapted from a book called Demystifying the Dissertation by Peg Boyle Single http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Demystifying_Dissertation_Writing.html?id=EoDXe9ZC_1EC&redir_esc=y

I'm using End Note as my bibliography tool (yes I know there are many better tools out there now but I already had a large End Note library and it felt too hard to change). 
I'm pasting this template into the 'research notes' section of the reference and attaching the pdf so everything is in one place. 

--------------------------------------

Author discipline:

Keywords:

Copy of abstract:

What is the big picture? How they set their research into the broader research? What is the bigger context they are addressing?

Big point of their study:

Premise or hypothesis or aim:

Data sources or arguments as material thing they study:

Theories or conceptual approach:

Analytical or research methods:

Results or analysis

Quotations

How this article or book influences your research:

Citable notes: 
----------------------------------------------------

Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas on this template 

The Machine Stops

After reading an excerpt from EM Forster's The Machine Stops written in 1909 I'm left wondering if I live in a machine or at least according to the machines and what if these machines stop?

When I became a Scrivner devotee recently I read an article by 'The Thesis Whisperer' (http://thesiswhisperer.com/2011/01/13/is-your-computer-domesticating-you/) called 'Is your computer domesticating you?'

I didn't realise I was 'in the machine' until the Whisperer pointed it out. I've been a slave to Word for ever and not realised how bloody crap it is. Now I'm using Scrivner and I'm liberated, or am I.

In Forster's story people live in a post apocalyptic world underground where is it safe from the mess made above ground by people in the previous generation.

Airships fly people between underground worlds where they live in 'splendid isolation' using pneumatic post and a form of telepresence to communicate. They talk in half-baked, second-hand ideas that feel spookily incomplete and fear visceral communication above all.

They are the old school hikikimori (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori). They are sort of me and very much a lot of the younger people I know.

Tonight I had two things delivered that I bought online - a bag to hold the machine (a lap top) and a food dehydrator. Technically now I could exist in isolation if I begin dehydrating the figs and vegetables in my backyard.

I also shopped for a door online, received two phone calls from family members, sent and received multiple texts, submitted an online task for a class, checked the weather for tomorrow to decide if I would ride my bike or take the tram.

Why go outside? Why seek out people in person?

I guess it is for that nuanced emotion that Forster's character Kuno feels and seeks and to practice real human contact and empathy. Because I like my friends and the fresh air and ultimately because I'm afraid of that empty feeling becoming normal.

Grounded theory - cop out or legitimate approach

After a discussion with my supervisor it seems I'm using something fairly akin to a Grounded Theory approach. This is something I've always read in academic papers - "this research uses a grounded approach with allows the meaning to emerge from the data" - and wondered if it's just a way to meander on into a topic without much thought.

I am pretty sure I've changed my mind about this now.

After wrestling with the idea of using Bourdieu to understand my data I've come back to the notion of not using any big 'T' theories to enter into my subject.
For a lovely look at the character and work of Bourdieu see the YouTube clip "Sociology is a Martial Art" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csbu08SqAuc (note, there are multiple parts to this clip).

I've realised the point of using a grounded approach. It allows me to collect my data using open ended questioning and see what the data reveals in terms of theoretical understandings and concepts. Perhaps it will show up ideas around Bourdieu's habitus, distinction and fields of capital, but perhaps it won't and if I'm looking for evidence of these notions I will surely find them.

Konecki points out hat in allowing the findings to emerge from the data we therefore allow for serendipity, or accidental findings to occur which may not have happened had we used a more structured approach to analysing the data.

Grounded theory also uses theoretical memos which are designed to encourage the researcher to reflect on their own engagement with the data and the process of grounded theory.

From these ideas then I would suggest it is important to have a broad idea of the possible emergent qualities of the data. If I've only read a couple of papers on my topic I can only recognise those concepts in my data, where as if I understand multiple theories and a breadth of concepts around my topic many more things might  'emerge'. The role of the supervisor must be crucial in this as they can surely recognise many more things that the student in the data.


Konecki, Krzysztof Tomasz. "Grounded Theory and Serendipity. Natural History of a Research." Qualitative Sociology Review 4.1 (2008): n/a. Print.

More information on Grounded Theory: http://www.cprjournal.com/documents/groundedTheory.pdf

Just waiting for the perfect conditions in which to write my blog. First, clean the bathroom, then make coffee, then I really should read an article on my topic, surely that will help me to 'get inspired'.
Feeling completely freaked out by my topic - better not write on that, it wouldn't be a good look.
Nope can't think of anything to write. This must mean I'm officially a student again. Might go get the washing of the line.

Upcycled blog

Adrian (course coordinator and subject lecturer) has asked that we set up a blog.

Despite being a partial Luddite I am happy to report that I already had one - a long abandoned page whose name will need to be upcycled for its new purpose.  While once 'Sustain the Wander' was more literal - how long can I keep going across countries before returning home to Australia - this title is now metaphoric. The wander is now some kind of cerebral wandering and sustaining this requires constant practice and improvement - both things that will help me coast along to a finished and totally awesome thesis. Smooth transition right!

Adrian told us in class that the very act of blogging obliges us to write in a way that makes sense to others and now that I'm back in this space I can see that. I am, of course, writing in draft first to avoid sounding crap. My fear in keeping my reflections in one neat space is that the lines will blur and I'll forget about the public nature of blogging and I'll sound crap.

The Trafford Eco House, our visit

This morning I visited the Trafford Eco House, a home in suburban Manchester where Andrew lives with his family.

They have moved from Brisbane to Manchester to be nearer their family and have been in the house since July 2009. In that time the house has gone from being an average home with a large garden to an extraordinary beginning in self-sufficiency (see the picture of the garden, right).

The garden has been the primary focus of the family's time and resources so far and now contains fruit trees, garden beds, composting and most impressively a polytunnel that houses an aquaponics system.

Aquaponics is a balanced system of food production that utilises a nutrient cycle (see picture of nitrogen cycle, below). This picture is sourced from Backyard Aquaponics.

What this looks like practically is a one or more grow beds connected to a fish tank via pipes that circulate water with a timed pump.

The scale can vary in size and complexity depending on the space and resources available. A balcony system might have a small tank with gold fish and a small herb garden while a system like Andrew's has a large tank for edible fish and many grow beds for herbs and vegetables that will feed the family of four. (See picture, left, for an example of a basic system - sourced from Backyard Aquaponics).

The grow beds contain media such as expanded clay or river gravel to hold the plants in place and the nutrient rich water from the fish tank then floods this bed at timed intervals to feed the plants, thereby cleaning the water to put back into the fish tank (Note, there are variations on the flood and drain methods such as continuous flow or floating raft. See websites below for more information).

Andrew hopes that eventually his system of grow beds and fish tanks will provide the family with all of their non-root vegetables and much of their protein. The family aims to close the loop in this system by feeding the fish using both what they grow and the worms and fly larvae that are naturally attracted to their compost. This is impressive from a sustainability perspective because it avoids the pitfalls of large scale commercial fish farms that often use wild fish to feed to the farmed ones thereby depleting the overall stocks and causing a dangerous imbalance in the ecosystem.

The Trafford Eco House system, a little more complex than a basic one, has 6000 litres of water in circulation. The 3000 litre fish tank will eventually grow Rainbow Trout and three smaller tanks act as sumps. When water is pumped from the sump into the fish tank it causes the water level to rise and the overflow to be channelled via pipes at the top of the fish tank into the grow beds.

There are three large grow beds down the middle of the polytunnel and five or six smaller ones along each side wall all using expanded clay (see picture, right). Once these are filled their overflow system drains the water, now cleaned of fish effluent, into the sump to wait for the next cycle.

At the moment the system is cycling water once per hour in order to build up the bacteria necessary to the nutrient cycle and to adjust the flows to each grow bed. Once this is complete the fish can be added and vegetables planted, either as seeds or seedlings. Andrew has planted some rocket seeds as an experiment and they are beginning to sprout (see picture ,left).



Andrew's experience of setting up this system over the past six months has provided the following valuable lessons:

• Using large grow beds rather than many small ones requires less resources such as piping and the time spend installing it.
• Plastic tanks will buckle under the weight and pressure of water so need a good wooden frame around them. Andrew would consider using just a wooden frame and a plastic lining for a fish tank if he were to repeat the process.
  
• The foundations that the whole system is build on must be solid. Andrew has spent extra time and money on reinforcing the ground under the weight of the tanks and grow beds after they began to sink.
  
• The use of just one pump in the entire system is preferable. If many smaller pumps are used to pump water through the system and one fails this can cause flooding.
• Expanded clay is very effective at retaining moisture and the necessary bacteria but smaller bits can block pipes.
• Engaging local council in your activities can greatly expand the network of people who may show interest in this system and provide assistance in the future. The council promotes the Trafford Eco House and Andrew holds workshops on site.
  

I have been interested in aquaponics for a year or so but until now have been somewhat of a fringe dweller to the whole experience. Visiting the Trafford Eco House has awakened all sorts of possibilities for me.

I now understand that this technique can be made as simple or as complex as you like but it still remains low maintenance and low impact in terms of food production techniques. I can also see why this system has been so successful in Australia - in many areas of the country a polytunnel is not necessary because there is less temperature variation than somewhere like Manchester. A simple cover from the rain is all that might be required. And we can grow Baramundi because it is native (yum).

For me Aquaponics should be part of our eating future in Australia. I definitely want to make it part of mine.

Websites with useful information:

• http://www.aquaponics.com.au/ (Commercial, New South Wales based)
• http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/ (Commercial, Western Australia based)
• http://www.aquaponics.net.au/ (Commercial, Queensland based)
• http://traffordecohouse.wordpress.com/ (non-commercial)
• http://aquaponics.org.uk/ (non profit)
• http://www.uvi.edu/sites/uvi/Pages/Research.aspx?s=RE (University of Virgin Islands, Research based)
  

Huge thanks to Andrew and his family at the Trafford Eco House who so generously took the time to show Maureen and I around their home and garden.
Also, thanks to Charlie and Rebecca, who run Aquaponics UK out of Stirling University, for chatting to us back in January about their experience of aquaponics.

Maternal waif inspires shoppers

Is anyone else slightly disturbed by the 'look' of this mannequin?

This photo was taken at a major clothing store in Manchester.

Women are expected to part with £20 of their hard earned cash for this t-shirt - that comes in sizes 8 to 18 - based on a size 6 mannequin that has been stuffed with two plastic balls for breasts and another plastic ball for the 'bump'.

Nobody on staff had bothered to do her size 6 jeans up and her plastic bump was humiliatingly revealed. Shoppers were laughing at her and I took her photo.

I'm inclined to think that if a clothing brand has gone to the trouble to design and manufacture maternity wear they could at least show some respect to the women who have to purchase and wear the clothes by using a decent looking mannequin.

I found a much more realistic maternity mannequin online for only £49. Fair enough she has no head but at least her bump and breasts are genuine parts of her.

Off we chug again

After drinking approximately 300 cups of tea and surviving on a diet of carbs alongside more carbs my wee Scots lassie and I are driving off into the cold and pink sunset tonight.

We are Edinburgh bound - a whole 30 minute drive. After being in the UK for about three months I have got the hang of misinterpreting distance. The other night Moz's uncle referred to Cornwall as the end of the earth. This leaves little doubt that we will not be seeing them in Australia in a hurry. And this is despite me selling the halfway point (somewhere in south east Asia) as a weekend shopping stop.

After a weekend in Edinburgh we plan to head down to the borders (the area that unsurprisingly hosts the border of England and Scotland) and onto Newcastle for some walking and a catch up with Moz's old university friend. Then it's off to the Lake District for more walking then to see the fabulous Matt in Manchester.

Not that I've been a super wonderful regular and reliable blogger but I predict a proper lack of action in this space until we are back in London selling Vincent the van in a few months time.

Until then....

The conundrums of a sustainable traveller

In my very first post I said the following with regard to avoiding aircraft:


"I'm leaving Melbourne ... the general intent is to make it back to Australia in 6-12 months without flying (ok - maybe just one flight from Singapore) .... The themes I am hoping to capture in this 'journal' are sustainability (particularly energy related initiatives I'm hoping to visit), fantastic passionate people and various travel insights that come from avoiding aircraft".

I would like to share four very obvious insights and a hypothetical that come from avoiding aircraft and then I will go on to explain our conundrum more personally.

• It is ridiculously cheap to fly


• It is ridiculously expensive to take the train


• Some parts of the EU don't see sunlight for the better part of a year (think UK)


• Some parts of the EU have sunlight for much of the year (think Spain)

Now for a hypothetical. Let's say Ms Piccadilly is fed up with the grey days of London so she decides to go to Barcelona for a week in February. Here are her options:

1. Bus- Route, Eurolines London to Barcelona. Time, 27 hours there and 23 hours back. Cost, £137. Carbon, 34.1 kg


2. Train- Route, Eurostar London to Paris then change trains to Barcelona. Time, 20 hours there and 20 hours back. Cost, £200. Carbon, 65.6 kg


3. Aeroplane- Route, London to Barcelona. Time, 3 hours there and 1.5 hours back. Cost, £40 without luggage and £58 with luggage. Carbon, 194.3 kg

I'd say Ms Piccadilly is in a picaninny of a pickle.

What should she choose if she wants to travel sustainably? The bus right. But Ms Piccadilly is on a budget and only has a week off work. The £60 odd saved is one or two nights accommodation in Barcelona and the 45.5 hours she saves means an extra two days of sunshine, rest and relaxation. If you have ever lived in the UK you know how rejuvenating this can be.

This is a real conundrum because for most travellers it costs to care about carbon and for millions of people flying away to get away is now the norm.

Moz and I are six months into our travels. We spent three months taking a train around Europe and it was very lucky that we had pre-purchased Eurorail tickets because the trains are super expensive - certainly more so than aeroplanes. We then purchased a diesel van called Vincent Van-Go and have been travelling around it in the UK to avoid the extortionate cost of rail fares and increase our ability to reach remote places.

We now find ourselves faced with an ever tightening budget and the last leg of our marvelous adventure - taking the Trans-Mongolian train across Russia and into China to fly home from Asia. Getting from the UK to Russia would be a cinch if we flew and it would save us loads of money but alas we will attempt to take buses and trains and maybe even hitch the odd lift.

I suppose my point is that from home, when planning a trip like ours, it seems easy and fun to take trains to see the world while also 'doing the right thing'. But, faced with the reality of dwindling cash supplies my commitment is seriously tested. Is it any wonder that emissions from the aviation sector are one of the fastest growing in the world.

George Monibot's blog from Copenhagen sums up my point beautifully. He took a £480 standard train fare from London to the climate talks in Copenhagen rather than an £18 flight.

** Try the UK based Transport Direct calculator to compare bus, train and aeroplane emission from your planned journey.

** These footprint calculators are one way to understand the impact of your household on the planet - WWF calculator is good for UK residents and ACF calculator is good for Aussies.


** The Man in Seat 61 will help you plan most aspects of a train journey anywhere in the world.

Dropping diesel in Wales

We stopped the other day at a public toilet next to a slate museum in the tiny Welsh town on Llanbris. We needed to empty our overflowing chemical toilet and the environmentalist in me wanted to do it into a toilet and not on the road side in Snowdonia National Park.

After chatting to the helpful man who had just cleaned the toilet block we decided to sneak our naughty little potty into the men's, out of sight of the goings on in the area. Just as we'd worked out how to proceed in this task two men, one middle aged and one young, appeared in the doorway wearing head to toe diving suits of black rubber.

They were like lake monsters but with a better sense of humour. "Oh dear, there's been a take over" they declared at seeing two women in the men's bathroom. After some fumbling apologies and a weak explanation for our pee stained potty they told us why they looked like lake monsters and wanted to know about our lovely van Vincent.

The men, Eamonn and Albi, dive at the bottom off a water logged and disused slate quarry as practice for their summer holidays in the Mediterranean. In Wales they wear three layers including an arctic layer in order to keep warm-ish.

Curiosity lead them to Vincent and a raft of questions including fuel consumption. We discussed miles and kilometres, litres and gallons. The men took a break from the van tour to get dressed and we used the opportunity to empty the little loo into the men's urinal. That is another story....

The heroes of the story decided that we should follow them in our van to the dive shack where they needed to return their equipment and they could use the computer to do some conversions. Enter another character, John, the owner of a tiny dive shack. Over the next hour of so John, a middle aged balding, chain smoking Welshman peppered the main plot line of 'working on the van' with woes of his dysfunctional computer and stories of his son and daughter-in-law in Australia. This included photos of the woman's brain surgery to remove a parasite a week after their return. By the end of our stay I managed to plant the seed in John's head that it was probably the stop off in Thailand where the parasite jumped on board.

Back to the van.... Eamonn by now had mentioned that he was a diesel mechanic... for Ford. Would you read about it!?

When Eamonn did the maths, using the dive shack computer, and discovered that Vincent the Ford Transit was getting half the efficiency of his peers all were completely committed to solving the mystery and thus began an hour long process of working by torchlight. Eamonn banged and clanged while Albi his faithful side-kick insisted on being told every twist and turn in a diesel engine. John smoked nearby.

The culprit turned out to be a fuel leak in a small rubber pipe leading into the engine. This was dripping onto the exhaust and causing the smell, which was obvious when pointed out. This was also the probably cause of our carbon monoxide alarm screeching at us as we drive.

After some man-handling (see pic right) and a slice of faithful gaffer tape the leak was fixed but there remained a disturbing noise. The last owner had fiddled with the [enter proper mechanic speak here] to compensate for the leak. This mean the van was revving high and not using oxygen but rather burning even more diesel.

Once Eamonn finished John came with a tank of compressed air (see picture below), and a cigarette in his mouth ready to light, to clean the diesel off the engine.

Now we will wait and see how fast the gauge goes down but either way I am grateful to the kindness of strangers and sorry for all the diesel we left on the roads of Wales.

Blogging and why I'm crap at it

So this blog hasn't exactly turned out the way I'd hoped. Entries for one... just aren't here are they.

Backpacking has changed a lot since I last did it. Now everyone has a mobile phone and even a mini-laptop. Alas I do not. This means finding Internet cafes and paying the sometimes extortionate cost (up to AU$9 per hour) to sit in a stuffy room and try to think what on earth about my travels would make interesting reading.

Setting this up as a sustainability focused blog was somewhat setting it up for a fall. I simply haven't had the opportunity to gain an in depth look at many sustainability related topics.

Somehow I'm finding myself a very busy little backpacker. Always somewhere to go and something to see. Go figure...

So the Scottish lassie and I have been on the road for 4 months now. We have been through Italy, France and Spain all by train and we have never been in one place for too long.

Our latest adventure sees us in Vincent Van-Go, our lovely new camper, travelling around UK and Ireland (where we are right now). For a look at the gorgeous Vincent, and an example of a high quality and dedicated blogger, see Letters from London.

So I apologise to my lovely friends and family who have been waiting to read something, anything from this page. I will try a little harder to gain some blog confidence and build up my blogger blagging skills.

recipe for multi lingual madness

Ingredients

• 2 Chinese ladies who speak dialect Chinese and moderate Italian


• 1 Spanish woman who speaks Spanish, German, some English and a little Italian


• 1 Spainish woman who speaks Spanish and a little English and Italian


• 1 Spainish man who speaks Spanish and a little English and moderate Italian


• 1 woman from Litgenstien who speaks German and a little English


• 1 woman from Australia who speaks English and very little Italian


• 1 woman from Scotland who speaks something like English and very little Italian


• 1 Frenchman who speaks French, English, Russian and a little Italian


• 1 Basque woman who speaks Basque, Spanish and a little English and Italian


• 1 dog who speaks all languages when food is being offered

Add vino ......

Add more vino .......

Add a dictionary and some playing cards ......

Result .... multi lingual madness and a whole lot of fun.

more budget travel tips for Italy

So yes... we are finding Italy quite expensive on the Aussie dollar!

Tip number 6:

Book a language course (learn Italian) in Siena, Florence or Milan with Scuola Leonardo da Vinci and they find you super cheap accommodation. Serious, it is cheaper to stay somewhere for a few weeks and go to school from 9-1pm than to be a regular tourist. And guess what, you learn pocco Italiano.

We will be in the beautiful, and car free since the 70s, Siena till after il Palio - check it out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palio_di_Siena

PS did I mention that I left Australia with a back pack weighing 10 kilograms? Yes, friends a sack of spuds, a very small child, the weight I put on in the last year (which seems to be falling off with all this walking).
And what can you do with such a back pack? You can run away fast from dodgy hostel proprietors, climb many many flights of stairs to other hostels, lift it well above your head onto train racks, use it as a seat... other ideas greatly appreciated.

Ciao from Siena

another brilliant Italy on a budget idea

.....
5. It is more cost effective to study Italian for two or more weeks than stay in a hostel/hotel as a tourist. If you book with certain language schools they find you crazy cheap accommodation in an apartment with a kitchen etc.

We're off to Siena..... Ciao x

PS. the colour green is definately not associated with sustainability (sostenibilità) here in Florence. I asked in Cafe Verdi (green) this morning and according to the owner Italians would think of Opera (Verdi - ah yes) well before they would think of anything environmental.
See image of Tuscany - verdi si? ;)

Well isn't Florence just a sheer relief when compared to the intensity of Rome. Wanted to share some travel tips as the whole sustainability thing isn't taking off as yet.

1. Don't line up just push in. There is usually a way - follow the Italians. We walked right past a massive line up for tickets into the Sistine Chapel simply because of the human tendancy to herd. In this case the herd went for the already long line and ignored the empty line that was also selling tickets to anyone willing to break free from the herd.

2. The piss smell in Rome and Florence is due to a serious lack of public toilets (another lesson I had forgotten). If you are on a budget go to a back street cafe and order an espresso to use the toilet. Cost the same as paying the service charge and you get a caffeine hit. Whoop!!!

3. If you plan to keep a blog check to see if the instructions will show up in English first. Opps!

4. Quite simply www.helpx.net

More soon