Tuesday, 3:40 am

Richard Dawkins shouldn't have bothered himself writing The God Delusion, the mere existence of bedbugs disproofs that of a God.

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the holy cleansing and purifying knights of the apocalypse...

Top 5, worst sleeping nights of my life:

5. Australia, I'm not sure when and where since there were many nights involving the tent - summer trips with the lot and with Ash:

Perhaps it was the one right before going to Moreton island with Niro and Eva, maybe the one on the top of Brisbane Waters national park with Rik and Eva or perhaps the one with Ash on the west coast (that turned out to be its last), but definitely the whole experience with my crap tent in Oz. Many a time I woke up in the middle of the night to fix those ever-braking poles as the tent almost fell on top of our poor, sleeping heads. Many a night I heard them snap and went back to sleep cursing the bloody thing and hoping it would at least stay standing until the morrow. Funny enough, it was almost an emotional moment when I finally parted with it.

4. London, my first night on my new flat - only a few days ago:

I rented out a huge room with my own private "garden" in a decently cool area in London. To my regret, I discovered that even though the previous owner had left a few weeks ago, the true occupants were anxiously waiting to welcome me: that night, a bedbug infestation feasted on my flesh and blood. Even though it was a shitty night I was lucky to be in high spirits because of my new job and how my new adventure was starting to take shape in London. Three days later, the bloody (literally) creatures have worn off my optimism and deranged my psyche. I'm hoping tonight doesn't clinch a new position in this accursed poll. Tomorrow the bastards MUST go.

3. Venice, first night in Venice waiting for Ash and Lucas to arrive the next day - ski trip to the Alps with Ash and Lucas.

I had the rather dubious pleasure of discovering how cold the hard stone can be in a rainy winter night whilst carrying my rucksack with me. After a few beers in a pub, I tried to sleep under some of the arcades next to the canals but the cold stones seemed intent in challenging my experience-toughened resistance, maybe because of the proximity with big bodies of water. After wondering for hours hoping to find some sort of shelter, I ended up sleeping under a scaffold to protect myself from the rain and over some cardboards to insulate myself from the ground: it worked to perfection, good'ol homeless style. Funny enough, the next day I slept perfectly fine in the airport for about 5 hours and, after the arrival of Lucas and Ash I had to give in to their bourgeois demands to sleep an extra 3 more top quality hours in a bed... absolutely nonsensical.

2. Ferry from Patras to Venice, sleeping on the deck of the ferry - end of inter-rail trip with Ash:

After inter-railing for months around Europe (mostly Italy and Greece) with Ash and sleeping pretty much every night in night trains and in variously shitty camping sites (in our tent), Ash and I had the brilliant idea of treating ourselves to proper beds in our last night in Greece, in Patras. The result: my first encounter with bedbugs. Strangely enough, he managed to get away unscathed but alas! I wasn't so fortunate. On top of that, the next day I decided to try to do the Jewish thing, out of sheer curiosity and to test myself, and fast for a whole day (I can't quite remember the name of the festivity but it was in late October). Of course, my itching body didn't aid much in this endeavour. I also remember I was reading American Psycho at the time and that it made the whole situation even more disturbing: first encounter with bedbugs and resulting nasty bites over my whole body, first time I fasted for a whole day and resulting vagueness and airiness of the mind, plus intensive reading of very graphic descriptions about a psycho killer drilling holes in his victim's gums...

The truly nasty night was actually the following one. We had to take a ferry from Patras to Venice so we could catch a flight to England from there. That night, with my rashes at their peak of itchiness, I ended up "sleeping" on the deck of the ferry inside my sleeping bag besieged by a thousand itchy bites and a hideous, continuous glare coming from the engine room of the ship. Moreover, the idiotic crew members didn't turn off the lights of the ship so there was no way to avoid staring at a massive light bulb every time I opened my eyes; on top of this, the cold wind prevented me from getting too far away from the sheltered yet horribly noisy entrance to the lower decks. Did I mention that I had a thousand bites from bedbugs?

Only the sight of the moon over Albania and the Mediterranean night sky saved this one from getting the top accolade. Well, maybe because the winner was pretty nasty too.

1. Galway / train from Galway to Dublin, only night in Galway before returning to Dublin in the early hours of the morning - traveling solo in the UK trying to get a taste of the real homeless traveler's life whilst sleeping on the rough:

In truth, most of the nights were actually not too bad except for the one in Galway (some of them were in fact excellent, like the one on a hillside near Tralee watching the sun fade over the atlantic ocean). I was on a tight budget so apart from sleeping in parks and hills, I was also spending little money on food. I arrived in Galway in the gray afternoon drizzle and found a lovely little Irish pub (a REAL Irish pub) where there were some funny, bearded young men playing some cool Irish traditional music. I got carried away by the experience so, a couple of hours and Guinness later I decided to set off to find a place to sleep for the night. I had an empty stomach (even before drinking) but due to the thickness and heaviness of the black beverage revered in that country I thought I felt pretty full for the rest of the night.

A few hours later, still happily drunk and marveled by the city but already quite wet, tired, and in view of the lack of options available, I choose the entrance of a church as my abode for the night. The church was one of the ugliest I can remember since it was surrounded by one big parking lot that seemed to protrude from the building in every possible direction. Even though I was cold, wet and wary of Irish rapists, the really dreadful part was waking up at 4:30am with the most horrible hangover to go catch the only day train back to Dublin (maybe this should actually go on some sort of top 5 worst hangovers). I got up feeling extremely sick, cold and miserable; I had to shoulder my heavy rucksack and head to the station in the morning gloom under the same persistent and depressingly thin drizzle.

When I finally boarded the train and thought I'd get some more sleep, the new day dawned and the light of the morning sun glared in my eyes. Unable to sleep, with a thumping headache and the most painful jabs stinging at the back of my eyes, I tried to find an answer to my plight in the toilets. A few more appalling minutes retching over the stinky sink unable to obtain any tangible (or rather visible) results from my dismayed efforts gave me another brilliant idea: since my stomach felt completely feeble and empty I should eat something and it'd surely make me feel better. After force-feeding myself a banana I'd been carrying I finally managed to fall asleep, only to wake who knows how many minutes later to clumsily make a blind dash to throw up a thin yellow stream of thickish bilis in the train's piss smelling toilets. For the life of me, I can't remember throwing up anything more disgusting than that (top 5 throw ups?), I actually consider myself extremely lucky to still like bananas after that dismal experience.

The rest of the journey comprised of some 3 or 4 miserable hours of half-slept existential sorrow and agony, cursing the very day a drunken Irish had the brightest idea of inventing the black stuff (once again, maybe this should go under a top 5 worst journeys).

Special mention:

Frontier between Bulgaria and Romania, sleeping on the side of the road of a side road - trip to Vama Veche with Matt and Sabina.

This one should probably be in there anyway. We arrived late in Vama Veche, an old once-a-hippie-now-trendy Romanian village in the frontier with Bulgaria, but that didn't prevent Matt and Sabina from having an imperious desire to walk to Bulgaria. Yes, just WALK to the bloody country. So we set forth towards Bulgaria, passed the security checks and, after asking directions (there weren't that many choices really) from some very bewildered border control policemen, walked the 5 kms towards the nearest Bulgarian town.

The little town was, of course, a shit hole. Luckily, it was a shit hole where there was some sort of festivity going on so we were able to bargain with the locals in a very effective sign and grunt language to get some nondescript sausages and warm, flat beer for the night. Despite the sour tone of my writing, I actually enjoyed that night quite a lot, it was simply a completely nonsensical and stupid idea; however, for whatever reason I seem to have a penchant for ideas nonsensical and stupid. Anyway, Sabina was flirting with a very hopeful Bulgarian looking for a Spanish passport whilst Matt and I went out of our way to avoid even getting the slightest glimpse of any of the local beauties (god forbid smiling at them) given the very menacing looks we were receiving by the hostile, hormone-pumped, former-would-be-communist youths.

We somehow managed to survive and drink the night away surrounded by a very picturesque crowd that was slowly beginning to accept us. Some of them were actually friendly enough to approach us and offer their golden-teethed sisters. However, Sabina didn't quite agree with the sausage she had eaten or all the warm beer she was drinking, maybe she was just puking her way out of a tight situation with an over-excited Bulgarian but in any case, we cleared off and started walking back to Romania.

Suddenly and fortunately, someone had the alcohol induced sudden inspiration that maybe the shift of the control policemen could've changed and, if that was the case we had got ourselves in a pretty nasty situation: two drunken Europeans (yeah, I know, but I had the passport!) and an drunken American appearing out of the blue, or should I say the pitch darkness, without a car, walking on a deserted road and trying to enter Romania at 5 am in the morning... we were bound for some serious questioning or some serious bribing. Therefore, we decided to sleep out the rest of the night on the side of the road of a side road and head towards Romania first thing in the morning. The thing is, the vegetation on the side of the road of the first side road we found was pretty thick and we couldn't dare to venture any further because there was barbed wired and who knows what overzealous property protecting Bulgarian night-dwelling monsters. Still, even though the road was absolutely deserted, we couldn't risk to sleep on it (even stupidity and daring has its limits).

Eventually and given that we were getting too tired and the odds of finding a haven in a god-forsaken Bulgarian side road were getting longer by the minute, we simply dropped dead on the side of the road. Unfortunately, in less than 3 minutes we were covered in a swarm of starving mosquitoes trying desperately to find any bit of exposed flesh to prolong their existence. It's in times like these when I wonder how the fuck can so many mosquitoes procreate and survive in nature, and then reflect pitifully on the sad and helpless life of whatever animal that lives in the area and is forced to endure such a nightmarish experience every night.

I don't think we slept at all that night but at least we lay down for maybe half an hour and, when the sun finally shyly rose over the black sea, we headed back to Romania - now in too grumpy a state to even care about what border policemen might think about our sudden apparition. When we finally got to Vama Veche, we slept a good solid 5 hours on the beach and then checked in a decent hostel. Beds feel ever so precious when you spend a night on the rough.

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It's almost 6 already. Well, that's two hours worth of my blood that these bastards aren't getting. Damn it, tomorrow is my second day at work, I should be in bed. Ah, well...

I only intended to write that stupid thing about Dawkins, God and bedbugs but I got carried away telling all these stories. It's strange that I don't normally go to great lengths about telling detailed accounts of my trips. Maybe I'm not a good story teller and I feel I can only be fair to the memories if I put them in writing. Maybe I'll become one of those old grampas that pester their poor, innocent nephews with stories of past adventures and outlandish experiences. Gee... I must be getting old...

Joko