I'm from Australia, the land down under. I am from Brazil. Hi, guys, I'm from South Africa.

Tell me something. What would you say if you knew the world was listening? My boss and his wife are terrible people. I mean, I love my men and all. Don't get me wrong.

But dude is what let's get back in the loop on what's the word? The international show of word of mouth. You could find us by keying in what's the word at ACORN Studio?

Hello, everybody, and you're very welcome to the timely Hector and Teresa podcast, which this week is going to be called Benfica.

Yes, you'll get it done, Benfica. Let's get it out of the way.

And it's slightly awkward with people sending things to the house because you don't want to be encouraging stuff. But something beautiful arrived last week.

It's a photograph of three sheep in a field in Moeed, which I know doesn't sound phenomenally exciting, but it's fantastic. We'll take a picture of it and sniff around there.

And it's by a lady called Caroline Quinn who does fine art photography. I think she is a back of the day there, but it's.

Yes, but effective in my current is a beautiful part of the world near Robertstown, and it's about 10 miles outside down by the river. It's a lovely house. Yes, Hangers-On are superb.

So we've had a big adventure this week. Well, that's this. I mean, I started with my adventure.

Yeah. I was going to say, what did you get up to for the week? Normally we don't shoot. When I got down to something, why don't why don't we ask each other what we have for the week?

So I'll kick it off there. Told me Friday night and you both know this now. So not only onthe new Friday night, about half past eleven. Such an old person, such an old person thing to do. I fell all the way down the stairs, head over heels. I had a glass whiskey in a book in my hands. When I slept, I couldn't grab onto the banister and I just was gone. And I've busted my leg and my chest and my neck and my voice.

Your voice is kind of sensitive. Why is your voice like that? I've hurt myself into sensitivity.

You have. You've dented your vocal cords. Yeah. So that's happened to me. Can we have a little reconstruction of this? Because I'd like to know the largest.

I wasn't I wasn't wrong just in case I was not drunk. Many glasses of whiskey.

I'd had one, but I had had I had a following in my hand, a full, tremendous spindly hand as well as the first thing I did was she opened her mouth to see what they say.

Leading up to that, they say what an awful lot of accidents in a car happen in the two to three minutes when you're nearly home because you think your brain's boxing. That's that's exactly what is for Delhi crime, exactly what happened.

We have antlers hanging over the front door. God knows where they came from. But I in order to kind of balance out the karma of the antlers, I trun an old Tibetan scarf that I got off a who lives above and Jampolis in Kabban.

Yeah, he's that is the second or third in humility to the actual Dalai Lama, like he's the boss men, but they've been fled Tibet in order to trips all over the world.

How Tibet.

About 20000 and they went north to Scotland first in anyway. And then he ended up in jumbling. Now jumbling I don't think is the Karvonen for the area, for the parish gamboling, jumbling.

Yeah, that's the name for the Opata carbohydrate. So he gave me this white scarf for the Dalai Lama. It's on white scarves around people. It's kind of a blessing.

You know, you've probably been there own.

I've never met the Dalai himself. I've often got no we were going to go to the sacred city for the Dalai Lama. Is the Dalai Lama is. Well, we never I was only in the Himalayas. The sacred areas of get a way to go. I didn't go wasn't a temple.

So so I had to run this Tibetan blessing scarf on the antlers just to to kind of say, look, if anything bad happened in the GetNet, these antlers let this scarf redress that very.

And we balance things off now.

It's coming up to Easter. So my wife decided to throw up.

These are kind of a Easter eggs woven into a kind of a thing. What do you make?

Baskets of reeds. Reeds? Yes. Rorschach's Rorschach's. So Rorschach's. Oh, yes. Straw rushes reeds in a kind of a shape with Easter eggs bet into it as she hung down the as well. I'd never seen it before. So I was, um. I was coming down the steps and the entrance is high up in the wall. And I thought, what the fuck is that?

You know, I could make heads or tails of it. And I, I was wearing socks and carrying whisky and and a book in my hand, a book about God.

And then what I did as I missed my own socks and I missed the I came down on the curve and I was gone.

Jesus taught me all the way.

And you went headfirst like you you went forward going forward. Yes. I felt all from the second step. And it's a curved stairs as well. So I was kind of went around the back and I was delivered that not into the floor like a helpless, like a barber. Rauno me and not not crying raun.

Oh, no. Where was everybody?

There. Pandemonium. And there's no Yvonne panicked. What were you doing? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. So where to find each other?

I tried to talk her out of the pandemonium and she did you bring the ambulance ismy into pain relief.

But so I said I said, give me I was kind of cranky. Gabby's uncle Paul. I said, who put that thing over the ambulance?

And I said, Give me ice and pain relief.

Ibuprofen? No.

Yeah. So basically from just below the kneecap up to me, up to what you call nothing, I broke nothing.

But it's muscle has come off bone or tendons are scratched or something like me, you know, ribs and I got the ribs. The ribs are done in Israel. Yeah.

You're very, very lucky. The ribs from being hit, the ribs were from some kind of weird stretch that I did in the in the fall. Like it's a big stairs.

It is. Because there I am. The moment you didn't cut your heads, hit your head, knocked your you didn't get it.

I was I thought I was falling. I was just focused entirely on the whiskey glass. You're looking the glass.

Didn't listen to me, Nick. Yes. Yeah, that was that was my drama of the week.

So I'm limping up and they're like, well, then I just a very difficult night fight night.

And then it seems the doctor on Saturday over to John Butler, sports physio on Saturday for a two dips John makes of jockeys. So two dips into the the freezing freeze and bats ultrasound.

Well, I just normal scheidt, you know, but I've been limping now for a while. I get a job and I was it was only at the weekend you decided you were going to do an ultra marathon. You sprung that one on. Oh yeah.

I mean all the way across the country I never doing any exercise. Welcome to the land of relax, relax, relax.

Never getting into a gym like a roundabout Robin and watch where you're touring. You like where are you going to let us know to get ready for us.

Sorry. Excuse me. This is the Saturday night again. That's what you get. No for. Let me tell you this night. Don't cross the line if at all.

I'll do a marathon if an old person asks you to help them across the road. What do you say? Yes, I'll bring you across. Okay.

So if a blind lady says will you help me run from your old Golway, what do you say? Say yes, of course. That's exactly what happened.

Okay, well, he won't be like this. Well, he won't be going on until I know that was my few days.

Were you trapped in again? I was Trabzon. I was Thrips, and I have to say hello to a panther.

One second, Capullo, you go first.

Well, I mean, honestly, I mean, you know, after St. Patrick's Day, I just.

So you got a shout out from the president. Oh, for God's sake, did you fall down the stairs. Didn't me on some Friday and ruin it all like.

And did you turn upside down? No, I wasn't actually even watching it. I was in the car. And next thing I got like phone calls and text messages and. Oh, my God. And I what? So my brother rang me and he said, sure.

After getting a mention that the man I'm sorry, I said, What do you mean? I mentioned I thought he was going to go through the blue. It's and the you know, the family connection, whatever. And he was like, no, no, he mentioned you specifically. And I was like, in what context?

Then obviously I watched back and was, you know, I mean, that's pretty incredible, isn't it?

It's amazing. Was it emotional for you to hear this? Very. Yeah, it was actually quite a bit of a teary when I heard it, like because, you know, and I think another thing that was was nice for me on that happening is that, you know, you'd be kind of talking or I'm related to the president or I know. But, you know, people would be like, yeah, right. Like know you know, who knows the president.

And then the fact that he just showed up unprompted, unprompted, and like, you know, my Rita.

Yes.

And then and then poor Joel obviously fell off the stairs on the plane on Thursday. And, you know, it was a bit of a I tell you, on day four, it was a week for stairs.

I was totally wanting. It is enough to fall back on down stairs. But when I fall upstairs, that's got to live and that's living.

The shout out went global.

Yeah, it was it was class like. But I don't know, like, it's brilliant. You know, if you knew what was actually coming, it wouldn't have been as exciting.

Yes. Yes. Neil Martin was born in the car and he was not really like as if he knew what was happening in the region when he went to be listening to a podcast. Then better he'll have to start getting to know me to be like, hey, when he comes into Knokke, I thought I was going to say my cousin Larita does a podcast.

Well, yeah, I mean, everybody is doing baratz for a year like that.

I don't get to do myself, but a little bit crazy. He got it. Got we do that.

He's doing throe work. Don't forget now that next year with God's help, the Tommy doesn't fall down any more stairs. He'll be over there next year. Yeah. We love to watch that. Tell me when you've seen the stairs again, have you gone back to the scene of the crime, have cordoned it off, did you do fingerprints, have the crime scene been?

And I tell you, I wouldn't have words that fuckin then rushes that you have antlers when they come off the fuckin wall and the antlers hard.

But the funny thing was, so there was Rawdon's screaming and and half an hour later, I'd calm down and I knocked on my daughter's door. She's 14.

And I said, I'm all right, by the way. And she says, Oh, I thought it was the dog.

But you're weak now.

You've been traipsing over, traipsing around the country. Quick synopsis all over the country. Don't f for me. And then down to Cork and then over and Clonakilty and then over into Cross Haven and then across into Waterford and then into Karlo, open to Mulgan and back into good farmland.

I was up in Cerrillo and I was driving through this skullion countries, but not for Scullion's parallel car all over Ireland capital of the world.

There'd be fellas coming over now from Africa, India, South America, looking for the secret of good skies. Scullion's usque.

They have Scullion's on everything. They've Gagnon's in the middle of the match, but I love Scullion's. I like to like gay onions.

Let do you like about the Scarlet in York. They're they're just beautiful and they're lovely. They're light and they're kind of. But yeah it's yeah.

There's no sandwich in the world that isn't better off when the scallions and the green beans are the white versus the green bit is just for flirting with you like a shop at the White House.

The big, big white, big beautiful. What needs to be high just to off the west is a harsh yes but a skullion.

See a little lift, just throw it in the chin and sweetcorn law a little bit off your swing as opposed to getting the fish.

But they're not nice. After about six days, if you don't eat the Scullion's rice to get Wishnie obviously was was. So be like a mickey.

It's in a psychiatric hospital.

Why do they look different?

We come up there, we come up the motorway, we turned off in Bankstown and we crossed over the river barrow. And I went to a place called Gary Hill to meet a girl from Poland called Eva. And a lad from Dublin called on. And he's a baker. He's a talented guy. And they live in the back of this big estate where rent and a real sort of cool farmhouse property. And they were sitting together a couple of years ago and they said, what are we going to do?

And they started rearing snails.

So once they got in on Sunday afternoon, I walked in to a snail farm with four hundred and seventy five thousand snails.

I didn't initiate the lads with the patch and they were all Hamri Aphrodite's, by the way.

They're going to see that.

Sorry, hermaphrodites. Oh, good. I'm Aphrodite. Snails. Snails are in their binary. They're either male or female, depending on the way they lay in on top of each other. They shoot whoever decides that they're ready for a bit of rompin when they're when they're in their love season, they shoot a white arrow out of their side like Cupid into the side of the male or female, a white arrow.

I thought they could have their own. I thought they were asexual. And they had their own I thought they had produced their own for those that thought they got themselves back, they gave birth to themselves. No, no, no, no.

They're they're hermaphrodites. They're they're from they can either be male, female, depending on the day.

And one of them shoots this white arrow to the side and then they all join in and they are lying on top of each other, thousands of them.

And they all pagans nail these alerts with the little cells.

These are the lads that are when you lift up in your garden, they're Irish snails, their best snails in the world that are in your drainpipe, that are under the wheel of a car, that are in your garage.

What do they use this now as far they shipped them off round the world where snails are a delicacy, the French can't get enough of them. The Italians loved them. They loved them in Dubai. They loved them in the United Arab Emirates. They loved them in Japan. They crave the Irish name.

I'm a bit disgusted over 400000 of the word he has.

He has it all a special room when it's all moist and the heat is in there.

It was like walking into an orgy of snails. They boxes or they know were all lying in a tough of the thousands. And how's how could you feed them?

What did they feed them on the one you stand on them? No, no.

They're all up and they're all in a whole sort of thing, a wooden thing. And then they take the eggs every three days and then they wear them and little boxes and then they bring them down to during the summer, they're out in the open air. And an amazing story from a Polish girl and on. And they're having a baby soon. And then they said we were just about to leave. And didn't they say you stay for some lunch?

No, I said no to this thing and. Oh, and what could we say? What could we say? Well, you two words come to mind.

That one does yes. And one is no. And we turn to we're all packing up. We are like. How should we may as well Dinmore and and. Gaelic L'Escargot is the name of the company L'Escargot as the French that French love them. Yeah. So we sat outside in the sunshine and we like having a soft mickey in your mouth.

You know, you I learned how much it's worse than like it's so much I'm having a roeg in your mind.

We're willing to solve Mekki, but you're chewing on something. It's not. So, so, so fair play to. Oh, he's an ex chef and a baker. So I could smell garlic. Right. I knew that was garlic, but that's all good.

And parsley and we're all sitting outside gone white. Why is that.

So do the Lord. A lovely salad or bread. Can we go to the banks? And we were going to smother them.

So outcomes this ball of mickeys in garlic sauce and what the fuck there in.

I'm not we all. We all are the story.

I know she got a big massive spoon and she started dollop in the mouth on top of it and an E spoon.

There must have been 40 or 50 snails and it was dripping down on top of the bread. And I'm looking at Rascon. He's looking at me. OK, we better do this.

I get so you don't even filmon this for the show. No, just one anyway.

So you're just doing it for. So we just said we stay for we show your face. It's all about your own face. So up it goes the mouth and straight and it's very chewy. It's when you look at the picture of them, they don't look, they're black and they're just little things. And that just chewy and chewy, those great taste of garlic. And you know what? After a while, I was so hungry that we didn't have lunch.

I started morning to them Ruscoe in four seconds and they weren't as bad as we talked.

See something like that. You can just swallow them. You don't have to chew them. No, but this is like a muscle. Your attitude is like I just I just wanted to and I said to you, man, if I was I said don't.

If I was out in the middle of the forest and I know how to survive and I was doing bushcraft in those six days with no food or water and I found a load of snails, would I survive? He said Hektor, one of the great sources of protein, one of the great sources of protein, the Irish snail. So I am going to look at snails and I next war.

I'm quite good. Could you. Yeah. And did they take them out of the shells of the shells.

But they're just, they're just looked like little mussels. So that's what I had on Sunday afternoon of my lunch.

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Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.

Now, so we had flown in from Moscow. Who's we? We invited me in, Evan. We had we were in Moscow and we're taking a seven hour flight into Siberia. Yeah. And five time zones. Yes. And it was middle of winter. We got to the city called Tomsk. And from Tomsk, we filmed there for a day or two, just freezing cold and permafrost. And we wanted to go to Krasnoyarsk and onto Krasnodar, where I had seen the rugby team about two years before that.

Who playing one of the I don't know how it happened, but they were playing one of the rugby games against a team in Siberia in the European Challenge Cup was a Kazakhstan or so there was no Siberia and it was in Krasnoyarsk across North Africa constantly ask.

And there was a picture of Bundakji and all the boys in the dugout with hot water bottles and blankets and sleeping bags and everything.

And they got stranded there for an extra couple of days. I remember that. So we got to that city and we filmed there.

We went to that rugby team and the boys we met, the captain of that rugby team I talked about when Connor came to town. But after two days in that town, we knew we were going to get the Trans-Siberian Express and we want to be on a forty two hour train journey of that forty two hours.

And the train was coming in. It had left Moscow five days before that. It was coming into the station at one o'clock in the morning and we would be on it then non-stop for 42 hours.

Oh my God, that will be my worst nightmare, trying to fucking plan what we're going to eat and what we're going to drink.

But one of the stories we did before it was we were going to meet this Russian oligarch, a Siberian oligarch, who had, I think, to oligarch.

Yeah, OK. Are they did they said, oh, please.

Yes, oligarch. Oh, sorry. So we were meeting this Russian oligarch oligarch, ugly accent like a fella from the can carry Grantham's.

So I didn't even know I've been ah for all my life. Don't ever say that again.

I don't think people who might know isness, oligarch, oligarch, oligarch.

So I we are meeting this iberico it up into two. We're meeting the Siberian oligarch. That doesn't sound right. We're meeting a Siberian oligarch and he we're better live.

And you got that one oligarch. Let's look silly. Let's go.

Roman Abramovich is an ugly n oligarch. Oh, he's nuts. So his name was Dennis.

He owned you garaging care borith. Dennis Good.

Dennis, what was Dennis Rubinoff Shelf or something. Right. However, that found him right. But he owns about 30 restaurants.

He's a private jet. He's restaurants off Red Square and he's a supremely rich Siberian guy.

Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. So so that night we were coming, I thought we knew that one o'clock that night our bags were packed. We were getting on the Trans-Siberian Express.

So, Roscoe, as we're waiting outside in the snow and permafrost was freezing cold. We were being picked up by Dennis, this Siberian wealthy businessman who was bringing me to one of this exclusive Siberian restaurants.

So there's all this sort of in trepidation was freezing outside.

We're getting ready. And, Roscoe, that this lad comes you've got to turn right to the camera and say we're going for dinner with Dennis.

So. So that's cool. Yes, that's great. So as this car pulls in, there was this it was like an Escalade. And that is like a Ssangyong will was more like a big Ssangyong, blacked out Windows, massive Jeep Geiger's out the front, two guys going to the front driver and thing are blacked out windows. And they got Hector.

I said, yes, I did. Mungo's, please walk me over to the back of the car, opens the door or blacked out. And I hop in and there's Dennis sitting there. Welcome to Siberia.

How did your producer find this fella?

He he's a very, very, very famous restauranteur. His his restaurants are called Seeberg. Syberia was like Siberia, Siberia. They're very famous, as in local produce. Local herbs is is a very, very wealthy businessman to hotels, but especially Siberian restaurants. He's opened up ones in St. Petersburg, in Moscow, because they can't get enough. It was like from from where? Way away. So when we get speaks perfect English security in the front with his driver, blacked out windows, cameras, all the cameras, all the cameras in there rigged.

So he spoke to me very passionately about growing up with nothing. His parents had nothing. His dad died when he was young, his mother going out and getting food during the 80s in Russia when there was no food, even getting a loaf of bread. And how he after that, he said, I swear I'm going to go on. I'm going to get my education and I'm going to become a success. And he's very proud of being from Siberia and making his millions there.

So we get to the restaurant and the minute he arrives, the cavalry come out and it's like VIP, Siberian style waitresses taking my jacket. People ask me. And so we are brought into the central part of his restaurant restaurant. It looks fantastic. And all around us, where vodka bottles six or seven rolls high of different vodka bottles. Now, we knew we were going on the Trans-Siberian at one o'clock in the morning. And then he goes today, tonight.

Hector, you're my guest. You are. I'm going to bring you into the world of Siberian cuisine. Next minute. It becomes with six different vodkas. This waiter comes in six different vodkas in front of me, beetroot, horseradish, cabbage, chestnut vodka, blueberry, vodka.

And he goes, this is what we do before we drink, before we eat the food. Each one of these, we celebrate the traditional plants of Siberia. And then there he goes. Yes, this is what we do here. So I now know wine. I'm not so sure like shot horseradish. And of course, now can you see can you taste the Siberian horseradish? I said, yes, that's my beetroot. Bombach Me.

Yes, tradin. So the food was absolutely beautiful. It was raw. It was Siberian. It was he was so proud of being from that area. So we had a great night with him and Dennis and the Siberian.

Can you read what the food was. Yeah, the food came out. It was like small little fish dishes and then it was all but it was all raw. Was it like no cocktail was cooked? But he was so proud that everything he was sourcing was from Siberia, this place where we think that people should be sent to prisoner camps way back in the day, this place where we some of those we Siberia's Fokin, the size of America like it's like five time zones.

We flew from Moscow to get to Siberia and was half an hour flight into this wilderness.

Some parts of Siberia aren't even discovered yet. It's a frozen amirs, an incredible land. And there's Tomsk, there's Krasnoyarsk and there's Krasnodar. They've invented the Soviet Xavier at the universities now in his town and all the best minds from Moscow, the best young students want to go to Siberia to study. It's no longer the place where where prisoners are sent. It's no longer the place that that was the last outpost. It's no longer the place where you're sent to be punished.

Siberia is going to rise as one of the great areas of the world in or how is it going to arrive?

Because they've got the best minds. They've got the best universities. It's an incredible place for chemistry, for patents, for pharmaceutical stuff, especially for the body. He says, you know, the herpes virus.

I said, yeah, Zovirax, he said, invented in my town. So they're coming up with these brilliant medical universities. It's becoming the go to place in Russia.

And is it an independent country or just a state? It's a state. Are the Russians, the Moscow, the Muscovites. When you think of where Moscow is geographically Russia. Moscow is only two hours from Frankfurt. Yes. I mean, I was ten, twelve hours from Frankfurt. Moscow is Russia is the whole top of the world and Siberia is that far flung place. Then Vladivostok and then you're over nearly you're not you're nearly in Korea and now and underneath you're in Mongolia.

It's just yeah.

Everyone should take out the map and look where it is. And if anyone has ever got the chance to go to Siberia, you should, because it it's just an amazing place.

But and like I suppose, not many people would have an opportunity or need to go to, you know, if you like. A lot of people do take the Trans-Siberian.

The Trans-Siberian Express is seven days and seven, eight or nine nights from Moscow to Vladivostok. Doesn't that sound a lot to do that later?

It reminds me of, is the train like the one that you get from Ballona to Manola is like now you're talking.

It's old and it's rickety. So Dennis gave us everything we wanted, Rusko was salai, salivate, salivating behind the counter.

Do we get the picture?

And Evan was behind again, gone off, for God's sake.

And I was like, oh, were you drunk? And the list and the vodka, there was four or five different rounds of vodka coming through, but it was lovely. You know why? Just small.

You know why little small Charlotte called. Wow, that's credible. He says. Do you do you feel the Siberian do you taste the Siberian chestnut that Putin you brought us in from Connemara that day.

That was one of the nicest Putin ever tasted in my life. And that would have been made from ingredients from around the area.

Yes, I can totally get that. And there were small little shots and he goes, once we had a shot, you don't go into the other ones he discusses. You chat, you converse. 20 minutes later, you have another little shot. Now, this is made from a Siberian horseradish. The taste of my taste, this pom intense flavors.

And you were getting giddy. You weren't getting drunk. You were just feel nice. Food was incredible. Finally, we wrapped up with Dennis and I've got photos of this. We were surrounded by vodka. And he goes, tonight, you take the train, Trans-Siberian.

I said, yes, in Japan again, the waiter. And he goes, get these guys. Whatever they need are supplies for the train. I said, wow, what do you mean? I said, he said, whatever you need, do you need food, takeaway food, you need drink, 20 hours. I said 42. He said, get them whatever vodka they want.

Roscoe's lit little because we were because we have they know if we had bought we went into a small little grocery store that afternoon. And and it's not as if you're walking into test scores. You're walking into a small little tiny Russian shop. And we're looking at stuff like Noodles and Roscosmos and Pringles. We brought about ten boxes of Pringles. We brought cheese, we brought some sort of salami. We had bought two bottles of wine.

We had probably destroyed after was two hours.

We brought loads of Siberian beer. Warmbier iced our water rascal's.

So what do you want water for? Drink, drink, drink. Did we sleep on it? I said forty two hours lost. So we're all tired.

And we came out of this little girl so we were seven bags of shopping for our little cubicle on the train. Little did we know a couple of hours later and one of the top restaurants in Siberia that the guy was called Get these guys whatever they want.

What was the train journey like? So. So before we left Siberia, Siberia, the restaurant crosscourt your bring these but go to the boys could taste it. So we all started getting vodka's was we knew we're going to have a long journey and we weren't sleeping tonight getting on a train at 1:00 in the morning, the adrenalin with all the equipment. So and then I said, Dennis, could I get a bottle? You can get whatever you want.

I said, see that raspberry one there?

Have you got have you got get a bottle of raspberry for these boys and get the chestnut.

So we brought about five big bottles of vodka onto the train with us. Dennis dropped us in the Ssangyong, the blacktail Ssangyong to the train station. It was like something you see in a movie from the 60s. It was freezing cold. There was ice everywhere, snowdrifts as the train came into the station.

And you can see your lawyer, your you know, there were Mongolian guys there, looked like there was Uzbekistan UFC fighters.

It was freezing cold. It was a quarter to 1:00 in the morning. I'm half crippled now with the vodka west. We've got a fifteen flight cases, fifteen bags, and they're all packed there at the platform at the side of the station. Tell me this.

They're getting on the train because you're the star of the show. You don't have any bags here. I know. We fill them first, as in we fill up gold. And I did the piece I you are such a character on the hand. Imagine Thomas shot in Siberia August. Why, sure. If I had a daughter. Lagos Monchaux by Misha Adulterant Trans-Siberian Express Feki Mischief. Errante Verleger Siberia native estimated Bellona in Mongolia. So get the bygone rate cut and that's what it's all hell bygone bygone bygone sweat.

Gerlinde you know happen the bags. Oh no we all had, we all had because the three of us have traveled to la Kabah.

Tomé having you know the star of the show you lived in by a tripod in Rascon Quick Gezari because all we wanted to break the back up. Don't break the back up of us. Not at all. Who's got the groceries.

So we're told me now you only within in first class.

Unfortunately when we got on to it now it's like going back in time.

The first thing that hits you is this immense, well, small heat.

And then you realize that the train is packed with people of all spices and colors and sweats and the little tiny cubicles are tiny. And we bought we had ordered two sleeping quarters, sleeping quarters. Like as you walk up the side, there's not space for two people to walk by.

One of them is a spy stabbed.

I've seen them films with the pencils so closely, you have to step up along the side wall. So, so, so we get all the bags to the lovable.

So the idea is you lose the law with all that Dobra Darlow Cockshell La Jolla Coxiella to sleep. Well, the password I learned was how's it going in Russian Coxiella glugs or cocksure.

So Evan unfortunately the poor bastard that wasn't born Temba me, he got no, there wasn't enough space for him because what he took so he said I'll be all right, I'll be in the war next year that were next to him, had a couple of military boys.

They look like these Fokin.

You know, your mom's an assassin, you know, but you know, they kobie the bet. Better head and McGregor. Habib no. Mladenov he was the son of another Rojak and he was in heaven walking into the place.

The two boys were like sitting there in our singlets. I know fucking a pair of shorts on them and flip flops like this. I want to get up with a book on thought. We were like, Oh, they're going to kill you. I didn't even in the. He had to crawl up over the big smoking six month traveled back up, and that's going to step on your Bank of America.

Oh Lord, I didn't speak a word of English right for you, for no one wanted to go to the toilet. Did you buy that?

Some flip flops in the heat. La la la la la la la la la. Belle, you coming in now?

You might as well. I'm so there.

I'm getting out of here quick.

And then we went up to the doors and we had our own little we put all the Pringles and all the cheese and all the salami and all the ham and all the bread and don't break the vodka.

Four bottles of fucking vodka on the table. I did it in the bed here. And then we pulled the two beds that are above us and we put flight cases and bags and tripods and cameras up above us up to the ceiling and fucking hate. And we were stripping off.

So anyway, forty two hours on the train. All I can describe to us, when you looked out the window, there was nothing vastness and white and snow and trees and nothing and no lights. No people, no roads. No not that was place.

We just sit down and have a coffee at the window. Not so.

So we started to write a poem or so. What we did go to finish free didn't have never even had to come in, come into us because we couldn't.

He says was the old man just sat there like this and the Mongolian have frozen all avenues, haven't had to come in and out to us.

So I said, lads, there's only one thing to do. Rascals like there's only one thing to do. That's forty two hours. Let's get steamboats and we sleep for a few hours.

What the fuck. The strawberry vodka. I applaud the brain. That was fantastic. And then we had our cans and then we started getting it. We got a little bit adventurous so we went down to the little eating cabin or and there was a lovely little Russian lady down there and she in behind like the CIA like that you're. Yeah, yeah.

In behind them we were there hello Coxiella Godzilla. And she's like with beer. Beer because we drank the vodka. At this stage this is like six hours into it, still five o'clock in the morning and we're in the middle of nowhere on the Trans-Siberian Express and we saw that in our little fridge shit. About thirty small cans of Russian beer. Right.

And we just sat bought the whole lot of them bought the whole lot. After a while we were doing making towers of cans and stuff as we looked at, saw nothing. Nothing.

Were there many like many people on the train packed, packed with people in transit. Imagine, just imagine a cousin from Moscow going to see a cousin there.

It was just that it sounds like want Doblin. It sounds like what it was like was a rural Irish train during the 90s and.

Yeah. Or even before that. And then we drank the place dry and we went back to the cabins and we slept and we got drunk three times in the forty two hours. Oh hang over the second time.

Then Evan found out that if you paid, if you paid one or two U.S. dollars they would give you a token to go down to a shower, which is about 19 carriages off. And it was just basic primitive shower where you could wash yourself and evidence that the boys just needed to connect with the place where your mom was just sitting there.

So. At one stage, the lady who served as the beer about 15 hours later, as we walk one of the mornings, she woke us up and we could all go, go Cafferty always.

So you like knocking on doors. I noticed I brought the tea coffee where it was like Pringles and ham everywhere and was vodka bottles.

It was like this dangerous when we were in her clothes and she goes by God, we all love those of us who we are. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And she came in and I remember she went up to Rusko and she rubbed his head because he was he he looked rough and she goes, oh, like she knew the hangover.

She just rubbed his forehead. The coffee.

I said, yes. Yeah. And did she have the loveliest, the loveliest homemade sausage rolls I've ever tasted down?

The selection of sausage rolls and two cups of tea beside us. And she laughed because she knew we had drunk so much.

Finally, we got near the Mongolian border. And we got off the Trans-Siberian Express, but we passed Lake Baikal, which was one of the world's biggest lakes, the lakes where the lake went down for six hours as we journeyed by it. It's one of the most amazing wonders of the world, Lake Baikal, and it's in the middle of Siberia. And that was we were we were just all the way dribbling by it for about seven hours. And as you can see, as the day broke, you can just see water.

It's just like a sea. But it was a lake for seven hours.

Finally, we got to make sure we got to Mongolia.

But the beautiful thing was you stop at these small stations during the 42 hours and you just be just Ruscoe get out for a cigarette and we just hop off the train in this winter frozen paradise for a couple of minutes in the freezing cold and just get back on again.

And we got to Mongolia. And it was probably one of the most amazing things I've ever done.

But we'll never forget Dennis in c.B of Severe in his restaurant going, Yes, you like vodka to me.

I was there a first class carriage in the train. Not to my knowledge.

People are doing a holiday thing of what do to the Trans-Siberian Express that for now, because it is drastic, it's just one of them, all of those experiences.

But what was your past version of it? There must be, I don't know, the Trans-Siberian. And I know since I've come back from Siberia two or three years ago, there's been so many Irish people that have pushed that boat out and who are looking for that alternative bit of travel that have gone all the way to Vladivostok. But Jermaine Dennis was so convinced that Siberia is going to open up as technology and and a global hub that links Moscow to the middle of Siberia and then links Japan and China, he said that this place is going to explode in years to come and that it's going to become the link between Europe and that European, Russia and then Siberia, that those cities, Krasnoyarsk another and then the cosmopolitan world of Asia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, all those cities and China, they're just super cities.

But imagine gone the whole way along to Vladivostok.

I know there's a I think you can do the Orient Express from London to Istanbul. Yes. Yes. And it takes two weeks. And we have and my wife did it for our honeymoon.

We did Paris to Venice. Oh, nice. Yeah, nice little overnight.

And was kind of it was good because I would love to do that with the Trans-Siberian Cardioverter.

I love trains.

Imagine getting on the train in Moscow and knowing you're going to be on it for five days and five nights that long coffee and a notebook and it takes that long to go on the train from me or to Dublin. Like if you've done that train journey, you've no idea what to do. Other ones.

Oh, thanks for listening to this week's episode of the podcast.

Mind yourselves out there. Stay safe, Tommy. Get away. Stay away from the stairs.

No stairs for everyone. Be careful on the stairs. The section that blocked it all off at red, red and white tape.

Yeah, but you what happens as you get older? You do get it. It doesn't affect just your body. It affects your mind.

Yeah. You feel, you feel you've lost your confidence now.

Yeah. I'm just, I'm just like no let's just kind of walk on you realize now and have a look like my uncle. Yeah. That might never come back. You know, you might never you might never lost hope. It doesn't.

I really do. Would you like to have a limp. Oh. And have a pipe and my left arm are walking but yeah. No my left leg don't work with Jesus. Maybe I had a stroke or something.

I know it was definitely, I definitely fell down the stairs but I just think that I so I would love my left leg just stopped altogether.

I've dropped and you just tried to tell me that some people have that problem and it's not nice to fall down stairs.

Was wasn't my side the reason I'm trying to make the best out of a bad lot. But I'm saying maybe in the years to come, I'll be lucky enough to fall down on my right leg and then my right arm and all of four useless limbs and then we'll be returned to the bed.

I take them off, I think, to silence. The moral of the story is please be careful out there, especially when you're heading to the first step, whether it's down the stairs or up the stairs.

Mind yourselves on the stairs, mind the stairs, mind.

Have you ever fallen down the stairs? No, but I know what it's like when you miss the stairs. Once developed, how do you fall upstairs stairs? I fell face first up bang.

Yeah, I was. I think it's hereditary isn't it, for an upstairs. But I went there a breeder cattle. Yeah I was, I was going out when I walked up the stairs.

Hadn't even had a drink. Got to the very the second last year. That's the damage. Tummy me. That's where you fell down as I was going up. Next thing I turned around to talk to someone behind me and I missed the last step, fell down, put my hand out to stop me. I broke my little finger.

And you see, what happened now is loads of people around the country are going to talk to us this their stories. I only took the baby, you know, the baby stairs, things that you blocked the kids.

But you don't mess with the things you put on the gate. The gate.

I only took the game off when the boys were fourteen. Well, Tommy, to tell me he's going to have to put up the children's give up.

Maybe we can do that because dad's out of his room. Yeah. Don't forget at the top of the stairs and you can never open those bloody. My dad is having a panic attack up the stairs. I can't go up on the go go down.

I'm getting, you know, walking frame saying I love I love a walking stick. I don't want them. I wouldn't want to hazard you guys when they're like you.

You need a band like St. Patrick.

Yeah. I didn't get to the bottom of that. Oh, yeah. I'll get you one of them when you give me a proper one of them. Like a proper answer. It was had one previous owner. But did anyone get the fall. She's dead now.

So hang on. You wanna give me a dead woman stick? Yeah. Well, where's where's the stick submerge.

And is it has a crook at the top four.

Does it look like Hanalei and is it is this the woman that used on the house. Yeah. Oh it's there. Well now be there a while.

Now it's there a what color is the stick. I think it's black. A black stick.

Where did she get stuck in a shop or in a hospital. In a shop or d'you want like a stick. Would you like one that you can make longer and bigger, you know, like a longer and smaller you know, you can adjust crutches with a little.

No, I just think like an old lady lean on it.

And I think you need to consider wearing rubber soled shoes as well. Tell me, why is that electricities it?

No, it's just safer, safer, safer when you're old.

People wear real personal shoes.

I might have a pair of them.

The shed is well to bring them up for you like they are the special needs shoes. No, they're just for dead people. They bought them when they were alive. But they're. They're all in your garage. Would you like them, Tommy? Would you like shoes and a stick? No.

And I have one of those things as well that you put on the outside of the toilet, that it helps you get up and sit down. It's like a little frame. You can do that. I say, yeah, it's hard getting up off the street.

Yeah. Especially with your bad ribs. Yeah. Because your education is the one you push off from.

Yeah. Yeah. Well if I get I'll bring up that too. It'll take a while for the quads to get back to normal times, but they never go back to the quads.

Got some Tomalin I would hope as maybe to get of them doors for the bat. Oh yeah. He's swinging doors. Yeah.

We need one of the bats that have to be elevated. You be have to be healthy. I think we should put your first meeting.

We'll be watching him on the show on Saturday Night Live.

Like I can't move my leg. They'll have they'll have been put in a special chair.

It's hard to listen when you're in pain. Do you know what? It's harder to go to the toilet when you hurt your ribs. I broke my ribs once and gone to the toilet was I can flush the toilet with the pain.

You couldn't push, can't even call, can't get up or down. Tell me you got an awful rattle. Can we just I find yourselves out there on stairs till the boat next week with old with dead people.

I mean, people aren't used to stairs.

We live for thousands of years with our lives in a bungalow. All my life. I don't even have a new stairs. I don't. I didn't I didn't go upstairs to 29.

I'm a bungalow person. I don't like stairs. I think the bastard English fucker bar over with upstairs. There's Irish depends on the stairs and you never beb to get a chair lift on the stairs, you know, because it's bendy.

What I do is I take that fucking stairs. OK, Tommy, I don't know. You should have put a landing area halfway down.

We twist like Yeah. Twist and then back down. But you went the full 180 degrees round the bottom. Inovalon, Amenophis do it anyway.

Stay safe on desk. Stay safe. O o o o o o. And.