Chaadtravels's Blog

Konichiwhat!

chaadtravels — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:00:58 +0000

So, six days ago I embarked on the second portion of my journey, the hunt for the most elite of urban kickers in Niseko, Japan. Well, not necessarily for an urban booter, but for multiple types of exciting terrain, great snow, hiking and outdoor fun as well as Japanese city craziness. Originally my plan was to return to Europe and explore more of the eastern portion and Scandinavia, but when Paul and Amy planted the seed in my head of amazing snow and the most rippingest of pals, I had to go. They arrived just under a week prior to my arrival, and had prepped my room with a very special local delicacy; white liquor godo. For those of you who have never experienced it, what we’re talking about here is essentially lower percentage vodka (20-25%) sold to you in either the blue (20%) or red (25%) variety. Seen as a novelty item by some, Paul, Amy and I take this product very seriously. My first day on “the slopes” was fantastic, as we had a powder filled day at Moiwa. This awesome little resort had cornices everywhere to launch off, and really great spaced out Japanese trees to crank aggressive euro inspired turns. The day featured two of my soon to be great pals Anders and Tobias, Swedes that have recently been deemed traitors by the Swedish government and have relocated to the Norwegian city of Oslo. Though the government may not trust these men, I have complete faith in their life choices as well as facial hair grooming. The next couple days were filled with many new people entering my life… oh yeah, by the way I’m living in a home of 26 people!! Primarily Aussies, with 6 Japanese, us 3 Canadians, 2 Swedes and a Kiwi. There’s a lot of racist in the house, especially between the Aussies and Canadians, but I think it’s something that we can work through long term. There’s been a couple pellet gun incidents, but other than that we’ve kept it pretty clean. Honestly though, this house is amazing. It’s pretty wild to live with this many people and have so many characters in one place. The comedic efforts never seem to stop, and with this many people there’s always someone to contribute and ensure that lulls never really occur. Unfortunately the Swedes leave tonight, but we’ve made sure to give them a proper send off. Over the past 72 hours Paul, Amy, Anders, myself and a few other contributors have built an epic snow cave that is only accessible from the side door of the house. It has a cavern in the middle large enough to comfortably hang out, and features benches with carpeted seats, a snowboard table and white liquor godo. We will be charging 1,000 yen to enter and will likely fund our entire trip via this project. Really though, it may not actually be a revenue stream, but it’s gonna make for one hell of a party. Aside from the house, the great turns and fun parties, the shopping experience has been off the hook. Paul, Amy and I have very similar shopping styles here, “if it’s funny, buy it”. With that approach we’ve had some fun culinary experiences, and found some truly unique alcoholic products. Paul could recently be found drinking rum that came from what looked to be a small syrup container with pictures of orange bunnies holding birthday cakes, complete with lit candles. Ironically, in large part due to the label art, this was absolutely something worth celebrating. The following days should be filled with good snow, and nice times with my new pals. Paul is also in the process of finding a Delica to buy, drive around the country and ship back to Canada. This will result in us seeing some amazing things that we never would have been able to, saving shit loads of money sleeping in a van, and basically the most fun ever. Glad to see all of you kids at home are having great turns, that snow was certainly due. Things are great here, and I’ll continue to keep you posted Love Chaad.

Turkish Delight (not in the gelatinous chocolate covered form)

chaadtravels — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:03:09 +0000

When we last spoke we had been spending some nice relaxed days in Sofia, Bulgaria. Well, shortly after our last bit of dialogue things changed, and for the best. We had had aspirations of a big party night, and this finally materialized on a fine Bulgarian Saturday eve. After exploring the main local strip we (a hostel crew of 8) caught several taxis to the university area of the city. The first club was fairly bumpin, but they weren’t playing any Crash Test Dummies, so we opted to find another beer consumption station. After talking with a local, we followed him to what sounded like a fairly bitchin place for live tunes. Bitchin was right!! After several more beverages and music oriented discussions, the local guy we had come in with actually approached the band and proposed that I play drums with them on a track. They bought in immediately, and I joined them on stage very apprehensive of exactly what I would be playing with them. They selected “knockin’ on heaven’s door”, and I chimed in with a slightly revised drum line featuring multiple cow bell hits and waaaaaay too much double kick pedal. Not really, but imagine! It was really awesome though, and Derek got the call on the next song as well. Man things sure fall into place sometimes for a drummer in need… Shortly after Derek and I got onto our hellish night train and made a break for Istanbul. What a shit show. We paid for tickets, then had to pay extra once we got onto the train to pay for our lay down beds. Oh, and we could only pay in euros… wicked. Fast forward approximately an hour later, a Swiss guy playing the role of translator, and our Serbian, Bulgarian and Canadian money being exchanged for Euros, and things were totally smooth. Our 2am border cross also meant us (as Canadians) paying over twice as much as a traveller from any other country for our Visa. BRUUUTAL. Oh well, Istanbul is worth it. Istanbul is a shock. People approach you here constantly claiming that they’re your friends, but you have absolutely no prior relationship. Like I’m talking nothing here, not ICQ, not Friendster, not Facebook, they’re actually just using it as a ploy to sell you stuff. Can you belive it? Here I thought I was going to leave with such an extensive network of people that cared about me, but now I just find myself with a backpack full of ceramic horses, gyroscopes and those plastic spider things that can descend the walls of your house in under minutes! Talk about throwing your budget out the window! The Bazaars here are pretty wild, spices, teas, Turkish delight, kittens… everything a common Dave Leroux could ever want. All the RMSDL’s here are so friendly, tons of them, all homeless, but happy to lap up a bowl of milk, or any treats that any size of feline could ever wish for. Derek has been taking some pretty good pictures of people having their pictures taken, and I’ve had some nice times haggling with Bazaar shop keeps. My plans in the coming days are to take things that I no longer need and try to sell them to assorted Bazaar vendors in the exact same manner that they approach me. I’ll keep you posted.

Mostly just Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

chaadtravels — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:22:19 +0000

Throughout our trip there has been multiple themes, but none better than the local news playing on our many bus trips. As with many news interruptions on the radio they make sure to jazz them up with catchy sounds and attention grabbing sequences of headlines and yet more sounds. The thing with these news casts is that they’ve essentially sampled the sound that would happen in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater when your character would do a secret move and intermittently placed this noise in between what I can imagine is every change of topic. In Serbia this was particularly pleasing, as multiple hours into a bus ride you would have fairly entertaining Boratesque music interrupted by what sounded like a guy mashing his Playstation controller mixed with unintelligible rapid speech. It’s seriously amazing, I’ll try to get a video of it just to verify that I’m not just ranting out of my ass here. On a more exploratory note, Sarajevo was pretty radical. The devastation and first hand testimony didn’t come close to that of Mostar, but it was still a great experience. We once again went on an a tour, but this one was considerably shorter and not quite as impactful. We explored the tunnel that the Sarajevans used to escape the city during their time under siege in the 90′s. The city was comprised of way too many cemetaries, with an over abundance of them showing lives cut short in the mid 90′s. We had a modest Halloween here and hit up some local pubs, viewing some modest local Halloween apparel and having a solid time. We then ventured on to Nis, Serbia, not exactly a must see, but a spot to break up a heinous 15 hour journey. Nis was a nice surprise though, featuring an exceptionally clean hostel, amazing food and an overall clean and welcoming city. We found a restaurant from a local that was located in an alley that was off the culinary chain. My dish (which I indulged in back to back nights) featured FOUR types of chicken (chicken breast cooked to perfection, chicken pieces wrapped in bacon, chicken breaded with sesame seeds and chicken cordon bleu with mushrooms). That meal and 2 beers, $13… thank you very much. This ain’t no Sizzler guys, seriously, visit Slovenia and Serbia just for the sake of your palate’s enjoyment. We’re now in Sofia, Bulgaria having some mellow days and getting psyched for Istanbul. We’ll be taking off likely tomorrow, and we’re as the Australian’s would say “sick-as car park boardie heaps” to be going. On a final note, what’s up with showers where you have to hold the shower head whilst cleaning ones bod? Have you ever realized how much the cleanliness of armpits suffer? In order to clean your arm pit properly you basically have to chicken wing your non shower head holding arm and feebly clean. Get a life, mount your shower heads.

I knew I packed shorts for a reason…

chaadtravels — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:35:40 +0000

It’s true, we finally got 20 degree weather. Nearly three weeks ago I made the bright decision to pack 2 pair of boardshorts, 2 pair of walkshorts and 2 tanktops. Recently there was a point when I wore my one pair of jeans for 2 weeks consecutively. Hindsight I tell ya, HINDSIGHT!! So, Dubrovnik, beautiful, but damn expensive and touristfest2000. The old town was great to spend time in, but every meal was in excess of $10 (far from nearly gratis). One day Derek and I found a slightly sketch seeming local dude and rented his modest yacht for the day. Derek paddled our asses over to Lokrum (an island just off the coast), and we had great aquatic times together. Derek is sooooo ripped now, Sylvie is one lucky lady. We stayed in a room in the home of the sweetest local family. They had a cute little girl with pudgy cheeks, and were approximately 420% more friendly than the rest of the Croats we dealt with. A combination of the mediocre weather and our not-so-friendly experiences with people in the Croatian service industry made us a tad excited to head on to Bosnia Herzegovina. We headed to Mostar and spent 4 days adventuring and seeing what truly transpired in the early 90s. The devastation these people went through was horrific, and to see the damage first hand was a pretty humbling experience. We had the best guide ever, honestly, he was a machine. Bata was his name, and he took us on a 13 hour tour of a life time. We went to the tops of mountains, swam underneath waterfalls, went to a mosque positioned amazingly underneath an overhanging cliff at the opening of an underground river more than 90km in length and visited multiple communities. This man was an overflowing source of information whether historic or geographical. His passion was unrivaled by any guide I’ve ever had, and in large part due to him, our Mostar experience was great. These people have been through so much, and to see how vibrant and passionate they are to share their culture with you is a great experience. We’re now onto Sarajevo, and likely heading into Bulgaria shortly. Derek now has a jacket, and after my recent flirting with non-pant wearing, I’m back to my denim. Not the full tuxedo, just the pants. Sarajevsko beer costs $2.80 for 2 litres of beer. Burek (a local delicacy of thin shelled pastry filled with beef, cheese, potato or spinach) costs $2-$4 to fill up your tummy. VW golfs (white or red, and late 80′s/early 90′s models) dominate these roads. I don’t mind this place one bit!

Canadian Tuxedos and Loyal Canines

chaadtravels — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:43:26 +0000

Spending nearly a week in Split, Croatia just as spending that amount of time in any city your vacationing in can in time show you funny little entertaining traits. Split was no exception to this, hence my bizarre title. Being from Canada, I take pride in denim, and actually have multiple friends in a street gang that prides themselves on their all denim outfits. Though this group lacks sleeves, the Split contingent more than made up for them. Middle aged males, many of them, rocking denim soooooo hard. Ironically enough I’ve been kicking myself for only bringing one pair of jeans on this trip. Split was a beautiful place to spend the better part of a week. It featured a beautiful prominade, many buck o slice pizza places, great goulash, cheap gelato, and loooooots of German Shepherds. One day it was like 18 degrees and sunny, and Derek took off his shirt and went swimming. This was a personal highlight thus far, as I’ve been waiting to see what kind of goods Derek was rocking underneath his modest t-shirts. Speaking of beach/water, we did an awesome little trip to the island of Brac as well, automobile styles! That’s right, some poor Croatians were silly enough to rent us a vehicle… big mistake. We took that thing off so many booters it was ridiculous. No, not really, but Derek did handle those tight mountain roads like a highly skilled F1 racer, even though we were in a low end French automobile (see Dave Leroux for car make details). We even visited the beautiful beach of Zlatni Rat, in 15 degree weather. Unfazed by the heinous weather, Rob Kablins stripped down to his green boardshorts and took himself a dip. In the mean time, Dave Leroux worked on his tan and Derek and I networked. Today we left Split, and it pissed like I haven’t seen in months. Like Vancouver rain, except you’re not in your car and you don’t have an umbrella and Derek’s coat got left on a train from Vienna and he’s wearing a plaid Crew jacket. Understand?? It was awesome. So, Dave and Rob left us this morning, and we’re now back to just the two of us. Things just won’t be the same without Dave’s vertigo and Rob’s love of drinking Zima. Man those guys know how to party. We’re now in Dubrovnik, and this place rules sooooo hard. The old town is made of stone and surrounded by stone walls nearly 100 feet tall. If you google pictures you will be impressed and give me a high five. Love you guys!

Rijeka-Krk-Split

chaadtravels — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:59:09 +0000

Oct 16 / 18 Sometimes when youre moving along your route its best to just skip the stuff you didnt research and go straight to the things that you know will be great. This was the case with our entry to Croatia. Facing a rather daunting bus or train ride ahead, we elected to stay in the industrial northern Croatian town or Rijeka. This town can be quoted in multiple travel books as, ¨not on anyones must see list¨. We probably should have taken that hint. We chose to stay in the bustling tourist island of Krk instead of getting a job in the port and being grizzled men. However, with the money we spent getting to Krk and staying in their shit hostel and considering the opportunity cost of missing out on sorting fish in the harbour we most definitely got served. My neck also seized up real good somehow due to a pillow or sleeping style malfunction, rendering me really bummed. Even now I’m still holding my neck weirdly and am in constant discomfort… oh the joys of my neck and back of late. To get to Split we chose to take the night train, an awesome decision. After a day of casual beers we ended up filling the 2 hour gap in the middle of our 11 hour train ride with some serious partying with the locals in a city of 10,000. Our Croatian pals Animal and Shikke took us in and gave us a treatment fit for Brian Burke. Not only did they put our bags in a separate storage room, but they fed us drinks and kept track of time to ensure that we would make our train. Such rad guys, party though, wow. We had good talks about Croatian/Slovenian relations and they explained their lives in a nutshell to us. Pretty sad to hear much of it, but really great to have insight into these peoples lives. We somehow made it back onto our train, partied a bit more and passed out. The next thing we heard was SPLLIIITTTTTTTT. A fifty five year old man and a fifty year old woman proceeded to battle for our business, a business that would land us sleeping in their homes. This sucks at any time, but at six am its the worst. They stalked us for about an hour as we drank coffee, just sitting outside the building waiting. We chose neither and are now in a hostel, its great to not be around them whatsoever. Split is great, the promenade has light coloured tile and has a beautiful bay in front of it. I think Im going to enjoy this place, but this day has lost the battle of a mild hangover. Dave is watching Ellen on the couch, so Im gonna go shake him from his trance. Love youss guyssss!! Chaad.

Ljubljana is College

chaadtravels — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:42:27 +0000

Oct 14-15I guess we should have guessed that we would run into some fun when a city of 250,000 is comprised of 54,000 college students. We ended up having a fairly riproaring night here in the Slovenian capital after following some directions from our friendly hostel worker. We found a quite large bar around midnight and proceeded to dance in provocative nature with each other for the following four hours. Rob took part in a beer comsumption competition with two locals and could also be seen removing my shirt and throwing it across the bar. Unfortunately there was no cages to dance in, but the small wooden boxes proved as decent platforms. At 4am we then followed some local kid who promised us fantastic party time, so we made the obvious choice and followed him for 45 minutes through residential areas. Then, right at our moment of ultimate skepticism, a massive three story college party appeared. These kids are ridiculous and obviously never listen to their parents’ curfews. Dave Leroux wasn’t listening to his parents’ curfews either, and he stayed out til 6am with us and even met the potential future Mrs. Leroux. Well, maybe not, but I think he might have just gotten her ICQ# if you know what I mean! After the party ended we slept til noon and hired some fine single speed bicycles. Ripped around majority of the city and saw fantastic sites. We also became elitists at doing skids on our bikes. Ljubljana had a great commercial social area built around the river that cuts through town. This results in delightful spots to share beverages and laugh with friends. I would recommend it to anyone. Well, we’re gonna go find Dave and Rob, see you in a couple days!!

And I Have Begun!

chaadtravels — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:22:53 +0000

Yeah, yeah… I know, I should have done this when I began my journey 11 days ago. Please forgive me, I promise Ill make it worth while with fun tidbits of joy that will enrich your life. Sorry for the frequent grammatical botches, Ill be on many computers that have some seriously funky stuff goin on. This current one per say has the y where the z usually is, its gonna be a really fun entry!

Oct 4 – 10
So, London was great. I was there from the 4th until the 10th. It was great to see my sweet lady and to experience her new roomies and place. They live near the Clapham Common stop in South Lambeth in a really sweet area in a newly renovated home. It was great to see the LSE campus, drink Grolsh, take the tube and begin my life of being a tourist. My lady has started a really nice little life in London and Im excited to be experiencing a bunch of it over the next 7 months. SO, from London I flew to Klagenfurt, Austria on the 10th… oh boy what a morning that was. I made the immensely intelligent decision of getting severely partied the night before, and was forced to deal with the multiple tube transfers and a 1.5 hour bus ride out to Stansted airport in a state that Ive never seen. I felt so poorly that I needed to choose a specific spot to focus on, or my previous meals threatened to pay a visit. It was seriously terrifying. I finally start to feel better in the airport, and I realize that my gate closes in 5 minutes. Initiate the most turbo security check, and then an all out sprint for the next 8 minutes. I arrived at my gate to see approximately fifty people, just relaxing leisurely waiting to board. Several girls laughed at me from the lineup and I calmly added my sweatmess to the queue. From there on things went quite smoothly. Got into Klagenfurt, roamed for a while, found a hostel and settled in. Met the raddest 65 year old Italian lady and ended up speaking Spanish with her for three hours. She invited me back to her dorm room where I then ate birthday cake and celebrated her granddaughters birthday. It was hilarious, four people who spoke Spanish, the remainder only Italian. Somehow we all communicated, it was pure gold. The Grandma was suuuuuuper vulgar and was embarrassing the granddaughter the whole time. I told them my mom made amazing carbonara… they didnt believe me.

Oct 11
Train to Lake Bled. Ok, and by train I mean three trains with heinous waiting periods in the middle. Such shit. Went through Villach, Austria and Jeserice (kinda sketchy small Slovenian town) and finally got in around 7. Did an awesome half hour night walk through dark streets, and found my sweet Derek Heathcliffe at our radical hostel. Went out for some fine meats and loved life.

Oct 12 – 13
Lake Bled is unbelievable. It is completely stunning and has ridiculous hiking completely surrounding the city. Vintgar gorge, the park was closed but like the true bad asses we are, we disregarded that. The trek took us on amazing skinny wooden paths raised between 8 and 30 feet off the water. At one point a massive tree ha d smashed an 80 foot section and we were forced to be men and navigate the debris below. It was a time of pride for both Derek and myself. That day was likely 4 hours of hiking, and it felt awesome. Derek has a nice red beard and I enjoy the time we share together. That night we were delighted to see the friendly faces of Dave Leroux and Rob Kozlowski. Robs face had sweat on it and Dave looked quite pale. We spent the next day adventuring around Bohinj and doing the first portion of the trek to Mt Triglav. I love the fact that Derek and I were considering trying to summit that mountain, we were out to friggin lunch. Its such a menacing environment, and snow has already hit suuuuuuper hard. Our hike was wild, and about 1,500 metres vertical. The top section was at times very goatpathesque and my fear of heights was a serious factor. The top even had small snow flakes falling on us, which increased my anxiety ten fold. The valley below was unbelievable, infact, you should use the internet and look it up (Bohinj Valley). We also went to Vogel and took the tram up to the ski hill. It was absurdly steep and the view was fantastic. Derek wasnt exactly exuding confidence in the Slovenian architects, but I held him and he remained calm. We enjoyed Bled immensely, but that time had to end and Ljubljana was next in our plans. Dave spoke of party and beer multiple times and we deemed the Slovenian capital the best place to nurture him. Dave Leroux has the softest hands of anyone. I really hope that he uses his network of other retired movie stars to get him a hand modeling gig. See you in a couple days!!! Pictures to come as well…