Mark's Travels

10 years of travel blogging from 35+ countries around the world

Ungrateful Danes, dossing and no TV or Internet 17th December 2001 in Exeter, United Kingdom


I don"t have a TV or Internet access at home. Most of my friends have gone back home. So there isn"t much to do on Sundays, hence the length and detail of this blogg:

I"ve added some more photos onto the site. They"re from Ana"s photo album.

Danish Ane"s parents came to stay last week. Some of the most ungrateful people I"ve ever met in my life. To contrast, when Freda"s Mom came to stay, she washed the dishes every night, greeted me in English and bought take out for us one night. Ane"s parents did buy food, for the 5 of them. It felt really nice to be left out and not offered anything as I sat at the dinner table with them. To add to that, they were nice enough to never speak a word of English, even when talking about me. I can now see where Ane gets her snotty behavior.

I was just about ready to kick them out and make them stay at a hotel. The cheapest hotel in Exeter is right next to the M5 at the outskirts of town, it"s a bargain at £49 per person per night. If her parents were looking for budget they could stay at a Hostel and share a room with a homeless Welshman and 5 Italian Backpackers. I bet the Backpackers will be extra polite and quite as they party the night away. To add to that they probably would know about 4 English word between the 5 of them and none of those words appear in the sentence "Shut the fuck up, I am trying to sleep!?

The Danish girls have a friend named Mia that wants to stay for the entire month of January for free. The girls were shocked when I said that I wanted rent from her. I guess I"m supposed to take the added cost of another person in the flat because "she"s their friend". Better yet, I should crash at her place in Köbenhavn (£5 to anyone that can pronounce this properly) for the month of February for free. Far exchange, right?

Spanish Ana stayed with me last week. She cleaned everything, carried my groceries back from the market, bought me McDonalds and treated me like a King for the week. Ana truly is one of those special people in my life. The kind of person that only shows up a few times in one"s life.

I can"t wait to travel to London/Calgary and get a change of pace for a while. Exeter is a really small place. Not having TV or Internet isn"t making it much easier either. I saw a photo of one of my mate"s flat and he had a TV with a Playstaion 2 and the Internet on his PC. Back home I wouldn"t think anything of this but here it looked as though he was living like a King. Turns out he pays £70 less in rent each month. That would pay for ADSL, a TV rental and the BBC license.

I"m ready to go out and buy a TV. I would keep it in my room instead of the Living Room a.k.a. Freezer downstairs. The girls didn"t like this idea. God knows they wouldn"t pitch in a penny for the thing and would watch it constantly.

When we were trying to work out how they could pitch in for the internet, £8 a month was too much for them... they would only use it EVERY WAKING HOUR OF THE DAY. In all fairness, my investment was much higher:

PC: £750 one time fee
Modem: £32 one time fee
Surftime Evenings and weekends: £12.99 a month, calls between 8am - 6pm are at £2.40 per hour.

So thinking that they would use it 2 hours a week = 8 hours a month. £8 isn"t to bad considering they didn"t spend a penny on the PC in the first place. To add to that, the PC is in my room (and will always be) and Freda wanted privacy while she was online and wanted to be able to destroy all evidence of any site she had been to while on my PC. Way too dodgy. She"s the only one that hasn"t met anyone out here, no way she is going to be on my PC without being supervised.

We were unable to resolve this one and they now pay £5 a hour at an Internet Cafe in town. I enjoy a 10MBit link at work.

I"m going to do some more traveling in the New Year. In January I"m going to Manchester. In February it"s a toss up between Barcelona and Stockholm, I"ve found £10 flights to each. I can"t let so many great traveling opportunities pass me by while I"m here in Europe.


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