Music City

After spending four days in Nashville, I was generally disappointed to leave the place. I found things there that I never expected. For the first time since being on the road by myself, I didn't feel the pulsing pressure to go out and see as much as I possibly could. There was something about the daylight in Nashville - it just makes you want to be and appreciate, without a map or an itinerary or a camera. I found myself falling in to step with the world and finally finding my stride as a traveller.

Without a doubt, the best part about Nashville was the music. Every night offered a new buffet of talent. On my last night, I went and saw the Dirty Dozen Brass Band - a brass band from New Orleans who played southern jazz like you've never heard before. But it wasn't just about the bands in the bars. It was the people I was staying with at my hostel. Everyone harbored some secret talent for music and some of my favourite memories involve sitting around the hostel at 3 AM listening to these incredible musicians playing music just for the hell of it. I was exposed to some incredible people who have encouraged me and changed me and certainly left their treble cleff imprint on my travels, each in their own way.

Ciao for now. xo

Beneath the Brim

What is most interesting about Nashville is not the hat-wearing-boot-scooting cowboys or even the music they play. It's all the things that lie beneath the stereotype that make Nashville more than just a hicksville city.

Like the fact that in Centennial Park, there sits a giant replica of the Greek Parthenon. Giant. And it's surrounded by the lush green grounds of the park where ducks wonder between the fountains.

Or at The Frayed Knot - the local bar for the Vanderbilt collegiates - they actually play beer pong, on tables designed and designated strictly for beer pong. And dressed in their deck shoes with the sleeves rolled up on their salmon pink Ralph Lauren shirts, they get very drunk trying to prove their masculinity by bouncing a ping pong ball into a slightly-full cup of beer.

Or how the music is not strictly knee-slapping-swing-ya-girl-round country tunes. The live music (of which there is plenty to choose from) is a hybrid mix of country, pop, jazz, soul and even hip hop - a rapper beatboxing with a violin is quite a scene to behold. Even my hostel, AAE Music City, is overflowing with talent. A piano sits in the lounge room where people lay down honky tonk tunes when the feeling suits them, or each pick up a guitar to play the Dueling Banjos or their latest musical creation.

That's what makes this city Nashville.

Ciao for now. xo

Thank God I'm A Country...er...Girl

After another pleasant journey on the Greyhound, (I sat in front of a man who was having a phone conversation about an ex-friend who just got out of jail - "He was let out with nothing but the clothes on his back, a bag of Cheetoes and a bible" - direct quote), I arrived in Nashville, the home of country music.

I feel every night spent out at the Toyota Country Music Muster listening to country rock, every performance I've seen courtesy of the School of Country Music and every time I've sung Keith Urbans' 'Love Somebody Like You' at the top of my lungs has prepared me for being in Nashville.

Even on a Wednesday night, Down Town was a side-show fair of bars bursting with people listening to local bands hoping to make it big. With some new friends I met at my hostel - AAE Music City Hostel (a winner) - we saw a cover group who were like a countrified beer garden band. The streets are full of buskers, some playing spoons and using a suitcase and a kick as their slapdash drum kit. Every corner boasts another leather boot store and everywhere everywhere, cowboy hats. It's like the Muster on uppers. 

But as tantalizing as the music has been, I got to Nashville with only one thing on my mind.

Cowboys.

Ha, just kidding.

The one thing on my mind was - vegetables. Fresh fruit and vegetables. For days, I couldn't work out why I was so lethargic and tired until I realised, I haven't eaten vegetables in weeks (well, months if you gloss over the sad excuse for vegetables we got served at camp). My poor body has been running on bagels and granola bars and the occassional serving of pulled pork (my new favourite American pastime).

So armed with eyes bigger than my backpack, I made a trip to the Farmers Market on 8th and Jackson where I found manna from heaven. Beans, eggplants, peppers (capsicums), squash, cucumbers, onions, avocados, peaches, nectaries, apples, oranges, bananas and tomatoes as big as your face. And with the intention of eating it all, I arrived back at my hostel with enough produce to open my own stall.

And tonight, I'm cooking me a feast.

And then finding a cowbow.

Ciao for now. xo