The blue lady...

Full of tourists! When we arrived some girl came up to me and asked if I was American? Pointing out i was kiwi I asked if she was Canadian. Nope, she was American herself! We told her we were looking for another kiwi guy Oscar (we had quickly realised none of us knew what he looked like) and so she set off asking every person at the bar if they knew him!

Awesome! We sat down for a beer and let her go to work. Stunning too so it shouldn't be long. All the girls here look like they're out of magazines. In the end however it was Oscar who found us. And so began a night of dream shattering reality.

This is how life works in Antibes. You wake up at 6am to get to the port at 7:30am. Then you walk the docks asking each boat owner if they want some help. Cleaning, mending, whatever. 99% of the time they say no but sometimes, you get lucky. If not, you head off to the crew finding agencies to check on your contacts, update your CV and this usually keeps you busy from around 9am to midday. Then it is off to the Captain's building where you learn of what time the new boats are coming in the next day and then you do some more dock walking. Then it all starts again the next day.

When a new boat comes in, you are usually part of a group of 20 or more guys and girls bunched up at the boat's soon to be new berth with eager eyes all greedily wondering how to outdo their neighbour in geeting onto this new ship. It's like putting one beautiful girl in a room full of 20 single guys. Competition all the way. And to make it more similar, you'd have to make her having a boyfriend 90% of the time too!

And the morning dock walks, you are not alone. Oh no, there are A LOT of others doing it too. And not just in Antibes mind you, this is going on in every port in the near by region! Crazy! The whole bar we were in this night was full of people looking for work.

So what about Oscar you may be asking? Well, he is still looking for work too. Two months on! He has done a bit of deck hand work, no sailing mind, and tells us you can walk weeks up and down the docks without striking lucky. So no luck there with stealing his contacts...

So realising I have no experience, no skills and no CV and now no contacts, I am ready to face reality and stow away until we are far enough out that they have to keep me!

Antibes

Antibes. Pronounced Un-teeb-a is rich people world. This place has money. Check out the yachts! Some are as big as our house!

Our host had mentioned there were some companies around the port whose job it was to set up crew with boats. So we decided to put our name down with a few of these. So at about 2pm (yeah, slept in a bit) we headed off to town.

When the day was drawing to a close, we had put our name down with no one but had seen a lot of other names around. A lot. And they had experience. And qualifications! Bugger (o:

But Jo had a friend Oscar from NZ, an old neighbour, who had been here 2 months. Surely he would have some contacts and maybe he could hook us up? So we got in touch and agreed to meet in the Blue Lady later that night with us secretly habouring plans of smoozing all his friends into giving us work...

Polizia

We began our stay in Italy by practicing all the Italian we knew; bolognese, pickio us upio (we figured putting an e-o sound on the end of words made them Italian), pasta, bonjourno and so on. Things were not looking too hot if actual conversation was required...

We waited for about an hour and a hlaf for the first lift. Ended up being a guy telling us our plan was stupid, Genova was aaages away from Milan and it would be hard to get there. He also said he couldn't take us but in the end he did drive us to a better spot where all roads led to Genova. Also taught us a little more Italian so that was all good.

So at this new spot we began again. High hopes. Then medium hopes. Then low hopes. Then no hopes.

When do seasoned hitch hikers find themselves dispairing? When the Italian police come and tell you they are going to arrest you. Hitch hiking is illegal in Italy they told us and so we had better catch a bus, then a metro and then a train over to France and try again there.

SUCK!

We carried on hitching for a bit but when they returned with 3 police cars and made things pretty clear they weren't happy with us, we headed off to Milan to catch a train.

So we got to the station only to find all trains had left till the next morning. So we decided to try some last minute couch surfing. And it worked! Called up a guy and he was sweet to let us stay for the night. One minutes warning. Now that is a generous guy!

Then next morning we caught a train to Antibes in southern France, met up with our new host Romain and it was time to begin looking for work on a yacht. Or not work, but just an opportunity to learn to sail...

Leaving Switzerland

We decided to join Vince for CS meet at the swiss 'beach' in Aarau. Sounded like the Berlin beach camp all over again with fire, songs, chats etc. Awesome!

Was pretty cool too. Sausies on a stick over the kiwi made fire, skinny dipping in the adjacent swiss river, too much red wine and the usual great group of couch surfers making it a fun night all up.

Then, planning on heading on to France the next day, we decided to see if we could find a host living further south than Vince. So we got hooked up with a guy Flo and at the end of the night we headed off together. Or i headed off with Flo but Jo had disappeared somewheres. So I went to find Jo and got back, only to find I had now lost Flo! And so he stayed lost. We ended up sleeping the night at the train station (all 30mins of sleep that is) and then hitching off the next morning in fine spirits (o:

Hitching out of Swiss was easy too and we soon found ourselves over in Italy...