HP's Blog

Global Citizen, Friend and Traveller

[hpmystery]

Bored in Brussels

Mum said we would recognise our hotel because it had a European Union flag flying out the front, but every second building in Brussels flies at least three, because it’s the home of heaps of European organisations. It took us a while to find the hotel but once we did it was easy to get around on the Metro. There’s lots of art galleries to see in the city, which we went to because that’s what my family do,  but I want to tell you my top two places not go to.  

The manneken-pis! that’s the top of my list of things to not see in Brussels. I mean if you’ve seen one boy pissing in public, you’ve seen them all.  I lived next door to a hippy family once, and they were always ‘watering the lemon tree,’ as Mr Hippy called it. And when they gave us a big bag of lemons I didn’t have any. Dad said I was being silly because they were organic, no pesticides or sprays, but I know what they were sprayed with! Mum said the statue reflects the rebellious spirit of the people, but I think she just read that on a website. But don’t let me put you off going there.

Then there’s the atomium, which you can see from a train window, and it doesn’t look very exciting so I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for going there, even though my science teacher said she would love me to do a class talk on it when I get back to school. You can imagine I was thrilled with that, so I’m afraid I will just have to tell her about how I begged my parents to take me but they just wouldn’t. Sometimes they are so selfish!

Then there’s things not to eat in Brussels and top of that list is mussels or moules as the Belgians call them. Of course my parents thought they were lovely but I just had the chips or frites as they call them, with mayonnaise. And they were the best! Actually all the other food was fine, especially the chocolate, and I can see why people have arguments about whether Swiss or Belgian chocolate is best. I can’t decide.

Then there’s beer, which is a horrible drink, but there’s a lot of different sorts here and my dad decided he would do some beer tasting with his friends from an art gallery.He came home very late and blabbering about reaching Nirvana because he had drunk the best beer in the world. But next morning he said he had a hell of a headache so I think the Nirvana might have worn off. 

Here’s a picture of one of the Tin Tin murals that you see on lots of buildings in Brussels. I think Snowy is a really cute dog. When I grow up I'm going to get one just like him!

[hpmystery]

Intercontinental Breakfast

Breakfast is big in our house. It's always a serious affair. We don't have cereal in a box, because my dad says that the cardboard has more nutrition in it than the cereal and mum says if she wanted us to have that much sugar she'd open a bottle of coke. So in Australia breakfast is a variation of the Swiss Bircher muesli. You  soak the muesli overnight in water and then in the morning add fruit and milk and nuts and yoghurt. One of my friends wanted to know if my parents used a cement mixer to make it, which I thought was a bit rude, but then she came with us to Switzerland and got a rash on her mouth from eating a Bürli (that's a hard Swiss bread roll). I said she should stick to the American toast bread, which is what they call white sliced bread. Same sort you get in Australia.

But when we are in other countries we eat whatever food is there, and if I'm honest, which I am most of the time, I'm not quite as enthusiastic as my parents, except in Switzerland. I'm a big fan of meat and cheese and bread and jam and coffee for breakfast. And my all-time favourite is gipfelis (that's croissants). I could eat that breakfast till the cows come home, as Auntie Lizzie would say, except maybe the stinky cheese which can burn your mouth. Burny cheese and scratchy bread! Who'd have thought Switzerland had such dangerous food?

When we're in China there's congee, rice porridge for breakfast, and you can add whatever you like to it. In Korea there's these great mushrooms and noodles and tofu and kimchi which my parents love. My dad likes to think he's Korean.

But then when we went travelling last month in Australia we had a continental breakfast at a motel. My dad wanted to know what continent it was from, because he certainly wasn't going there. After that my parents went to the supermarket and bought stuff so for the rest of the week we had an Intercontinental breakfasts.

Here's a picture of our Intercontinental Breakfast.

[hpmystery]

Big Things

We went to Brisbane to see GOMA, that's the Gallery of Modern Art. On the way we stopped at the big banana and the big prawn. Australia is famous for 'big' things. Dad reckons their tourist traps, because they seduce people to come in, take their picture next to 'the big thing' and then buy bad coffee and overpriced food. Not that our family does that. Mum always makes a spinach pie and we take our own coffee in a thermos with nice bikkies and snacks. We use the toilets at the 'big' places because they're usually clean. It's the same when we travel overseas, we only go to fast food places to use the toilet. I'm not very good with squat toilets and in Australia I just can't go to those compost toilets. I used to be famous for being able to hold on for ten hours when I was a kid. That's not really something I like to boast about, but it is a useful skill when you're travelling. My favourite artwork at the gallery was the elephant on its side. By the way it wasn't a 'big' elephant but a normal sized elephant, only on its side and looking at a water rat or kuril as its called.The work was called The World Turns and it was made by Michael Parekowhai. We had a big discussion about perspective, that went on way too long, and we walked down to Southbank. Mum and I had double decker icecreams and Dad took pictures of rubbish bins.

[hpmystery]

Das ist mir doch alles Wurst - it's all sausage to me

My dad said Frocks off to Austria for nominating Conchita Wurst for Eurovision in the first place. Both my parents were really glad she won this year and they think that a special sausage should be named after her. You've already got your bratwurst and your weisswurst and your liverwurst and heaps of other wursts, so a conchitawurst could be one with slightly burnt onions covering the sausage, like a beard maybe? 

Which brings me to vegetarian sausages. There weren't any at our school sausage sizzle. There never is. Mum says you've got to go to inner city schools in Australia if you want vegetarian options. But then again there weren't any bratwurst or weisswurst either, only the fatty pork sausages that seem to be the ones you get everywhere in Australia.  I think everyone should be able to able to eat the sausages they like. As German speaking people say, 'das ist mir doch alles Wurst.' It's all sausage to me.

[hpmystery]

Eurovision and Sausages

My dad loves Eurovision and he hates it. Other adults invite their friends around and they all dress up and drink a lot and eventually end up singing Abba songs. But my parents get confused by it. Not because this year there is a man who dresses like a woman and has a beard.That's not confusing (for them). Her name's Conchita Wurst and wurst means sausage in German. Dad has been making jokes about the Wiener takes it all, because she's from Vienna which is called Wien in German and a Wiener is also a sausage. And the winner takes it all is a famous Abba song.

What's confusing for them is that Eurovision can be very nationalistic with everyone voting for their own country or bloc of countries and they don't support nationalism, but they like the songs. Although Dad says he doesn't, but I know he listens to 70's music and Eurovision type music alone in his office on a Friday night, especially when he's been drinking wine.

But I like Jessica Mauboy. Now she's getting really famous because she's been on Sesame Street and Eurovision.  Mum said she and the dancers gave a fabulous camp performance, complete with all the Australian stereotypes and perfect for Eurovision. But I've got to go now because our school is having a sausage sizzle today. Unfortunately the sausages aren't like these cervelat we cooked in the picture. You could say that school sausages are nothing to sing about.

Remember: Everything has an end, but a sausage has two.

[hpmystery]

Swans and Pelicans

I woke up wondering how many homes you can have. It seems unfair that there are all these people in the world with no homes and then there's all these other people with two or three or even more.

I know lots of people who have two homes, in fact I'm one of them. I always say this is my home in Switzerland, and this is my home in Australia. I don't own either of them, (I'm a kid), but neither do my parents, because my dad says property is theft, which is something that one of the Marx brothers says. I can't remember which one it is, but that doesn't matter, so we rent them. Mum says this means we get to live in the best places and as long as we don't get kicked out, we're fine.

I have lots of friends who are ex-pat kids (that's the word adults use to describe people who are temporariy living in a country that's not their home country). Home country is the one you were born in, although sometimes that can change when you move permanently to another country and make it your base.

Some of my friends are also called third culture kids because their parents come from two different countries and they grow up in a third, or fourth or fifth country, that's not their parents' home country.

There are people who think it's really glamorous living in lots of different places in the world, changing schools every few years and learning different languages and customs. My family are always telling me how lucky I am. But when I talk to some of my friends, they agree that sometimes it can be hard being this lucky.

This is a picture of the Bodensee or Lake Constance, and this is the town of Arbon, the setting for the book FAKE. I love the swans, and once when I went back to my hometown in Australia I saw pelicans on the water and thought they were swans. Jet-lag can make you very confused, because in Australia, our swans are black not white. Would you believe that once I saw a black swan on the Bodensee? I was jet-lagged then and when I told my parents they didn't believe me. But that's another story.

[hpmystery]

Turkish Delight and Swiss Chocolate

Yesterday I had this craving for Turkish Delight, not the crappy chocolate bar one, but the real stuff you get in Turkey, with the pistachio nuts and icing sugar and rosewater. Mum brought a box back to Australia with us, but she had morning tea  with her girlfriends the second day we were home and they ate the whole lot!  I didn't even get one. She blamed the jet-lag for not being together enough to ration them out properly, but she should know by now that there are some things you just shouldn't do when you're jet-lagged. Shopping, sky-diving and inviting sweet-toothed women to a Turkish Delight buffet, being the top three.

So then I checked out the chocolate stash. The first few times we went to Switzerland we came back with a suitcase full of chocolate, but over the years, my parents have got more moderate in the chocolate stakes, so we only bring back a dozen or so blocks each time. I went to the cupboard and there was only one left, The Migros tourist block, Switzerland's cheapest chocolate, the one with dead blowflies in it. (That's what we call sultanas, sorry not the Sultan's wives, who are also sultanas and that can be very confusing).

Anyway, there's this lovely old lady who is a friend of my dad's and she always gives me a chocolate before we leave Switzerland, and it's always the tourist one, and it's always the last one to be eaten when we get home. 

Here's a picture of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul where you can't buy swiss chocolates but you can buy enough Turkish Delight to feed a flock of sweet-toothed forty year old women forever. As you can see, we weren't the only ones shopping that day. 

[hpmystery]

The Opportunity Shop

In Switzerland they call them Brockenhäuser (or a Brockies for short), in Britain they're called thrift shops and in Australia they're called Op Shops. The Op is short for Opportunity. If you've read FAKE you'll know that an Op Shop is the perfect place for a mystery to begin, because you just have to wonder where all the stuff comes from. But there are certain rules to follow in an opshop, so here's two.

- If you don't like touching other people's things (they're called pre-loved, but in reality they could be pre-anythinged) then you shouldn't go in to an opshop because everything is second or third hand stuff. This rule is specially for people who like to disinfect their hands a lot.

- If you are you worried about having dead people's things, then you should probably stay away from trying on old people's shoes and clothes. You know the stuff I'm talking about. 

But there are many great things about opshops. You can get all your presents there. Just tell your friends its retro or vintage if its got any damage. (Auntie Lizzie says its best to avoid giving anyone second-hand underwear, in any circumstances, see rule one)

Some opshops are called boutiques and specialise in real vintage clothes, (from the 70's), and these cost a lot, so they don't really fit into the opshops I'm talking about. Here is a picture of one of my favourite Swiss opshops that display their books rainbow style out the front of the shop.  If you want a book and the shop's not open you just take it and put your franc in the box around the corner. I like that because they trust people, and don't have signs up everywhere threatening to take you to the police if you steal anything, like some I know in Australia. Dad reckons that's a leftover attitude from Australia being a penal colony, thinking that everyone's a criminal. But I wish people wouldn't act like criminals and dump their rubbish outside them, because they're not not waste disposal places their opportunity shops.

[hpmystery]

I want to be a cat in Istanbul!

HP here and just thought I'd let you know the second book about my adventures is soon going to hit the streets. I don't mean that some kid is going to be throwing it out the window of their mum's car out onto the road so people walking their dogs can pick it up. I mean that you can buy copies of it from Morgan's online shop, or if you want to you can go to the library and read it for free. Morgan says she doesn't mind that because she's a library champion, but if you don't want to wait in queue for a book then it's probably best to buy your own copy

Its about the time we went to Turkey, the country not the bird, and before you fall off your chair laughing at my jokes, I'm not going to mention Hungary! We really only went to Istanbul and if I believed in reincarnation and came back as a cat that is the city where I would go. But first things first as Auntie Lizzie would say. You have to die before being reincarnated. And I've got too many things to do before I spend my next life as a cat.

I haven't got any pets of my own. That's not because I would forget to feed and water them and they would die, because once I had a tamagochi and it went for a whole month without dying, but it got lost in the end. I think one or both of my parents lost it, on purpose! But I couldn't prove anything. I found out later that a few of my friends tamagotchis also disappeared. Apparently they can be very annoying.

Anyway I've got a maths test to fail today so I better go. Here's a picture of a friend in Istanbul. The one with four legs. (He used to be a Sultan!!!)

[hpmystery]

Holy Cow

Hi my name is HP. This is my blog. My Auntie Lizzie suggested I have one to go with my books. That’s right there’s books about me and my family and our travels around the world. I don’t write them. My Auntie’s friend Morgan does. Auntie tells her stuff and she puts it into a book  called A HP Mystery. So far there’s four of them: FAKE, STOLEN, HIDDEN, and RIP-OFF. They're not all published yet, but should be by the end of 2014. I think they’re pretty good, if you like mysteries and things about ancient history and modern art and different cultures.

And I’m not just saying that, because she doesn’t pay me to promote them, although I wish she would, because then I would be able to buy my own iPad, instead of using my dad’s. OK she does give me the ones that she doesn’t sell, which means I’ve got a neverending supply of birthday and Christmas presents for my friends.

And that beats giving them jars of homemade jam which my friend Alice gives to her friends. (That’s what comes of having hippy parents!) So I really should count myself lucky that my parents have grown out of the hippy stage. Alice’s parents even used to tie dye her nappies! She says when she grows up she’s going to become a real estate agent and marry an accountant and buy everything new, just to spite them. If this was her blog it would look like a home decorators catalogue with lots of pictures of fancy furniture and kitchen appliances, but its not hers, its mine, so I'm going to put pictures up of what I like.

I know what you are thinking - that is not a self portrait! Meet my favourite Swiss Brown Cow -5189. But I think everyone should have a name, not a number, so I call her Holy, after Swiss cheese of course.