Wales day 1

On Friday night I went to the Erasmus fairwell party at the Packhorse pub and hung out with lots of my international buddies and ate the yummy free food. I also met up with Steph who I have danced with several times at Salsa and Swing and had a good natter to her and her mate for close to an hour. She is from a place between London and Oxford and has a fantastically posh sounding accent, but she says she the specific area she is from is not that high brow. I left the pub at about 12:30 and woke up six hours later ready to catch a train to Conwy in Wales with Ben and Celine. For the first hour train ride we all slept or tried to, then marvelled at the sweet Welsh country side, all different shades of green and rolling hills and meadows. After boarding another train we had to tell the conductor that we wanted to get off at Conwy, which we did.

The station was very small, and with the directions (which we didn’t even ask for) from a lady who also got off the train we headed for the tourist information centre. After about a minute of being outside we were all freezing, the wind was quite nasty. We took shelter in a little café and then walked down to the harbour where I went into the bathroom and put on an extra pair of pants, another jacket and worked out that I could wrap my scarf over the top of my head as well as my neck to keep my ears warm. Fully clothed up we walked on top of the wall that surrounds the town and then ambled through the castle as the rain started to sprinkle down.

As the sun set we went into a local bakery and ordered some Welsh Oggies which are large pasties filled with beef, gravy, leeks and potatoes. Bridgette the owner of the shop let us stay inside and eat even though they were closing and cleaning up, according to her assistant she was only doing this because she fancied me because I was an Aussie. After our meal we fancied checking out a local pub and only had to walk 100 metres before we found one. Once inside we were greeted by a very smiley chap who introduced himself as David, and we ordered our drinks – apparently it is not common to have coffee in a pub… We sat down by the open fire near David, so I asked him ‘So David, what do you do around here?’ ‘What?’ he replied ‘You don’t go asking people that! What would you say if I asked you what you do?’ ‘Err, I’m a student’. There was a bit of an awkward pause and then some of the other people in the bar started talking to us. When I was talking to the lady who owned the bar, David pulled me aside saying he wanted a hand with something, so I went with him into the next room and chose some songs on the juke box which he paid for. After a while of listening to the Eagles and Belle and Sebastion, I thought I’d try and strike up a conversation with Dave again and tried to continue on the conversation we were having with the other people in the bar, ‘So Dave, have you done much travelling?’, he looked at me and put one finger on the table, then slowly moved it about 12 inches (imperial – keeping it authentic) along the table, then he spat out ‘Don’t ask me that, ask your F***ing self!’ then turned around. Brilliant, we thought – cool Welsh locals!

But that was only the start of the craziness that we were to experience, as we were now heading to Aberystwyth a town of 13000, of which 7000 are students on the western coast of Wales. Just the night before I had texted Nia, a girl I had found on Couchsurfing.com to see if we could stay with her for a couple of nights, and she had agreed. So after two train trips and about 4 hours of playing ‘What am I?’ and other similar games we arrived in Aber and were met by some of Nia’s mates, one of which had just gotten back from Taiwan after staring in the film ‘September Winds’ there as the lead role. On the way back they bought some Fosters (which heaps of Poms drink) and we got some Fizzy drink and then walked to Nia’s place. It was a biggish flat overlooking the beach, and we all sat around chatting (and them drinking and smoking like chimneys) until one or two. We slept in the living room, Ben and Celine on a double lie low and me on the couch.