Who wants to get loose in Lucerne!

Welcome to Switzerland. A country most known for its pristine country side, yummy chocolate, expensive watches and white fluffy snow... no I'm  not talking about cocaine kids!

We arrive into the town of Lucerne as night is falling and the twinkle of the village lights can be seen as we are driving up the hillside to our cute little Swiss hostel. Everyone places their backpacks in their rooms (whilst sussing out who has the beset balcony) and the owner is a barrel of laughs as we sit down to have our dinner in the common room.

On our way into Lucerne, we were discussing what possible things could be on tonight's menu...macaroons? lightly crumbed veal strips? chocolate fondue? cheese?... sadly none of these were in our options. Instead we were given the breathtaking entree of stale bread and then a serve of sloppy cold pasta drenched in a weak tomato based sauce. How Swiss! Then when I politely asked if it was possible to get extra cheese, the waiter simply replied "no!" Well, with that I simply washed down the award winning meal with a warm glass of water (served in a old jam jar) and got a peaceful night's sleep.

The next morning was to be an early one. A group of us were dropped in town and we wandered around the village like lost puppies. We all individually pretended to know where we were going in search of a Lion Monument which commemorated the Swiss Guards who died during the french revolution in 1792.   Instead we got completely lost and walked in the wrong direction for quite some time because I was too busy talking to help the navigators map read, so the poor little things were clueless without my guidance.

One hundred years passed by, we found the monument, propped my camera (on top of a bin covered in cigarette ash) to score the best self timer photo and then went in search of some macaroons afterwards. As we were walking down a little side street, a truck load of band members came pounding down the street playing eerily music that was quite sweet, but had the most freaky face masks on id ever seen. Turns out it wasn't my private welcoming party to Switzerland, but a massive festival that the townspeople held every year at the end of winter to scare away evil winter gods and bring on the happy warmer weather. Everyone is invited to dress up in any costume they like and listen to the diverse range of different music that all the bands are parading too.

Three hours passed, I'd visited a fondue house for lunch and I was now dressed up in bin bags, glue and confetti.

A few of us discovered earlier that cheap beer was sold in cartons at the local supermarkets and we then got on the bandwagon after copious amounts of alcohol and decided that dressing up like one of locals would be fun too. With all the costume shops in town closed or sold out, we opted for a tight dress made out of deep green bin liner bags that even Lady Gaga would've been jealous of, although my haute couture became highly annoying when discovering you needed the sudden use of port-a-loo.

After successfully battling through 14 bottles of beer and seeing an amazing number of talented bands perform, the sun had set on this pumping village and it was now the final hour where the bands would line up and do one final parade down across the famous river bridge of Lucerne. Me and my mates had prime positioning and then disaster struck. As we all know, when Candy drinks beer, it  makes her become best friends with the waiting line in the toilet cue and now her bladder was making a dull roaring noise due to the liquid making its way to the golden gate. I couldn't exactly empty myself into a beer bottle as one of my male friends was happily displaying, so this left me in a moment of shock and paranoia.

I now had to make a drunkenly choice whether to break the parade barrier and run to the nearest pub I could find, push through the crowd behind me and find a bush or stay put and make myself a human fountain. With a category 6 tornado developing in my underwear, my final choice was to bolt like lightening and find a dark corner where no party goers would be standing and let it flow in true bohemian gypsy style. As I was running the streets like a madwoman, I began the process of ripping layers of my bin bag costume off, which left a dramatic trail of debris behind me. I opted to take a staircase down to the deserted, dark riverside and whilst dancing up and down on the spot like a twisted Barbie, i was successfully attempting to pee in peace.

Then as I was relieving myself, a curious little white swan swam up to the riverbank to see what I was up to. After most of my readers experiencing how much the bladder can hold on these drunken occasions, you'll understand when I say that the floodgates had now opened and I couldn't exactly stop for intermission. So now I was battling with
a) not getting wee on my new Nike kicks
b) not being spotted for public urinating by Swiss guards; and
c) not having my claka bitten off by a hungry swan

My business deal was cut short and I ran back to my friends feeling as light as a feather and reaching into my backpack for another beer. After the parade had finished, we spotted an intimate couple displaying doggie style in the parklands which we progressed to blow our whistles to and make loud obscene noises at them (which seemed perfectly mature when your alcohol reading is like a brewery). The male exhibitor enjoyed our cheering and whistles until he saw his female partner looking at us in disgust. He then came after us defending his true love from embarrassment and succeeded in fist punching quite a few of the lads from our friendship group. So the night finished with 1 black eye, a bruised nose, a bitten ear and a clawed chest... but fear not, your Candy was unharmed. Now, who said Lucerne was a boring place?


"Cheers" from Candy xx

To be sure, to be sure

"top of the mornin' to ye"

I welcome you OHA members to the land of leprechauns, beer and a hell of a lot of green moss!

Lets begin with the flight of the ever trusty and reliable RyanAir......so safe that when the plane lands you can hear the horse race bugle fanfare congratulating the pilot on finding ground level and landing everyone safely!?! The bright blue and yellow interior resembles something made out of Lego world and the flight attendants look like they've attacked themselves with a makeup counter and a can of bulk hairspray.

We clear security and leave the airport excited about seeing the mysterious country that is Ireland! The public transport seems quite satisfactory, no complaints there.. but when we check into our hostel, that's where the fun begins.

The hallway looked like were on a ship because every door had a porthole in it the size of a dinner plate and the room we were given had just about the same amount of space as a ship cabin. The shower was on time trials only giving us a limited amount of time with running water so you had to keep shoving the tap back in every 30 seconds and to make the morning times more fun, the hand basin was located at the end of the shower with the toilet seat only inches away.. cosy!

We had a tiny little spiral staircase to take you to the bunks upstairs that was built by Frodo Baggins and his mates, being a perfect size for hobbits, but a little tricky for us travellers who resemble a bit more of Gandalf's height. It was agreed that we didn't want to stay in this rabbit hole for long, so we set out in search of our first pint of Guinness. I was glad to have tasted the traditional Irish beer, but upon completing it, it was more like a roast dinner in a glass with creamy froth on top and one pint was more than enough for me.

One thing i will warn you of if you do travel to Ireland, is the addictive way you start talking like the locals. After four days of being there, we were getting any excuse to talk with a twist at the end of our words like ..
"pohtayyyyyyytoooohh" - potato
"toouu be shhhhuarrrreerrrr" - to be sure
"its nieeeeeyyyyce" - it's nice

and may i also include that this is all pronounced at the highest decibel level in your voice box, just so you can be heard over the loud Irish. Candy didn't do too much damage in Ireland although i will include a little story of her brief time in a town called Cork.

After checking into another hostel that provided oodles of room (almost as much as a pet kennel), all four of us went downstairs to grab a drink and listen to some good tunes on the jukebox. I decided i hadn't been very patriotic listening to American and British pop on my ipod for most the trip, so i wanted to request a strong Irish sound to infuse the fun into this bar and create some fun times for our last night in Ireland.

Instead what i did was create tumbleweeds to blow by as i placed 1 euro in the jukebox and selected song D2 (which was the one and only theme from Michael Flately's Riverdance). Whilst the previous selection of a chilled Bob Marley song was playing, it briefly gave me some time as I walked over to the bar afterwards to get a drink.

As I was waiting for that beverage to arrive, I slowly heard Bob Marley fading away which meant my request was next, but as I turned around to look at the jukebox, I saw that one of my other mates was standing there to make some of his own requests too. The Riverdance song I had selected started slowly with a haunting choirgirl voice and everyone in the bar had facials like they were getting held at gun point to listen to this music. All conversations had come to a halt and now everyone was looking directly over at my mate blaming him for such a tragic song request that the whole pub would now have to endure. As his back was turned, he wasn’t aware of everyone glaring at him and I started to laugh so hard my legs were crossed to prevent any spillages.

May I also remind you that when making a ‘paid’ request on the music machine, it automatically plays it at a louder level so the pub was now blaring with the deep and rich sounds of the tin whistle and bumbling goat skin drums with the added clutter of a 50 person dance troop doing the Irish jig in tap shoes.

The bar chick promptly comes over and in a thick Irish accent says “you had to start the feckin Riverdance didn’t yeh?” and it was at that point I felt that my work in Ireland had been done and that I felt sad but satisfied to be leaving the next morning.

Xxxxx Candy

Amster-DAAAAUUUMM!

Amsterdam

Where the people are high and the ladies are low...

This country starts with a tour of a cheese and clog factory where the owner is high and cant stop giggling throughout his welcoming tour around the factory. We are given a brief history of cheese and then a demo of how a clog is made by a man who was keen to impress by wearing clogs and track pants ….mmmmm.

Upon our group’s departure of this spellbinding place, we were offered to compete in the world record to see how many human bodies could be squeezed in, on top of and surrounding this rather large novelty clog out the front of the factory. Record to date was 38, our attempt was 18. Obviously the tour group before hand was pre-schoolers or from Asian descent because there was no way we were going to get anywhere near that number!

As we pulled up to our charming night stop named ‘Hotel Slotania’, we knew we were far from Kansas on this one. It was almost getting to be exciting to see just how shitty our accommodation could get and there were high prizes claimed for having the most terrible, impractical room in the places we were checking into. The group would run from door to door seeing who really got the jackpot of the dodgy toilet, the broken bed frame or the random sink in the middle of the room. I think everyone had scored well on this stop because they were carrying out renovations as the guests were staying there. The builders didn’t choose to do one section at a time or have any real structure to the demolitions, so there was dust, rubble and old, pervy Netherland tradesmen swarming around everywhere.

After settling into our dog-box of a room, we all freshen up and prepare ourselves to witness a well-known live Amsterdam sex show at the ‘Pink Elephant’. As we take our seats in the quite plush looking theatre, everyone is handed an alcoholic beverage and we can hear the loud club music pumping up to excite the crowd. The curtains roll up and we are greeted with a friendly pair going for it guns blazing right there in front of us on stage !! After I’d had gotten over the initial giggles, I was quite taken by the moves these experienced couples were displaying and it almost looked like they were incorporating a break dance, into a porno move and then crossed with something from Zumba.

We sat through 3 more ‘acts’ until we had half time where a female dancer came out scantily clad with a batman cape and baring all from the belly down. She was flouncing around flapping her cape (and her titties) all over the stage an then she prepared members of the audience that if they heard their name, they were to come up to the stage. I immediately had ill thoughts for the poor soul that had to be up in that pit of a stage and as those humours were running through my head my good friend was called up onstage. I imploded with a strong burst of laughter and egged him on to take his place up on the royal stage of sex! Then there were more names being called which shocked me, thinking that not all are safe, and then yours truly was called to join the rude rotating dance floor up ahead!!

Candy died with shock for .3 of a second and then rapidly joined to meet everyone up there and hoped that she worn her best just in case! The ‘bat woman’ whipped off her cape and asked everyone to separately take turns ‘sexy dancing’ with her and left me till last. I showed her that I wasn’t a wet mop by bending my knees whilst moving from side to side going down to her knees and back up towards her head and taking her hand do give the ole girl a twirl.

Batwoman looked back at me in shock and then progressed to the next section of her audience embarrassment segment.

She told us to stand back up against the wall and asked “do you guys like banana’s” which I excitedly yelled “yes, yes, I do!!”. As I glanced over to my friend (who had previously seen this show) he was shaking his head aggressively at me and I instantly regretting liking bananas.

Batwoman told us to take a bite of her banana which seemed harmless enough, until she progressed to stick it in her private lower region! Candy started to blush and was eager to get the first bite out of way following by running off stage, but no batwoman had other plans. You had to be chosen to take a bit of her fruit offering and there were four people in line ahead of me. As the stage victims were taking bites of the banana it was getting lower and lower and the participant before me made sure there was a mere stub left for my serving.

I lent down to have my share taking a modest ‘peck’ at the fruit, and then she refused to accept it, and grabbed Candy’s head shoving it back to towards her Netherlands to take the last bite. I stood up and laughed my head off meanwhile wanting to skull about 4 beers once I had got back to my seat. With a swift slap on Candy’s butt as she going back to her seat, I think Batwoman was quite happy with the old pot-of-poo that she was stirring.

The crowd involvement progressed (thankfully not with me) and one of the girls was bought up on stage to receive a sweet little lap dance from a male stripper named the ‘Black Pearl’ and then we set through 2 more sex acts which included a 9^th grader smoking cigars out of her little bumblebee.

As the group met outside the sex bar, we could not stop laughing and congratulated the man who had put our names forward to the entertainers before the show started.

He assured us there was a winner for the dance competition and I was in fact Candy Baskitt, chosen by batwoman herself. My well earned prize was a souvenir keyring from the ‘Pink Elephant’ but the icing on the cake was when she had endeavoured to give her number to give to me..?!

Now, after all that excitement, who’s up for a walk to the ‘coffee shop’?

Xxxxxxx Candy ‘Banana’ Baskitt