its cold out there

Today kiddies we are going to discuss a few things.
Psychology, a reoccurring theme I know, of myself (a topic on which I consider myself an expert), of Europeans(in a mass generalisation sense) and different tourists. And other stuff that comes into my head as I type.
Typing I notice is physically a lot easier than writing with pen and paper.. as such I tend to write better and more when im typing.. maybe lugging around a laptop is worth it.
For free internet it defiantly is. (better than an euro for 10mins.. ouch!)

So.. I spent a lot of time on busses yesterday. Busses are not specifically my forte.. for some reason I prefer trains, less air con I think. Anyway.. the scenery was spekkie.. and aside from a bung back it was all pretty groovy. (apparently not adjusting my pack to my back was unwise.. I now spend quite a bit of my time either wincing at apparently invisible demons to passers by.. or very flat on my back.. I feel about 60 lol) The reason for the buses (and a 5hr journey, instead of a 1.5hr one) was because of a very inconvenient train driver strike. I am all for better conditions for French Train Drivers.. but not so much when im trying to get somewhere.
So, thinking along, I realised im in France. No Shit… that may seem like a bloody obvious statement.. but sometimes im a little slow on the uptake. The fact that it took a week probably means im processing a little slower than normal.. but I got there in the end. It sort of sunk in that of all the places I have ended up in.. im in France.
This may not seem like an illogical place to end up in to most people.. it’s THE tourist route.. but I have secretly hated France for years. For no particular reason. Up until last week my total of French people met was at total of one. My knowledge of France stretched to Paris, The Champs Ellesays, Mont Blanc, le Tour and one Top Gear episode. And that its vaguely star shaped. I think with nothing other to base a like/dislike on, I went with the very old English view.
So I was somewhat confused as to WHY I came here. I have a friend here, I know a few people who came on exchange here, and other people I know go paragliding here. That’s it. But for some reason it seemed logical.
Im quite glad I came here actually. The foods pretty good, and not break the bank. The people are entertaining at the least (although that comes later) and its very beautiful. And I seem to be able to mostly get around ok without French.
But yes.. I also realised that my view of the world has become curiously insular. I think this has something to do with the events of the last week or so and being alone in a non English speaking country.
It’s a very simple world.
There's me.
There's the rest of the world.
And such is the world divided.
There's my little bubble with English thoughts, music and my little views on the world.
These views are being constantly proved wrong, but still they are mine. I accept that they are, or can be, wrong.. but they are valid, least I reckon.
So the world is either older younger, more or less normal than me. Etc.
So when I get asked little questions like ‘how old are you?’ I get rather stumped, I had to think for some time. I seem to be assuming that I know.. therefore everyone else does too.
Not so.
Its interesting, ‘the psychology of Amelia wandering the world’. Lol..
I think its this insular ness that leads to circular thinking.. very annoying.
I also seem to be emitting a field that puts me at, on average, 3-7 years older than I actually am. That’s possibly more annoying than the circular thinking. Although I don’t think ive got it that bad.. one 17yr old I met had a girl guess his age at 28. That was a bit devastating for him.

I think there is some part of the EU that states every European must do something unbelievably mind bogglingly odd in front of a tourist daily. I quite enjoy this little bylaw. And think it should be encouraged.
Yesterdays was good, taxi drivers in a rank in front of a train station would move up the rank as one taxi was used (you know the general drill). So instead of actually going to all the effort of turning on the ignition and putting the car into gear, one guy got out of his car and pushed it the next 10m to fill the gap. Very fuel efficient.
Actualy yesterdays was two. A whole bunch of teenagers were running around with packs of flour and breaking them on each other. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that for muckup day.
Todays was even odder. I thought id missed my oddity of the day, and was feeling very disappointed when walking back to the hostel I saw a group of people who thought they were hippies sitting in a circle in a park. There was the juggler.. guitar player and two, count them, TWO didgeridoos. I don’t know why. They probably don’t realise exactly how weird that is. They thought they were cool though. (no, they weren’t aboriginal.. nor Australian to boot.)

I met some French Canadians the other night. I was quite excited, I discovered I can actually understand Canadian French a lot easier than French French, I don’t know why, but if they talk slow, or are explaining something I can get it almost no worries. I understood ‘The French Prime minister has broken up with his wife’ and ‘dinner tonight is 3 courses, Salad, some main thing, and dessert, and cheese’. Im on the up and up.

What else? I was eating lunch today.. sitting enjoying the sun and the view. When I had a crow decided that he was going to save me from the effort of eating my lunch myself, I assume by eating it for me.
I did not appreciate this.. and I spent most of lunch in a kind of invisible tug of war with this crow. But it got worse. As I was trying to work out how to turn a lap top, pair of gloves and note book into a deadly projectile weapon to skewer afore mentioned avian creature, a tourist (asian.. what is it with Asians and annoying birds? SeaGulls aren’t cute.. crows attempting to steal my lunch are also not cute.. nor photogenic.) decided to do a little photo shoot with said creature.. which had just developed the gall to jump onto the back rest of the seat.
I was not impressed.. in the interests of international peace I stayed still, seething, waiting for the ego stroking to finish so that I could go back to working out if I was fast enough to grab and strangle the bird just enough to discourage it from lunch napping again.
It did make me wonder about the different types of tourists though, it would be sort of nice to be that enamoured by everything you saw. Very easy to please, and I don’t think that would be a bad thing. Oh.. the bird survived, the war continues.

I then spent the afternoon attempting, futilely, to document Autumn. Autumn here is somewhat of a different one to that at home. Its different when all the trees loose their leaves.. the colours are stunning.. some resemble so strongly the fire in opals. Its cool.. different to evergreens. And I think I got a few ok pics. Not as many as I would have liked.. but the good ones are good.

And now.. European psychology.
This theory is a work in progress.. I don’t think it could actually ever be totally finished without bias.
But obviously Europeans have a very Europe centred view of the world. (This is a gross generalisation, I do know people who know about the IR laws, Pauline Hanson and who aren’t shocked to find that Indonesia has its own language, so this is my perceived average) I had vaguely thought this might be the case, but I don’t think I realised exactly to what extent this is.
I also didn’t realise to what extent our view is Australasia centred.
There were some small tips, like people not having any idea about Australia, not knowing that there was an Indonesian language. I also found it very confusing to find their idea of Asia. We describe Asia culturally, ie. China, Japan, SE Asia, with India in its own category (probably the sub continent), then the middle east.
To them, I think, everything to the east of Turkey is Asia. There are some mountains that denote the border, it involves cutting Russia (hear that Russia is now Asia.. )
Its weird, it never occurred to me to describe it so technically. It also makes it hard to differentiate between the Middle East and Asia, and I do think its important to be able to easily differentiate. There are some huge cultural differences between the Japanese, Mongols and say Malays BUT I don’t think they are quite as big as those between people in the left and right of ‘Asia’.
Either way im obviously biased, and you could pick almost any European out of a crowd and they will emphatically tell you that you are wrong. It does mean that organisations can say they cover Asia when they say go out to Iran and Kazakhstan and that’s it. (this pisses me off a little.. my personal belief is that you ignore asia at your peril.. there are organisations that are ‘world wide’ and hit nowhere near the borders of India let alone Australia or New Zealand)
I think, again as a generalisation, we have a similar understanding of Eastern Europe as the average European has of Asia (ahh.. our Asia..)
Ie. Did you know that there is two countries? Slovenia and Slovakia.. they are different places. I must have known this because I knew that the language of Slovenia is Slovene, but it wasn’t a conscious knowledge. So I can hardly say we are better (although of course we are :P) but just very very different.
But this whole thing actually gets to me a lot. Not just because I am sick of being told that im wrong. (I am wrong in a geographical sense… not in a cultural one.. its like the difference between sex and gender) Also not just because it can appear that Asia doesn’t really count (im sure that’s not how its meant.. but just how it can seem) we after all have 2.5 (technically) of the BRIC countries. Brazil, Russia, India, China, from my understanding, they are the biggest economical developing countries-not the best way of saying it-. Ie. The places multinationals need to have a finger in to satisfy shareholders. Huge spenders.
It was because I have met a notable number of people who don’t know about the Bali Bombings. And they didn’t care, and perhaps its this indifference. (this mainly arose in Portugal, as such it could be a cultural thing, or just individual and as such generalising is rather incriminating for many innocent people)
Our school was affected by the bombings, and since then I have seen lectures by the AFP (Australian Federal Police) about the whole thing, including pictures of the Torso of one of the bombers.
And the thought that people could just not give a shit, its very emotive.
Perhaps if it hadn’t affected our school, if it hadn’t hit Australia so hard, if it hadn’t been the beginning of more hits on Bali. Perhaps then I wouldn’t care, which I think shows how hard it is to shake something once it becomes ‘personal’. I think also travelling makes it a bit realer, that there were attacks planned for the airport I used in Germany, for Heathrow (which I have used 3 times to date).
And im sure that there are similar horrible things that I am similarly unaware of, thus making me rather hypocritical, which I am well aware of.
But it doesn’t change how simple a thing, area definition, can create such a divide. Lol so to speak. Its not the thing you would have expected.

On the good news front, Canadians use toasters, they also cannot understand the lack of them in Europe.
I found a wifi spot.. on wonderful French person was so kind as to not lock his network.
I believe two things should be permanently free, Parking and Internet. Currently Parking isn’t quite at the top of my list, possibly because I don’t currently have a car.

That reminds me slightly, just, of a radio play I grew up listening to.
I blame this particular Radio Play for my tendency to hit things against tables to make them work, and my distrust of the media.
There is a character, Nikola Tesla, who runs the Digital Circus, whose big blessing is ‘free electricity for everyone’ .. I think we need something similar for Internet.
I think ‘Ruby’ has a certain responsibility for my growing up. Probably not the most typical hero to have as a kid. She was a Galactic Gumshoe (or bounty hunter) she sounds like shes simultaneously stoned, distracted, sexy and about to attack something. Its awesome.. Her job (in the play) is to work out who is manipulating reality through the media. I think that’s just as relevant now.
After all we call Big Brother reality TV.. and I cant think of anyone for whom that life is reality. Perhaps if we believe Big Brother actually is reality, reality will become Big Brother. What a horribly scary thought.

And on that note I will leave you.. perhaps next time ill think of something more interesting to discuss.


‘to know your enemy is to enter combat and appear to be no threat by losing, then pass on the information to others.’