slangin'

I am defiantly having a day at 'home' (Yann's apartment) today.

Before he left for work, Yann scolded me for not having practised my French at all, except for that one time in Madrid when I booked a room through a French proprietress.

Yann, on the other hand, rapidly incorporates new words into his everyday vocabulary. Within an hour of my arrival he had already used three kitsch colloquialisms imparted by Adrian and myself a month ago. He puts me to shame.

Text book examples of the three words might look like this:

Those who bushwalk in Norway are seldom snappy dressers.

This cheese is especially stinky.

That guy on the beach in Barcelona was creepy.

handbag protection unit

Visiting Barcelona at the tail end of my trip means that I've had time to hear many stories about the muggers and their various methods. Brits and Americans and Australians in France and Norway and Germany have warned me that you can't walk more than a few metres without someone trying to take your things by pretending to hit on you, or play soccer with you, or by just coming up and sticking their hand in your pocket. I'd managed to avoid these incidents until last night.

My Canadian friend Denis was celebrating his birthday. We were sitting on the beach with an earphone each, staring at my ipod screen and trying to remember which soundtrack 'Just Like Honey' is on apart from Lost in Translation. When Denis asked me for a pen I turned to see what can only be described as a cheeky fellow sitting nearby, quietly going through my bag. I sprang up in a flurry of orange coat and lunged towards him with a shrill 'Motherf-cker!' As the silhouette fled he tossed my journal, the only thing he'd managed to get hold of, comically into the air.

sad day in Rome

After leaving the Palatine, we find ourselves a long, hot way from any Metro station. My fellow tourists Marion and Amil put their thumbs out and almost immediately we get a welcoming toot from a little green car. Our benefactor is a middle-aged woman with t-shirts stretched over the front seats as covers, and a photograph of a young Italian man stuck to the dashboard. She drives us all the way into the central station, asking us about our lives in her stilted but determined English. When Marion asks the woman if the man in the photo is her son, the woman replies that he is, and that he died of lung cancer in June last year. She says it kindly, but unapologetically; she's said it a thousand times before. I sit there dumbly and don't say anything about Alex. Rome is sunny and sad.