[quote]Hopefully Shannon’s good for it too
[/quote]
Works fine for me, see you guys Saturday.
Perfect, see you both then 
Met up with Shannon and Eli today, great blokes. Very affable and chilled. Talked lots about all sorts of things. Definitely the highlight of my trip so far
I managed to offload my vegemite payload too Much lighter backpack, and no more getting stuck at airports due to it being classified as ‘gel’ lol
Yeah, it was great meeting you, and also great seeing Shannon again. Those two hours flew by pretty quickly! If I’m ever in Sydney then I will unquestionably look you up.
My fiance has apparently tried marmite and thought it was gross, so we’ll see how the vegemite goes!
Just echoing what the CommanderKeith and Demonpants said, was great meeting up and chatting about Java/games with such like minded individuals. And thanks again to Keith for the Vegimite, eating it as I post.
For anyone putting Keith up on any of the legs of his trip I can personally vouch for the fact that other than being an Australian he is a friendly, down to earth guy.
you have no idea how much you sounded like Paul from MOD(Masters of Deception) :). hmm, I just realized no1 here is that nerdy as me 
So, are we going to get some pictures posted from these fabulous meetups?? 
Wow, I’m an idiot. I really should have taken a picture with my phone. I’m terrible about taking pictures.
And, to my knowledge, neither Shannon nor Keith took a picture either. Bummer. 
Rats, I had a camera too. what a pity.
Oh well, just picture 3 nerds sitting in a cafe receiving funny looks from normal people
Lol, thanks. You know New Zealand started life as a state of Australia … ;D
I’m in Chicago now and it’s -3 celcius and very windy. Looking forward to get to NY and Europe 8)
Big thanks to Greg (delt0r) for letting me stay at his place in Vienna. Greg gave me a tour of the local bars and kebab joints and he even showed me the art of hustling tourist louts into buying him beers! His family let me come to their daughter’s party which was great fun, and I was taught the austrian waltz 8). I’ll put up our photos when I get home.
Here are all of the cities I saw over the last 5 weeks:
San Diego
LA
San Francisco
Chicago
Boston
NY
Miami
London
Paris
Lyon
Vienna
Dusseldorf
The Hague
Amsterdam
In the US the highlights were San Francisco, Boston, NY and Miami. Miami was rich, clean and beautiful, which is actually how i imagined all US cities would be. Somce US cities, especially LA, were car-dominated, sprawling, and full of bums which I have to say is completely the opposite of cities in europe. San Francisco and Boston were great since they’re both dense and buzzing with activity and they have areas with a relaxing university-town laid-back feel thanks to their large student populations
In Europe, Vienna and Amsterdam were surprisingly fun places. Vienna was very impressive for how many impressive palaces and monuments it has in a small area, and the way they actually use all of this old stuff by having events in inside and around, including a massive ice skating track which was sensational. Amsterdam is where I am now and I really like it. When they say it’s the bicycle city they are not exaggerating, there are bicycles everywhere! As I arrived at the centraal station I saw a 3 level ‘car-park’ which was actually a bike-park chokkas full of bikes with no spare room at all. Amsterdam is the first place I’ve found where you can go out on a freezing cold snowy monday night until 4am (unlike NY!).
Big thanks to Greg, Shannon and Eli for meeting up, and thanks to Simon and Overkill for offering to meet, it’s too bad I/we just didn’t have time. Next time for sure!
And to anyone coming to Sydney, make sure you let me know so I can show you some sights!
Keith 8)
My daughters friends keep asking when are you going to add J’s to your friends at facebook. Think you may be getting some friend requests ;). They also asked when are you coming back. It seems you left a good impression.
My face book friends are mostly family as is which is a bit lame, so I’ll friend-request everyone ASAP…
You can find me Eli Delventhal on Facebook. I should be the only one.
Would that be the one I know as the Viennese waltz? 180 degrees turn per bar for most bars and 60 bars per minute? Good fun, but I’m impressed if you managed to learn it in a short trip!
Thanks to multiple courses in dancing (it is a German thing), I think to remember that there are TWO walzes:
The (slow) Walz and the Vienna Walz (faster with more spring and turning). If you can get by the 2nd without being dizzy, you have not drunk enough
I must have been taught the beginners/slow waltz then, it wasn’t as elaborate as the vienna waltz you describe!
I’m back at home now, and enjoying normal non-backpacking life, espcecially having a car, fridge, hot shower and my own room
I’ve been meaning to put up my photos. I loaded them on facebook which has shrunk them to a reasonable size and now they’re on photobucket too:
Greg (delt0r, middle), me (right) and a spanish dude at the kebab (or duram???) shop at 3am in Vienna. Good times, but unfortunately Greg lost his holden commodore jumper at the bar :’(
San francisco, with Alcatraz prison island in the background. I met up with Shannon and Eli (Demonpants) in san francisco, but we all forgot to take a photo!
A backpacker friend and I crashed a lecture at Columbia university in NY just to see what it’s like. Finance, pretty boring
Making party in NY
Amsterdam, a beautiful and exciting city. This is one of the canals at night. The floating white things are actually swans sleeping!
A dutch beach with snow, that took some getting used to!
A very strange but common Austrian toilet. The hole is in the front of the bowl, so apparently when you sit down you actually have to straddle the toilet and face the wall. A very unusual experience! No wonder why there’s usually a lot of graffiti on the wall there!
Thanks again to Greg, Eli and Shannon for meeting up and showing me such great hospitality! It made the holiday 10x better
Nice pictures.
@Austrian Toilet:
Haha!
No that is intentional! On the one hand it is to conserve water because if IT would drop directly into a reservoir, you’d have to flush the whole thing, regardless of the amount.
Plus, IT dropping into a reservoir tends to have a gross side-effect, IfYouKnowWhatIMeanAndIThinkYouDo.
Also a big advantage when the hole is in the front is that YouKnowWhat has enough clearance and you don’t wind up with ‘FirendlyFire’.
- other stuff we need not discuss here
and if you think that is unusual, you have not been to Italy or other southern countries, where eating the food is only the first part of the adventure. 
Lol, thanks for the explanation
But I thought that the whole point of a toilet was the S-bend which kills any odours since IT stays submerged underwater ???
This design seems to defeat the purpose since IT sits right there on the raised back surface! :persecutioncomplex:
Man I LOLed hard here at my work when I read that .
I never actually tried the backward straddling sh***ing, but when I first saw one of those in Germany I also wondered why the hell they are like that .
And to be honest, I don’t buy Overkill’s expanation ! Unless you wait to accumulate a nice ammount of material and then flush (which would indeed save water, but you could do the same with a regular toilet . ).
Anyway, nice pics ! You really had a great time I guess