Headfest

I was surrounded buy old hippies, punk and ravers. Joe sipped lightly on his cider while very drunk girls sporting dreads rolled around on the floor. We watch Ozric Tentacles-a-like bands. Drink more cider. Dance to acid techno. Drink more cider. We could quite easily have been the youngest persons there. Fun stuff.

Coming Home.

Gary was extra grumpy and didn't say a word in the nine hour journey home. Miserable git.

At least we go the week end off to recover.

Going to work on the Monday was awful.

Zagreb

We were only in Zagreb for about twelve hours. We saw an extraordinary number of beautiful women and melted in the heat.

The best drink of the holiday was a jug of ice cold tap water with our steak meal.

I got completely eaten alive by mosquitos. I have a million and one bites.

I'd like to go back and see Zagreb properly.

Croatia - Day Seven

This is were Gary turned grumpy. We headed to Zadar and wandered around the shops and that. I drank, the others didnot. We all felt a bit crappy. We came home and were bugged by bugs constantly.

Croatia - Day Six - Drunk

I think this was the silliest day of the festival. I don't think we intended to get as pissed as we did. We visited the amusement arcade and drank while we played crap games of pool and the worst game of darts ever. And then went to the tiki bar and drank cocktails and then onto the empty club where we piled up cans of beer, did the conga and acted rather daft.

Funny funny night.

Croatia - Day Five - Best Monday Ever

Yay!
Originally uploaded by Big Richard C

Cruising around the Adriatic with beer, ladies and the best sunset in the world is especially satisfying when you know Rebecca Madden is slaving away at work.

:)

This was just a brilliant day. We set off late. We have problems reaching the island we were supposed to drop off for food at but none of this matter. It was just fantastic.

Best Monday Ever!!!

Croatia - Day Five - The World Cup Final

The bloody mosquitos and sodding pain in somach meant that I was awake most of the night. We get up and bully Gary for a while before deciding to have a walk up to the festival site in order to do some more lazing around. I have a couple of beers and then miraculously it is late afternoon and time for food. I suggest going to a different restaurant so we walked around the bay and eat another steak dinner. I feel my stomach healing almost instantly, like a massive coating was all that was required to heal the four days of complete alcohol abuse.

We head back to our room to freshen up and we are amused to see a rutting tortoise outside our balcony.

Back to the festival site in time to catch the last song of some band that was playing and the World Cup Final. The football was very very dull. What was amusing was the random singing and chanting. A lot of it aimed at Gary and his red speedos, this being especially funny when random Scots ladies joined in.

After this things seem to get a bit blurry. We went from drinking a pint every hour to ramping it up to one ever fifteen minutes. I watch the end of Hercules and the Love Affair, very good as usual. Then Henrik Swartz following was plays some cool tunes and we all dance around like loons. Paul decides to go home and Gaz follows him. The music stops outside and I head to the after party but quickly get bored of being on my own. I drink a few more beers and then decide to call it a night.

I stagger home along the bay. Miraculously I don't fall in the sea. I get home around half three. A ten minute walk taking rather a long time.

Croatia - Day Four

Today was not a great day. We ate and then I got a realy bad stomach. Gary and Paul went off to watch the football while I watched the Phenomenal Handclap Band. I tried to ride out the dodgy stomach with beer but while it didn't make it worse it didn't make it any better.

Mr Scruff was a bit boring too. Everyone seemed subdued, I don't think I was the only one suffering in one form or another.

An early night. :(

Croatia - Day 3 - The Garden Festival, Petrcane

The Garden Festival, Petrcane
Originally uploaded by Big Richard C

Strangely no hangover. We try to order a taxi but are told that we will have to wait an hour before one arrives. When it does the driver grumbles about the Garden Festival and having money and time and enjoying oneself. I think he was jealous that we were going to spend the next week watching young ladies dance around in bikinis.

We meet up with Gail one of the festival organisers who takes us to our apartment which is really just a room with a small kitchenette and a bathroom. Perfectly fine we have no plans to hang around. We freshen up and walk along the bay to the festival site to see what is going on.

Mostly it involves lazing around on daybeds and sunloungers and sipping beers. It would be rude not to, we grab a day bed and some beers and copy everyone else. Hours pass. Paul describes the festival site as "a big beer garden with stuff going on inside". Quite apt.

I decide to have a swim unfortunately the beach is made from hard sharp rocks which are horrid to walk on, the current seemed particularly strong too and kept bashing me back to shore every time I move out. I give up. And go back to lounging and boozing.

We are all now hungry, we eat at a restaurant overlooking the bay, steaks all round.

As the sun starts to set the festival gets a bit more lively people are dancing on the beach and in the paddling pool. The sunset is quite amazing. Nothing like I have seen before. Spectacular colours complemented with dancing ladies.

A young Australian woman approaches us with a survey about drugs, she has no clipboard. :)

You can tell that it is the holiday's first night for the majority of the festival goers because as soon as the sun disappears the cocktails come out and there are lots of very drunk people dancing really rather badly to everything.

The highlight of the night for me was the No Fakin DJs who played lots of silly records to which we danced very daftly too. The music finished around one and Gary had the potty idea of finding another beer which he did. He then accidently smashed a glass tab and nearly got us into a fight. I didn't want another beer.

Croatia - Day Two

Stomp stomp stomp go the monsters in my head.

Paul I believe feels exactly the same. Gary on the otherhand is dancing around the room like an elephant on speed, he says, I feel alright, I don't have a hangover, I'm not an alcoholic.

We stoll into town searching of food and water, Gary in search of love trinkets for some of his many women. We eat at a fast food pizza shop, my hangover drops to around 90% intensity. We then stroll around the old town before stopping by the seafront where Paul and Gary decide to go for a swim. Climbing out Paul announces that he has been cleansed.

We go for a very slow beer in a bar overlooking the sea. My hangover intensity drops again. We consider having another but then decide to change scenery. The change of scenery takes us back to the bar from last night. We sit outside watching ladies walk past and drink four or five more beers. We sit and watch girls, we wonder why so many of them are trying to get into the church.

And then another change of scenery and another beer and more girl watching.

My headache is still lingering but now with the added bonus of feeling a little bit drunk. We decided to grab some food and find a nice restaurant in a walled garden. Here I have the first of many steaks. The dinner is followed up by a home made brandy. Gary screams like a girl that it burns his nose - waaaaah - it tastes rather nice and does an excellent job of washing down my food. The monsters have stopped pounding my skull.

A little walk and another beer. I am now feeling quite sozzled, too hot and thinking that I may have already hit the point of no return which at seven o'clock would have been both embarassing and disasterous. However another stroll and a bottle of water means that I sober up enough to drink more beer. We sit outside a rock bar. We drink and watch girls sporting black and pink skull motifs.

Somehow we get talking to a strange Croatian metal fan. Gary rounds up three girls. The Strange Croatian Metal fan tries to get us to go drinking with him and his mates, he has no beer and doesn't know where to buy any, we decide to go with Gary's girls.

The Strange Croation Metal fan sulks and argues with one of the girls - I take it that she is his girlfriend. She is probably the prettiest of the three and the Metal fan the dorkiest person in town

They take us on a long walk around the Old Town in Zadar before settling on a bar next to the sea. I feel like I am in a strange bubble there are croation men around us fighting, nobody seems to take a blind bit of notice. The girl with dark hair keeps laughing at me, I am very amusing.

Gary's guaranteed shag is ruined by Paul and I because we tell her he has two girlfriends. The girl with blond crazy hair, says nothing, I think she would like to join in the conversation but her English is not good enough. Gary's guaranteed shag tries to teach me some Serbo-Croat but I am useless.

The Strange Croation Metal Fan is also with us. He keeps stealing our beer. I think Paul may hit him but he doesn't and Metal Dork leaves with his pretty girlfriend.

The bar shuts. It is five in the morning. The girls take us to a bakery and make us buy sausage rolls. We try to get them to come back to our hotel. They seem up for it but then decide that they don't want to have to walk back, I guess hinting that they would come if we'd pay for a taxi home.

Then the one girl asks us if we can remember there names, of course we can't. (Marta and Maria).

We go home. They don't come with us.

We have been drinking for hours and hours.

Croatia - Day One

An exchange of messages:

"Do you think 12 cans will be enough?"
"Just for you? I should think so"
"Are they super strength?"

I think there was some slight disappointment in Paul's face when I met up with him and Gary at Stanstead Airport and I wasn't absolutely smashed. I had no beer on the train. Drinking on one's own is never much fun.

Checked in. Two beers in the weatherspoons and onto the plane. Paul says something about lovely birds getting onto the plane. Turns out not to be the case. One OK lady and another with gravity defying boobies. "I'm the organiser of the festival" gravity defying boob lady announces to the stag party sat behind us, none of them attached of course and all desperate. Er no you are not methinks, as does the stag.

Plane rides are boring.

We arrive in Zadar. Lots of security. Paul gets pulled over after Gaz and I are out of the airport. The Police wanted a closer look at his suspicious looking sweets.
We get a taxi to our hotel via another with a similar name. Then straight out for beer.

First (foreign) beer of the holiday and quite nice it is too. We watch the football in a quiet place which is closing. Paul suggests having a quiet night but we carry on towards town and have another three in a pizza shop/bar. Cheap rounds at 45 Kn but again this place is closing. Again we move towards the town and have another couple of beers outside a bar before being told that we would have to move inside or go home. There is only one choice.

The barman spoke very little english, there were three locals drinking funny liquers and a group of kids sitting at the back ignoring us. The locals it turned out weren't that local, a german and a dutchman both restauranters in the town we were heading to. They chatted. We got more drunk and eventually I hit that horrible spot where you can't drink any more. Time to go home.

The half hour walk to the town turned into an hour and have walk home. Pissed. We all were.