From Auckland to the Bay of Islands

So, I've got my meeting with the Nazi...I mean, French Chef today. I have no idea what to expect, though I hope my new accommodation will get sorted out and that I've slept my last night in a hostel (for a while). I took the bus from Auckland yesterday and it was a scenic 4-hour ride over a winding, twisting, ascending, and descending two-lane road. There are no straight roads in this country, it seems.

Paihia is a small, bayside town with more backpackers than residents. Across the bay, you can see Russell, where I'll be heading in a few hours, and though called "more charming" than Paihia, it is also overflowing with about 800 people. It's hard to cultivate my general distaste for people when there are none of them around.

I spent the last week in Auckland hanging out with my dormmates. Two Irishmen, two Englishmen, and a German. You really haven't lived if you haven't seen a couple mid-20's Irishmen dancing (white man's overbite in the extreme) and lip-syncing to Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." Basically, a force of nature. Those Europeans really have an appreciation of the 80's. I noticed this in Prague, too. The 80's and Europe together are unstoppable.

One Englishman was 50lbs overweight, and a junk food addict (surprise), who constantly took time out of his life to suck on lollipops between cigarettes and beer. If I could buy stock in "dead before 50," this would be the company. Let's just say this: he was a nice guy from the English countryside whose malodorous nature was a combination of hair gel, body spray, and lots of sweat. The perfect storm. If anything will help him achieve offspring at some point in his life, it'll be the cure of his allergy to water and soap. The other Englishman is a fair-skinned, quasi-professional windsurfer who has worked in Turkey and Greece and wouldn't be out of place in California. More importantly, he does a mean air-guitar. He faithfully reprised Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in its entirety while playing pool. I think we'll hang out again, if only because we'll be able to compare changes in the lesions on our skin as we compete to see who can get skin cancer first. As for the German, he was looking for the grocery store, so I pointed in the right direction and said, "think France." Wouldn't you know it, he had no problems marching right over. For Vegemite. Everybody needs a little concentrated yeast in their lives to spruce things up. Anyway, in a typical robo-German way, he took 20 minutes to select a DVD to watch. Watching him pare down the choices one-by-one, I almost felt like I was in the Eagle's Nest watching the exact same methodology used to confiscate the Sudetenland. In other words, we're all just products of our environment. I only mentioned the War (both) once or twice to see if I could get any collective guilt out of him. Nothing too over-the-top, of course. Just a "how's Poland?" question and a reference to those "dirty" Bolsheviks (hey, we have something in common). Sadly, it seems the Germans don't believe in guilt. Or emotion. But that's okay: I don't believe in forgiveness, so I guess we're even.

The next blog should be from Russell--oh wait, I'm not sure Russell has the Internet yet. I'm kidding, of course. I think. I hope.

Until next time...