A Hunchback, a Mona Lisa and the Return Of The Lovely Voice

So, we went to Paris.

It's a tricky one to write about, as while it was quite long (10 days), it was also a very different vibe. Dara's girlfriend, Anna, came to visit - so he's been off holidaying with her. Thus, it's just been Finbar and I. Lovely to have space in the van, and not-knowing-anyone gave us opportunity for some time to ourselves, and even to some quiet-nights-in-watching-tv-shows, which was nice for a change. Of course, being Paris, an awful lot of my time was spent finally doing the touristy things I've never done, due to being drunk the last time I was here (3 years ago - time really does fly..). As those would be boring to write about, I'll just post photos with snappy captions; for your enjoyment. Hey - you're the one reading this. You can't really be picky. Is it weird that I'm talking to you? In the next 48 hours, you will meet someone new, or something will happen to you that will have a serious effect on your life. However, if you don't send this message to 5 of your friends - your dog will die. No, no matter that you don't have a dog. It's a metaphorical dog. Like the "Death" tarot card. You know - silly..

Shut up David.

Here is David at the Opera house. David is wearing a scarf because his throat was sore. Not because he's a hipster. That's a different issue.

Here is the Mona Lisa. While I made sure to barge my way through all the Chinese people (as I am taller) to the front to see it properly, I thought it was more interesting to watch all the people...taking photos....of what surely must be the most photographed painting in the world....maybe they don't have the internet in China yet. That's actually kind of true in a way, isn't it...

This is the view from the top of Notre Dam cathedral. I went to a mass service there, too. Mum'd be proud. It was pretty unimpressive - about 30 attendants and it was in French (I was hoping for Latin). Made me kind of pity the institution - for all the terribleness of the Catholic church, it is kind of mellowing to see something so great and powerful reduced to a tourist attraction..the gargoyles and whatnot were pretty damn cool, though.

They say the real gems of Paris are found just by walking the streets, by day or night. We found this to be true, certainly. Though perhaps for different reasons than others. For example, this particular carpark we're parked in seems to have occasional prostitutional campervans, and extreme-late-night-Petanque-players-of-all-descriptions)...oh, sidenote - we're parked for free about an hour's walk from the city center, or 10 minutes on a metro...about the same distance as most of the hostels...this campervan lark even works in the big cities so far). Here is a Michael Jackson shop.

Here is an Indian Music Shop. In the Indian district of Paris - where we were genuinely the only white people on the street. Kind of fun. I am Midnight's Children.

Sometimes it strikes me as strange that most of my photos contain a Finbar. It's hard to do selfies with attractions, though. More selfies. Both of the above scenes made us think of our friend Shrinky. We miss Shrinky. Ironically, there's no way in hell he reads this. Maybe someone can pass on the message.

What else. Ah yes, the busking. Busking in Paris is notoriously difficult. Mostly because it's illegal. Yet full of buskers. It's strange though - the police don't arrest you or anything. They simply move you on, with a nice friendly sort of warning, so you don't get in trouble.. it's just a little risky if you keep getting caught by the same officers in the same spot. Which is annoying, as Paris is huge, so I only knew of a few spots. Today was a funny one though - a policeman actually said "We don't mind it at all, but unfortunately it's forbidden". Strange. But I did okay - enough to get by anyway without hitting up the savings. Met two really nice travelling buskers too - one who was permanently on the road for what must have been 10 or 20 years from the sounds of it. He'd been busking through Asia and everything, said it's completely doable. Cool to know! It's a bit nervewracking though - never knowing how long you can busk for, and watching out for police all the time. You feel like a drug dealer or something. But at the same time there's no malice, I've even had them clearly avoid me so that they wouldn't have to stop me. Today I actually followed two policemen at a safe distance, so that I knew when they'd walked past my spot - to guarantee me the most time before they walked past again. But yeah, even though the money per hour is as good if not better than many other places, I'd rather do 4 hours with no hassle in Toulouse then a stressful 2 in Paris.

Ever the problem with writing a blog intermittently is the lack of detail. So for my last paragraph I'll just write about today, I guess..I do hope you're still reading. Thanks for your support. No, really..sometimes it's really hard not to sound sarcastic. I'm a nice guy. See? Anyway. Today I went to meet Cristina, the aforementioned lovely-voice girl from Paris with whom I was to do a duet. We only had a few hours, so she showed me to a good thrift shop, as I'd hoped to buy some new threads whilst in the fashion capital. Or old threads, I guess. I realised something today though - I can't shop with anyone else there. I honestly didn't know that until today. I mean she wasn't in a rush at all, tonnes of cool clothes and dirt cheap..I had money from busking...but I couldn't do it. Gave up after 5 minutes. And we're leaving tomorrow so I can't go back. Oh well. We went to write a song and record it with the time left. It was fun - I've never really done anything like that before. We had a harmony and everything. I mean it could be far better, but for only a few hours it was good I think! I'll post it up here when I get a copy sure. That girl's destined for great things if she tries. And then having done a duet with her, I can a reality TV show contestant. Dream big. Oh, and she brought me a little bottle of Tsuica from Romania (she was away, hence us only having one day) - the Romanian version of Poitin. We've had it before, actually, 5 years ago, on our last big excursion. Dangerous. Can't wait.

I was quite sad leaving today though. It's easy to forget the farewells when one thinks of travelling. Great to meet new people every day, but you also have to say goodbye too soon. 

Tomorrow, Lille. Finbar and I took the night off tonight, as the next few weeks are gonna be full of parties (electro club in Lille, then Caoife and Sonny come to visit, then Amsterdam, then Berlin. Recipe for...success?). 

And by night off, I mean, kebab.

And by kebab, I mean kebab followed by a 12 pack of Snickers icecreams.

And by kebab and a 12 pack of Snickers icecreams, I mean we ate them all. All of them.

Is that chocolate around our faces? No, silly. That's your jealousy. Don't you even dare try and judge us. You know you'd do the same thing if you thought no-one was looking. We just photograph it. Next level. Das Collective. We're living your dreams.

But everybody knows, that a broken heart, is blind..

That's right, it's a lyric. I'm using lyrics for my blog titles now. I used to do that on an old blog when I was like 16. It's still cool. And the song is on right now in the van, in fairness. Dara's beside me wearing my Lidl hat (which at this stage, is just the Lidl hat. Slutty hat.); we have 6 hours on the road tonight to Beauvais (North of Paris, a Ryanair city) to collect Anna tomorrow. So we're splitting the drive and blaring the Black Keys on the soundsystem. Rock and roll.

Okay, so where was I...ah yes, Lyon.

We arrived on Tuesday afternoon. I woke up shortly after and was quite confused, as I was in a different city but there didn't seem to be anyone in the van. I resolved to take a walk when Finbar appeared from behind his curtain - turned out they were just asleep also. We sleep a lot. Don't you dare judge us. They had managed to find a nice parking spot next to the park; that is to say next to running water and toilets. The longer we do this the more our goals change - at first we used to look for campsites, now they don't even come up on our radar. Even if we can stay for free by performing we'd much rather spend that time busking, and campsites are generally much further away from the city than...well....parking in the city...
I went out to check out the scenery and quickly discovered that the park doubled as a free zoo. It was a strange discovery to make - half asleep walking through a park only to realise you're standing next to a giraffe. Hello giraffe. I went back and told the guys of my findings and we spent the evening zooing it up. My voice was still missing in the realms of the stupid drunk David so I figured I'd spend the next day doing all the touristy stuff.
But nope. Seems Lyon is dead at the moment. Everyone's away on holiday. This appears quite normal to the French people, but to me it just seems ridiculous. How can a city go on holiday? I mean it's not a small city or anything. It's one of the biggest cities in France - the biggest we've been in so far. But I mean, everywhere was closed. Every art exhibition, every cool cafe. Everything.
So I'm going to skip to Friday. That's not to say we didn't do anything on Wednesday or Thursday. There was the Twilight movie night in the van. Only one left to see now. Don't tell me the end. Dumbledore lives. Finbar and I did some busking and it went okay - not as well as other cities, but easily better than I need....relativities a funny one - once you're on 30 an hour it's hard to go back to 15-20, even though that's easily enough to get by when you have absolutely no expenses. But yeah. Friday. Oh, Lyon has loads of really pretty and strange things though, here are some photos. And of us on a rowing boat.

Dara and I decided it was time we went back to our roots of a few months ago, and brought all our gear into town for an amped-up-with-drum busk. We set up on the main street and were just about to start when the police came along and moved us. It was pretty annoying, as we were definitely going to do well -I'd seen other less-good amped acts making a killing the day before. They said we could play in the nearby square, so even though the square was completely empty, we said we'd treat it as a practice session anyway. It was fun, we did fairly well and got 2 beers brought to us from a bar. Again with the relativity - it can be hard to remember it's meant to just be fun, especially when you're trying to take music quite seriously, as I've decided to lately...
We brought the gear back to the van and thought we'd have another movie night. I went for a walk and saw that there were tonnes of people drinking by the river. I rallied the troops and within the hour we were leaving the van again with bottles of rum in hand. I brought my guitar - we figured by singing a few songs we might be able to make some friends. Yes it's calculated. Yes we've done it before. Yes Paris girls, that's what we did in La Rochelle too. Stop with all the judging. Whatever.
After picking a spot I started doing a few pop songs and it didn't take long before we had a little group. We're a good team - I play the songs while Finbar and Dara look for openings/Dara asks people for a lighter. It's a funny skill to learn, but definitely a very useful one when travelling. What happened next was a little strange - some people we weren't even talking to near us got up to leave, and for some reason we started talking to them. It's hard to describe, but within like 30 seconds we all knew we'd end up friends. One of the girls said we'd be welcome to stay at their Geneva apartment so long as I play them music. They were all Swiss, and all really cool. I dunno if we've ever moulded so quickly and so well with another group before. I mean within 5 minutes we were having such a good night. We went to a nightclub, which was our first since leaving Galway. We didn't really know we'd missed them - given that we never even go to them in Ireland anyway. But it was amazing. 8 euro in but you got a 7.50 cocktail in there and it got pretty drunk pretty fast. Drunk and sweaty. We thought it was last orders at one point so we got two beers and a shot each.

Turns out it wasn't last orders at all, so I bought a round of 9 cocktails after. Goodbye money. Easy come, easy go, right? Definitely worth it. After much sweaty dancing and nearly getting kicked out a good five times for just about everything and anything, we went back to the Swiss' apartment, which was pretty cool, a really big loft they had rented for a few days. Dara has some photos, so I'm sure you'll see them. Me though, I was absolutely hammered. After about an hour I got the patented Drunken-David-Homing-Pigeon instinct, and left. Stupid David. I got home eventually, but it took me ages, while the lads slept on comfy beds and got lovely showers the next day. Someday I'll figure out how to overcome that. Someday. We're definitely going to try and meet that group again, either in their Winter cabin in the alps, or they might visit us in Berlin. I hope so, anyway - I can see some amazing fun to be had. Oh, did I mention we're actually moving to Berlin now? If we can get an apartment. Gonna stay there from the end of September 'til we fly home at Christmas. It'll get too cold to live in the camper in October, so it's either that or move seriously South, which we'd rather save for next year. And we love Berlin. So we're pretty excited about that.
The next morning/actually-late-afternoon, while I was battling with the hangover monsters in my bed, Finbar drove us out to Vichy to visit his uncle. It's a nice place. Quiet, and everyone's clearly quite rich. We had a few practical things to do, so we didn't get to busk or even see much of it. We spent last night drinking quiet beers in the local bar with Finbar's uncle, then today we did our chores - clothes, dishes and grocery shopping. Good to get a little break though - I can see the next 10 days being quite busy; looks like there'll be about 7 of us Irish hanging around. Can't wait to see Anto especially. Plus I have to do my duet. I haven't heard back from her about the lyrics actually. Keep up, Cristina. Anyway, that's all for now I think. Bonjourno ;)

An Amazing City and an Amazing House

Haven't updated this in nearly a week. There's an annoying irony with blogging while travelling - whenever you have lots to write about, you generally don't have enough time to write about it. 

Let's see..

The  next day I went busking again - this time in the hope of making lots of money so as to do all the touristy things/relax around in Cafes drinking coffee. Time for a proper French holiday. It went well - got 70 euro in total that day and only stopped because of rain. A guy came up to chat who was half Irish and half Swedish. Joachim was his name. We didn't speak much as he was in a rush but we arranged to get a coffee the next day. This doesn't sound very interesting does it. But you're wrong. This character will appear again at a later paragraph. The next one, probably. I'm introducing a character you see. Building personality. Being an author. Winning the Pulitzer prize. Winning the Booker prize as I'd actually prefer that to the Pulitzer. All the fame. All the girls. 

It was a great day actually, come to think of it. In between busking sessions I went to the natural history museum, which was nice but none of the information was in English. Kinda had to come up with my own explanations for the strange African tribal masks. They were big into theatre, you see. Thriving drama scene. Bit pretentious. Also sat for an hour drinking a coffee on my own in a busy Toulouse cafe. This was on my list of things to do. It was nice, not as exciting as I'd imagined it though. It always looks more fun in the movies. Or when Tom Waits does it.

So on Thursday I went to meet Joachim after a little busking. He showed me a few of the sights and we got a beer. Finbar joined and we spent the day walking around what felt like the entire city of Toulouse. It's so much better to have a local guide. We saw all the bridges, a few churches, loads of gardens. Even Japanese gardens.

We failed miserably to find any restaurant open before 7 so settled on a giant Subway. Don't judge us. I paid with a voucher someone gave me busking - 8 euro food voucher, but apparently people pay 4 euro for them; one of these employee discount things. Don't believe me? ...I'm sure you do believe me, but that's a good way to introduce a photo. Author. Here's Joachim holding said food voucher.

We decided we should visit the Irish bar, as apparently this one is actually really good. Went in and ordered a Guinness. It wasn't great but we figured we'd have one or two drinks anyway, it felt like a good atmosphere, bad Guinness aside. A few minutes later I thought I recognised a bartender. He looked just like Chris Hurley's brother. One of our best friends from home....and it kinda made sense - I knew Alex was living in France. I just had no idea where. I thought about it but figured it would be kinda ridiculous; very unlikely that he's a bartender, let alone a bartender in Toulouse, working tonight.....but fuck it, I asked one of the girls working, and lo and behold it was him. Couldn't believe it.

We ended up drinking a load of Guinness and getting hammered with Alex. Luckily he lives right in town so we all went and passed out in his flat. When I told him I was busking around France he said he'd love to come out and try it, so we resolved to play together the next day. We were pretty damn hungover so it didn't go as well as it could have, but he's got a great voice so it was great for him to get out and build up some confidence. Hopefully he'll keep it up now that I'm gone. 

Took it easy that night with the hangover and all - we decided to move the van closer to the city. The hippy festival take-down had finished so there were no more free showers to steal, and all the vans having left the car park meant it probably wasn't too safe. Also had a chat with the manager of the same Irish bar and they said they'd give me a meal and free booze if I played there the next night. Not as good as a paid gig, but fuck it - 4 pints and a meal in France is worth about 40 euro anyway (6e for a Guinness). 

The next day I went busking one last time. Had to finish early as I could feel my voice going and throat getting sore and knew I'd have to play again that night. Two girls had been watching/videoing me play earlier and came up when I finished. They had just arrived in Toulouse on holiday (from northern France, Lille), and asked me would I like to get a beer. Being finished anyway I thought it'd be fun so I agreed. We met Finbar on the road and invited him along too. It was a nice day, just drinking beers and chatting beside the river (they have toilets beside the river in Toulouse, how very thoughtful!). The girls brought us for French macarons as we'd never tried them - very tasty! 

Dara and Alex showed up around then too, but I had to head off to play in the Irish bar shortly after. I was pretty tipsy if I'm honest - but I don't think anyone noticed. It's funny, in Galway if I even had one drink I'd hear the difference but I practice singing so much now I don't think it's a big deal. Not a good habit, mind, but nice to know! I played about two hours and had a massive burger. A few people offered to buy me pints/shots so I stuck around for an hour or two until Alex came by to pick me up and bring me to where everyone was drinking. A girl working there knew one of the guys who come in selling roses. So I got a rose.

Second rose I've been given in France actually. Someday I'll find that special guy. It gets a little hazy then - I definitely made 15 euro playing music outside; a fiver from one guy and a tenner from another. The tenner was from playing a request that I happened to know really well, and the guy was over the moon to hear it, but I can't even remember what song it was. Oh Guinness. It was a pretty messy night - the lads had been drinking the whole time I was gone so by the time I arrived they were as bad as I was. Good fun though - first proper sort of normal-night-out. Drinking in an apartment and getting hammered with English-speaking people. 

The next day we regrouped and met Joachim at the van. He had invited us out to his parents house for the evening. We didn't know what to expect - we knew it was on a fairly big area of land with a swimming pool (they host wedding receptions there). But man, I can't describe how beautiful this place was. We got a beer from the keg that they just....had....and took a walk around. I mean it really is paradise.

We met his parents and they instantly became some of the nicest people we'd ever met. They were just so genuinely welcoming and lovely. They invited us to come drink with them at the reception - it was a friends wedding this weekend so they had all been invited. That's when the fun started. Once word spread that I was a musician I was pushed up to play. My throat was killing me but I could hardly say no, standing in this paradise. 

It went down really well - later some of the French people asked me would I be playing in Toulouse again over the next few nights, as they'd like to hear me another time. Which was lovely. It's up to Lyon next though, so I had to say no. Do you see the fish water feature/fountain thingy behind me? That's not water. That's a rum fountain. Rum mixed with pineapple juice. So you don't have to go to the bar. You just carry your cup back over and let the magical fish fill you up. Amazing.

It was a fantastic night. We got chatting to tonnes of great French people, who even given that they didn't speak English or us French, the rum fountain seemed to allow us to communicate with perfectly. Everyone was so nice to us that we wanted to give back as much as we could. So I played plenty of music (my throat not being very happy with this choice today), Dara and I did a little fire show and Finbar did a sketch for the married couple.There was plenty of music from others too. This guy had a great line - "I don't speak very good English...but I speak very good French!",

We went for a drunken swim in the heated pool, where we nearly killed ourselves standing ontop of one another's shoulders and fighting. Near the end of the night the bride and groom insisted that we join in for one last game of Pakito (apparently their 5th that day). It's kind of like rock the boat in the way you sit but then everyone crowdsurfs along the line. So much fun.

What a night.

In the morning Joachim woke us up for a special Foie Gras market nearby - famous in the region as they go through about a tonne of fresh foie gras in under an hour. By fresh I mean the actual duck livers. He was right too - we got there 40 mins after it opened and just about managed to pick up the last 3. For dinner that night apparently. We visited the rest of the market - very oldschool french market, full of live animals mostly.Birds, rabbits, piglets, everything. Not really my cup of tea, but nice to see.

We went back to the house and hung around for the day, sleeping and later chatting with the family. They have a pretty cool story - both Motorola engineers in Toulouse but they both quit to just live the good life and rent out their wedding place. They really do seem to have it all figured out. They have two pianos too - one grand and one upright, so it was awesome to hit the keys after 40 days away. I avoided practicing any singing with my voice being completely gone, which left me some time to start writing the duet I mentioned a few weeks ago with the Paris girl, Cristina. We've decided we'd try and write it remotely, then meet up to put it together. Tricky project but who knows, I'd really like to do a duet and she has an amazing voice (and has promised icecream) so it's definitely worth a shot! Watch this space I guess.

At around 9, after lots of preparation we all sat down to eat the fresh foie gras. I didn't know what to expect - I don't like pate at all. But I tried to stay open. I'm telling you though, that stuff is the bomb. It melts in your mouth, and is just so very very rich. One of the best meals I've ever had, without a doubt.

We stayed up chatting 'til all hours. But the paradise world had to end sometime. After one last lunch (and cleaning our van/washing our clothes), we've taken to the road again. This time toward Lyon. As I drove the whole 5 hours down to Toulouse the lads are taking this one, leaving me some time to write this giant blog and catch up on some e-mails with my granny. Hi Granny! Seriously though - this last week has been full of highlights of the trip so far. I think we're all on a high. If we all had to go home tomorrow for whatever reason I feel like we've gotten so much out of the trip that it'd be okay. All the money we put into the camper has been completely paid off already in my eyes. If I hadn't been busking I wouldn't have met Joachim, if we didn't have a camper we couldn't have gone to stay with his parents so easily. Life just works out perfectly sometimes.

New Song and a Homeless Man

Finbar and I just walked to MacDonalds in the rain (with umbrellas - never fear - the campervan is equipped). I say rain.. I really mean crazy big storm; lightning every few seconds and we got fairly drenched just from the drops hitting the ground so hard that it bounced up. Two McFlurries please. I'll have the Daim one. Extra caramel? Well if you say so...naughty..

Look at me, updating regularly. Well, there's a reason other than it being a good idea to keep your blog updated regularly. I'm uploading a video, see. A YouTube video. That's right - I've finally managed to record a new song. Living in Das Camper has some funny quirks but for the most part it's not all that difficult. There are things like walking 5 minutes outside to use a bathroom/take a shower, and it's very difficult to keep pots/pans/dishes clean when we have no running water (we've been staying in carparks for...3 weeks now), but when you don't have real jobs it's still less than an hour out of every day...which is...mostly free.

I busked two and a half hours today, but I didn't really need to. We're not paying any campsite fees at the moment and have a hypermarche and Lidl up the road for cheap groceries. This has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Shut up David. The video. You'll see it (as I'll make you watch it), and think "Why on earth did that take two weeks to get done?", "He didn't even shave?", "That's clearly just taken on Dara's mobile phone". You'd be right on all three. But it turns out to be very, very difficult to find the right time, place and equipment to record a song when you live in a van. For the last 10 days there has been music blaring everywhere in a mile radius with the festival.. Oh well. It'll do. Just need to get famous then people will make videos for me. And assorted icecream flavours. All involving pistachio. And huge pointlessly oversized lollipops. I won't even open those. I'll just have them on display - to show you that you can't have them. David gets the lollipops. You're not even famous. Who are you?
So here it is, I hope you like it, if you don't, I hope you'll tell me, as I'm taking this whole thing quite seriously these days, so it'd be good to get any kind of feedback. If you do like it, it'd be wonderful if you hit the share button or whatever for my new Facebook page ( http://www.facebook.com/davidowensofficial ) - guess I should try and promote it and all that.


Anyway, what actual news? I got up really early today. 8.30am in fact. Earliest I've been up in a month. Didn't get any sleep really with loads of noise in the carpark for some reason. But I was determined. Fed up of hippies. Fed up of sleep-ins til 3. Fed up of going from city to city, and only seeing drinking spots and busking spots. Time to be a tourist. And it was awesome. I was in Toulouse by 9.30. Went to a cathedral, a church, and small aeroplane and art exhibitions

before finding a busking spot and making enough for the day before lunchtime. I had a really weird thing happen actually - a homeless old man sat down opposite me and listened for a good while. Then he came up and in our broken languages he explained that he didn't have much, but would like to give me a bag of coppers he had. I didn't know what to do. I mean, he was clearly homeless and poor and old. There was about 50 cent in there. But I couldn't exactly turn it away either, or offer him some of the money from my case, without seeming like I'm turning my nose at him - there's always the chance that that's what he was hoping for, but if he wasn't...jesus that'd be bad... So I acted as grateful as I possibly could and accepted. It was really strange. Really cool though. Definitely one of the moments I'd hope to remember for the rest of my life. I wasn't sure what to do with it after (as awesome as it was, we find it very difficult to get rid of coppers), but luckily there was a beggar kid sitting next to the ATM nearby, who got excited and kept giving me the thumbs up when I played Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars. So I have him the bag after. It felt really good, the world sort of evening out with everyone happy. Just hope it wasn't his grandad. Anyway. It's so easy to get into a habit of drinking every night and sleeping in as...well, drinking is fun. But it's nice to feel productive again.  Guess that's part of the reason for the video too. When we got home I had it in my head - I needed to get it done tonight. Completely changed the strumming pattern in the last 24 hours (we tried to record yesterday but my plucking wasn't loud enough, so went busk-style on it), but it was time. And I'm happy with it. It's rough, I don't look good at all, but it's a decent representation of the song.....and hey, maybe people will like the song.

So here's a mid-year resolution. More early mornings, more time for things.

Hippies and a Ceili

So it's been a week since my last update. Not really sure what to write about - I didn't really do all that much. Spent most of the time playing music and hating hippies. There are a few things though.

I hate hippies. Which is strange, considering many would consider me one. I juggle, I live in a van touring around Europe, I enjoy copious amounts of drugs. Only messing. Hippies don't do drugs. Just me. But really - being around them constantly for a week it starts to get to you. I got offered a massage today, while walking past a playground. But I couldn't take it. I just couldn't. And I really wanted a massage too. My shoulder's sore. One day I was sitting in the grass talking to people and playing guitar, and of course I had a 1.5 litre bottle of sangria and a big packet of crisps on hand. They weren't so bad with the sangria, but my crisps didn't last long at all. Hippies I wasn't even talking to sometimes. They just seem to think everything is for sharing. It's not for sharing, hippies. Those are my crisps.

Anyway.

Saw some cool things though, there was the European unicycling competition thing. I didn't realise unicycling was an extreme sport now. It's kinda cool. Not really cool though - I'm sure the tricks are hard but they just don't look all that amazing.

Saw tonnes of really good juggling and circus shows though. Like 2-3 hours a day. I'm all showed out. This one was pretty cool - balancing 8 balls and a balloon with hairdryers..

Got pretty drunk every night too. Really need a break from all the drinking. Was awesome to hang out with some of the Irish jugglers and get to know them a little better. Especially Brendan. I mean I already know him pretty well, but he's pretty damn cool. Whenever we're at something like this we end up reminiscing about Sziget festival years ago. I'd love to go again. I will go again. What else...

Oh, there was a Ceili last night, in honour of the EJC (European Juggling Convention) being in Cork next year:

I won't be going. Not necessarily because of me preferring music festivals to juggling ones, but also as I'll be away. On a cruise. My amazing American uncles decided to buy a cruise for all the "kids" in the family. So cool. Big respect. I bet you're not going on a cruise though, are you? I bet you'll be stuck in work, working for the man. Working for the man to bring home your pay and buy a bigger car to put your giant plasma screen TV in. Choose life. I bet you won't be happy though - you're never happy. Smile every now and again for God's sake. Or don't, actually. Your smile isn't all that nice anyway.

It's been good for music though - finished another song. So now I have two songs that I'm actually happy with. Really need to get them recorded. Maybe tomorrow. Gonna start pushing it on people then. Time to get famous. Might even pay for some advertising if I'm happy with the videos. Thoughts?

Also, Dara hurt his shoulder a few days ago and can't really juggle. You may think this is a bad thing, but in fact it's fantastic. It means he can only work on our music project - in which he draws things based on my lyrics, which are projected (yes, we have a projector in the van..), while I play my songs. I'm really excited about this - it being different to the usual acoustic-singer-songwriter thing means I might be able to get some gigs once I have enough stuff, and he drew some stuff for it before and I think it really fits. Who knows. He's working on it across from me in the van right now actually. Hi Dara. We need a name though. 

So David's pretty happy. Missing my family a fair bit at the moment - they're all at a big get together in Sligo this week. Aforementioned American uncles are over visiting too. Staying in my room...though I guess it's not my room anymore. That's a strange thought. This trip'll easily be the longest I'll have been away from them ever. Hopefully I'll get home for a good while at Christmas - maybe 3 weeks or something. My Granny reads this blog now apparently, too. Which is pretty cool, but I should probably try and keep it a little family-safe. Though the trip has been pretty okay for that. I often get messages from people asking if there's actually far more to things than implied - I haven't mentioned anything about girls on the trip really. I'm sorry - there are no girls. I'm not actually a rockstar. Yet. As for now, we're gonna stay in Toulouse for a bit as we haven't been to the city yet, then start making our way up North. I'm really excited about Berlin - we hope to stay there at least a month. It's got traffic lights for juggling shows, a great graffiti scene, good busking spots and an acoustic music scene too. Perfect.