Frogs, Snails And Puppy Dog's Tails - Lives Saved And Mates Fought, A Failed Party in Paris.

Paris is a city which has been so written and rewritten about that to go with my literary instincts would be to slide down the slippery slope toward cliché. On the first day we took the metro to Anvers and walked up the many steps to Montmarte (seen the movie Amelie?) and took a great big long look at the old girl. I’m not going to lie to you – from that vantage point all one sees is a million and seven identical roof tops, which in Paris are delightfully unique to everywhere else but Paris (which must be pronounced henceforth as Pahree). But clichés exist for a reason, they were the most fitting way to describe something and as a result became overused and then tarnished with the horrible appellation, cliché. But fuck it, no one reads this After Grog Blog anyway. So from that vantage point, the top of Montmarte, instantly I thought of the City of Romance, I can remember myself in Paris a couple of years ago kissing and twirling under the Eiffel Tower and on street corners with a girl I was really fond of – and I absolutely demand that everyone tries that at one stage of their life. The second appellation that sprung to mind was the City of Light. Paris is called the City of Light not because it is well lit, although indeed it is, but because it was the seat of the Illumination. The Illumination was a period of radical thought change spearheaded by the philosopher and novelist Voltaire. This was a period of change in the way people perceived themselves in the world, all of a sudden it was possible for people to be equal, rational – perhaps capable of dictating their own future. These thoughts inspired the revolution, the abolishment and subsequent beheading of the monarchy, which in turn lead to the American revolution over the Brits to democracy and the free world, ideas which we today take for granted. Well all of this started in Paris. The old girl has been shaping the world for a bloody long time and continues to do so today. Paris is such an important city that she doesn’t care at all whether or not I exist, reaffirms my feelings of insignificance – she doesn’t want to know my stories, but perhaps you do. So I’ll sling you a couple of tales which dance between tall and true about our little time here in Gay Pahree.

Did You Ever Know That You’re My Hero?

The Paris Metro is an integral part of Parisienne life and an amazing feat of engineering and organization. Every four minutes a train departs every one of the 368 stations and transports some of the daily six million passengers along the 200 kilometres of track shared between its 15 lines. They reckon that every building in Paris is within 500 metres of a metro station. This is amazing. Even better is that you can take any trip on the system and it will cost you no more than one euro sixty, no matter whether you are going from one station to the next or traversing the entire city. So I was standing on this engineering feat with Heroby one day going around to the Parisienne universities trying to drum up business for our party that night (Pisstemberfest). We had just visited Paris City University which, by the way, had a very impressive international student centre, as donated by one Mr Rockerfeller, and we were heading into rendezvous with the team at the Eiffel Tower when the train pulled into a station. After the usual unload upload time the train signalled its intention to depart again with a little beep and the doors prepared themselves for closure. Now as the usually mundane actions were taking place a rather large African woman came bounding up the stairs and across the platform with singular idea in her head to catch this very train. Now as she neared the train she slowed her trotting tempo, in order to facilitate the boarding, and this is where it all went wrong. She coincided her slowing with the painted lines of the platform, which are always a little more slippery than the black tarred part, and went into a slide. Her slide consisted of her feet going out from under her and jamming between the train and the platform as she landed with a hugely ungraceful slapping bum flop. Now this was terrifying as the doors were shutting and the train was preparing itself to depart, with her feet. I, surprisingly to me, was absolutely dumfounded, or dumbstruck, jammed halfway between laughter and mortification, quite simply absolutely paralysed. Toby, on the other hand, began to move like I never knew he was capable of. Part jungle cat, eagle and muscular bear, he dropped his things and glided across the train cabin and to the aid of our sprawled African friend. Summoning strength which is usually reserved for mothers whose children are pinned to suburban driveways by erratic milk vans, he pulled her out of the crevasse, that mawing pit of train and certain stumpifcation. Then, holding her delicately and resembling one of those crocodiles that bites off a wildebeest’s neck and the next carries its fragile young with uncharacteristic tenderness, Toby went from lifting this rather heavy lady out of the crack to placing her gently and safely on the train, reassuring her and then resuming the journey as if he had just performed the most regular act in the world, while I was stunned like a mullet, catching flies like a side show alley clown or a blow up man doll. It was absolutely stunning, amazing, the way he saved not only the ladies legs, but maybe her life and the life of all her relations as I am sure they would be so consumed with grief that they would forget to consume air and there would be a domino effect of grief related deaths, spreading like a virus in a doomsday novel until I am left the last man standing with free run over all the shops and car stores, though I think the stench would become a bit much as the entire population of the world slowly rotted in the gutters…..

N.B: I was forced to write this piece at economic gunpoint. Apparently I didn’t paint Toby’s involvement in the Valencia theft episode in a heroic enough light, i.e. at all.



La Rue Saint Dennis.

There is a book by Henry Miller called “The Tropic of Cancer” which is a semi autobiographical account of the author’s time in Paris. It was banned for most of his life in most countries because of the level of sexual explicitness, basically he wandered around Paris sleeping with hookers, and most of these exploits took place on the Rue Saint Dennis. So after the party, more on that later, we followed our fabulous host, but terrible guide, Raffa up the road looking for a bar that was open, apparently he knew a Pakistani place that was open till the wee hours where we could smash a curry and a few glasses of red. Well he didn’t. So we wandered for a while around the mean streets and wound up on the Rue Saint, which is still an absolute hotspot for prostitution. Now I’m not sure if this was a plan by Raf to cruise by his favourite hookers under the auspices of showing some foreigners around, but having reached the hooker boulevard he declared the restaurant as a myth and deposited himself on the sidewalk. This was two in the morning and we had to wait until five until the subway opened. With the crew there were five additional, one member had managed to attract three frogs and another two Swedes. Now the frog fiddler stole into a conveniently passing taxi with his charges and stole off into the Paris night. Once he did this two of the guys attached themselves to the Swedes and attempted to lead them up a side alley and into Valhalla when our resident jungle boy noticed them and took offence. He was under the mistaken notion that the Rolling Circus was an inseparable organism that it was all in or none in, which is completely erroneous. Basically once the job is done and a party has been thrown the guys are free to do whatever they like with whomever they like. Anyway, the offended party chased them up the street and confronted them, threatening them with real physical violence. This was enough to scare one of the guys into a passing taxi, part real fear part opportunity to get the fuck outta there and hook up with the frog fondler’s team of grenouilles. Now that left one man to deal with the Guatemalan rage, and he was the recipient of an angry spit to the coupon. Of course later that night peace was made and the offender has been sufficiently ripped on ever since, although he insists that he cannot be blamed when so much alcohol was involved. All in all some people were in taxis off to Parisienne apartments with French girls, some were staggering and holding onto lamp poles and two were so out of their minds they thought it wise to fight over girls, all done on the black shine of a wet Rue Saint Dennis under the watchful gaze of the ladies of the night. I’m sure Mr Miller would be proud.


Pisstemberfest.

The rationale for our existence and our voyages across Europe is our ability to put on a banging party in every city we go to. San Sebastian was a shoe in and Valencia was banging, we overcame adversity and wound up having a good one. So we rolled into Paris, pretty low on cash thanks to a run in with the police and a little Spanish semi-bribe, confident in our ability to put on a banging party. Well let me tell you, Paris is an entirely different kettle of fish. Whereas in other cities bars and hostels were receptive to our cause, in Paris they couldn’t care less. We found a venue, which was located, unawares to us, smack bang in the middle of the gay district, and a pretty good deal – happy hour all night. So we set out flyering for it, which on paper was a piece of piss, hit the tourist sights, of which there are a million, and give our publicities to massive packs of American frat boys and German female soccer teams at the base of the Eiffel tower. Well it didn’t turn out like that. For starters, surprisingly, everyone in France’s capital is French (apparently we missed the tourist season by one week), and the French couldn’t care less about our party. Anyway, long story short, what we ended up having was a staff party in Paris. Our projected party numbers of 200 people plus turned out to be about 30 others and us. We got loaded, flirted with fags for drinks, danced and had a good time, despite the fact that financially we were in the direst of straights. A failure, and that is the fifth consecutive time that Paris has defeated me, but I swear that I will one day conquer Paris, or at least have a minor victory. With Jacque Chirac as my witness, this will occur.

Gaudi? Who The Fuck is Gaudi?

There is no real point in boring anyone with the details of the three and a half hours taken when we crossed from the southern Vanencian extremity of Catalunya into its Barcelonan heartland. Well maybe there is. I drove a little blue convertible with myself a stuffed four foot panda named Amanda and a stoned Guatemalan and a stoned Melbonrnian. Of course i wasn't stoned but being the day after the night before i many has well have been and im sure they derived many snail paced delights dousing my head with cold water at five minute intervals, lest i projected us in a flaming homosexual metalic heap off one of the stunning mediterranian highway vistas. Nevertheless we got the job done and after parking on the highside of town we went into the belly of this Catalonian beast for a Giro, a tinny and a pint. After that the general consensus was bed, funny how a life lived at its festive extremity can induce a natural state akin to the injestion of more the recommended weekly dose of valium in one line, but thats what happened and nightmares ensued for the next six hours, not stirring once even though the wolds most vibrant full time party city was throbbing just one open balcony door away....

But then you wake up with an all consuming thirst.

Lets have some fun.

So after doing some menial SiroWak housekeeping chores and making sure our existence was validated by something other than merely being at the top of our party game, we took a liquid lunch slash team meeting in the infamous Travel Bar (i once put a raw egg in my bottom in this bar but thats a completely different story). Fast forward eight hours and one of the team members is being an uncharacteristic prick to his Gallic girlfriend with the built in systic earring and all of a sudden Penos is bestowed with the new nickname sez pest, and we are off to do the pub crawl, five pubs one club nine monsters. (Ed's note: Don't believe the angelic ramblings of the author, rest assured that he was as bad, if not worse than the others, it's just that the evil Warren is on a concerted campaign to end the lives of both Gravy and Wayne, beginning with the memory).

What i do remember is that i woke up on a two seater lounge to Ring-A-Ding coaxing me out onto the streets and in my continuing state of intoxication the most perfect thing in the world for me at that hour was Sardines, Calamari and Crayfish. What to wash them down? A glass of red, for sure and didn't i know just the place, the bustling fresh food market in the middle of La Ramblas and further more the little seafood restaurant right down the back. It's not the cheapest place, but when you've spent all your money the night before why not drop twenty euros on Crayfish. I left myself with a grand life savins total of eight euros, with which i purchased a cute little penny turtle promptly named Shelby (as he has a shell). Once the team saw him crack team beta went and bought him a mate (named Shelly) and we left them to get acquainted and set off in search of an Indian restaurant. After a wet lunch we wiggled through the winding cobbled streets of the Gothic Quarter to the infamous Travel Bar for a few million more beers. We were party to some interesting information - namely that tonight at Barca's best club, Razzamataz, would be host to Australia's best party band, The Presets, while some of Australia's best partiers, Us truely, were in striking distance.

Upon entry to Razzamataz I promptly lost my shoes and my shirt and begun popping Supermen on the empty dancefloor until the prudent bouncers ejected me shirtless and shoeless into the street. The guys told me that the Presets were fantastic, all that i know is that thanks is due to the two lovely and very pretty girls who tok me home, by which i mean literally escorted me home-no mean feat when Warren is at hos most stubborn. Upon making appartment fall i realised that I was lacking some keys - an essential ingredient to an entry pie. What I did find was a three quarters full can of beer, which was promptly launched up and through the open balcony window, through the room right down to the back and onto the sleeping dutch girl in the bunk bed. I didn't remember this until she reminded me in the morning, and my dear i sincerely apologise on Warren's behalf, though for sure I can't be held accountable.

The Day of the Party.

We were in Barcelona, afterall, with a job to do and that was to put on a party. So on the morning (2pm) of the party we got together at a cafe and after a pep talk and some beers we hit the streets armed with a handful of flyers, a burgeoning bellyfull of beers and bloody high spirits. We wandered around for a while, spreading the good word of demographic diversity - not just giving flyers to young travellers but to all and sundry from young kids to old bums, Morrocan acrobats and Senegalese illegal immigrants. I am convinced that the Senegalese guys are some of the coolest people of the world, leaving their home continent and language behind in a rusty tub towards a completely foreign land and idea. Kind of doing what i am trying to do, but really bloody well, just getting y selling sunglasses and handbags and constantly physically running from the police. We set up shop on the world famous La Ramblas with all the street performers and did our own version of a circus gig, coaxing a decent crowd into our party. At the end of the night the party was a success, we were all again hammered, I made out with a really good looking Estonian lesbian (i was her first man lips in five years) while her fuming jealous lady lover looked on. One of the guys was treated to a night of extremity with a smoking hot Swede and another was whisked off to a hotel room only to be brought back to the party and introduced to his most recent lover's boyfriend. Once it was all said and sone, i went back to pass the night with one of the many loves of my life and then it was up and at them, we are off to Paris.

These god times are killing me.

What do you do with a surplus of tomatoes?

La Tomatina started for me with a god-awful crush – the result of 40,000 people making a mad rush into a town which has a sitting population of about 8000 and no tourist industry apart from the few hours of La Tomatina. The main street of the tomato fight was at capacity and as more people entered from the front the side streets acted as an overflow, so the crowd was naturally pushing down. Now like in a river, if one relaxes and goes with the flow they will end up where the river peters out, a little further away from where they wanted to be but nevertheless safe. This was the plan of most of the crowd bar a few muscular young lads of Southern European persuasion who decided that this was the perfect stage upon which to display their machismo. If they weren’t ripping at girls’ tops they were pushing against the natural flow of the pushing crowd, creating a situation where smaller people were being crushed and suffocated and everyone was under threat of losing their feet and being trampled. At one stage I had to push my way through these muscle bound freaks with a young Japanese girl who had lost something in the translation of what the event entailed and had brought along her one year old son, who was in real danger of having his young oriental life cut short.

I was almost ready to give up, write La Tomatina off as a hoax and head back to the car but made one of my characteristic changes of heart and took a couple of back streets with the intention of finding another portal into the tomato based madness of Tomatina. We found one entry street that pitched above 45 degrees in parts and was ankle to knee deep in fast flowing pureed tomato and water mix. I struggled up to about three quarters of the ay up when I was hit with my first tomato, though judging by the consistency of it I’m sure I wasn’t the first guy she danced with that night. Soon after that there was a god awful push and I knew that if I could just swim through the crowd to a wall and find a hold I’d be able to weather the storm and slide up to the top once the crowd had passed. I made my way across and grabbed ineffectually at people and smooth walls until I found a little ledge, enough for the first two knuckles of my hand to wrap around and I was literally lifted off my feet but managed to hold on and made my way up the street of Neapolitan to the running street fight.

After the squash of before it was an absolute pleasure to make it up into the tomato battle but at first all I could was scrape at the soup and pull up little bits of pulp and skin where possible and fling them ineffectually. Other people by this stage were lying in the pulp and getting soup kicked on them while others were filling buckets with pulp and launching it over unsuspecting coupons. Nevertheless it was still fun and I dumped many a handful of pulp over a coupon my fine self. A three piece Spanish guitar band started blasting their song over the streets while they walked around and mimed being filmed for, presumably, a film clip. After doing the puree stomp for a while I made my way further into the crowd and went towards the wall, which was covered in plastic tarpaulin to protect the shopfronts, and I noticed that massed up around them were whole tomatoes, not many, but they were there – little red (and sometimes green, shhh) missiles. That was when the fun really began and I reckon I had a good half and hour of chucking tomatoes, retailing at 2 dollars eighty a kilo in Australia, at other humans. There were three ways that I would operate, either indiscriminately lobbing them into the crowd, picking a head and pitching a screamer at it or close range revenge demolishing someone who had gotten me earlier. Then the cannon blew which signals the end of the fight and I made my way through some back streets where some of the nicest old ladies in the world hosed me down and offered me their towels and a plastic bag to store my gear and one even gave me a bag of grapes, it was like the wanted to reward me for destroying their town by wasting their food. Nevertheless when every orifice resembles a lettuce light garden salad it all of their hospitality was welcomed with open ketchup sauce arms.

We walked the fifteen minutes back to the car with a few large beers and two cute as a button Mexican girls. At the van we were met with an arrangement of tearful forlorn faces and it was instantly apparent that all was not as it should be. It didn’t take long to work out that we had been robbed and all of our gear was now in the hands of some rascallian Spanish thiever. As this was sinking in, as I was formulating my plans for a European trip sans passport, laptop, cards and identification I noticed one of the rollers talking to two middle aged Spanish guys. I went over and it was made apparent to me that they were claiming to be undercover police and that they had our gear but we had to follow them to collect it. Now when you’ve been ripped off, robbed or just generally burnt your scepticism level skyrockets, so in the absence of seeing these ‘policemen’s badges I was insanely suspicious. It was as I was off to grab a real policeman that the lead guy popped his boot and displayed all of our bags, in all of their glory, sitting in his boot.

”Give them back”

But it wasn’t possible; they wanted us, in our big slow diesel van, to follow them in their little zippy racing cars. Now you can’t blame me for disbelieving these two ‘policemen’ so I jumped in the zippy little blue convertible – known quasi-affectionately as the Barbie Car – and followed them around the backstreets of Bunol while they zipped around in and out of traffic and my paranoid mind of minds I was convinced that they were trying to shake me. After a few narrow back streets at breakneck speeds, a la The Italian Job, they pulled into their robber’s headquarters with me in hot pursuit and right into the car park of the Bunol chapter of the Guardia Civil. Yes that’s right ladies and gentlemen, these desperados were actually real life policemen, and they happened upon the actual desperados while they were rifling through our stuff, apprehended them and appropriated their get-away vehicle. That was why they had our stuff in the back of their car, which was why we had to go to the police station to get it back – it was all evidence. So the end result for all the formerly happy but now jittery and freaking rolling circus members, was that we could collectively sigh a sigh of cliché and relief. Where to now? Well rollers back to Camp Squat for a swim and a quick soap up underneath the beach showers (and a sneaky look at some Spanish breasties) and off into the centre of Valencia because boyos and girlos we have to put on Valencia’s finest La Tomatina Ketchup Party. I’ll let you know how it panned out sports fans.

Valencia, Fagnatics and Camp Shanty.

The circus that is SiroWak 2008 rolled into Valencia after traversing the vast sparce aridity that is central Spain. On our approach we passed the town of Buno, the future site of La Tomatina, and upon inspection declared it to be a cross between a spaghetti western ghost town and a Siberian Gulag, and it required a yogic stretch of the imagination to envisage the words biggest Guzpacho being created there in three days time by 40 000 sangria’d up human catapults. It was about a 20 minute drive into Valencia, and despite our intention to avoid Spain’s third biggest city it sucked us in, forcing us to admire the square blocks of commerce and habitation that prompted me to remark that if La Tomatina wasn’t on I would have spun around and headed back to Madird with all her feminine wonders, but we had three days and there were tomatoes to be thrown so we made a beeline south to the national park and long beaches of El Saler.

Down the beach we peeled our eyes off the many assembled bare bosoms to take advantage of a small wind swell that had been whipped up for our body surfing pleasure, and I even grabbed my board and paddled into a few before the salty bath that is the Med this time of year ripped two stitches from my feet and caused a premature shred stick retirement. An inspection of the local campsite found it to be bizarrely consecutively shithouse and expensive and it wasn’t until a few pensive roses prompted an adventurous pisser to go bush that we found the site of the future Camp Shanty, our home for the next few nights. Once we erected the tents the sound of thumping techno came alluringly wafting on the breeze and with a renewed spring in our step we skipped our way to the town square, intent on cutting some shapes. There we found an open air foam party with an age range of 8 – 14 and 50 – 87, a melangerie of smooth hairless skin and saggy hairless skin, which disappointed us to such a degree that we made our retreat but not until Ring-a-ding and Lunatic made a shirtless foray only to be taunted henceforth with allegations of prepubescent groping, I still believe they at least had that intention.

We day tripped the next couple of days into Valencia proper and after the East German reception we received on the way in it was refreshing to discover an absolutely stunning city centre. Valencia proper is what used to be the old wall city, and within its now arbitrary walls remains many delightful curches and official buildings, dating from some time ago, the actual details of which I have no intention of discovering being my contentness with the place just looking nice and the buildings being big and aesthetically pleasing. Get off my back. What remains of the old wall are two giant gates and just on the outside of them is the long diverted river which is now green space for the cities inhabitants and a museum district where different museums compete for architectural bizzareness, star wars helmets and conch shells in white and containing various curios from all around the world.

Have you ever seen the film Dawn of the Dead? Or Night of the Living Dead? Where your hero protagonist finds him or herself in a seemingly deserted city when they come across some human looking but obviously inhumane monster who tries to abduct them, a situation which is avoided but then repeated en-masse the further the hero protagonist gets into the city until they find themselves being accosted on all sides by an absolute sea of monsters, dribbling, slurring, decaying beasts who want to latch onto the hero and either eat their brain or at least just chew their ear….? Well I lived that nightmare in Valencia the night before La Tomatina in the old town. On our approach I noticed a couple of people sporting a yellow shirt, the tell tale marking of a Fanatic. The Fanatics are a tour operator that specialises in sending packs of Australian youths into foreign cities in spectacularly large groups, the rationale being that Australians should only ever mingle with other Australians and that a cultural experience while overseas is a threatening thing and measures must be put into place to avoid interaction with foreigners. On this night in Valencia 1400 Aussies drank, spewed and fought their way to alienating any antipodeans from the locals, and for that Fanatics I say thanks.

Wake me up before you Madrid a go go.

We rolled into Madrid and somehow found a park right in the middle of town. This is miraculous as it's Spain's biggest and most formidable city. That underground carpark was to become the base camp for the SiroWak crew for one memorable but totally forgetten evening. All our intentions to get to know the real Madrid went out the door when we joined a tapas tour and discovered that beers cost one euro twenty. Yep one single euro and twenty cents. Faaaaantastic. So the majority of the crew deposited themselves in a beautiful little tapas bar just off Plaza de sol and drank for about eight hours. Once we resurfaced the day had escaped us so we decided the best plan of attack would be to look for a party. I think we went to about seventeen different bars, sat ourselves infront of an updraphting grate and watched girls skirts get blown up and just generally created mayhem. The level of female beauty in Madrid is second to nowhere i have seen in the world.

We ended the night sleeping in our underground palace and im pretty sure the temperature didn't get below fifty degrees. But we did it.

Next stop Valencia.

The Day After the Night Before.

I can't tell you too much about the first leg of SiroWak as after two months at the Smashed Surfcamp and one hell of an opening party I was absolutely dead to the world for the first six hours, curled up on the middle seat with Amanda the Panda. I was assured upon my awakening that the drive was stunning, mountainous all the way through the petering out of the Basque country and beyond. Spain is really surprising like that, I always thought it to be flat but it's not at all, for the most part its either mountainous or tablelands. We pulled off the highway in the pursuit of somewhere tranquil to pass the night and lick our wounds and stumbled across the delicious little town of Arrand and after wandering through the narrow streets and marvelling at Spain's 4567th amazing cathedral we found a cafe for a quick beer and a river by which we slammed our tents and cashed in the hours of sleep we were all owed. I must say that my night was one of tossing and turning, partly because I slept all day and also because Peños is a man of the snore. Nevertheless I woke up full of beans because I was in Spain and we were headed that day to Madrid....

SiroWak Succumbs to San Sebastian Silliness.

So having strapped our helmets on and lowering ourselves into our respective cannons the SiroWak crew, plus Indie the Indian guitar player, blasted off into deepest darkest Basque country with a resounding boom. The destination? San Sebastian for the opening party of the SiroWak 2008 Rolling Circus. We heald it at ZM's discoteque on the beach and after lining our stomaches with an all you can eat buffet about 200 SiroWakians joined us in draining the place dry during the hour of free drinking. Now your humble scribe's memory after that is hazy at best but I distinctly remember dancing of the dorky and dirty varieties, tequila shots, nudity and an abnormal number of male/female pairings mysteriously disappearing only to reappear soon after nicely crumb chickened with sand. The SiroWak crew set up shop and did a roaring trade in the sale of rocks, fortunes told and even gave away free Surfaris with Smashed Travel. Before we knew it it was six in the morning and the hour of our Madrid departure was nigh, so a melangerie of arms and legs, a veritable pants on orgy, went down in the infamous House on the Hill, as everyone tried to find some available space for a few moments of much needed sleep before it was time for us to push off in the direction of Spain's heart.