JP's European Shenanigans

Cadiz

2011-05-03T21:04:00.000+01:00

Looking forward to spending a couple of days on the long beaches of Cadiz, Mia and I set off from Seville around midday, arriving to grey skies and chilly Atlantic winds a couple of hours later.

View from the hotel

Navigating the local bus system was straightforward, and we found our hotel. It lacked the character of our nice room in Seville, but was very clean and comfortable, providing nice views of the ocean from the second floor.

The weather ruled out the beach, and so we walked the couple of miles back into the city along the water. There were one or two brave souls in wetsuits trying to make the most of the surf, although I didn’t notice any waves above two meters.

The city itself is said to be the oldest in Europe, and unfortunately has not been maintained particularly well over the years. We spent some time wandering around, and saw the cathedral from the outside and also the ruins of a Roman theatre. The theatre was completely shut off for reparations and the cathedral looked to be undergoing some as well. We decided not to linger at either.

Roman theatre ruins

The streets are a bit wider than Seville, and it was generally easier to find our way around. We sat down for a very nice lunch of calamari and a local fish specialty. After this the rest of the day was spent walking to see the few small sights and parks that are dotted around the small city.

Local fish

Mia was very keen to experience some flamenco dancing while we were in Spain, and the helpful lady at the tourist office recommended a place on the way back to the hotel. We found our way there later that evening and were provided with a really good (and free!) show of flamenco dancing and singing.

Flamenco

There was a guitarist, several singers and a percussionist who supported a very talented young male dancer who clapped and tapped his red shoes about the stage at the speed of a humming bird flapping its wings. It was quite a performance, and also looked to be a graduation of sorts for him, as he was rewarded with some kind of commendation at the end. The whole experience was very authentic, and it appeared that this was the thing to do at the end of the week for the local citizens. The place was rammed full of a few hundred people, and Mia and I were very grateful to be able to see the show. I have to congratulate Mia on fending off waves of Spaniards trying to pinch my seat as I battled through the throngs at the bar to get us a few drinks.

Sunbathing and beaching was again ruled out for us the following day as the grey clouds and rain set in early. We again caught the bus back into town and visited the local market that was selling huge quantities of fresh seafood as well as at least as many delicatessens around the outside selling varieties of meats, fruit and cheese. Picking up some strawberries, we wandered out to the last remaining monument we hadn’t yet caught a glimpse of, found a nice tapas bar for some lunch and wine and whiled away the rest of the day having a few drinks, reflecting on the trip so far. We would make our way back to Seville the following morning, and then back to London the day after.

Cadiz fish market

All in all, Cadiz didn’t really go the way we’d hoped. I imagine that later in the year the weather would be much warmer and more amiable to beach activities. At this time of year there is only the sights of the city itself, which couldn’t really hold a candle to the magnificence of Seville, that we’d just experienced. We were very glad to be heading back to spend one more afternoon in Seville and finish our Spanish excursion on a high note.

I found it interesting that the Spanish don’t really speak much English, which compared to other western and central European countries, was a bit of an oddity. At the same time though, they are still quite a friendly people, and are willing to engage in a bit of communicative charades. Mia and I have both really enjoyed southern Spain, and are keen to visit again sometime. Perhaps Granada?

The best part of Spain

Sunny Seville

2011-05-01T13:37:00.001+01:00

With the royal wedding coming up, giving us an additional public holiday, Mia and I were able to take only a few days off to provide a total break of nearly twelve days.

We had already decided that we didn’t want to be around for the royal wedding itself; neither of us being particular monarchists nor wanting to deal with the throngs of tourists invading the city of London for this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Our rooms courtyard

We booked ourselves a couple of tickets to Spain and left on Easter Monday night down to Gatwick airport to sleep over at a hotel to catch our 6AM flight the next day. Once in Seville, we caught the bus to the city center and found our hotel, the Hotel Convento La Gloria, a remodelled convent. It was nestled in a few side streets quite close to the main attraction of Seville, the cathedral. We dropped off our things and began to explore.

The first thing that struck us was the abundance of orange trees all through the city. They line the streets and are dotted around corners. It is the time of year when they are in full bloom although neither of us was adventurous enough to pick any. We were able to try some freshly squeezed in a number of places, and this was quite tasty.

An orange tree in front of Torre del Oro

We wandered around for most of the day, moving from the cathedral up through the north-east part of the town and then back down through the central area, tourist map in hand dotted with interesting looking landmarks and symbols.

It turns out that nearly all of these landmarks were churches, all in various states of use and disrepair. If Adelaide has the title of ‘City of Churches’, then I think those who gave it such a title should consider a visit to Seville.

Some of the old wall

There were a couple of more interesting things to see, such as a good section of the old wall that would have surrounded the city at some point, as well as some of the governmental buildings that were also very old. It is interesting to note that most buildings have small courtyards, usually with a water fountain or feature in the center. Also quite prominent were elaborate mosaics of painted tiles all over the city. Seville clearly has a rich history of ceramics and pottery.

As the day drew to a close we wandered back to a pub we’d stumbled upon earlier in the day with an old wooden bar and many legs of cured ham hanging from the ceiling. It turns out that it is the oldest bar in Seville, and we quickly made friends with the bartender who could speak a few words of English and recommended some excellent (and cheap!) wine, as well as a great selection of ham and cheese. He also introduced us to the idea of drinking a white wine after dinner instead of the stronger spirits, and that turned out to be very refreshing; a concept we intend to pursue further.

Tapas in a 300 year old bar

The following day we decided to examine the two main tourist attractions, being the royal palaces followed by the cathedral. The royal palaces were interesting enough, but in my opinion once you’ve seen a couple you’ve seen them all. Windsor Castle, Edinburgh Castle, Seville Royal Palace… which one are we in again? To be fair, it was quite unique, as Seville used to be an Islamic state, and the palace had been taken over from the days when it was used by the Muslim royal equivalents. As a result, much of the architecture has a strong Moorish influence, as well as the gardens outside. The gardens themselves were quite enormous, extending well out behind the palace with plenty of water features adorning corners and pathways.

Courtyard of the Alcazar Palace

Inside there were a variety of massive tapestries, paintings and the like, as well as an innumerable quantity of mosaic tiles covering all of the walls. Apparently the palace is still in use, however the Spanish royalty chose not to make an appearance amongst the thousands of tourists and tour groups piling through the place.

Gelato.

After a couple of hours in there I was properly bored, and managed to drag Mia out and back into the baking streets of Seville. She got in the rather long line to enter the cathedral whilst I sought out a cash machine, coffee, some water and gelato. Returning with my prizes, to find Mia quite a long way through the queue, we finished off these items and entered the third largest cathedral in the world. It was definitely massive, with many little chapels surrounding the central nave, each dedicated to a saint, king or other noble dignitary.

We made our way up the 34 ramps and 17 steps to the viewing area of the bell tower that provided views across all of Seville. To be honest, the city does not have much to offer in terms of tall views. The roofs are fairly plain, and few of the churches have spires or identifying features that would otherwise break up the splay of housing. It was quite clear to see from above all of the snaking narrow roads that reminded me quite a lot of what it is like in Venice. The difference here is that the roads are actually named, so with an accurate map it is not too hard to find your way around.

Inside the massive cathedral

The descent back down into the cathedral was fairly rapid, and we finished circling the inner area, finally finding what I was most curious to see: the tomb of Christopher Colombus. It is a very grand sculpture of his sarcophagus being carried by four kings, and it stands in the back of the cathedral. I spent a while checking it out, whilst Mia exclaimed ‘I didn’t know he was Spanish!’

Me 'n Chris

We had a look at the bullring, although couldn’t enter due to a bullfighting show that was happening in a few hours.

Bullring

It was quite expensive for a ticket, and neither of us was particularly interested in the spectacle. We had a look at the Plaza de Espanol, a huge semi-circle construction with an enormous water fountain in the center, and then spent some time in the surrounding gardens.

Plaza de Espana

Exhausted from the miles and miles of walking over the past couple of days, we went back to the old bar and had a meal, which was unfortunately not as great as the tapas we’d had there the day previous.

We then slept in until midday, rising a few hours earlier for breakfast and then determining that we hadn’t quite rested enough, and simply wandered around from bar to bar eating tapas and drinking orange juice, beer and wine. Finding ourselves at a recommended restaurant, we ate yet more pork for dinner with some great wine and finished the evening off at the ‘religious bar’, which is exactly as it sounds. With more figures of Mary and Jesus than most churches, it was most uncomfortable (for me) to be stared at by these lifeless effigies as we sipped on our ‘Blood of Christ’ cocktails, a mixture of whisky, champagne and grenadine.

Blood of Christ in the religious bar 'Garlochi'

Deciding not to stick around for a second drink, I scurried Mia and I out of there and recovered our senses with a white wine followed by the smoothest Anis I’d ever tasted at a more traditional Spanish bar.

So ended our time in Seville. The following morning we rose for another excellent breakfast in the hotel, made our way across to the train station and departed for our next destination, Cadiz.

2011-02-20T18:13:00.011Z

After a three and a half year hiatus, I decided to update this little journal of travel, adventure and general shenanigans.

What’s happened in the interim? The cliff notes would read something like this:

Arrived in London, found girlfriend, got job at soulless bank working in quantitative finance. Had several trips back home, spent Day of the Dead in Mexico City, saw Northern Wales with girlfriend, proposed in Scotland and spent the next year between London and Edinburgh planning the wedding. Went to Portugal as best man for best mates stag party, and held the title of longest rider of the mechanical bull. Performed best man role back in Melbourne and soon after had my own stag party in Amsterdam where I found my way on stage during a live sex show (my clothes stayed on). I then got married to my wonderful wife with a traditional African ceremony in London and white wedding a couple of days later in Edinburgh. Six months later we had our honeymoon cruise through the Caribbean and spent new year’s eve of 2011 in New York City.

That was all good fun.

So that brings us, dear reader, to my most recent excursion to the alien landscape of Iceland. Mia (that’s the wife) and I were planning on visiting during our honeymoon, however logistically this proved difficult. We deferred it to February of 2011 and spent the most recent extended weekend within its deceptively hospitable shores.

We arrived late on a Wednesday night and found a bus to Hotel Bjork where we would spend the next several nights. Luckily the hotel did not subscribe to the Icelandic musician of the same name, and we managed to find our room and bed< by about two thirty in the morning where sleep was quickly embraced.

Our first full day was spent with Iceland Horizons ‘Southern Shores’ tour. This would be the first of two full day excursions spent with a British guide, David, who had relocated to Iceland over a decade ago. He was an entertaining man with a penchant for describing things in great detail. This included a history of the island and its Viking heritage and language. The landscape is quite striking, with large volcanic mountains separating large open rock plains. Iceland is a continually growing island, both outwards due to tectonic and volcanic activity, but also rising up from out of the Atlantic ocean. This means that many of the plains that we drove through used to be ocean seabed.

There are many and various farming homesteads out in the lava plains. David explained how as new materials and building methods were brought to Iceland over the past hundred years or so, the residents would build a newer, better house not too far from the old one, and convert the previous to a storage facility for livestock or supplies. As a result, each of the different farming areas would generally have a fairly old turf building, usually built into the rock and a couple of other more modern structures.

We passed by Eyjafjallajoekull, the volcano which erupted in April of 2010 and caused untold inconvenience to most of Europe and around the world. Interestingly enough, only about 25 homesteads were affected in Iceland itself. The volcano is on the south shore of the island, and the winds blew the eight kilometre high ash cloud south and away from the island. Icelanders continued flying in and out of the Americas, whilst the majority of Europe was grounded due to the airborne ash.

The area around the south shore is amazing. We saw two large waterfalls, both of which it were very accessible. This provided some nice photo opportunities before we continued on to a glacier within the foothills of the surrounding mountains. I had never seen a glacier outside of a photograph before, and the deep blue of the massive ice formation is not given justice by my camera. Apparently this is created from oxygen, compressed under the immense weight of ice.

We continued along the coast to the southernmost village of Vik, where Mia and I both ordered a traditional lamb soup. We saw some incredible black sand beaches with a basalt cave that I felt was one of the highlights of the trip. The wind and weather in this area was quite violent, so we quickly piled back into the van and headed back to Reykjavik.

That night we attempted to see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights), my primary motivation for coming to Iceland. The forecast for the aurora was the strongest all year, so we went out with high hopes for a stunning light show. A massive solar flare had been registered only days earlier, and it is this sort of solar activity that is the necessary prelude to the atmospheric event.

Unfortunately the Northern Lights are a natural phenomena and are never guaranteed. Apparently the solar flare was so strong that it pushed the corona much further south than Iceland, and was probably visible as far as Scotland and Ireland. Luckily our tour guide for this trip was also very entertaining and gave us a good history of the area we were shivering in and some of the details of the more recent fishing wars between Iceland and Britain.

Undeterred, we ventured out again the following evening and after standing in the biting wind for a few hours we were rewarded in a small, but still very striking display of the Northern Lights. I finally was able to fulfil a dream of playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon whilst standing under such an incredible spectacle. Mia and I both agreed it was a very cool thing to experience and was worth braving the cold.

Of course that was in the evening of the second day. Before that we had spent the sunlight hours on the Golden Circle tour with David. This consisted of another beautiful and enormous waterfall that we couldn’t get quite as close to, and seeing some of the natural hot water geysers in the surrounding area. Both of these sights were interesting and I managed to get drenched by one of the larger geysers attempting to create a killer photo.

We also managed to stop by and pet some Icelandic horses, one of which seemed to take a particular liking to the taste of my ski jacket. Iceland has had a law in place for over one thousand years that prevents any horses from being imported into the country. As a result, the seventy thousand horses that currently populate the island are all descendants of the original Norse breeds that were introduced over a millennia ago. They are a very pure species, fetching a high price among horse collectors the world over.

The last stop was in the national park that we had spent the first night waiting for the Northern Lights, and whilst it had some quite pretty scenery, by this stage Mia and I were a bit over sight-seeing.

The following day we had a wander through the main strip of Reykjavik, visited the flea market and ‘world famous hot dog stall’. Neither of these were particularly good, and so a bus was found that took us to the rather more world famous Blue Lagoon. Mia and I spent the afternoon there, alternating between the warm blue water pool, smearing silica mud on our faces (Mia more so than me), and the various steam rooms and saunas that were available. A great way to relax after two very busy days of seeing the main sights of Iceland. Once our skin was sufficiently waterlogged, we dried off and found our way back to the hotel for a much needed sleep before our rather rude four thirty morning alarm clock to get our early flight back to London.

Overall Iceland was a great trip. The scenery is incredible and unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere. The whole island might as well be one massive volcano (rather than the forty odd that comprise it currently), and the landscape is something out of another world. Between amazing waterfalls, the lava plains, the Northern Lights and the steam vents coming straight out of the ground, Iceland is a very unique place to be, and I can see why its residents are very proud of their home despite some of its harsher living conditions.

Bemusement in Berlin

2007-10-13T18:18:00.000+01:00

My first day in Berlin saw me get up, check out of my hostel and head across town, closer to the center of Berlin, Mitte, and check into a hostel over there. Berlin isn't terribly centralised, but Mitte (basically a suburb) was definitely closer to what was happening than way out where my original hostel was. I just couldn't get in there straight off the bat.

I had agreed to meet Renske at the walking tour, and searched around sometime about midday. We found each other, and she had brought a couple of her friends along with her. An Israeli pair, they were doing a spot of travelling themselves. There were a huge number of people crowded around to do the walking tour, and the guides quickly organised everyone, firstly by language and then due to the extent of the English speakers, they split us up into two groups of about 30.

Our guide was a young Singaporean guy with an American accent and a very powerful voice. He had been in Berlin for near on a year, and obviously loved the place. He spoke with a lot of passion, and was able to deliver to us the modern history of the city in a very entertaining fashion. We saw the Jewish memorial, a collection of grey blocks all arranged in a square area and the Brandenburg Gate, where all conquerers of Berlin tended to parade through. We saw several large buildings, from churches to universities to libraries to massive parliament buildings (the Reichstag). There was checkpoint charlie, the site of the Nazi book burnings, parts of the Berlin wall, and the whole thing culminated at museum island where our guide gave us a very animated story about the fall of the wall and the reunification of Germany. It was definitely the best walking tour I'd done on my trip so far, and it was incredible to hear how much history had happened so recently to now.

Renske and I parted ways, and she went to catch up with her Israeli friends who had run off halfway through the tour to chase some other fancy. I got back to the hostel, had a chat with another Melbournite in my room along with another Aussie guy from Sydney who was travelling around with a Scottish girl. The pair of them work on one of the cruise ships that go gallavanting around the world, and they both had some interesting stories to tell. Apparently when working on one of these ships, it is a 7 day a week job until you get back to port, which can (at times) take up to months!

Later that evening I went down to a metro station in the former East Berlin and hung around waiting for Renske and her friends to show up. It was a very dodgy area, with several vagrants wandering around and hassling each other whilst drunk. I was nervously waiting about half an hour before the others showed up, and then we all waited a further half hour or so whilst waiting for Renske's local friend to arrive. Eventually he did, and we quickly made our way from that area and into a nearby cocktail bar.

It was a funky little place, with a very red interior. Initially we went into one of the rooms in the back of the place, however it seemed that there was some kind of mafia-ish meeting taking place, and we decided to get out of their before anyone noticed. A cocktail and a beer later saw us leave the establishment and eagerly follow Renske's friend to what was sure to be a great club, as Berlin has quite a big reputation for having some of the worlds best nightlife.

The place we ended up in was Kaffe Burger, an indie little bar that came recommended by Renske's local and also got a good wrap in a couple of travel guides. The music they played was very varied, and whilst the dance floor started off pretty bare, after a few hours and a few drinks the place was near capacity. The music wasn't totally my scene, but after a few more drinks and then quite a few good tracks in a row I started to get into a groove, though dancing wouldn't have been the right term due to the throngs of people in the way. It was more like group swaying.

As the night wore on, I started to lose interest again until the DJ threw on "Chocolate Salty Balls" by Chef/Isaac Hayes, and whilst I don't think anyone else there knew what the song was, I'm sure I entertained a lot of people with my particularly enthusiastic shenanigans. This continued a few songs later when they put on "Gay Bar" by Electric Six. Two songs that I never would have expected to hear in a popular club both got played in quick succession. Brilliant! Shortly after I saw Renske home, wished her well on the rest of her journey (she was leaving the next day) and made it back to my own hostel.

The next day I spent the morning doing my washing, and had hoped to go wander around the Pergamon museum, the Gates of Babylon being high on my to-see list. Unfortunately being a Monday all of the museums were shut, and so I decided to check out the Reichstag instead. It is the German parliament building, with a massive glass dome over the top of it. I waited in the queue to get in for about an hour, and then made my way up the circular staircase that traversed the interior of the dome. It gives a fantastic vista of the entirety of Berlin, and they even give you a little panoramic map that points out the various features of the city from your respective vantage point.

After admiring the view for a short while I went back down and walked around the top part of the roof for a while, said hi to an Irish bloke from my hostel that was also there, and then made my way back to the hostel for a nap. An hour or so later I got up and went down to the bar, waiting on a couple of people who were to meet me there and then head off to a pub crawl arranged by the same mob that do the walking tours.

Whilst in the bar I ran into 3 English guys whom I quickly convinced to join us on the evening shenanigans, followed by another Aussie girl, Danni, two Canadian guys from my room, Mike and Alex, another Canadian girl at the bar Maggi, and Michael (the Melbourne guy from my room) brought along Jo and Sarah, a couple of English girls. Basically I'd formed a group of over ten people and I took them all down to the starting point of the pub crawl, though my efforts weren't even rewarded with a discount.

We started the warm up at the first bar, with free beers (until the kegs ran out), and we initiated some drinking games. I showed our little group the games I'd learnt in Prague, specifically Fuzzy Duck. Sarah also got in on the games, and introduced us to "21", a game that we'd continue to play for the rest of the night. By the time the pub crawl moved from this first pub, the group was about a hundred strong, filling up the footpath for quite a distance as we changed venues. Maggi and I grabbed a kebab on the way, as neither of us had eaten, and after quickly woofing those down, chased the group into the second bar.

The second bar was pretty cool, with plenty of floor space and some tables and chairs around the edges. I found Sarah and Jo with part of our group sitting at one of the said tables, continuing their rendition of 21. One of the coolest parts of the place was definitely the wrought iron dragon head that was attached to one side of the bar, occasionally spewing out a massive fireball in the middle of the club whenever one of the bartenders got bored and pressed a little button.

We didn't seem to spend that long there, only having time for a couple of drinks and another frustrating couple of rounds of 21's, a few of the group (the English guys) having a bit of a struggle with the rules. We were shepherded out of that place and into the third of the evening, with Sarah and I chasing one of the organisers of the event around getting as many free shots of Vodka and orange as we could. Sarah had made it a point that we must toast to something everytime we took a shot. She also made it a point to make each of her toasts to something that was designed to irk me as much as possible, whether it be to the Queen or the English rubgy team.

The third place was significantly smaller than the last, but we managed to secure another area of chairs where we could continue, once more, to try and get something out of our drinking game. Unfortunately by this stage most of the group was fairly drunk, and it didn't take long before we simply gave up. It was quite crowded, and again, before long we were on our way to the next venue. I continued to chase the organiser around for vodka shots, however Sarah had decided not to keep up with me any more, to the point of starting to throw hers out over the ground. I found this particularly frustrating, and anyone that knows me will understand that I abhor the wastage of perfectly good alcohol. Right before we managed to enter the fourth bar, I'd gotten a couple more shots for us, at which point some guy tripped over in front me of, throwing the shots all over the front of my shirt. Needless to say I was not impressed.

The fourth bar was an upstairs place, with a fairly packed dance floor and some good drum 'n bass music playing through the club. I found myself a chair and continued chatting with those around, but really there wasn't much to say about the place. The pub crawl had dwindled in number by this stage, probably down to about a third of the original group. We left the joint and headed to the metro when the rest of our group decided that we'd had enough of the organised shenanigans. We made our way back to the hostel bar, which had closed. Sarah and I dashed upstairs to play some pool, only to find the table wasn't working. We went back down and asked the bartenders where a good club was around the area, and he marked one on the map for us.

Sarah, Jo, Mike and I made our way there, only to find it was the Kaffe Burger once more, and I couldn't believe I'd been directed to the same place two nights in a row. It really just wasn't that good. However it was late, and Mike and Sarah had gotten into some ridiculous conversation about whether it was worth killing a baby in order to save a lot more lives, so Jo and I left them outside to continue their debate and went into the club. It turned out that Jo wasn't English at all, although she had a thick London accent, and was in fact from Edinbrough. We were talking for a fair while and laughing at the weird music that was being played, when eventually Mike and Sarah found us on one of the couches. We hung out for a little while longer, and in the wee hours of the morning made our way back to the hostel to crash out.

About 11 I woke up and met with Jo, Sarah and Mike downstairs. The girls and I agreed to head to the Pergamon museum, however Mike went on his own way as he'd checked it out already. We made our way down to museum island and into the entrance, nearly losing Jo to the toilets in the process. The place was massive, with life size recreations of various pillars and gateways. The thing I was most excited to see, and then equally dissapointed by was the Gates of Babylon. It was indeed massive, however the blue and yellow paint scheme on the thing made it look like a giant childrens toy, rather than one the most intimidating structures in human history. It was about that time that Sarah realised that very little of what was in the museum was actually authentic, and was mostly recreated with plaster, and then she lost all respect for the place. This combined with a severe lack of sleep from the previous evening saw the two girls start bursting into strange fits of laughter about topics I didn't understand, and I just chalked it up to their slow descent into madness.

Eventually we'd all had enough of the ancient artifacts and made our way out to get a late lunch. It was here that Mike rejoined us, and after a couple pizzas and a round of beer, we made our way to the new art gallery. I'm usually not a fan of these sorts of places, I've never really understood painting, and this was compounded by Mike's rather good knowledge of it all. I did see some things I like, including a painting of a tiger with some cubs, a postcard of which Jo and Sarah gave me as a gift later on that day. We only spent an hour or so there, after which Mike and I went back to the hostel and left the girls to go do some shopping.

I got out my little book that detailed all the pubs and clubs in Berlin, determined not to end up at the Kaffe Burger again that night. I made a list of about 6 different places to go to and marked them out on a map, and eventually people started to congregate in the bar. The drinking games started again, with about 6 people from our group the previous night, plus a couple more Canadians, Mark and Mike (we now had 3 Mikes in our group), and another Aussie girl, Renee. We hung around in the bar for quite a while, and after a few false starts about 12 of us made our way to the first bar on my list, as a group that had been dubbed "Jimmy P's Pub Crawl Shenanigans". Sarah had enticed one other guy from the bar to join us, an Aussie game named Tom. He was deaf, but could read lips like a champion and could communicate fairly well by talking. A couple wrong turns later we eventually found the first pub. It was fairly quite and full of locals, so we had a few beers, the new Canadians broke a few glasses and we all had a good time for about an hour.

After that we made our way to another club, "Delicious Donuts", which was very difficult to find. It ended up being behind a closed door that we had to ring the bell of to get in, but once in it was a very funky place. It was pretty dead as well, and we just decided that due to it being a Tuesday, there just mustn't be that much going on. Berlin's reputation for being the nightlife capital of the world was fairly shattered for me at this point. There were about 6 or 7 of us that actually stayed at the club for any amount of time, and at one stage Tom and I challenged some locals to a game of foosball, and got our asses handed to us in short order, without scoring a single goal.

Sarah and Jo had the plan to stay out all night, as they had to catch a 10AM flight back to England. We ended up making it until about 4AM, and given the previous nights efforts, we were ready to pack it in by then. We headed back to the hostel, I said my goodbyes to the girls and we agreed to meet up some time in London.

I slept until around midday the following day, packed up my gear and then headed to the airport to catch my flight to London and meet up with Dave, who I was staying with until I got my feet settled in the new city.

Berlin as a whole was pretty cool. It was incredible to learn about so much history that had happened only in the past century. I would say that it is definitely the focal point of modern history, and there is still so much there that really didn't happen all that long ago. The walking tour was definitely the best I've been on so far.

The nightlife reputation is very overrated. To talk to people that might not have been there you would get the impression that the city is a non stop party. This is simply not true, and I did get out and check a few different places out. Considering Kaffe Burger is supposed to be one of the best places around, and that it sucked, doesn't really say much for the scene. I guess it was very over hyped for me before I got there, and this would be why I was dissapointed. It didn't, however, stop me from meeting a bunch of cool people and having an awesome time all the same.

It has taken me a long time to get this post out, but finally it has happened! Berlin was the last stop of my European journey, and marked the end of what was an unbelievable trip. I can't do it justice as an epilogue to this post, and I'm going to write up a proper summary and reflection of everything that happened sometime in the next week or so. Stay tuned, and in the mean time check out the photo gallery!

Playful Prague, Part Two

2007-09-19T10:32:00.000+01:00

My plan for the day was to head about an hour out Prague to a suburb known as Kutná Hora, where the famed Sedlec Ossuary, or "Bone Church" resides. It's a fairly small little town, and an even smaller church. It is more like a chapel, and rather than being made from bones as I'd been led to believe, it is simply decorated with them. The chapel was built on the site of a popular burial ground, and several hundred years ago when it was extended many thousands of human bones were exhumed. A half blind monk decided that it would be a good idea to then decorate the church with these remains, and the result was four massive piles of bones in each corner of the church, a bone chandelier consisting of at least one of each type of bone in the human body and a very cool coat of arms made out of human bones. Being a fairly small place, it didn't take long for me to go through it and snap some photos, and whilst it was not literally made of bones it was still pretty funky.

After wandering around for half an hour I made my way back to the station, confirmed with the guy on the train that it was going to Prague, and took a seat. What was a one hour journey there somehow managed to be a three hour journey back to Prague, and indeed back to a completely different station than the one I'd left from. A few metro stops and a bit of walking later, I was almost back at the hostel when I passed a girl standing at an intersection looking completely lost. She was an Aussie girl, Alison, and was simply waiting for her travelling partner. We chatted for a while and I convinced her that we were going out somewhere cool that evening and she should find me in the bar later on that night.

I got back to the hostel and dropped my bag off, headed downstairs to make my way out to get an authentic Czech meal for dinner. I was blocked halfway out the door by Renske who convinced me to go down to the supermarket with her and a few other people, get some food and cook it back in the hostel. I took her up on the offer, and we ended up getting some chicken, rice and vegetables with a couple of jars of sweet and sour sauce and a few Pilsener's for good measure. Renske and a Canadian guy also by the name of James (and also wearing a very similar shirt to myself) did the cooking, a process that was made excruciatingly slow due to the rather poor hotplates in the hostel kitchen. I simply couldn't get much heat out of the thing, and what should have been a 20 minute stir fry turned into an hour and a half slow stewing. The result was reasonable, however, and the three of us, a kiwi guy by the name of Anthony and an American guy whose name I forget sat down to a piping hot meal. I will emphasise here the temperature of our dish, which by the end in combination with working the stove had me looking like I'd just stepped out of a sauna. We finished up and retired to our respective rooms to get ready for that evenings shenanigans.

I went down to the bar, which had been open for an hour or so, but was still completely empty. I did find Alison there, however, and we had a few beers while the crowd slowly built up. It never got terribly busy, and after a while, the group I'd had dinner with showed up and told us of the club we were going to that night. I'd told Anthony that Alison and I would wait for him at the bar whilst he went and got changed, and about fifteen minutes later I realised that he probably wasn't coming back. The Dutch guys from my room decided they'd like to tag along now as well, and after they stuffed around for a further fifteen minutes we were finally on our way. We wandered out to find the club, walked in a few circles, asked a few shop assistants before deciding to cut out our losses and head back to the hostel for better directions. We received these and eventually did find the club, realising that the reason we'd missed it the first time was because it was completely shut. Apparently Thursday nights were this clubs night off.

I quickly convinced our group that Cross Club was our next destination, and shortly after we arrived, to my delight, back at the place of spinning lights and funky music. The music was a bit different this evening, being of a more house bent, but the drum 'n bass room downstairs was pretty funky. We sat upstairs for a while having a few rounds of the local brew. One of the Dutch guys challenged Alison to a beer sculling competition, to which she threw down hers faster than Dutchy could blink. Not wanting to be outdone, I followed suit, after which Alison and I had a couple of repeat rounds to the wide eyed amazement of our two companions who clearly had never tried to put down a beer quite so fast.

After a rounds of this we made our way down to the drum 'n bass area, and it was here that we ran into the rest of our group. I gave Anthony a serve for bailing on us while we were waiting for him, we all had a laugh and hung around a table we found. Shortly after sitting down I had an extremely attractive young Czech girl sit herself down next to me, and after a brief hello ask me for a smoke. I tried to communicate my lack of tobacco to her, at which point she promptly got up, walked around a bit and returned with a large joint paper and handed it to me. I think the look of extreme puzzlement on my face communicated more than my words ever could, and she retrieved the paper back off me and resumed her search for marijuana elsewhere.

Between watching the American guy try to hit on every chick in the place, and then convincing Anthony to dance next to him so he had a better chance with a pair of locals in another corner of the club, the rest of us just chilled at our table and wondered why they kept turning the house lights on and off. Every five minutes or so the bright lights usually reserved for the not-so-subtle "time to leave" hint would be turned on, and then a few minutes later would be turned off again. After a while of this Alison and I decided it would be a good time to get a dance in, and as she passed her bag to one of the Dutchmen for safe keeping, she managed to tip a full pint of beer all over him. I found this hilarious, and while the Dutchmen wasn't terribly impressed with the situation, he took it in good humour and went off to the toilet to soak off his shirt what he could.

An hour or so later I hit my wall and decided to wrap it up for the evening. I made my way back to the hostel and crashed out. The Dutchmen obviously stayed a couple of hours longer, and by the time they made it back to the hostel were in quite a drunken state. They made no attempt to keep their noise down as they entered the room, and in fact did quite the opposite. They were shouting and laughing and making a ton of noise for about twenty minutes, even after one of the other guys in our room asked them politely to keep it down. This had no effect whatsoever, and it wasn't until I told them to "Shut the f*** up" several times in no uncertain terms that they realised the extent of their annoying behaviour and eventually went to sleep.

I ended up getting a few hours sleep, but had to get up at 9 to check out, as I had to move rooms that day. I did so, had my shower and put my bags into the luggage room, and then proceeded to head down to the bar area. The bar is closed until 8PM, but there is a side room which is fairly dark at all times of the day which is never used while the bar is shut and has a couch, albeit rather uncomfortable, which I promptly fell asleep on for a few more hours. I was passed out here until about midday, at which point I got up, wrote a bit on this very blog and then checked into my new room and got a couple more hours shuteye. I woke up and it was closing in on dinner, Renske convincing me again to have dinner with her, this time being a specialty of Dutch pancakes.

I tried to assist in the cooking of said pancakes, but my flipping skills were atrocious, and I relegated the responsibilities to Renske. She had as much trouble as I had the previous evening with the poor quality of the hotplates, but after an extended cooking session she had a nice pile of pancakes ready for our group. They are pretty much the same as regular pancakes, however with things like thinly sliced apple or banana thrown in. Our dinner party this evening consisted of Renske, the American guy, an American girl, Ellen and myself. It was an unusual feast, but certainly satisfying.

As was becoming the trend by this stage, after we'd cleaned up after dinner we got ourselves ready and headed down to the hostel bar. There was actually a band playing in the bar area that night, a three piece set of two guitarists and a girl singing vocals in between playing the flute. They were pretty good and it was a nice way of warming up and getting a few beers in. Ellen and I were playing with our cameras, playing around with the manual modes trying to get some good pictures without having to use the flash. We managed to get a couple, but the lights that were in the room tended to wash out the photos a bit.

After the band was over we found out that there was a good reggae band playing at the Cross Club that evening, and it didn't take a lot of convincing to get a good contigent of people keen to head out there for the night. It was a fairly different group of people than previous nights, as most of the group I'd hung out with had moved on to different places. Renske, Ellen, the American guy and myself were the only ones from our original core, and added to this were a couple of other Australian guys and a few other people who I didn't end up chatting with on the night.

The Cross Club was many times more busy than the previous two nights, definitely a combination of the reggae band that was playing and also it being a Friday night. We payed the nominal cover charge and headed in, the group segregating a bit as we entered. Ellen, Renske, one of the Aussie guys and myself got some drinks and then found one of the side rooms with a foosball table and had a game of that, and then decided to check out the reggae band. It wasn't long after we'd been there that the majority of the group decided they didn't like the place one little bit and made plans to go to the five storey club in the city. Ellen and I were much more keen on hanging out at the current venue, and not an hour into us arriving and we were the only people of our group left in the place.

Ellen and I got to discussing the various cool lighting rigs they had set up around the place, and it wasn't until she pointed out that the lights behind the DJ were a face that I actually noticed. She described a couple of the other rigs she'd seen from the previous night here, as did I, and we both quickly realised that there were whole sections of the place we hadn't seen. We danced in the very crowded main floor to the excellent reggae group, and after that was over, we wandered through the whole place taking in all of the excellent setup's they had in so many different rooms. We both decided that the face behind the DJ and also the crazy spider rig (see the gallery) were definitely the highlights, and we got a few drinks and chilled out in that area.

We spent a few more hours in the place, including some time in the upstairs bar area. It was here that we observed some locals trying to teach a very frightened german shepherd to climb up the stairs to our area. Eventually they just carried the animal up, and he spent most of the night huddled under the tables trying to avoid the throngs of people, the crazy lights and the loud music. Ellen and I both agreed that while it was cool that someone had brought a dog, it wasn't really the right place for it, and both felt a bit sorry for the poor animal that was clearly scared out of its wits. Thankfully after a while he seemed to calm down a bit and actually was travelling up and down the stairs without a lot of trouble. The time started to push into the wee hours of the morning, and so we left the club and headed back to the hostel. We found the quiet room near the now closed bar where I'd slept for most of the morning, and hung out there for a while before crashing out for the night.

After a couple hours of sleep, I showered, packed my gear and headed down to the breakfast area. Ellen was there, which was lucky as she'd taken her watch off the previous evening at the club and left it with me for safekeeping. I returned it, said my goodbyes with her and headed to the reception area to find Renske. After a quick check on the Internet to find where my hostel was in Berlin, Renske and I headed off to the station. Renske was also headed to Berlin and we'd arranged to travel on the same train, however Renske was headed to a different hostel to me.

A very friendly Brazilian couple shared our cabin, and we had a chat to them about travelling and what it is like in South America, listened to some different Portugese music that Renske and I had on our respective ipods and eventually made it to Berlin in the mid afternoon. I arranged to catch up with Renske the following day, made my way to the hostel, dropped my bags off and spent some time in an Internet cafe across the road. I grabbed some chinese food for dinner, and then crashed out slightly before midnight.

Prague was fantastic. Following hot on the heels of Krakow, the party just seemed to keep rolling, and the people I was able to hang out with during my nights in the Czech capital were really good fun to hang around. The sights of Prague are nice to see, with the cathderal in the castle and the Charles bridge being the highlights.I thought the Lennon wall was also very cool, especially as it was just one of those things we happened to run into. The five storey club was average at best, and at least I can say I've been there.

Cross Club is definitely being most awesome club I have every been to. There are more small rooms with funky lighting and crazy decor than you could imagine, and the music was brilliant on each night. The whole place just had a wicked vibe, and I thoroughly enjoyed every second I was there, and I was there three nights in a row. Of all the nightlife I've seen on my trip so far, Cross Club was definitely the best, and it is a place I'll never forget.

Photos of Prague available!

Playful Prague, Part One

2007-09-16T15:05:00.000+01:00

Originally I had planned to go to Cesky Krumlov, a quaint little town 5 hours bus ride south of Prague. After getting to the Czech capital and having had little to no sleep on the train, I couldn't really cope with the concept of having to work out the busses and then travelling for half the day to get down there. Added to that was my destination following Cesky being Prague, and the fact that I was here already just meant that the nice little quiet town simply got cut out of my intinerary.

The first thing to do when arriving in a new country, specifically a country with a currency that you do not have, is to find the closest ATM and get some cash. There's about 4 euro to 100 Krone, and so I figured that 2000 Krone would be enough to get me started. In my sleepless dazed state I wandered over to the nearest cash machine, punched in the relevant numbers and awaited my fortune. The machine went through the usual clunks and noises, spit out my card and then spit out my money; a single 2000 Krone bill. Thats like getting an 80 dollar note where most things cost below 2. Basically, no one wants to accept tender of such a large denomination.

Chris and I made our way to Sir Toby's hostel, a place that had been recommended to us by various people back in Krakow. He'd made a reservation whilst I hadn't, but the very helpful lady behind the counter was able to squeeze me into one of their rooms. It was here that I was able to break my 2000 Krone note and get some useful currency out of it, and after dumping our bags in the luggage room, Chris and I decided that we shouldn't waste a whole day, and got the tram into the city itself.

Our hostel was only a ten minute tram ride or so to the city center, and upon entering the tram both of us tried to be the bigger man and didn't take the single seat that was in close proximity. At the next stop an elderly man walked on, requested the seat to which we gladly offered. He seemed enamoured with our generosity and began to strike up conversation, explaining that he actually lived in Chicago and was over here to visit his mother who was ill. He began giving us his opinion on the Czech governing policies and what it is like to be a Czech citizen, punctuating these pearls of wisdom with why he prefers to live in Chicago. When it came to his stop, he insisted on us getting out with him, and so began our own private tour of Prague by the very friendly local old guy. He took us to a couple of the major landmarks in the city, explained what they were for and their history. He was very excited not for the landmarks themselves, but rather for the historical significance that they symbolised. To illustrate, there was one particular structure, a kind of gate from when the city was walled in, and it doesn't look very impressive, but several significant historical events had happened there. In his mind, this made the structure incredibly exciting and valuable to him, and he communicated this to us with no shortage of enthusiasm.

He took us to the main street of the city and pointed out what was in different directions, and where he recommended we spend our time. He gave us his opinion on where to change money, and urged us "Don't take their bullshit!" if anything seemed a bit dodgy. He then pointed to an Irish pub up the road that he vouched was an excellent place for watching the soccer, and just when Chris and I became concerned that we were going to be stuck with this guy a great deal longer than we probably had wanted, he wished us all the best, gave us a few other small tips and was off. It was a very cool experience, and probably the friendliest local I've met anywhere on my trip.

Chris and I continued our journey around Prague, checked out the main street that was very busy and ran through most of the main part of the city. It had the massive National Museum at one end, and the famous Charles Bridge at the other. We walked from the former to the latter, and then across the bridge. The bridge itself was crammed full of people, with many characiture artists doing their thing, several small stalls selling beads and necklaces and the like, and a musical group calling themselves the "Bridge Band". They were actually quite good, a trumpeter, a tromboner, a tuba-er. What was most interesting was the guy playing the washboard. He had metal thimbles on each of his fingers, and ran and tapped them along a steel washboard, essentially sounding like a tap dancer. He was definitely the star of the show, and the audience seemed to appreciate his solo efforts the best.

Struggling through the throngs of people, we eventually made it to the other end of the bridge. We continued down along the river and came across what is known as the Lennon wall. There is a mask resembling John Lennon that is affixed to it, and the whole thing is covered in various graffiti. Apparently it used to be where the youth of Prague would come to write their opinions on the current government, and today has become a sort of shrine for the advancement of hippy ideals. What I liked the most was one piece of graffiti on the wall that wrote "Coexist" with various religious symbols. The picture is currently on the wikipedia link, but here is a direct one in case it gets changed.

We walked further down the river and crossed back over to our side, saw the opera house and also the dancing building. I was excited to see what would constitute a dancing building, but by the time we'd gotten there I was completely knackered from our few hours of walking and while it is fairly funky looking, I didn't feel it was worth the effort to get down there. After standing there for a brief minute and taking a snap, we got back on the tram and headed to the hostel. We both crashed out for a couple of hours and then got some pasta at the restaurant next door.

By the time we'd finished dinner, the bar in the hostel had opened up, and was fairly quiet. We had a few beers and slowly met the people from the hostel who were filtering into the bar. It was during this initial lull period that we both met Renske, a very friendly traveller from Holland who had learned a majority of her English whilst living in the US. As a result, she had a very strong American accent whilst speaking English, but she didn't seem to take too much offence at being pegged as a yank. We tried to convince her to head out with us later that evening, but she'd made up her mind to have a quiet one, promised to head out with us another night and after finishing her cup of tea she left to get some sleep.

After a while we realised there was a reasonable contingent planning on heading to the biggest club in Prague; a five storey establishment with the reputation of being one of the biggest clubs in Europe. A few more beers were had, Pilsener Urquell and Kolner being the ones availabe, and at less than a euro a pint they go down quite well! Chris and I ended up sharing a table with a couple of Scottish guys and two English girls, and both the Scots and Chris delighted in showing us all a bunch of drinking games. The first was "Fuzzy Duck", which involves each person in turn having to say "Fuzzy Duck" until someone decides to say "Does he?". At this point the order is reversed, and then everyone in turn must pronounce "Ducky Fuzz", again, until someone utters "Does he?". The first to screw it up takes a drink and begins the next round. It may sound simple, but do it with yourself in your head a few times and you'll soon realise the hilarity that can be had.

The second drinking game that Chris introduced was "Ping, Pang, Pong!". Each person in turn must say the words in order. The person to say "Pong!" looks at someone, who is then required to start the sequence again with "Ping". For instance, Chris would say "Ping", I on his left would say "Pong", and the person on my left would say "Pang!" and glare at someone who would then have to say "Ping". The trick is to glare at someone whilst saying "Ping" or "Pang", and have them say something out of turn. Again, the first to screw up takes a drink, and it is also a very simple and fun game to whittle down the beers.

This went on for some time, and once the group got moving, we followed the Scots, who had increased in number once they'd found their other couple of friends, and also knew the way to the joint due to previous excursions. The tram could only take us so far, and the remainder of the walk took quite a while, about another 30 minutes. Looking at the map from time to time I think it could have been cut down significantly, but the roads of Prague aren't very regular, and I wasn't in the mood to be leader that evening.

We got to the club shortly after midnight, payed our entry fee and began to scope the place out. The bottom floor was fairly generic hip hop and R&B, and Chris and I quickly lost the rest of our group as we waited at the bar. I don't recall the name of the beer that was on tap, as it was a brand I hadn't heard of and haven't since, but I -do- recall that it was a 12% variety, but still tasted quite good. After retrieving our drinks we made our way to the next floor up which was a kind of loungey and chilled out area, skipping to the next one which was the trance/dance floor. The music was pretty commercial, but listenable, and we hung around there for a breif period before realising that none of our group were here either and made our way to the next floor up.

Upon entering it was clear that this was where a good percentage of the club population was, a population primarily made up of teenagers and people in their very early 20's. This floor was what I call the "cheesy retro floor", with everything from early Michael Jackson, to MC Hammer being pumped out of the ample speakers. The place was also where the majority of the girls were, so if you could stand listening to the crap in the soundwaves, there was a fair amount of eye candy to look at.

Chris couldn't quite finish his beer as the extra kick was giving him trouble, so he skipped a round and then decided that it was Mojito time. In fact, it seemed to be Mojito time for the rest of the night, and we must have gotten through quite a number of them by the time we left. Braving the cheesy retro floor for a while longer, as thats where our group had ended up, we sang crappy songs and danced crappy dances until eventually we'd had all we could take and went back down to the trance floor. The music hadn't changed much from when we were there a couple hours previously, and the generic house and trance music continued playing for the rest of the night. It was an extreme improvement over the trash upstairs, but had I gone into a club where this was the main floor then I would have been dissapointed. However, the company was good and we kept our groove on until 5ish at which point it was unanimously decided to head back to the hostel before the sun came up.

The walk back was just as long as the walk there, punctuated by a strange sculpture of a pig on a diving board (see the photo gallery), and a lot of puzzled faces as we tried to work out how the astronomical clock worked in the main square. Deciding the thing was broken anyway, we left it after a few minutes of pondering and managed to get back to the hostel around 6.

I had agreed to meet Chris the next day around 1, and we had it on our agenda to head up to the Prague castle. We battled with the trams trying to get there, the number we'd been given seemed to have been cancelled. Eventually we gave up and used the metro instead, and walked the rest of the way. It wasn't a terribly long walk, but the castle is up on a hill, so the steepness combined with our alcohol induced lethargy from the previous evening meant it was something of a battle to get up there.

The castle is supposed to be one of the biggest in the world, but it doesn't really look like a traditional fortified castle. It's more like a big collection of conjoined buildings, with a fairly elaborate cathedral in the center. I'd originally thought the cathedral was the castle, as it is the only real ornate building in the whole complex. There were quite a number of people milling about, taking in the sights of the area, with entrance to the cathedral being free. Chris and I were both fairly unimpressed with the castle parts themselves, and didn't really feel like paying the entrance fee to go into what was likely just another museum, but checked out the interior of the cathedral which was quite interesting. We also walked to the top of the tower, 287 steps that we both probably could have done without. The view was impressive though, and after catching our breath and milling about for a while up there we made our way back down and went to the train station to work out the timetables for the next leg of our respective journeys. I was making my way to Berlin in the next few days, and Chris was planning to head to Amsterdam. It took over an hour of waiting in queues to get this timetable information, after which we headed back to the hostel to see if anyone was keen on catching the England vs Germany soccer match that evening.

Apparently no one was particularly interested in seeing the soccer, so Chris and I made our way to the Irish pub, and watched the game there. The place was packed with Germans, who were obviously enjoying themselves quite a lot. On the couple of occasions that they scored, the whole place went crazy, and several of the well lubricated krauts would start dancing on the tables. It made for a good atmosphere, though England lost which didn't make my companion very cheerful for the next short while until we got back to the hostel and had a few more beers. We met up with Renske again who told us that she had a contingent of people organised to go to a different club, the "Cross Club", that night which was just around the corner. She showed us where it was, and then everyone else left whilst Chris and I got ourselves sorted. We then tried to follow her directions there, ended up making a wrong turn and lengthening our trip a considerable distance. We did eventually find our bearings and then find the club, the front of it being an open area, adorned by a bunch of coloured neon lights on a rotating platform spinning in different directions.

This would be the first of several trips to this club during my time in Prague. I absolutely fell in love with the place. The whole joint is covered and built from old industrial scrap metal, pieces of car engines, twisted metal sculptures and wrought iron barriers. The front area is a low lit outdoor beer garden and once you go indoors, it becomes a labyrinth of corridors and side rooms. There seem to be three or four main dance floors, several bars and many little side rooms to sit down and relax with your drinks. In every area the lighting is crazy, without an uncoloured light in the place, the majority of it being a combination of reds and greens. Most of the lights are attached to moving platforms, whether it is something as simple as a ceiling fan or as complicated as a moving montage of luminescence covering an entire wall. The most impressive of these was the lighting being the DJ one one of the main dance areas, the whole set of lights resembling a skull face, with the lights that made up it's outer perimeter moving in a hypnotic wave motion. In the center of the floor was some kind of twisted metal object that wouldn't look out of place in one of the Matrix movies, with it's entire body slowly spinning in a circle, with several lights attached to its exterior moving about in various ways as well. In fact, the whole club wouldn't have looked out of place in one of the Matrix movies, but rather than feeling sinister, it just felt really cool.

The music in the area that I spent most of my time in was some of the funkiest breaks I'd ever heard. The DJ really knew what he was doing, and his mixing and track selection was superb. I checked out a couple of the other rooms, the music mainly being either drum 'n bass or more chilled out in some of the seating areas. Chris ended up leaving around 1 or 2, still feeling a bit worse for wear after the previous evening, and also having to catch his train to Amsterdam the following morning. We'd met up with Renske and her posse when we'd arrived, and apparently the group of guys she'd come out with didn't understand that she was a girl capable of taking care of herself. She split off from the group earlier in the night and they spent most of their night running around the club trying to find out where she was. I ran into her a bit later on and she'd picked up a local Czech guy and was enjoying having some chats with him in an upstairs bar area. Once she'd calmed her little group down and convinced them that she was fine, most of them left. As I was the only one left in the club from our original group, I promised her I'd let her know when I was leaving if she wanted a chaperone back, and headed back downstairs to the funky breaks room.

After a few hours of dancing around in there I moved back out to the bar and ran into two Dutch guys and a few Irish girls who all happened to be staying my room. It was quite a coincidence and I spent a couple hours drinking with them, until they decided to call it a night and headed back to the hostel. Initially I didn't feel like leaving quite yet, and I went back into the breaks room which had slowly changed styles into more generic house music. A few minutes later I realised I wasn't really into it anymore, and the alcohol I'd consumed sitting down with the other group probably hit me as well, and I made a hasty exit from the club to try and catch my roommates headed back to the hostel. I didn't actually catch up to them until I made it inside the hostel, making a far too enthusiastic dash up the stairs and nearly falling the whole way back down. It was not my most graceful of moments, but luckily I was uninjured and crashed out promptly to bed. It wasn't until the next day that I realised I'd completely forgotten about Renske at the club, and fortunately we ran into each other later on. She informed me that she ended up hanging around with her new Czech friend, who luckily wasn't a psychopath and she'd made it home without incident, though not until many hours after sunrise.

Crackin' Krakow Part 2

2007-09-07T12:32:00.000+01:00

The next day everyone got up about as slowly as they had the previous, and discussions were had on what was to be done. After a slow breakfast and the equally slow getting ready process we decided that we'd head on down to the Auschwitz concentration camps, and after a few more people entered and left the hostel we ended up with a group of about 8 reasonably conscious participants. After everyone got themselves sorted, we headed on out to get the tram down to the bus station, all 8 of us piling straight on. I was the only one with a ticket which I quietly validated, and not 5 minutes into our trip, two guys got on the tram in plain clothes and started asking people for tickets. Some of the group started acting the dumb tourist without a ticket, but we were all ushered off the tram and the next fifteen minutes were spent arguing with the two guys, who looked very dodgy, about how much fine they should have to pay. It involved a lot of slow communication and bargaining, at one point the guy pulling out his phone to call the police. Eventually I think they got the fine down to about 30 wotsits each, which I think equated to a little less than 10 euro. I'd say the best bargaining was done by Daniel, or as he was known to most of us, "Spaniard", who was a fairly charismatic dude and did most of the talking.

After a time we did get to the bus station, found the bus to Auschwitz and made our journey there. It took slightly over an hour, a time spent by most dozing or light conversation. Once we'd arrived, we had to decide whether to take the guided tour or wander about ourselves, the catch being that the guided tour didn't start for another hour. Suggestions were thrown back and forth, and the general consensus was that the guided tour was the preferred option, both to better understand what it was we were looking at, but also because a lot of us couldn't be bothered reading anything and rathered taking the lazy way out. Most of the group then wandered off around the camp, but Rod and myself decided that we were going to see it all pretty soon anyway and were content just to sit around the main entrance.

The tour started, and was led by a Polish girl who'd actually had family who died in Auschwitz, so understandably she was quite passionate about the information that she was providing. It was interesting to hear about the different buildings and the things that occured in the various places around the camp, along with more personal stories about where her family had fit in.

Auschwitz was actually broken up into three sites. The first, and what is actually known as "Auschwitz" (the Polish spelling is "Oświęcim"), was the first of the camps and and considerably smaller than the second, Birkenau. There was also a third camp, Monowitz, however there is no remnants of the third left standing. The buildings look suprisingly good, and if it weren't for the signs and information being given to us by our tour leader, it would almost seem like a nice place to wander around. The brick buildings are all in good repair, there are nice green trees all over the place and save from the rather intimidating barbed fencing around the place, the whole area was quite pleasant. Inside each of the buildings are different displays, and this is where the whole thing became a lot more sinister. They showed models of how the camps were laid out, and described the ruthless efficiency of the Germans in why Auschwitz was where it was and how the rail system easily transported prisoners from all over Europe to this central location in Poland. There were huge collections of actual peoples belongings (original) that had been stripped away from them on entry, and I remember one display of thousands upon thousands of shoes piled up in massive heap along two windows in one of the structures. There was also tons of human hair that had been uncovered when the camp had been liberated that the Germans had used for making various high quality textiles, hair that was shaved off each prisoner upon entry.

Our tour guide showed us the living areas and conditions of the prisoners including the areas where people were tortured in various ways, and the whole thing was particularly sobering. There were various rooms that depicted how the living conditions changed over time, beginning with nothing but straw on the floors, to straw sacks that were used as mattresses and then to the crowded bunks that some may be familiar with from common photos.

One of the last buildings shown to us, or rather pointed to in the distance was the commander's house, where he lived whilst running the camp, apparently with his entire family. I was a little taken aback to believe that someone would live with their family so close to such a terrible place, where the smell and noise must have been present constantly. The last building shown to us was the gas chamber and crematorium used in Auschwitz, however it was quite small, and most of it had been rebuilt as a replica to show what it would have looked like in operation. This building was only used whilst the Germans were constructing Birkenau, the largest of the camps, and known as an "extermination" camp.

Birkenau was our next destination, and whilst there were less buildings still standing there, it was unbelievably large. Once I had walked through the entrance gate to the camp, you literally could not see the end of it in the distance toward the horizon. The actual area of the place eludes me for now, but over 100,000 prisoners were kept here at any given time, kept in check by over 6,000 gaurds. It was here that most of the gassing was performed, with a railroad built right into the center of the camp so they could quickly bring prisoners directly to their imprisonment. Once they had arrived, they were quickly sorted into either workers or marked for death, often marched straight to the gas chambers where they would be told that they would get a shower, herded in 2,000 at a time and killed. There were four gas chambers and crematoria, run by prisoners themselves. The whole place was very shocking, and simply the enormity of the camp was enough to give you pause.

We wandered down the railroad, were shown some of the living quarters that had been rebuilt, saw the remnants of the gas chambers that had been blown up by the Nazi's when they heard the Soviets were coming and finished at the main memorial. There was a plaque in each language of the prisoners that had died in Auschwitz, and I noticed that the only reason they had an English one was due to all of the tourism they get to this place. After the tour was complete we had about an hour to wait for the bus, so we sat around and chatted, and eventually made the trek back up to the front of the house, went up the main entrance tower to get some photos and grouped back together to wait for the bus.

This particular bus that we were waiting for happened to be the last back to Krakow, and without any decent signage, we simply waited around about the area where we were dropped off previously. After a time a bus turned into the road on which we were waiting, went about 50 meters past us, turned around and paused for half a minute. We had waved it down as it drove past, and started walking towards it, and then the driver pulled back out and drove right past us, not having picked up a single person from the place. Realising that it was our last chance to get home, a couple of us thought quickly, and got the rest of our group to a couple of taxis waiting near the entrance. It was the first time in my life I've had the opportunity to jump into a taxi and request frantically "Follow that bus!!". The taxi driver did so, making it back to Auschwitz (the second stop of the bus) before the driver had left again, and I'm sure charged us a premium for the service. We joined the now rather large queue to get on the bus, and whilst we were all able to get a seat we were spread a bit further through the thing, and not in a nice little group as we'd been on the way there. Add to this that for some reason the journey back home took over two hours, by the time we'd actually made it back to Krakow it was dark, and I was tired and annoyed. I may have been overheard to wish unspeakable fortune on our complete wanker of a bus driver.

A short time later we made it back to the hostel, and quickly left again, as it was past 9, apparently the time when a majority of the restaurants close. We found a nice little italian place and had some food, myself ordering the requisite lasagne, a choice I later regretted as I feel that my dish had been sitting in a hot pan for a few hours and had turned rather hard, whereas everyone elses pizzas and pastas looked quite fresh.

Returning to the hostel to freshen up and get ready to go out, I threw down a few Jagerbombs and a beer and began to feel a bit better about life in general, and we headed out to find some other people from the hostel who had headed out to the club of the night by now. We chatted to the owner outside reception briefly, threw down a few of the offered vodka shots and made our way across town to the "Kitsch" club.

Upon arrival there were a bunch of people loitering around outside, one with a fresh wound above his eye, and I began to get a little nervous about the quality of the establishment. It actually seemed to be about two or three places all jammed into the one building, with our choice for the evening located up the top. Having nowhere else to go we decided to brave the place and headed upstairs to grab a drink. The top floor was split into two, one side playing cheesy retro sort of stuff and the other playing something I don't recall, but certainly a lot more pleasant to the ears than the former. Jon was in there doing his breakdancing thing and apparently having a vodka drinking competition with some Russian guys, a competition I dare say he wasn't winning. He was putting them away like a champion, however, and I will certainly not disparage his efforts. Considering he'd throw a couple down and then get on the dance floor and start spinning on his head, I'd say the man has a gut of steel. I had been bought a beer by someone at this stage, and it was about now that I realised how much I hated the staple Polish beer, "Zywiec". The stuff just doesn't go down very well and leaves an after taste that is far to reminiscent of vegemite. It didn't stop me finishing the beer though, despite my companions discouraging. For those interested, Tyskie and Lech are far better varieties of Polish beer.

An interesting side point at this stage would be to point out one of the ongoing running gags that permeated the whole of our time in Krakow. The hostel provided us all with a map, and on one side of the map it had a list of what it considered useful phrases in Polish. Amongst these included things like "Hello", "Please" and "Thank you", but also some other rather interesting ones such as "Are you a nurse?", "Do you have any available brothers/sisters?", and the kicker was "May I please fondle your buttocks?". I don't think anyone was game enough to try the latter while we were out, but the most hilarious to us (the boys at least), was "Do you know how to play the trumpet?". This would constantly get thrown about no matter where we are, and I do know that Rod gave this one a crack in a club, only to have the response "Well no, but I do know how to play the keyboard!". Apparently the lass didn't quite understand the euphemism.

Chris, the Englishmen that I would end up spending the next few days of travelling with, joined us at the club and actually ended up hanging around longer than any of us. We had a small group hanging around at one table, but the vibe wasn't quite as tight as it had been the previous night. Rod and Steve had found some chicks that they'd hooked up with the night previous, and were busy making repeat inroads there, and a lot of the Americans had already left that day. It was still a fun place to hang out, but none of it really left a lasting impression on me, and by about 3 I think most of our group had dissapeared. Chris had decided to move back to the cheese room to try and find some girls, a mission he was successful with and ended up bringing his prize back to the hostel around 5 in the morning, and the Spaniard tried his luck elsewhere in the club and managed to get a few numbers to chase up the following day. Clare and I left shortly after 3, picked up a couple more beers at a 24 hour shop, however it seems that once it gets dark you need to make your purchases through a rather intimidating iron grate. We hung out for a while back at the hostel and watched people slowly trickle their way back home, and a few hours later called it a night ourselves.

In what was becoming quite a trend by this stage, everyone was in bed until close to midday. Eventually we all roused once more, discussed the previous nights shenanigans, ate more cheese and yoghurt amongst deciding to check out Krakow's other primary tourist attraction, the salt mines. The transport there was a considerably simpler task, just a 20 minutes bus straight to the place, a fine free event. Deciding that our meager breakfast wasn't quite sufficient, we went to the restaurant across the road. I went for the chicken skewer, which far outshone the rest on the table, with my companions each receiving a rather small dish of scrambled eggs. Most decided to get back on the wagon with a pint to go down with it, and ensuring I steered clear of that horrible Zywiec stuff I ordered a Carlsberg to be safe, as the wait staff here didn't speak a word of English.

After a time we finally got to the salt mines themselves, and upon queueing we discussed which entrance fee we should get. There are two options, an English tour or a Polish tour. Tim, one of the bright sparks of our group suggested that if we were to get the Polish tour we could save a few bucks (it was cheaper), and we'd still get to see the whole thing. No one really disputed this, despite the saving being a rather paltry 4 or 5 euro, and off we went into the mine following a chap whom we couldn't understand a word of. We traversed down about 30 flights of stairs to get into the mine, and then set off walking through what was apparently only 2% of the entire underground labyrinth. This 2% still took a few hours, stopping in each cavern where there were various puppets and animatronics showing what would happen in different parts of the mine. Chris and I attempted to make our own hilarious running commentary of the place, however after the first few caverns this started to run short. I'm not sure if the tour would have been that much more interesting had we chosen the English tour instead, but after about an hour of following our Polish guide, a lot of us were completely over the whole thing. Each cavern didn't really show us anything different, and between looking at different sculptures carved out of the salt and licking the walls (Jon became an expert at this), there really wasn't that much to distinguish any one place from another. We did attempt to lag back occasionally to try and hear the English guide behind us, but after receiving a couple of death stares that could only be delivered by an eastern European, we kept up with our main group.

There was one very large cavern that had been converted into a sort of chapel/church, with carvings on the walls depicting various scenes. Clare rather cleverly deciphered most of them and pointed out their chronology, and the whole room was fairly impressive. Apparently you could book the place for weddings and the like, and it was supposedly a fully functioning place of worship. We left the church area and continued through the rest of the mine, which became less and less impressive as the caverns progressed. There was one cavern that was quite large, with a pool of water in its center. We were ushered in, and then a sound and light show was initiated that was just poor. A few spotlights shone on different objects within the cavern, but nothing moved and the sound was just strange and bizarre. We left the cavern all a bit puzzled, not sure what they were trying to accomplish with the spectacle.

Eventually we made it to the end of the tour, and we quickly found our way through about twenty different gift shops, and up into a very rickety and small elevator. We left the mine completely, and most of us agreed (the Irish girls not so much, they seemed to enjoy the experience at least somewhat), that the whole thing was a bit of a waste of time. I'm not even sure if we'd gone on the English tour that the excursion would have been much better for it. Most fell asleep on the short bus ride back to the hostel, and then pretty much everyone went back to bed for a couple of hours.

Later we headed out to get some dinner, but again leaving it a bit too late there were few places open. We had a group of about 10 people, and went into one place that wouldn't serve us because they "didn't have enough cooks in the kitchen". After a time we found a rather large mexican restaurant that was willing to accept our patronage, however split us up into smaller groups as they wouldn't allow us to move any tables. I ordered some ribs that were wholly unsatisfying (compared to those I'd had in Innsbruck), as the rib bones broke while I was trying to pull them apart, and the meat quality was just generally pretty average. We had a round of cocktails as they were fairly inexpensive, and after everyone was finished, "Boo" left as he had to make a train, and then the rest of us went back to the hostel to get ready for this evenings shenanigans.

The mood back at the hostel was fairly lackluster, drinks started flowing but I would describe it as more of a trickle than a fountain of alcohol. Clare challenged a bunch of us to scrabble, but this was abandoned halfway through as it was boring the piss out of most in the room. About three quarters of the group then decided to head out again that night, but a few of us were happier to hang around in the hostel and have our drinks indoors. I kept this going all night, with Clare being the only one with the stamina to keep up, watching the punters slowly trickle in from their outings, spent a while listening to a particularly hilarious comedian on Jon's laptop, whose name I wish I could remember. It was something "Tell", but I can't for the life of me recall his first name. Unfortunately typing "Tell" and "Comedian" into google isn't coming up with much for me.

Hearing the stories of those who went out was interesting, apparently they went to a fairly ordinary bar and then later on ended up at some kind of death metal gig, where all the ladies in the house would sit around the outskirts whilst the gents would stand on the dance floor and swing their hair around circles. A few were going to join in the festivities by swinging their shirts around, but were quickly discouraged from such and not long after made their way back to the hostel. I can't say I was altogether dissapointed in missing out, but it would have been interesting to see.

Eventually most made their way back, and then even the hostel staff wandered in about 6'ish to lay out breakfast for the morning, after which time Clare and I decided it was probably time for us to wrap up as well, but not before I was told that I must get up in the next few hours to see her off to her taxi. I did so, and then made my way back inside for another hour or two nap, and then headed into town to organise my night train ticket to Prague. Jon came with me, as he was headed off to his next destination and after a nice sushi lunch and a bit of wandering around the shops, I bode farewell to my breakdancing Asian-American friend and headed back to the hostel. When I returned I found Chris trying to work out his own journey to Prague, and ended up going back to the station with him and one of the other American guys and helped him sort out his ticket. While we were there, Spaniard rocked up and organised his own travel, and it became fairly clear that today was the exodus of most of our core group from the hostel.

The four of us took the opportunity to have another wander around Krakow, saw some of the sights we'd missed so far, and I showed them the rather delicious Polish barbecue I'd found the first day I arrived. There were some traditional Polish dancers and singers on the stage, and the whole atmosphere felt very authentic. The dancing is particularly unusual, basically a bunch of old women in traditional Polish garb stand with their fists on their hips and twist from side to side. It didn't seem very complicated, but they all had the look of people that take it very seriously.

After heading back to the hostel for a nap, we went out for a dinner recommended to us by Slovak consisting of "potato pancakes". He was very keen to take us all there, and ensured that we'd each put down a couple of vodka shots before heading out. I guess I was expecting a small restaurant or something similar, but it ended up being more of a take away booth, so we ordered the ham and cheese potato pancake as recommended and then headed off to a pub around the corner to have a few beers while we waited for them to be cooked up. This was the first chance I got to have a chat with Slovak, and his lifestyle is very interesting. He's been to Australian over 15 times, and regularly takes tourist groups from Europe, primarily Germany and Poland to see various parts of outback Oz, as he seems to love our country. He is very into organising tourist activities, something that was made clear to me the second day I was there when he took a few of our group hiking through Poland and into Slovakia. It was then made clear to me at this point, that one of the reasons he enjoys going to Slovakia is that he able to buy a type of Absinthe there that is apparently illegal to purchase in Poland. He also assured me that the skiing/snowboarding on the mountains between Poland and Slovakia is excellent and extremely cheap, something I hope to check out sometime during the European winter. Once our "potato pancakes" where ready, we were about to get up to go retrieve them, at which point Slovak told us to sit down, and he and who I assume was his wife went and brought them all back for us. It was essentially like a massive hash brown with ham and cheese all over it, and thoroughly delicious.

Our meal and beers finished, we hurried back to the hostel, as four of us (myself included) had to get our asses into gear to make our train. Chris and I pulled our damp washing off the lines, crammed them into our bags and hurried out the door with the other couple of guys who were getting the same tram as us, however Slovak wouldn't let us leave without having one of his evil Absinthe shots. It went down surprisingly well, but left a burn in my stomach that hung around for a good 5 minutes or so. We jogged through the rain, but missed the tram, and ended up flagging down a taxi to get us to the station. We arrived with few minutes to spare, found our platform and cabins and dropped our stuff.

Chris was in the cabin next to mine, sharing with an Irish group of two guys and two girls, and we all got along quite well. I tried to convince the sixth member of their cabin to swap with me in mine next door, which was a good deal considering I was in a four person cabin rather than a six. He poked his head into mine and spied two French guys with their shirts off, and decided to stick with his initial boarding. The train trip was average to say the least, but the company was good and they were serving beer (unfortunately warm) for the first half of the journey. We got stuck on the Polish / Czech border for a good two hours for some reason, an event which I found out from other travellers later in my journeys isn't too uncommon. Even though there was only the one passport check this time, I got less sleep on this trip than I had on the previous one from Budapest, mostly due to the raucous Americans partying with the French guys in my room. I stayed out of my cabin and hung out with Chris and the Irish group (I'm sure their extra passenger in our cabin was having a delightful time trying to sleep himself) until about 3 when the train finally started pulling out of the station at the border. About 6 hours later we arrived in Prague.

Krakow was awesome. It was awesome because Slovak really knew how to make people feel welcome and how to encourage them to have a good time (he really enjoys the tourist industry), and it was awesome because the group inhabiting our hostel while I was there were all really good fun to hang out with. We basically became our own little family for the better part of four days, and everyone was happy to enjoy everyone elses company. I'm sure had the group dynamic not been as enthusiastic and tight that I wouldn't have had nearly as good a time, as I didn't feel there was heaps to see in Krakow. Certainly there was Auschwitz which was interesting, and the salt mines which were not so, but the city itself doesn't have all that much in the way of major sights. There is a castle, which I actually never got to see up close, and the market stalls and town square were nice, especially that barbecue, but what made Krakow for me was definitely the fun I had after dark with my fellow comrades.

If anyone is going to put this place on their to do list, I would certainly recommend "Ars Hostel". Really, the name says it all!

The photos are also available.

Crackin' Krakow Part 1

2007-09-04T16:49:00.001+01:00

The train rolled into Krakow shortly after 6AM, and I emerged from the cabin bleary eyed after the two passport checks on the way had cut my total amount of sleep down to a few hours. So much for getting the sleeper cabin. I found a bank machine, pulled out some local currency, the official name being 'Zloty', a name which I could never remember and simply referred to generally as the 'wotsit'. I'd gotten used to using a currency other than the Euro down in Hungary, however changing exchange rates every few days starts to get confusing, and it can become difficult to appreciate the value of things in general.

Having meandered out from the station and seeing my tram go right past me, I decided it would take less time to simply walk rather than wait the half hour for the next one. By this stage I'd gotten good at working with maps, and I began to fold the one I'd picked up in Budapest into the nice little square that I'm used to dealing with. Halfway through this process I managed to rip it in half and ended up having to try to walk down the road whilst holding the oddly shaped pieces of paper together to know where I was going. I keep a local city map in my back pocket at all times, and this combined with the constant refolding of the thing means that I generally have to get another one every two or three days. This one had officially lasted about 15 minutes.

I made it into the hostel around 7, found the reception, where the guy behind the desk was chatting with a couple of the patrons who had been out the night before, obviously had enjoyed each others company so much that they hadn't actually been to bed yet. The staff informed me apologetically that my bed wasn't currently available, something I had fully expected as I hadn't booked it until that night, but they urged me to leave my bags with them and head upstairs and help myself to the breakfast. The girl of the newly formed coupled on the couch told me that she hadn't used her bed yet, and since her cab was coming in half an hour that I was most welcome to it. The staff weren't particularly keen on this idea, so I thanked her for the consideration and head upstairs to find another Australian guy, Rod, who was in exactly the same position as I was. He had, in fact, been on exactly the same train as I had, but his more hasty exit from the station had meant he'd made it in time for the tram. We chatted over bread with cheese and a tub of yoghurt, both keenly eyeing the two couches in the main living area of the place. Similar to Budapest, this hostel was more a converted apartment, but unlike Budapest (or perhaps because I'd just gotten used to it by now), it felt a lot more comfortable. There were three dorm rooms, one of 10 beds, one of 6 and one of 4 and the living area between them was quite large, with two very comfortable couches, a TV which was left perpetually on one of the music channels and a long eating table down one side. About 15 minutes into our conversation, another guy emerged from one of the dorms, let us know that there was a killer snorer in his room and proceeded to go to pass back out on one of the couches. I poked my head into the 10 bed dorm, and spying the mattress on the floor with the immaculate sheets on it and taking a punt that it belonged to the recently left girl from downstairs, decided to graciously offer Rod the other couch and crashed out there.

A couple hours later I got up, not wanting to have the staff find me using this bed of which they'd strongly discouraged, and luckily by that stage one of the couches had freed up. I promptly made myself at home there and got another couple hours of sleep, interrupted here and there by the other inhabitants grabbing breakfast around me.

Eventually Rod and I were woken up by the increased activity in the room, and started hearing about the stories of the night previously from all those around. The stories were hardly necessary, as the look of death on most peoples faces was enough to tell that there had been a big night out for all involved. There were about 4 or 5 American guys, most of them Texans, a couple of Canadians including one guy named "Boo", a couple Irish girls, Fiona and Claire, and a couple British guys, Richard and Steve to boot. Apparently there were more people who had been out, but they were still crashed out around the place. We all chatted for a couple of hours and realised that pretty much nothing was going to get done by anyone that day.

One thing that I had decided was going to happen that day was to get some new shoes. I bought a brand new pair of Colorado's before I left, a brand that has served me particularly well in the past. After the previous two and a bit months of travelling, however, I'd completely worn this pair out, to the extent that if I walked in wet weather, water would come through a crack in the bottom of the sole and soak my right foot. I used the opportunity to actually have a look around the city a bit whilst chasing down shoe shops, and eventually made my way into the main square. It was pretty big, with a lot of market stalls around, a stage and also a Polish barbecue. Deciding it was time to eat, I ordered a meat skewer and a Polish sausage, at which point the server turned around and said "One skewer and Kielbasa". I nearly grinned my face off, getting extremely excited that I'd just heard the word 'Kielbasa' outside the context of a Tenacious D song, even though I did know somewhere in the vault of my brain that Kielbasa is the Polish word for sausage.

I ate my lunch with a Polish beer, made my way back past one of the shoe stores that I'd found on my trek into the center, picked up what seemed to be a pair that I could wear out in London but also comfortable enough to finish my European Shenanigans, and made my way back to the hostel. I found Rod out on the tiny balcony, and after cracking a couple of beers we met up with Claire and Fiona and headed out to get some food at the Chinese restaurant across the road. It was good stuff, and it was about this time that I realised how cheap Poland was in general. For a good quality Chinese dish with rice and a beer cost me the equivalent of about 4 to 5 Euro.

On the way back to the hostel we passed the bottleshop, picked up some booze and headed back upstairs. I'd decided to grab some Jagermeister and Red Bulls considering how cheap they were, something that was to spell out how I'd be starting my nights for the rest of the time in Krakow. By this stage everyone seemed to have recovered reasonably well from the previous nights efforts, and within a few hours the drinks were flowing again. There were more people up and about by this stage, and it wasn't too long before Claire had initiated a drinking game known as "Kings", which involves spreading a deck of cards around a glass in the center. Each person takes it in turn to select a card from the pile, and each card has a particular action associated with it. One special card worth mentioning is a king, when everyone is required to pour a little bit of whatever they are drinking into the cup in the center. The rules vary on the next bit, some saying that the person drawing the last king is to drink the contents of the communal mug, however in our game anyone drawing a 2 was required to partake of its rotten contents.

The game went for a couple hours, with some getting more drunk than most. Fiona was the one to select the final 2, being tasked with finishing off the by-now-nearly-full concoction in the middle. She, however, hadn't quite recovered from the previous nights endeavours, and actually never managed to finish it off.

After everyone had become sufficiently lubricated, we all, sans Fiona who had decided that bed was her next destination, made our way to a club in town called "Prozac", probably the most touristy club we could have chosen in all of Krakow. As we were walking past the hostel reception the guy who owns the place, Slovak, quickly came out and told us to wait. He then returned in short order with a round of vodka shots for all involved, an act that would become tradition for every time we left the hostel at night. I'd spoken to various people in my travels by this point on the merits of vodka and how one can stand to drink it straight, and the general consensus seems to be to keep it in the freezer, and then if it is of reasonable quality it actually goes down quite well. So much so that even the intoxicating effects of it are slightly cleaner. I thought that the Poles, being quite proud of their vodka (pronounced everywhere in central to eastern Europe as 'wodka', and even spelt that way occasionally), would have been fairly strict about this cooling process. Apparently I was mistaken, and the room temperature spirit filled everyones bellies with a small fire and a grimace to boot.

By the time we'd made it to the club everyone was in a pretty good mood, and we sent one of the girls in to check it out, being as they were allowed in for free. After getting the thumbs up a group of about 10 of us all ventured into the place and found a nice couched area not far off the dance floor. Rounds were bought, and people started feeling the music, which was being played by a DJ downstairs and pumped through to the dance floor upstair as well. By this stage I'd heard the rumours of one of the American guys, Jon, who apparently was able to break out some moves on the floor. It wasn't long before he decided to throw them down again, and in short order he was spinning on his head and ripping out all the classic breakdancing moves you'd expect by a bunch of baggy-clothed wearing guys on the street with a boombox. This brought cheers from the crowd, and was quite impressive to watch. It also gave a few of the rest of us reason to go and join him on the tiles.

Less than a minute of being on the floor, and suddenly I had three fit girls climbing all over me. Two behind and one in front, all grooving and groping. Needless to say, in my mind this is exactly what the fans want, and in short order I was making mental plans to move all my stuff to Poland. However, I quickly realised what these girls were up to as I started to feel hands and fingers enter my pockets and start to fish around. This wasn't too much of a problem for me, as before I'd even gotten to Europe I'd made the decision to have my wallet and camera attached to my jeans with some little cables/straps I'd picked up along the way. I'd somehow allowed myself to become a pack mule for Claire, however, and her little wallet was currently unprotected in my back pocket. Not wanting to be the party-pooper though, I just kept a very wary consciousness of where these current belongings were, and allowed these three girls to keep doing their close-body-groping-thing. One of them managed to claw out my map, which I swiped back in quick time, and I think now that they'd realised I'd worked out their game they decided to go and find some more unwary prey. I got off the floor and was sure to inform the rest of our group what was going on, lest they become victims of this rather sneaky little scam. They even had a crack at Claire, who, wearing a skirt, was really not a very clever target. They did delight into throwing her clothes up a little.

Some of us checked out the downstairs area which was the same as that upstairs, except a much more crowded dance floor. I have a feeling the lighting guy either wasn't paying attention or wasn't there at all. It was either this, or someone had spilt their beer on the 'off' switch for the strobe light, as the entire time I was down there, the thing was doing its little flashy thing the entire time. It was extremely off putting, and after about fifteen minutes I decided that I was probably going to go mental if I stayed any longer and Claire and I retreated back upstairs. We had a wander around the rest of the club and found a few other places which were pretty funky. This included a quieter, loungey sort of area where I happened to notice one rather successful punter with two fit girls taking him in turns on the couch, and also an interesting little balcony over a smaller dance floor with a very low ceiling. I remember the music was different, although by this stage I can't actually remember what it entailed.

By this stage the group had become quite segregated throughout the club, and about 3 or 4, Claire suggested it was time to go and we headed back to the hostel where a bunch of the American guys were on the couches making a whole ton of noise. We mingled with them for a while, then retreated to the balcony, however the Americans were having none of it and tended to fill the place with noise no matter where anyone was. After a couple of hours of this I decided I'd had enough of drunk yanks and as the sun was poking its rays through the horizon I crashed out for the night.

Being in Budapest

2007-08-27T16:15:00.000+01:00

To get the hydrofoil boat to Budapest requires one to be at the checkin for the boats about 8AM. This is a minor problem if you don't really know how far it is to the harbour because it's not on your map. As a result, I got up at 6AM after a couple hours sleep, dragged my bag onto my very tired shoulders and started heading through the dawn to the metro station. Turns out I was about half an hour early, and then after the checkin there was still a wait until 9 for the passport control guys to get their act together as well. Eventually I got through their gates and onto the vessel, named a hydrofoildue to a large wing it has attached to the underside of the hull. This allows the boat to rise out of the water as it gains speed, reducing the water drag on the boat and making the whole thing more efficient and capable of greater speeds. I think I heard the captain say that our vessel averaged around 35 km/hr.

Catching the boat from Budapest to Vienna was one of the things on my original itinerary that I wanted to make sure got done. It may be observed that I've actually reversed the direction, but the journey is much the same. Just, you know... backwards. I planned to check out the sights coming out of Vienna, marvel at the wonderful scenery down the world reknowned Danube river, the second longest in Europe. Unfortunately due to my previous late night shenanigans with the Irish and my hellishly early start that morning, I was basically drifting in and out of consciousness for the first couple hours of the six hour journey, so much so that I missed going through the first lock. Essentially I missed any wonderful parts of the Viennese end of the river, and the rest of the trip, except for a castle or ruin here and there was actually quite bland.

It was not possible to stand on deck during the journey (except when going through the locks, which was quite interesting to see), however it was possible to sit on the top portion of the stairs going up to the deck and poke ones upper body through the sliding hatch. I spent the last hour and a bit of the trip in this configuration, listening to some music and enjoying the breeze. I must have chosen the right music, and in combination with reminiscing of Vienna and my trip so far, a fresh Hungarian beer and little packet of pretzels, I had an extremely potent "life is good" moment. I've had this happen to me a couple times during the trip, but none quite as powerful as this one, and it was an excellent feeling.

Not too long after, the massive parliament building of Budapest came into view, followed by several other of the cities famous landmarks, including the Széchenyi Chain Bridge. The boat pulled into dock, and after retrieving my bag I had a quick chat with a couple of other backpackers standing around the exit building and we arranged to meet later on that night for a drink.

Luckily there was a bunch of maps available in the exit building of the dock, and luckier still it was only about a kilometer to my hostel. I found my way through the extremely busy streets down to the location, which was in a large building complex with a square central courtyard. I got buzzed in through the main door and checked in. The place was a dingy converted 2 storey apartment, with a lounge and kitchen on the first floor and a couple of dorms on the second, quite a way removed from the refined, professional look of the previous hostels I'd been staying in. The dorm I was in smelt of something I can't describe, and people had their crap all over the place. It was what I expect living in a share house of about 20 people would be like. Fortunately the other patrons of this establishment were all quite friendly, and over the next few hours I got over the initial shock and it actually began to feel quite homely.

I didn't have much time, save to drop my bags, check my mail and leave to meet Rebecca and Bruno, the backpackers I met off the boat. Bruno had dissapeared elsewhere to find a friend of his, but Rebecca had found a new Spanish companion, David, and he was keen to head out with us also. We plucked a few bars out of Rebecca's guide book and attempted to find them, only to get continually lost through the streets of Pest, the east side of the city. Eventually we found one of the bars we were looking for, a place that ended up feeling pretty local as a result of the Roma/Gypsy music playing in the background, the lack of any English on the drinks menu's, though the bartender was able to speak a little.

It is now that I will mention that Hungarianis one of the most frustrating languages I've come across so far, completely removed from anything I'm used to. With the Romance languages, it is usually possible to work out what some of the words mean and get the general gist of what a sign is trying to communicate. In Hungary this is essentially impossible, as it seems to have no correlation with anything I'm familiar with. This makes ordering food, drinks, asking for directions or anything of the sort an impossible task unless you've mastered the art of psuedo sign language, a skill which I'm pleased to say I've developed a good ability for.

We ended up hanging out in that bar until sometime around 11, at which point my stomach, starved of any sustenance apart from beer, started to inform me of the situation. Rebecca decided to head back to her hostel, and David and myself made our way down to a restaurant not far off, thankfully with English translations on their menu. The service was slow, but I was happy that we'd actually found a place to eat so late at night. We were finished shortly before 1, we payed, and it was about then as David was flicking through his wallet, that he realised he'd lost his credit card. After a moments panic and a few more moments cursing we went back to my hostel where the Internet was free and he could cancel his card. He headed back to his hostel, and was supposed to meet Rebecca and myself at the ferry to the Sziget festival the next day, but I actually never saw him again.

The following day I did a bit of wandering around Pest, geeked out on the Internet for a couple of hours and uploaded quite a number of photos. It is rare that you find Internet cafe's with relatively lax security that will allow you to install software (such as Picasa), and I refuse to upload photos using their "pick 5 at a time" web upload method. Therefore, when I do find the opportunity to install such applications I jump at them, and the result is a mass upload of hundreds of photos as seen a couple days ago on this very page.

Come about 6 I made my way down to the river where the Radio 1 ferry was taking people over to the Sziget festival on Óbudai-sziget island in the Danube. I'd managed to get to Budapest in time to see the last day of the 7 day festival which had (this year) over 370,000 visitors, 25 different music stages and over 70 more other stages of various types. It included bungee jumping from a crane, rock climbing and ziplining across a good portion of the festival grounds, all types of food stalls you could think of (from Mexican to Serbian to fruit juice).

I have said, and believed, that I would never see as big a party as I did at San Fermin in Pamplona. I will now officially amend that and say I will never see as big a party as I did at Sziget in Budapest. The whole island was used as a party ground, separated into a few different sections with thousands of tents littered in between. Many tens of thousands of people were camping around the island for the duration of the festival, but how they could possibly get any sleep with the noise around them 24/7 I have no idea. It was a fairly hippy crowd, but there was most types of music imaginable, from blues to world music, to mainstream pop to dance/techno. Rebecca, Bruno and myself wandered around the island, snacking on some mexican cuisine and drinking cheap pints, hanging around the main stage for some of Juliette and the Licks. They were ok, but apparently we'd just missed the Eagles of Death Metal, a band who doesn't actually play death metal and one I'd have been interested to see. The Killers were the main show and coming up next, so we checked out the blues stage which was awesome and got a feel for the rest of the stages.

The Killers started about fifteen minutes early, but luckily we'd made it back to the main stage in time. There were countless thousands of people all crowded around to check out the main stage grand finale, with flags and banners being waved through the air, various people crowd surfing over the masses and plenty of chicks on shoulders. Now I'm not a huge fan of the Killers, not because I dislike their music, but it's simply not something that makes it into my regular musical repertoire. That said, I was able to recognise and even sing along to more than half of the tunes they pumped out, which must say something for how far their influence reaches. Speaking of reaching, Rebecca is only just over 5 foot tall, and was barely able to see over the shoulders of the people in front of her, let alone the stage. Deciding to get into the spirit of the concert like everyone else, I got her up on my shoulders to a couple of their tracks. The whole crowd was going pretty crazy, the throng basically moving as a single giant entity in time with the music. The atmosphere was incredible, and they put on great show with no less than 3 encores. They wrapped up about 10:30, which gave Bruno and I time to see Rebecca off at the ferry and then head over to the Nokia Party Arena where Deep Dish were to start playing at 11.

Wanting to last a few hours here I decided to get off the beers, opting for something involving an energy drink. Jagerbombs would be my usual drink of preference in this context, but they had neither Red Bull, nor Jagermeister. Their energy drink was "Burn", and I decided to create my own cocktail of that and Bacardi. It goes down ok and after a few has the desired effect. I recommend two shots of Bacardi to one Burn, a drink I will christen the "Burning Rumball".

Apparently I'd been fed false information, and the DJ opening was not Deep Dish, but rather someone named "Chrisss", who I'd never heard of. He was ok, and was followed about an hour later by a French DJ, "Cedric Gervais". I'd never heard of him either, but he was supremely good. Very deep electro synths over some good basslines, and his mixing was top notch. He went on for a couple hours before Deep Dish took over the reigns, and I managed to get talking to a couple of Hungarian girls who had only just discovered dance music about a month previously. They seemed to dig everything equally, but in my opinion when Deep Dish came on they just couldn't keep the vibe going as well as Cedric did, and their mixing was a bit off. They Hungarian girls left, as they had to work in about 5 hours, and I stayed through most of Deep Dish's set, but when the clock rolled past 4 and I just wasn't getting into it anymore I headed off, had a hot dog for a snack (worst idea yet) and got a taxi back to the hostel.

In order to relax from the big party the previous evening, I'd planned to go to the Széchényi baths. I dropped by the station on the way to get my ticket to Krakow, a place not originally on my list, but after several independant recommendations one that made it. The station was absolutely sprawling with the thousands of Sziget'ers trying to get home. People were asleep or just waiting around throughout the platforms and out the main entrance. I got to the international ticket window, or rather, about 100 meters behind it where the queue started, decided that this was not going to fly and resigned myself to coming back later that evening when hopefully the crowds had died down.

The baths were also quite busy with people, a lot of them having the same idea as I, that a nice day in the saunas and pools would be a good way to wind down after a big party. There are two main outdoor pools and at least 10 different saunas within the complex, a couple of steam rooms, massage is available and various other "well being" treatments. There are many different indoor pools, all with a slightly different temperature, ranging from about 28 degrees and increasing in 2 degree increments up to 38 degrees. I'm not sure why they are so specific about it, but I'm sure there are therapeutic reasons for each.

Each of the saunas has a cold drop pool just to the outside, which must be somewhere less than 10 degrees. The first sauna I went into happened to be the hottest, the needle on the wall reaching the 70 degree mark. Now I like my saunas, and I like them hot, but this one made my legs feel like they were burning. Needless to say I didn't last terribly long in there, and jumping into the cold drop after that was quite an experience to say the least. I found a much more reasonable sauna after that, somewhere in the 60 degree range, and the interesting thing about this particular sauna was the ice bowl just near the entrance which was continually dispensing ice flakes. The custom is to get a few handfuls of these ice flakes and compress them into a type of ice ball with your hands, which you then use to cool different parts of your body whilst in the sauna itself. It was a great concept and allows you to sweat a deal more before having to jump out into the cold drop.

I spent a good 3 or 4 hours in the baths, alternating between the saunas, steam rooms and outdoor pools and come about 5 I decided I should dry off and get out to meet up with Rebecca and Bruno again for dinner. I made my way back to the station and waited for an hour to get my night train ticket for Krakow. I nearly missed the window, as the rather grumpy lady behind the counter was ready to pull the curtain shut just after serving those in front of me. I had my map of Krakow ready in my hand and quickly whipped it in front of the window, pleading with her to let me get just one last ticket. This seemed to melt her ice heart, and I was able to just sneak through the closing time.

Once I made it back to my hostel, the next thing on my list was to organise that evening's accomodation. I had tried moving hostels earlier that day, but they were all booked out, apparently it is common that after Sziget a lot of the party goers use the opportunity to check out Budapest. I asked the current hostel what could be worked out, but they were full also. However, this being a fairly relaxed place they agreed to let me sleep on the couch downstairs for half price and having no alternative I agreed.

Bruno and Rebecca were waiting for me at a bar about 20 minutes from my hostel, and after getting changed I made my way to meet up with them. Bruno regaled us with very interesting stories of his month spent on a tall ship somewhere in Scandinavia, something I would be keenly interested in trying someday. It is another thing that has made it onto my list of things to do in the next couple of years. He couldn't hang around, however, and ran off to meet one of his friends after an hour or so. Rebecca and I had a wander around and chose out a restaurant, deciding we should check out some authentic Hungarian food before leaving. I got a goulash soup (one of my favorite meals) and some kind of curry, Rebecca choosing some form of pasta dish. I also decided that due to Paul's very strong recommendation we should try a bottle of the Tokaji wine, one I've described before as being incredibly sweet due to being made from a certain type of grape infected with noble rot. I can certainly attest to it being a very very sweet white wine, nearly like a syrup, but still quite nice. It probably wasn't the correct choice for a main meal, as I would imagine it is normally drunk as a dessert wine. We enjoyed our food and chatted until midnight, after which I walked with Rebecca back to her hostel, saw her off as she was leaving the following morning and made my way back to my couch.

As I expected, there were a bunch of people in the living room drinking and having fun, so I joined them for an hour or so putting down some more Hungarian beer, after which they all headed off to a club somewhere in town. Having been in Budapest for a few days now, and having done next to no sight seeing, I decided to pass on the club to get at least a few hours of sleep to enable me to do some walking the next day. The couch ended up being quite comfortable, and I slept through until early morning when the cleaners started their shenanigans downstairs.

Being the day of wandering around Budapest, I made a list of the things to see. The first thing was the train station, where I deposited my bag in the luggage storage, as I didn't want to head back to the hostel to pick it up later that afternoon. My sight seeing then started with the Jewish Synagogue, apparently the biggest in Europe and most impressive in the world. I was not impressed. It has a couple of small towers, and a main hall, along with a museum and some memorials. Compared to even average Christian/Catholic cathedrals, the place just doesn't have anything going for it. Later in the day I would see St Stephens Cathedral, which is by far not the most impressive I've seen, but I felt it a far more impressive structure than the Synagogue. One of the memorials was interesting, however, being a steel tree with each leaf of the tree having a name engraved on it.

I stopped at an outdoor restaurant for another taste of traditional Hungarian Goulash which while nice, didn't seem to have the richness of flavour I'd had previously. In fact, to this day the best goulash I've had has actually been back home, cooked by Andre's mum, herself Hungarian. The next stop was the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, which is an impressive structure with some funky lion statues on either end of it, crossing the Danube river. I made my across the bridge and up to Castle Hill on the Buda side of the river, where I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find Andy and Will, two of the guys I'd met in Munich a week or so earlier. We had a brief chat, but they were there with Andy's parents who were waiting for them to go up the furnicular to the top of the hill. Being the thrifty tourist I am, and not wanting to have to get more Forints out of the bank, knowing I was leaving that afternoon and they were useless anywhere else, I decided to walk up the hill. It wasn't to steep, but it was long and I had definitely burned off a few calories by the time I reached the summit. The view from here was quite impressive, you get to see a good chunk of the Danube, along with a great vista over the whole city. I wandered back and forth along the hill in front of the castle before heading back down.

I checked out the cathedral, mentioned before and the went to the House of Terror, the location in which the Arrow party of Hungary, and the secret police during the Soviet occupation were housed. The place is now a museum to the modern history of Hungary during the communist era, starting with the occupation by the Nazi's in 1944(which didn't last more than six months), followed by the Soviets after that. The last Soviet solider only left Hungary in 1991, and the period of occupation sounds like an incredibly frightening thing to live through. There were plenty of descriptions of the treatment of Hungarians and how the country was governed, the propaganda along with some lighter areas, one that contained a whole bunch of very bright and funny posters from different areas. It ended with a walk through the prisons underneath the building and descriptions of the rather horrific things that happened to people there.

My time in Hungary had drawn to a close, and I had to quickly make my way to the train station to get my night train to Poland. I retrieved my bag and found my sleeper carriage, which ended up being quite nice. I was in a three bed sleeper, of which I was the only occupant. I had a chat to some other Aussies in the compartment next to me, and tried to get some beer of the conductors. It said there was such availability on the wall, but apparently the menu was off for the night. After a couple hours of chatting I tried to get some sleep, but to get to Poland it is requird to cross the border into Slovakia to the north, and then out of Slovakia into Poland. This results in two passport checks, and consequently two rude awakenings.

Budapest was great fun. Making it in time for the Sziget festival was an incredible stroke of luck, and it is definitely something I would come back for, and would want to spend more than a day at. I struggled a fair bit with the language, but luckily most people knew at leat basic English. The city is quite big, and every street seems to be extremely busy during the day. The sights themselves are good, but coming from Vienna I think some of their splendor was a bit lost on me. Given some more time I think I would check out the parliament building, which is quite an impressive piece of architecture and I would be interested to see what other type of nightlife is around. My next stop would be Krakow, a place where I would find a great hostel with some of the most fun people I've met so far.

The photosfor Budapest are available as well!

Hundreds of Photos

2007-08-25T21:54:00.000+01:00

Now Available.

Basel, Zurich, Freiburg, Black Forest, Munich + Dachau Concentration Camp + Neuschwanstien + Deutsche Museum, Innsbruck + Alpine Zoo, Salzburg + Ice Caves, Bratislava and Vienna.

Check 'em out! Photo overload!

Battling Bratislava and Beautiful Vienna

2007-08-25T17:56:00.000+01:00

I'm sure they were gaining retribution for me waking the room up at about 5AM with my shenanigans the previous night, but at about 7AM the Korean girls in my room went about doing their morning routine. I'm sure my lack of sleep contributed to the time dilation, but these chicks took at least an hour and a bit to get their shit together. I know girls have a reputation for taking a while to get organised, but this was simply ridiculous. How many times do you have to open and shut that locker door woman? Needless to say, I was pleased when they finally left. About an hour later, say, 9AM, they returned. I assume they went to have breakfast, had a chat and said "Let's go wake that guy up in our room again, he kept waking us up during the night". They proceeded to open and close lockers and generally fart about for another half hour before they finally left the room properly.

I peeled myself out of bed shortly before midday and ran into Jan, a Dutch guy who was quietly reading his book in the hostel bar area. I was still a bit grumpy, a well known trait that anyone whose seen me in the morning will attest to, but I persevered with the conversation and ended up going out to get some food with him. This turned out to be a great decision, as he invited me along with his Dutch buddies for the day/evening trip they were making to the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava. I went back to the hostel, napped for another hour and met the Dutch boys down in the bar playing pool. It was probably the longest game of pool I've ever witnessed, and anyone watching would have assumed that they don't have billiard tables in Holland. Eventually they gave up (didn't even finish), and we walked down to the train station to get our tickets.

The trip only took an hour and a bit, and during this time I bantered some messages back and forth with Paul, whom I knew had enjoyed the city not long previously. He updated me on his current status in South Africa, apparently in a fenced off compound which I found slightly disturbing. He also gave me the names of a place to eat and a bar to track down, as well as the contact details of some random girl who was a friend of a friend of his. When we had arrived in Bratislava, we grabbed a taxi to get into the center of town, as we'd arrived in one of the stations on the outskirts. The 5 of us crammed into the little taxi, and it is probably a good stage to point out that 3 of the 4 Dutch guys I was with were at least 6"5' each, and that it was a very cozy little trip. We spent a couple of hours wandering around and checking the place out, downing a couple of beers and then deciding it was time to eat. We found the restaurant recommended by the big P, however seeing as it was in a basement sort of area and wanting to have a good old view of the Slovakian scenery of which we'd heard so much praise, we opted for an outdoor restaurant instead. We all ordered various "Slovakian" dishes, all of which were fairly ordinary. I'm willing to put this down to being at an ordinary restaurant, I'm sure there is better cuisine to be found around the place.

After our meal was done we attempted to find the nightlife (it was a Saturday), ended up wandering around for a while poking our heads in different bars without really coming across anything that grabbed out interest. I'm not sure exactly what we were hoping for, but we didn't find it. We also couldn't find the bar that Paul had recommended, and decided that 5 guys calling a single random Slovakian chick recommended by a friend of a friend probably wouldn't go down terribly well. The first place we checked out was more of a restaurant bar, with most people sitting down to eat. We had a round there then ended up wandering around for a further twenty minutes, including one of the Dutch guys poking his head into what was surely a gay bar judging by the pink lighting and the rainbow flag hanging in the corner. The rest of us decided to let him scope out the place before venturing in ourselves; a wise decision as he came out shortly afterwards and confirmed that this was not a venue we'd probably want to patron.

Eventually we ended up in a dodgy little cocktail lounge, sunk a few more brews there before the big midnight bell sounded and we had to start thinking about getting back to the train station. Before we did we ran into a group of cool Irish girls travelling with one Irish guy, had a quick chat and snapped a photo. I worked out between the girls that we were all headed to Budapest within the next couple of days, and they asked their male companion to swap numbers with me. I could see that he was having none of it, and in an unspoken agreement we assured the girls that we had and the Dutch boys and myself all left the building. Eventually we found a couple waiting around, and after bartering a price finally made it to the main Bratislava station. One of the Dutch guys had some Slovakian currency left in his wallet which he wanted to get rid of, and attempted to get some of the homeless people around the station to dance for it. It was in rather bad taste really, and Jan and myself managed to convince him after a couple of his little attempts to go spend it on a burger or a drink instead.

We made it back to the hostel around 2'ish and promptly hit the bar downstairs. Just as I walked in, I had an Irish girl, Mary, come up to me and ask if I was looking for a fight. She informed me that I was holding my shoulders back in a way that made me look like I wanted to rumble, and not realising that she was also slightly taking the piss I floundered a bit and tried to convince her that this was not the case. She dissapeared and one of the Dutch guys bought a round of punch, which was apparently the only thing left on the offering. It was strong stuff, but shortly after the barmen decided that they could sell bottled beer as well, and a round of Becks was followed shortly after. Jan started working his Dutch magic on some of Mary's Irish friends around the bar, and I decided to hit the pool table.

It was about then that I realised that the Aussie guy currently playing was one of the dudes I'd sunk a few beers with back in Salzburg. Eventually they finished that game and the coin I'd thrown on the table came into it's own. I spied Mary loitering around the table and told her that she was going to play as well. Apparently I hadn't been quite clear in my intent, and after breaking the setup, she was about start playing against me before I informed her that she was actually on my team. Apparently she was all ready to "beat my ass", probably because of the awkward encounter we'd had back at the bar, but once she understood that we actually had to win the table she decided to befriend me instead and we got to talking. It turned out it was her birthday this particular night and after some general conversation we got to chatting about what was going on previously at the bar.

She described my previous posture as someone that was "Lookin for a foight!". I couldn't help myself, and had a reasonable amount of Dutch courage by that point and replied with "Foightin? Oi'll be foightin round tha werld!", a random quote from a Southpark episode featuring Russel Crowe. She picked up what I threw down immediately and we began singing the theme song from Russel Crowe's show in the episode. We were both aghast that we actually knew what each other was talking about, and a bit later on in the game as we were struggling to pot the last few she queried what we were going to do about it. I replied "Well, by our powers combined..." to which she responded "We are Captain Planet!", and then we both started singing the theme song to that fairly obscure tv show as well. Her friends started shaking their heads out our extreme display of combined geek, but we were both to wrapped up in finding a kindred spirit to care.

We ended up winning the game but losing the next, at which point the bartender started to call last drinks, and threw on some "dancing music" for anyone that might care to get up on the bar, particularly singling out the Aussie I had run into in Salzburg. He wasn't the smallest of men, but got up on the bar anyway and started moving about. I made my way back over to the Dutch guys who had surrounded one of the Irish girls, and then Mary decided she'd throw her hat in the ring, jumped up on the bar and shortly after was trying to remove the guy's top, of which he was having none. Eventually it got all a bit to steamy for him and he came down and left Mary up there to enjoy the bar dance to Joe Cocker's "You Can Leave Your Hat On" by herself. The whole thing was hilarious, and I'm pretty sure she got a few free drinks out of it. After she got down from the bar, the bartender decided to put on a slower blues track to get some more people involved, offering some free drinks to the best dancers. I caught Mary by the hand and showed her a few steps of my own.

The bar shut around 4, and we all called it a night. I went back to my room and tried not to wake the Koreans again, lest I incur their vengeful wrath again the next morning. Unfortunately apparently I did, and they again spent an hour or so stuffing about getting themselves sorted for their next day in Vienna. I couldn't sleep in either, as I had to check out by 10 to move to the other Wombats hostel down the road, both because I wanted to see if it was any good, and the current one had no openings for that night. I left my bags in the new place and headed out to actually see the sights of Vienna.

In a nutshell, everything in Vienna is huge. I got the metro out to the start of the main part of the city, and as I emerged from the underground tram I was confronted with the parliament building which is absolutely huge. I checked it out from a few different angles then headed up the street to pass one of the theater houses which was also huge, and then to Hofburg Palace, which is absolutely gargantuan. I checked out the Rathuas, which is basically the town hall of the city. It was surrounded with stalls and booths selling all sorts of food, and had a mammoth projection screen set up in front of it. All of this was for the film festival that was currently being held there, however I didn't actually see any of the flicks on offer. I picked up some Japanes food and continued to wander around the city and quickly realised that pretty much every building is massive. I think the Austrians must have had a lot of money at some point in their history and just went crazy building stuff in the city. Whether it's a theater, a government building or just something residential, in the city center everything is opulent and huge.

I made my way down to the river and purchased my boat ticket for the next days journey to Budapest, and then finished the sightseeing tour with a visit to the House of Music. It was an interesting place with a lot of interactive exhibits that would make strange noises and music when you played with them. There were a few areas dedicated to different classical composers that were important in musical history and had some significant attachment to Vienna. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and others all seemed to do a lot of their work in Vienna, and this has led to Vienna being known as the city of music. I think this should be altered to the city of classical music, as those looking for something a bit more modern may be left wanting. The best part of the museum I found was a cool interactive game they had where you wave a stick around like a conductor would, and a video in front of you shows an orchestra playing whichever track you may have selected in time with your movement. I saw one guy who managed to wave the magical little wand around in a manner that actually resulted in the orchestra finishing the song. Everyone else, myself included, ended up having the orchestra stop halfway through, say something in German and all start laughing. I'm sure it was less than praise.

After my sightseeing trip I got myself back to the new hostel, checked in my things and made my way down to the bar. I chatted to an American couple for a while before realising that the bar in this hostel was quite ordinary compared to the one back at the original hostel, and come about midnight I decided to make my way back there. I found Mary and her Irish friends there and hung out until the bar closed with them. It was not quite as raucous an event as the previous night, but it was great to hang out one more time before I moved cities.

I had one of the best stays of my trip in Vienna. The city itself is incredible in and of itself, but I'm fully aware that my positive experience was largely contributed to by the people I hung out with and the shenanigans that followed. I've found that I get along supremely with Irish folk. This has given me thoughts of applying for the Irish working visa once my UK one runs out, which would extend my possible stay in this European region by a year. At the very least, I intend to make sure I visit the land of paddy's and guiness sometime while I'm living in this area of the world.

Seeing Salzburg

2007-08-24T13:35:00.000+01:00

The ice caves near Salzburg sounded like a good day trip, and I decided that I'd rather work out the transport for myself rather than paying the 30 odd euros to have it done for me. I got to the train station sometime around midday, got the train to the correct stop, but being a bit slow to get out of my seat and the door failing to open before the train pulled out ended me up in the next one along. Thankfully it wasn't too far away from the first, and a 20 minute walk down the tracks and directions from a guy who didn't like that I was headed directly for his house found me at the bus stop to get to the ice caves themselves. This was another 20 minute journey, followed by a 20 minute walk up to the cable car which would take me through the final ascent to the top of the mountain.

The mountains in the area are huge and beautiful. It's an incredible site, and one that my photos (yet to be released) simply do not do enough justice. The Austrian ranges really are incredible, and I can understand what all the fuss is about. What was not quite as beautiful was the hour and a half long wait for the cable car up the mountain. Whilst it was possible to walk, it was an ascent that would take an hour and a half by foot, and I decided that I'd rather preserve my energy for walking through the caves themselves. It was during this tedious wait in the line that I got talking to some guys that had come over from Kuwait to see the sights, and they had some interesting bits of information about their home country, the most ridiculous being that it is not uncommon for the weather in their fair land to reach into the 50+ degree mark. Insanity!

Eventually we made it into the cable car, which whisked us quickly up the side of the mountain, at which point there was a further 20 minute walk to the entrance of the caves themselves. It was at this point at the top of the mountain that the views became truly spectacular, which took the edge off all of the waiting for a while. Up this close to the caves had reduced the temperature significantly, and once we were within the large open mouth of the entrance, it was time to don jackets and jumpers. The tour took us into the caves, apparently which run about 42KM through the mountain, however we were only to see about 2KM of this. Another fact that the guide threw at us was that we were to expect a walk consisting of 1400 steps. The cave went into the mountain, but also continued to climb vertically. The interior temperature of about -1 degrees helped contrast the amount of work done actually walking through the place.

Every fifth person or so was given a lantern to help light the way, and the guide for each group holds a roll of magnesium which is lit to provide a very intense point of lumination that reflects off all of the naturally formed sculptures inside. Very impressive. As we walked through, the guide would describe the various different ice formations and how they had developed, along with bits of interesting history about how the place was found and when. The tour continued through, with various stops and at least a couple hundred people scattered through on their own tour; the Austrians, like the Germans, seem to be very efficient at getting people through these kinds of exhibits. About an hour or so later we were coming back out of the entrance, everyone pleased to be back in the outdoor temperature again. I didn't stuff around, as it had already reached the late afternoon by this stage, and I'd made plans to be back at the hostel to meet up with Brody from Innsbruck by sometime around 7. To my detriment, the queue for the cable car back down was another hour or so wait (which to me doesn't make sense logistically, how do they get them up there faster than they can get back down??), and after a near jog down to where the bus was, I was able to flag him down just as he was leaving and make it to the train station. All told, by the time I got back to the hostel it was past 8PM, and the whole excursion had taken about 9 hours. Was it worth it? The ice caves were pretty cool in and of themselves, but coupled with the incredible views of the alps while I was standing in those god forsaken lines, then yes. Yes it was. I found Brody and some new friends he had made in the hostel bar which I joined for dinner and drinks. I also ran into an Irish guy at the bar who, upon hearing "Roxanne" on the stereo decided to show me a drinking game of the same name. It basically involves taking a swig everytime the word "Roxanne" is said during the song, and anyone who is lyrically inclined will reliase that this is quite a number of times. My beer ran out just near the end, but it's definitely one I recommend. It's not conducive to conversation during the three minutes of play, as most of the time you'd be talking through a pint mug. Warning to the brave: Don't do this with shots.

The following day I decided I'd better actually see some of Salzburg itself and began my own walking tour of the place. I saw some nice gardens one my way down to the main area, the fortress being my primary destination followed by the Hellbrunn trick fountains. I got the furnicular (a word i've only become familiar with since getting to Europe, it's like a cable car but along the ground), up to the fortress and had a wander around. It offered some great vistas of the city, and there seemed to be a massive queue to get into the actual castle section itself. Deciding to see if that would die down, I went and had a coffee in one of the restaurants set up in the place, however this didn't seem to make any difference to the length of the wait. What it did change, however, was that I ended up standing next to an American couple, Eli and Jamie. They were on a couple of weeks holiday, and I was to spend the rest of the afternoon checking out the sites with them. They were both great to talk to, with that really eager and positive American attitude that some of them possess. This made wandering through the castle quite entertaining when the audio guide failed to deliver. Honestly the place wasn't much to speak of, interesting to hear about some history, but by this stage unfortunately regular old castles don't do much for me.

We left, got some food and beers down in the market area and made our way to a place nearby known as "Hellbrunn" which means "Fountain of Hell" or something along those lines. Basically it is a large park-like complex with several different "trick fountains". The first of these is a rectangular outdoor table made from marble. The owner of this place used to invite his upper class friends over, and have them join him at this table. This was replicated with the use of children on our tour, and once they had all taken positions, the guide flicked an out of sight switch, upon which time water sprayed out of all the seats save the one at the head of the table (where the host would sit). The kids, understandably, jumped out of their positions extremelly quickly and the crowd got a good chuckle. The rest of the park continued in this manner, where we would be taken through various interesting small buildings with fountains spraying at us from any possible direction. There was also one quite large animatronic display powered by water pressure depicting an old style town, with everything from a butcher taking off a pigs head to wenches being chased around in circles. It was all very interesting and well put together, and I was curious from an engineering standpoint about how they would have accomplished all this water pressure a couple hundred years ago. My interest was not satiated, even though there were some plans and drawings in the museum that we checked out later. We also checked out a stone theater that was nearby which was pretty neat. Basically imagine a stage carved out of stone with various stairs and levels carved into it as well. Very cool.

Getting later in the afternoon, I had to make it back to get the train to Vienna. I bode farewell to Eli and Jamie, picked up my bags and went down the station. It was only a few hours to Vienna, though I absent mindedly started in the smoking cabin which was horrible. I can't imagine how people can sit in a cabin full of smoke, and once I realised what I'd done, I grabbed my bags and wandered all the way up the train to find a seat in the non smoking section.

Eventually I made it to Vienna, checked into Wombats hostel (the Base) and dropped my stuff in my room. It was only about 11PM at this point, but the 3 other people in my room, a group of Korean girls were just getting into bed. I wasn't ready for that, so I quickly dropped my bag and headed down to the bar. I got my free tiny beer and found an American guy, Dan, that I'd met in Munich talking to a couple of American girls, Melissa and Alex. I sat down next to them and ended up spending the rest of the night in the bar till close with them.

Salzburg was cool, but I definitely didn't need any longer than I spent there. I missed going to the salt mines, but I'm not terribly dissapointed at that, it didn't sound that fascinating really. The ice caves were awesome, but I recommend anyone going to do the tour from Salzburg rather than pushing through themselves, as you will get to skip the cable car line that way, and the money you save is not worth the wait. Looking around Salzburg itself doesn't take too long, and they take every opportunity to let you know that Mozart was born and spent time there. Statues and buildings dedicated to the guy are everywhere. The following few days I would spend in Vienna, one of the coolest place I've seen so far.

Inspecting Innsbruck

2007-08-17T17:31:00.000+01:00

I checked out of Wombats and was on the train to Innsbruck by about midday. After a heavy few days in Munich I delighted in just being able to relax for a while on the train, and sunk myself into some hardcore Nintendo for a couple of hours.

I arrived in Innsbruck about 3:30, got a map from the station and headed to the hostel that was recommended in my guidebook, one of the few times I've actually used the thing! I'd asked the guy at the station where the hostels where, an he had provided me with a list. The interesting thing was, the one I expected to go to wasn't on this list, however I decided to head to the location anyway. After a half hour trek with my bag, I eventually found where the hostel should have been and quickly realised why it wasn't on the list provided me by the information booth. Basically it had been completely gutted and was in the process of some pretty severe renovation. Cursing my poor forethought I wandered back into the city and went to the first place on the list recommended to me by the info guy. This turned out to be a great decision, and whilst it was quite a small hostel, the beds were nice and the lady running it very friendly. She provided me with a bunch of pages about what to do and see whilst in Innsbruck, which restaurants were decent and a better map. I had a chat with the couple that had checked in at the same time as me, and then set about organising the canyoning excursion; the primary reason that I had come to Innsbruck. I found the mob that were responsible for organising it and booked myself in for the next day.

Once I'd made my way back to my hostel I found there was another guy in my room now, a German by the name of Christian. We got to chatting and then decided it was time to get dinner and something to drink, and ended up at the local beer garden known as "Hofgarten". Austrians speak German, so I asked Christian what the translation of the name would mean, after seeing the term "Hof" in quite a lot. He couldn't come up with a literal translation, but it seems that "Hof" means essentially encircled by something. So "Hofgarten", as best I could figure it, was an encircled garden. At any rate, we sat down and ordered a couple of the local brews, and Christian then proceeded to translate the menu for me. We both settled on the ribs, which were absolutely brilliant. Well roasted with a great sour cream dipping sauce, we were both treated to a rack and a half of excellent meat, a meal that had us both bursting. We had another beer at the place and then moved to another bar known as "Treibhaus", that had a small salsa dancing section downstairs, but we felt comfortable enough sitting at the bar in the large upstairs area. We were there until close, at which point we both stumbled back to the hostel.

This particular hostel provided breakfast in a different manner to most. The owner of the hostel was also the owner of the cafe on the ground floor, so rather than eating in a common area, we were simply given a ticket to exchange at the cafe. This resulted in the best hostel breakfast I've had yet, of cereal, coffee, bread rolls with some incredible home made jam followed up by a freshly made pastry. Christian and I met up in the morning and enjoyed this bountiful meal before I headed out to the rendezvous point where I'd be picked up for the canyoning excursion.

It turns out that the group was all American, and the pickup point being a university dormitory housed 250 American students currently studying abroad. I quickly realised this is why I'd seen so many yanks at the Hofgarten the previous evening. They were studying all sorts of stuff, from engineering to arts, and the group ended up being me, 10 american guys and one american chick. A minibus was required to get to the canyoning area, which wasn't in Innsbruck itself, but a nearby town about half an hour away. We payed our fee (85 euro, not cheap!), were handed out wetsuits, harnesses and boots which, despite the cold weather, had us all sweating almost instantly. This proved for another short, but uncomfortable bus ride to the point at which the canyoning tour was to start.

The beginning was a downhill hike (in wetsuits, quite a bizarre sight) through some pretty rough terrain. There were a lot of steep hills to climb across which involved us attached our harness to a steel cable that had been previously slung across the cliff face. Eventually we made it to the stream that was cutting through the mountainside, and our first entry into this was down a naturally formed rock-waterslide into a pool of (very cold) stream water. This was a very welcome relief to the hot wetsuits, and from this point forward the temperature maintained a much more reasonable level due to the constant jumping or sliding into pools of water. The excursion lasted for about 3 hours which involved small amount of hiking, climbing, abseiling down rock walls and jumping and sliding into pools of water. The most exhilarating bit would have been the 15 meter jump into a deep pool of water. This was originally going to be a 10 meter jump, but some of the Americans found a high vantage point, and after a bit of convincing the canyoning guides allowed those who were interested to jump from there. Standing at the edge of a cliff face looking many meters down into what seems to be a very small target was quite a harrowing experience, and despite what you may thing, hitting water from that height isn't the softest of landings, but it was definitely worth it!

The whole time the two guides were snapping photos and taking videos. I have a dvd full of them in my bag, and assuming it doesn't get snapped in two itself during my travels, I'll be sure to upload some. The whole thing ended with a schnapps and a beer back at the base camp, and everyone agreed it had been an awesome experience.

I ended up back in Innsbruck around 6, hobbling a little bit as I'd jarred my left leg slightly whilst climbing out of one of the pools. I met up with Christian and two other guys who'd moved into our room while I was out. An Australian guy, Brody, and a Finnish guy by the name of something that sounds like "Yoho". We went out to a very small Indian restaurant with about 3 tables for dinner for what was basically a home cooked meal. The lady serving and cooking the food did so from the counter behind us, and we would have been able to watch the whole process unfold before our eyes if we weren't concentrating on our beers and chatting about each others day. After the meal we headed to an Irish pub for a round and then to Hofgartens for more drinks. Hofgartens had an excellent deal of 6 beers for 10 euro or something similar, so we were able to get through a few of them. Christian and Yoho left around midnight, but Brody and I terrorised the local womens of the place, albeit unsuccessfully, for the next few hours before calling it a night.

Being my last day the following morning, I had a quick breakfast with Christian and Brody and then said my goodbyes. It happened that Brody was to be in Salzburg the next day and we made plans to meet up there.

My day was essentially the Innsbruck sightseeing day, and I wandered around the town taking in their tourist attractions. Their most famous being the "Golden Roof", which has got to be the lamest most famous tourist attraction I've ever seen. It's a fairly small roof that, whilst being fairly gold in color, is made out of copper and is certainly not that large. Why it has become their most famous attraction I have no idea, and I think their tourist PR should take a good hard look into how they're promoting it.

I also checked out the "Schloss Ambras", a fairly unimpressive castle in a very nice park. I saw a variety of duck fowl in the park, including some black swans that they had imported from Australia. From here, running out of time, I quickly made my way in the lightly falling rain to the Alpine Zoo which was pretty cool. The part that wasn't cool was the kilometer hike up the extremely steep hill due to my missing of the bus. The Alpine Zoo in Innsbruck is apparently the highest in the world, a fact made abundantly clear from this little trek. I arrived extremely damp, and not primarily due to the rain.

I only had an hour and a bit to get through the whole place, but managed to do so. There were a lot of mountain goat style animals and some absolutely massive birds, various types of eagles and hawks I think (all of the signs where in German). There was a farm area with cows, pigs, regular goats and the like, which I can only assume are there for the Europeans which may not see such animals very often. Certainly this area was fairly boring for myself, as these animals are all very common back home. They had a couple of bears and some wolves that were pretty neat, but I got the biggest kick out of seeing some moose. I've never seen one in real life, and I may have been heard to utter quietly "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!".

I caught the last bus prudent back to the hostel to retrieve my bag and made my way down to the train station to catch the next available locomotive to Salzburg, my cabin populated with some Germans having a very loud and apparently hilarious conversation. I got there around 8PM, checked in and spent the rest of the evening chasing up some food and doing my washing whilst chatting with an American chick waiting for the dryer to finish. I managed to get to sleep about 1AM, which has become an early time for me over the past few months, and got about 2 hours in before 5 extremely large Russian guys came bursting in the room, switching on lights and creating quite a ruckus. There seemed to be one guy in control of the group (ironically the smallest of the bunch), who cracked a beer from the slab they had in the room and after half an hour of a lot of noise seemed to tell them to go to bed and left the room. Then, at about 7:30AM, the same guy hammered on the door a few times, and obviously having been given a key from one of his crew, burst back into the room, switched the lights on and proceeded to crack yet another beer. I have no idea what this guy did all night, but he looked exactly the same as he had the few hours previously, and I don't think he was the kind of gentlemen for whom sleep was very high on the priority list. The ruckus started all over again, and deciding that I wasn't going to be able to sleep further that morning I gathered what I needed to have a shower and headed up there.

I organised some breakfast at the hostel. They offered an "Austrian Breakfast" that involved for a couple euro some great scrambled eggs with ham, tomato and various herbs, and by the time I got back to my room an hour or so later the Russian mob had departed the hostel. It also appeared that one of them had dropped some kind of important-looking documentation, not a passport, but similar kind of identification. There was also a fifty euro note and some currency I wasn't able to identify. Being the good citizen I am, I made sure that the ID got to reception for safekeeping.

Innsbruck was fun, but unfortunately for the most part, except earlier on the first day it was either cloudy or raining. This meant I couldn't get any decent photos of the incredible mountains surrounding the place, but at least I was able to see them for a short while all the same. It truly was spectacular, with enormous peaks surrounding the little town. The canyoning was great and I recommend anyone interested in giving it a go, although apparently Interlaken in Switzerland is a little better (but probably also a lot more expensive!). There aren't a lot of sights to get through, and I get the feeling that Innsbruck and its advertised surrounding "Holiday Villages" is more for those looking to chill out for a while. There are great hikes available around (not that I did any), and apparently it's a great base for those wanting to go skiing and snowboarding during the winter months in the Austrian alps.

Italian Pics

2007-08-14T15:04:00.001+01:00

Are available.

More of Munich

2007-08-14T11:12:00.000+01:00

I met up with Kyle around 9AM the next day as agreed, but first attempted to book myself in for another night of Wombats hospitality, only to be told that there was absolutely no chance of that. Luckily the next two doors down were both hostels as well, and the one next to us, Jagers, had an available bed. I booked myself in there, packed up my stuff back at Wombats and about half an hour later Kyle and I were on our way to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp.

After walking through the gate with the ominous sign "Arbeit macht frei", which means basically "Work brings freedom" (hah!), the whole place opened up into a huge (huge!) rectangular area, with a large square horse shoe shaped building that housed the museum section of the memorial site, whilst a hundred meters away or so there were a couple of large rectangular buildings, replicas of the housing structures used by the prisoners during their incarceration. The trip started off with a twenty minute video describing the camp and how it was used, including the details that it was essentially the prototype concentration camp that the rest of them were modeled after. Once the video was finished, Kyle and I wandered around the museum exhibits which contained copious amounts of information (I probably didn't read through half of it) on everything from the types of prisoners to how they were treated, to the human experiments that were performed (I found this the most disturbing), etc. Some of them were particularly brutal, such as "pole hanging" which involved hanging thr victim from a rafter by their hands tied behind their back, and "standing cells" which were cells so small that the victim was forced to stand for days at a time. They had various artifacts such as a uniform that one of the prisoners wore, various chains and whips and the like that were used and many, many quite disturbing photographs. There was also a Christian monument and a Jewish monument both within the memorial site, the Jewish one had an Israel flag and a candle in it, I expect put there by some recently passing through Jews. The whole thing was not depressing as such, but certainly a very sobering experience.

Making it back to Munich proper, I bode farewell to Kyle, who was about to make is way to Nuremberg, put away my bag in the hostel and hurried down the main walking strip of Munich to where a free bike tour was about to start. I decided that this would be the best way to check out the sites, as previous bike tours I'd attended were very enjoyable. After gathering the group, we had an English guide, John, from Manchester take us on our way around the main points of interest. From parliament buildings to where Hitler had marched his attempted coup (Munich was essentially where the Nazi party started), to various grand looking buildings, John was able to explain in very entertaining detail the reason a certain building was there, and how many times it had been rebuilt do to bombings or various other destructive influences. At least 65% of Munich was levelled to the ground during the WWII, and one particular building, I can't remember the name, had been rebuilt no less than three times in the past century.

We continued into the largest park in Munich (and I think the largest in Europe), the English Gardens, which, similar to Zurich, was where the locals went to sunbake and do their beachy-style activities. There is also one section of the gardens which is known as the "Nude Gardens", where the patrons are encouraged to drop their kit and enjoy the sun au naturale. Unfortunately the only members of the community that seem to take this offer up are the elderly gentlemen of the region, which will probably dash the perked up hopes of most of my readers. Nude soccer and other sports are popular, but I was happy just to get through that area with my vision intact.

In roughly the center of the gardens (past the nude bit) there is a Chinese Tower where traditional German music is played in the middle of the second largest beer garden in the city. We paused here for an hour or so to get some food, and of course some beer. I managed to put down a couple of liter steins and a bratwurst before getting back on the bikes, and luckily they didn't have too strong an effect on me to send my bike more than slightly veering along the path. Before leaving the gardens we saw the fake wave that is also quite famous in the city. Basically when the allied occupation was in Munich, a lot of the soldiers from California missed being able to surf, so they put a bunch of large blocks and wooden planks underneath a quickly flowing part of the river to creating a standing wave upon which the soldiers could surf. Apparently the Germans also liked this concept, and the standing wave has been there ever since, usually with at least 4 to 5 people all taking it in turn to have a crack at surfing on a river. They're in full body wetsuits, mind you, as the water is extremely cold.

The bike tour continued for another hour or so, showing us a few different sites, and after it was all said and done, the tour guide tipped (it was a free tour, but you're expected to tip the tour guide whatever you thought it was worth), a few of us then went down to the Hofbrauhaus to check out Munichs most famous beer hall. The place was absolutely packed with at least 3 thousand people, and after having a quick look around and listening to the German band briefly, we found a table and waited to be served. This waiting took a considerable amount of time, and after about half an hour we finally were able to place an order for some beer and food. This then arrived not less than another half hour later, and whilst the beer was good, it certainly wasn't worth the delay. I didn't stay too long in the place, as the waiting and crowds were excruciating, but one of the more interesting parts about the place is that the hardcore locals actually have their own stein and a little locker where they keep it in the place. Another bit of history is that this establishment where Hitler enjoyed to have his beer, and was essentially the place where the Nazi party was founded.

I went back to the Wombat's bar, where live music was supposed to be kicking. This was true, but it was the second band of the two which had been billed as "Alternative Metal Emo", which from the sounds of it wasn't really my bag. They weren't too shocking at the end of the day, and I had a couple of beers and chatted to one of the other people who happened to be on the same bike tour as me. After an hour or two of that, I wandered over to the Jager hostel bar where I ran into a few Irish girls and struck up conversation with them. We had a few drinks, chatted a while and then went next door, back to the Wombats bar, where I got distracted by some other people I'd met earlier. I ended up chatting to one of the girls travelling around with the band, and before I knew it the bar was closing and I had to go back to Jager's, at which point I decided going to sleep would be in my best interests.

I'd decided that the Deutche Museum was my primary focus for the following day, and after checking out of Jager and checking back into Wombats (nothing wrong with the Jager hostel, but Wombats was simply awesome) for my final nights stay, I headed across the city and was walking through the door of the museum about 11AM. I would be there until it closed, about 5PM, and I still didn't get to fully see the whole place. It is simply huge, and the whole thing is essentially a technology museum, a subject of which I am particularly fond. The entire basement area is made to be a mockup mine, with live size puppets and such pretending to drill into the walls and copious examples of the huge pieces of machinery and rail techniques used to do various types of mining. It was brilliant, and felt very authentic, until you tap the rock walls and get a very plastic sound back out of them. I recommend leaving the walls alone!

The rest of the museum included an aeronautics and astronautics section, various mechanics, power generation, an extensive computer science area, a marine technology section and a nuclear physics area just to name a few. The exhibits were about 50/50 in German and English, unfortunately the nuclear physics section was pretty much only in German (a subject that I'd become particularly interested in after hanging with the good people in Freiburg). However the displays and experiments they had running were all fascinating even just to look at, and most had some kind of interactivity available. The whole place was just incredible, and I would definitely recommend anyone heading to Munich to check it out.

After I was kicked out of there I headed back to Wombats to sort out my bed in the room (you can't actually check in until after 2PM), and I met an Irish couple there who were taking it easy with a beer and some music. They were from Belfast and two of the friendliest I've met. We sat around and chatted for a while, after which a young Australian guy who was also staying in our room came in and joined us. He was very drunk, but not in an altogether bad way, and after another hour of shooting the breeze we all went down the bar for a round. The Australian guy didn't last long, and headed back to our room to sleep off his stupor, but the rest of us stayed for another hour or so, met a couple of Americans and generally enjoyed ourselves for the evening.

Munich is an awesome place to go. There is plenty of historical buildings, interesting architecture, incredibly rich history added to the very nice English gardens and the best beer in the world (sorry Belgium, but you're awesome too!). The beer gardens and beer halls are great fun and the food is brilliant. I can understand why the Bavarians are a little bit more rotund than most, but I'm sure if I lived there I'd quickly end up in the same position. I spent 5 days there and could easily do it again, and it would definitely be the best place to go with a bunch of beer drinking buddies.

Managing Munich

2007-08-08T20:55:00.000+01:00

I got to München / Munich in the mid afternoon and fairly quickly found the hostel (Wombats) and organised my bed and bag. I would say that Wombats was the best hostel I've been in so far. The rooms are huge, with six beds to each, and their own bathroom. The beds are made of good strong wood which means they don't make too much noise when people are climbing up and down them. It also has an awesome bar downstairs with a pool table which is full of English speaking backpackers. Happy hour runs from 6 till 8, and then again from midnight until 2AM when they close up. It's also got a really funky indoor terrace thing with a glass ceiling full of beanbags and such. I'm trying not to sound like a pimp for the place, but it really was that good.

After having a shower and getting myself freshened up, I went down the bar to check out happy hour and ended up playing some pool and chatting to a couple of Americans who had also just arrived. They were intending on heading out to a pub crawl that night, and with very little convincing I decided to join them. We actually weren't able to find the one we were after, as we happened to be a couple of minutes late and it seems that they had left already. After a bit of asking around, however, we were pointed in the direction of the internet cafe across the road where it was said that another was in the beginning stages. We waltzed over there to find a row of tables with about 40 or so people sitting around having a few drinks, and after finding the organisers were allowed to join. Being an hour late, we had missed the first hour of free drinks included in the cost, so we were charged a lesser rate for the crawl and given a few beers and Jagermeister shots to catch up on. The group was fairly mixed, and I got chatting to an Australian guy and a bunch of Irish girls, and about half an hour later we were on our way to the first destination of the tour, the Augistiner Brauhaus. This is the oldest brewery in Munich, started by monks (München means 'Monk' in some way), and they pride themselves on having the longest running brew, and apparently the best in Munich. The best beer in the beer capital of the world? You'd hope it's a good drop. We lined up for our liter steins and I also bought a pretzel (a photo will be available soon), and I will attest to it's high quality. The group found itself a large bunch of tables within the other two thousand people (no exaggeration) in the garden under a chestnut tree. The chestnut tree has special significance, as they were planted to keep the beer in the shade, as the brewery would not brew beer during the summer for reasons I can't remember, and so they would store huge quantities of it for that period, and the chestnut trees were planted to ensure its safekeeping. All of these things were explained to us by the tour guide, however most of the time he was drowned out by the sound of the Irish girls singing and carrying on. This wasn't a problem for the rest of us, as we were enjoying their shenanigans immensely, however the guide insisted on trying to get the rest of his story through.

After an hour or so at the Augustiner, we moved onto the Lowenbrau haus, also one of the top five beers in Munich, of which more liter steins were brought out. These were also very good, however we were indoors this time, and by now all the Australians had gotten up to the raucousness of the Irish, and the volume of our combined voices near on drowned out the whole place. Several times the guide pleaded with us to keep it down lest we get kicked out, but certainly to no avail. After a while we left (could have been kicked out, not sure), and ended up at the Euro Youth hostel bar, literally two doors down from Wombats. By this stage the group had dwindled to about 15 people or so, and some of the Irish girls had started to fall over, so after a few more drinks there I went to my bed. I was very drunk at this point and what exactly happened next I don't quite recall correctly.

Basically I got into bed as quickly as I could, lay down for an indeterminate amount of time, could have been half an hour, could have been fifteen minutes, but after this period had expired I sat up on my bed (lower bunk) and curled up in the fetal position near the end trying to convince my vision to stay still. At this point some other guy who was standing around our room lay down and appeared to try to go to sleep right there on my bed, and even after a few foul words and some shoving didn't want to move. I was at a loss for what was going on, however two Korean girls that were also staying in our room had gone downstairs and brought up one of the staff, and were pointing at this guy and making an awful fuss about something I didn't understand. It was at this point that the guy finally got up and was escorted out by the staff member. I managed to reclaim my entire bed, and quickly lost consciousness, but the whole event left me very confused.

The result of this ambitious drinking session was that the next morning I slept in, fitfully, until about 11AM, at which point I got myself ready as normal. After my usual ritual of showers and food, followed by a quick email check I still didn't feel part of this earth, and long story short I accomplished very little that day.

What I -did- accomplish, however, was that the previous day I had found that there was an English cinema in Munich that showed original versions of current movies. I had bought myself a ticket to the 3:30 showing of the Simpsons movie, and by the time I had arrived for it, I was more or less back to normal and was able to enjoy the flick thoroughly. For those who haven't seen it yet and are Simpsons fans, I recommend you go and see it. Right now. I thought it was great, and the whole "Spiderpig" thing was awesome. Ooooohhhhh, he's Spiderpig!

After seeing that delightful movie I had a great cheap sushi dinner and then wandered around the streets of Munich a little bit, hoping to find the Australian bar to see if they were showing any AFL matches over the next couple of days. On the way I saw a series of buskers, the first being an excellent group of 3 violinists and a bass, who played a series of classical pieces. After that there was another guy with a guitar who was doing a more musical / comedy act, and he was quite good also. He probably spent a bit too much time hustling for cash rather than performing, but over all it was pretty entertaining. He made a point of guessing everyone's nationality as they walked past, and seemed to know a word or two in most languages.

Eventually I did find the Aussie pub, but it was already deep into its party throes and in the midst of a karaoke session, something I didn't particularly want to participate in at the time. I never did find out of they were showing AFL there. I wandered back to the Wombat bar, had a couple of drinks and a game of pool and crashed out for the night.

The following day I had planned to go to Neuschwanstein castle, better known as the Disney castle (or at least the one on which the Disney castle is based). I went down to the Wombat's tour desk and asked for some information on their tour, only to find it wasn't running that day. However I was pointed to another guy, Joon, who was also keen on seeing the castle and was looking for companions. The type of train ticket we were to get could take up to 5 people for the same price, so the more people we were able to get together, the cheaper it would be for all. Unfortunately we couldn't find any takers at the hostel, and ended up making our way to Fussen, the closest town, by ourselves. It was on the train that I ran into Kyle, one of the Americans I had hung out with at the pub crawl, and his new found traveling companion, Corey. We spent the 2 hour train ride chatting away, and once we made it to Fussen we met an Aussie girl who tagged along with us for the rest of the day. Once the bus had taken us to the little village at the base of the mountain the castle is perched upon we got our tickets, but had to wait for 3 hours for entry time to come up.

In very typical German fashion, the ticket you get for the castle isn't a free walking trip, but rather part of a guided tour of the place. There is no way to wander around by ones lonesome, so you are assigned a group number and a time, and are expected to arrive at the castle at that time. This requires a half hour walk up the hill, or a cheap bus fare or even horse and carriage ride if you are so inclined. With three hours to spare we decided to walk, but unfortunately it was at this point that it started to rain. We whiled away the next couple of hours at a little cafe just near the base of the castle, mostly just trying to stay out of the weather. Thankfully by the time our number came up the rain had all but stopped, though the overcast weather still loomed dangerously.

Also in very typical German fashion our tour started at the alloted time to the second, and the tour itself was quite good. I'm sure the guide had a tape recorder in her head that she pressed a button on every time we went into a room, and I feel sorry for her that she has to say the exact same thing about 15 times a day. The interior of the castle was interesting, with a lot of frescoes on the wall, though a good percentage of the place was never finished. The parts that had been completed were very opulent, though terribly gaudy. Most of the frescoes had some relevance to Wagner's opera's, of which King Ludwig II, the designer and commissioner of the castle was very fond. The views out of the windows over the town were spectacular, even in the cloudy weather, and after the 45 minute tour was over we hiked up further around the hills where a bridge had been situated to get a nice view of the castle as a whole.

We took some photo's from the bridge, which turned out great, and then high tailed it in back into Fussen to get the 2 hour train ride back into Munich. Unfortunately the train was broken and we ended up getting a bus for the first half of the journey, and we ended up getting back to Munich about 9PM. We shared a pizza between the group of us, then went our separate ways for half an hour before regrouping at the Jager hostel bar next to Wombats. We had a few drinks and I arranged with Kyle to go with him the next day to the Dachau concentration camp memorial site. We bade farewell to Corey around midnight as he left to go to Paris, had a couple final drinks at the Wombat bar and packed it in for the day.

Neuschwanstein was a good trip, very picturesque, and was a good use of a day. The next would see me checking out Dachau with Kyle, followed by the Munich bike tour.

Turin Photos Available

2007-08-06T10:27:00.000+01:00

Check 'em out!

A Lesson In Hospitality Part 2

2007-08-05T18:53:00.001+01:00

We awoke to another great breakfast, this time prepared cheifly by Christof and Simon (Nicole and Peter being away on their excursion), packed our things and headed down the station to head to Freiburg. We arrived early in the afternoon, and Christof took us up to his apartment. Three floors up, with a rack of shoes outside the door that would make one envisage a family of 10 living there, it was a nice place with a wood style of floating foor, a nice kitchen, three bedrooms and a living area. After checking emails and Simon cooking up a quick pasta lunch, with artichoke and anchovies (the latter of which I politely declined), we headed out into Freiburg city to see what was what.

Unfortunately the weather didn't seem to want to cooperate too well with us, and before long it was gently spitting away. After catching the tram to the outskirts of the black forest that Freiburg borders, we started to trek through the not-so-dense forest area, through a winding path and then up a fairly steep hill which opened up into a beautiful grassy area that could see over the whole city of Freiburg. We marvelled at this, and took the requisite photos before piling our stuff in a heap and throwing the frisbee around in the swift mountain air; an activity not without its peril, especially close to a large bunch of blackberry bushes. An hour or so later we decided to start to make our way back down to the city, but not before a father with a couple of his kids had decided to fly a kite in the same general area. The wind by this point was extremely strong, and I'm surprised the kite withstood the pressure applied to its structure. It was hovering in the air for sometime, at which point we noticed a real hawk in the sky not too far off, seemingly hovering in the strong wind also. Edging its way closer, the hawk eventually took a swoop at the kite, before the kites mad flutterings in the air sent the hawk quickly out of the area, no doubt terribly confused at the strange actions of this unusual bird.

Making our way down to the city, the rain that had lightly peppered us earlier in the day began to make its presence a lot more pronounced, and as we made our way into town more and more swiftly, we became increasingly more damp as the minutes drew on. By the time we'd actually made it back to the city proper, my hair, upper shirt and lower pants were thoroughly soaked. We decided to take refuge in a mexican restaurant until things eased off a bit, and treated ourselves to the strangest nacho's I've ever seen (nacho's without much cheese or salsa, and no gaucamole? Insanity!), some other corn chips and dip that were quite nice, and I ordered a mexican coffee. Thijs had ordered a 'sweet coffee', which arrived in a little espresso cup with some cream on top and a shot of kahlua added to the contents. My mexican coffee arrived in a large glass tumbler, also with cream, kahlua and tequila added to the mix for a good right wake up call. The stuff was pretty ordinary, and I would advise my more eager readers to reconsider adding tequila to their coffee in most circumstances.

Eventually the rain died down to a reasonable level and we started to make our way back to Christof's place. This involved walking through the (empty) market area, past the main cathedral. The cathedral was pretty awesome, as it was still lightly raining and the various gargoyles looked as though they were spewing water onto the ground below. I spied one particular gargoyle that was fashioned to look like a person hanging their butt out and mooning the world. An image can be seen here, but I must admit that it was much more hilarious seeing it in person.

By the time we'd arrived back at Christof's place his first roommate, Natalie had arrived home, and after introductions we set about solving her problem of a rumbling belly by cooking up yet another pasta dish with tomato and tuna. Not long after, Christof's other roommate, Regina, arrived and we all whiled away the evening over a few bottles of wine and vermouth.

That time of night arrived, and we packed it in. The following day we slept in until around 10AM and headed out to check the market whilst it was open. It was primarily a food market, with several "Wurst" or sausage stands, filling the area with the pleasant aroma of a good German barbecue. There was one stand selling at least 10 different types of mushrooms, including truffles, and many other vendors selling all manner of meats and vegetables. We didn't have a lot of time to check it out carefully, as we were to meet Christof who had headed out to a physics conference to help with the organisation, for lunch.

He took us to a nice asian restaurant, which was a great change of pace, as I'd not had a good asian meal since I'd arrived in Europe. What they didn't tell me is that while I was visiting the gents, Natalie had arrived with a couple of her friends from uni and they'd all switched tables before I'd gotten back. After a minute or two of bemusement I eventually found them out the front and settled down to eat my spicy satay chicken with rice, which was delectable. It was at this point that Thijs had to leave us back to Holland, and after saying goodbye to him we made our way to the train station to head to Titisee, in the Black Forest.

The place was extremely touristy, with every shop selling a variety of cuckoo clocks, various other souveniers, a few types of schnapps and other liquor. One shop even had quite a large christmas section, selling the once a year festivity decorations all year round. It was, however, an extremely quaint little village, and we delighted in taking a boat out into the main lake. Unfortunately we didn't find out that this was a pedal powered boat until we'd paid and got in the thing, and this particular pedal boat wasn't terribly efficient. We didn't get much speed up for the effort it required, but we were able to slowly paddle out to the middle of the lake and get some nice photos. Taking the rare opportunity, we were sure to announce several pirate references and star trek jokes, with Paul shouting "Ahoy!" to one boat of Germans who replied with a blank stare that would kill puppies.

After finishing our boat ride and taking a few minutes to relax our stressed leg muscles, we wandered through a few more of the souvenier shops and then made our way into the forest itself. It is true to its name, in that the canopy is quite dense of a certain type of pine tree. The pinecones aren't what you'd expect back home, but are a lot thinner and longer, and litter the ground everywhere. We walked for a while, found some good scenery photos and eventually made our way to a beer cafe near the top of one of the hills. Whilst I was in Italy, Paul was able to do most of the talking in Italian when it came to getting a meal or a drink, and I took the opportunity to flex my very basic German knowledge to order us a round of beers as we sat down. My "Drei große bier, bitte!" was replied with an acknowledgement, and then a rabble of German which I had no hope of understanding. Unfortunately the waitress didn't understand English at all, and after a bunch of linguistic gymnastics, she enlisted the assistance of a gentlemen at the table opposite, who informed us that she wanted to know if we would like cake also. Deciding it was time for a snack, I walked in with her and selected a few different types. One of them was black forest cake of course, a strawberry one and another I can't describe. She brought them out and we enjoyed cake and beer, something we all agreed was an odd combination, overlooking a very picturesque part of the German countryside. The conversation continued for some time, and we got to discussing the limits of my German vocabulary, at which point I informed them that I'd been told the only thing I need to know in German is how to order a beer, "Ein große bier, bitte!". Something we didn't realise was that a German lady in her fifties behind us must have been listening, as this remark caused her to roar with laughter, and after she regained her composure to add "It's true! It's true!". I think especially so in Bavaria.

We trekked back down through the forest, stopping for Simon and Paul to play with Simon's tricked out camera and tripod to get some swish photos, and made our way back into one of the cuckoo clock shops. Paul was intent on purchasing one of these items, and in fact ended up buying two, having them delivered straight to Melbourne. One of the interesting things we found out is that this particular store actually had a service center in Melbourne, which made the two year warranty actually mean something valuable!

After making our way back through the town to the station, we met back up with Christof and went into the convention center where his conference was being held to attend one of the public lectures given by a nobel prize winner in chemistry. His talk consisted of how global warming works, with the last third dealing with a novel idea of injecting large amounts of sulphur into the upper atmosphere to reflect light and cool the planet, should (and he stressed this was a last resort measure) current attempts at reducing global warming fail. The whole thing was a bit dull really, as his presentation wasn't terribly well done, and he essentially just read large chunks of text off his slides. However, the man does have a nobel prize so respect was deserved.

We woke ourselves up by the end of that, went back to Christof's place to gather some bbq supplies and headed out to a nearby park where Natalie and the friends she had brough to lunch were getting the portable unit fired up. Christof had chosen some great steaks and sausages, and after throwing the frisbee around for a while, we all enjoyed a great meal, including an interesting dish that involves wrapping up some fetta cheese with onions and tomato and sitting that on the hotplate for a while. I broke out the couple of bottles of schnapps I'd bought from the black forest, including one very nice honey based one, a peach based liquor and another bottle of some horrid stuff that just tasted like fuel. Christof, Simon and Natalie took to wrestling in the grass, at one point simon ended up half in the creek by the park and also getting slid along the nice green grass by his butt as Paul dragged him around. I felt sorry for those jeans.

A couple hours after the sun went down, and we went back to Christof's place, shortly after Regina had arrived home from her lab duties. She is currently studying some form of cell based biology and often gets stuck in the laboratory waiting for things to happen. She quickly devoured the remaining salad that we'd brought back with us, and then joined Paul and I in finishing off the schnapps (except the fuel stuff, I politely left that as a gift in Christof's apartment), whilst we trawled through a bunch of youtube videos and giggled the night away.

The next day after a bit of a sleep in, we checked out the market in a bit more detail with Christof and a couple of his friends, grabbed some wursts for lunch and parted once more. Simon, Paul and myself then hiked up the 300 odd steps to the top of the tower in the cathedral. Walking up that many stairs wasn't the biggest problem, as much as you had to contend with the people walking back down the stairs on a spiral staircase that was really only built for one. After a lot of squeezing and apologising, and then being informed once we had nearly reached the top that there is actually stair climbing etiquette, which states that those going up should stick to the inside, and those going down to the out, we finally made it to the top. It offered quite a nice close vista of Freiburg and the market below. We briefly checked out the church bells hanging slightly above from where we were, the largest weighing in at a whopping 7 tons. We squeezed our way back down the stairs and decided it was the right time to go get a thank you gift for Christof and his folks.

After a bit of walking and a couple asks for directions, we found ourselves downstairs in a very nice little wine shop, where the owner was taking a couple of potential clients through some tasting. Eventually he finished with those and asked what he could do for us, at which point we explained the situation, Paul and Simon (who know far more about wine than I) gave him some indication for what we were looking for. Paul was dead set on getting a particular type of Hungarian wine from the region Tokaji, that specialise in creating a wine cultivated from grapes with a type of noble rot, basically an edible fungus. Simon picked out a nice sounding Australian wine they had, "The Laughing Magpie", from McLaren Vale. After these wines had been selected, the gentlemen then decided to take us through a tasting of a bunch of wines he was keen to share with us, and Paul later on in the day made an excellent observation on the character of this man. Basically he gave us a tasting of 4 different wines (opening one new bottle for the occasion), and after all of this Paul and I selected one of them that we'd like to add to our purchasing collection, at which point the man confessed that he didn't actually have a bottle of the stuff available. Rather than taking us through a tasting with the intent of selling us wine, he simply wanted to share a few of his favorites with us, which we all found very cool, and something Simon attributed to the magic of wine in general, and his reason for being so fond of the beverage.

After leaving the wine store, we headed up the hill behind Freiburg a bit to a beer garden to have a brew, after which Simon left us to go check out some of the physics conference where Christof was at. Paul and I continued up the hill to the top, where a tower offering a different vista of the town was situated, and after some conversation and a few photos we headed back down to the beer garden to continue where we had left off.

We actually hung around the beer garden probably about half an hour too long, and ended up walking on the point of running back through Freiburg to get back to Christof's place to collect our bags. We picked up our belongings, and then had to do the same brisk pace to the station to get to the train back to Basel in time. Running with a 20KG pack on your back isn't terribly fun, and we made it just in time to get ourselves on the train and moving back to Christof's parents place.

Nicole and Peter welcomed us back into their home where we presented them with the gifts we'd procured, and were promptly treated to another incredible dinner of roast chicken legs with rice and a great vegetable dish which I can't describe. Some more of Peter's wine was poured and the whole dish was followed up with a delicious dessert of dried, caramelised figs with mango ice cream and sliced oranges that Christof had prepared. After an hour or so of chatting about wine and things, Christof drove us into Basel city to participate in the celebrations that were happening that evening.

Basel had a public holiday the following day, and to celebrate the people crowd the streets where beer serving tents are set up, and a massive fireworks display starts off at about 11PM. There were thousands of people all over the place drinking and having a good time with different styles of music being played all over the place.

We got ourselves a couple of beers, which took a good 20 minutes of waiting, and found a spot along the Rhine that Christof was convinced would be a good vantage point. Not long after, small long lasting fireworks (more like flames really) started being released into the air attached to helium balloons, and soon the sky was full of bright red flaming stars hovering around which looked incredible. About half an hour later, two large barges lumbered their way up the river and one took position right in front of us, thanks to Christof's good positioning. Some more time passed and suddenly the biggest and longest fireworks show I've ever seen in my life started erupting off the barge in front of us, and also from the other a few hundred meters up the river out of view. The whole show went for 30 solid minutes, and only a few minutes in we were being rained on by spent firework paper, clouds of gunpowder smoke filling the sky amidst some of the most intricate, bright and huge fireworks explosions I've ever experienced. Each burst of light from some of the larger fireworks were accompanied a second or two later by a thundering crack that you could feel in your chest. The whole thing went in stages of different styles of firework, and ended with a whole bunch of floating fireworks being relased into the river and quickly floating downstream. I still don't know how they managed to fit so many fireworks onto even a barge; it was that intense. The crowd erupted in applause after each section, and when it was over everyone tried to disperse back to the beer tents and streets.

This proved a slight problem as the crowd simply didn't move further than a meter a minute for the first few hundred meters. My problem with this was that the couple of pints of beer I'd ingested over the past couple of hours were making their presence known in my bladder, and there didn't seem to be a toilet in sight. About fifteen minutes of pain later and I found a semi-respectable place to relieve myself, much to the taunts and hollering of Paul and Christof.

Finding our way back to the carpack presented us with another 15 minute queue to pay for our ticket, apparently everyone else in Basel decided to use the same carpark joint as we did. This wasn't a major issue, as the grassy park right next to us was presenting us with another, albeit much smaller, fireworks show at either end. It was almost like some kind of jousting match, as one of the fellows at one end would shoot off something, and then the people at the other would try to outdo his performance. The craziest part about it was that one of the guys held onto one firework the whole time it was lit till it went off, and I could have sworn it would have severly burnt him, and when it exploded I thought he was done for. Apparently I was wrong, and this guy actually did know what he was doing, as he calmy walked away as if nothing had happened. I still don't know how that was possible, he must have been wearing a protective glove and jacket of some sort, not to mention the danger he put his face and eyes in.

Christof drove us back to his parents place where we sat around and chatted for a short while and then hit the sack once more. The next day would present us with another exquisitely prepared breakfast, and Christof's father drove us back to the station near their home. Christof and Simon were heading back to Freiburg, Paul to Geneva to check out CERN, and my destination was Munich. There was a round of goodbyes, and not long after I was trying to catch up on some sleep on a train through Ulm to Munich.

The days I was with all of these people were awesome. I've never experienced the kind of hospitality shown to our group by Christof's parents, Nicole and Peter, and there has never been a host and guide as gracious and thoughtful as Christof was during that time. It was really cool to be able to hang out with the same people for a few days and share in a bunch of awesome travelling experiences, and I sincerely hope I have the opportunity to meet up with them again.

A Lesson In Hospitality Part 1

2007-08-01T16:33:00.000+01:00

I managed to get to Barcelona International airport and after a lot of crowds, a horrible repetitive jingle over the aircrafts PA for 20 minutes whilst waiting for take off, and then a very friendly bunch of Swiss people who managed to direct me to the main train station, I finally arrived in Basel, Switzerland.

I knew I had about an hour or so to kill at the station until Paul arrived from Padova, however once settling myself into my first beer at the bar, I learned from a combination of dropped phone calls and SMS messages that he wasn't to arrive for a further three hours. Rather than drink myself into an expensive stupor (Switzerland is not famed for its reasonable prices), on Pauls suggestion I started to check out a few parts of the border city. Basel is at a junction of Germany, France and Switzerland, however it makes no qualms about being a very Swiss city. This is patently obvious, as they have an abundence of Swiss flags flying around at every possible opportunity. This is not restricted to Basel, being a border city, but was also prominent in Zurich as well, which I was to experience later.

Basel isn't too large, and in the couple hours of roaming I had, I was able to check out the Theaterplatz, a church that was heavily under construction, walk along the Rhine river a little and also see an old roman style entry gate whose name eludes me presently. The Theaterplatz was cool, as they had a fairly large water feature with a variety of weird mechanical sculptures that would spray water and move around, powered by pulleys and hoses. They were designed by some mad Swiss artist, and it seems to be a popular hang out for the locals as the sun goes down.

The Rhine river brought back further memories of that horrible cruise I had down it from whence I was but a wee one, however just checking it out from an elevated shore line was quite nice. It is a wide river with very swiftly moving water. I walked along this, past a church that was being restored (they all seem to be in this state I´ve found), which was made of a reddish brick, and had one door that was particularly cool. Very ornate sculpture work had gone into its 5 or 6 meter high facade, with some inscriptions in German that I couldn't work out.

Following this I went through the old gate to the city, that would have been the main entry point when it was surrounded by a medieval wall. The portcullis and gate parts were still intact within the structure (it wasn't just an arch), and this made for a very authentic looking piece of architecture. After describing it to Paul later on thta evening, he enquired as to the impressiveness of the gargoyles, however I still don't recall seeing any.

Eventually I made my way back to the bar in the station, and a half hour later Paul rocked up with the new friends I was to make over the following couple of days. Christof, the German and our host, Simon, an Australian and Thijs (pronounced like rice but with a 'T'), a Dutch guy who knew the others through visiting Melbourne University at some stage. We all clambered into Christof's car, and he took us over the German border to his parents house, where we were introduced and invited to dinner.

This was to mark the start of an incredible procession of German hospitality over the next few days that left me in awe of their generosity and friendliness. This particular night involved Christof's parents, Peter and Nicole, having cooked us a fantastic barbecue style meal, consisting of a fantastic type of steak, chicken skewers, scalloped potatoes, salad, beer, wine and bread all delicately presented and layed out on the patio table from which we were dining. They were keen to hear our stories and to relate their own, and just when we thought we had eaten till we'd burst, Nicole brought out an incredible home made black forest cake. Our cups were never allowed to empty, and it was probably one of the biggest meals I've had yet on my trip. We spent the evening discussing various things, from wine and travel, to some more deep conversations about nuclear physics and even the intelligent design vs evolution theory debate after Christof's parents had turned in for the night.

It is probably relevant at this point to side step and describe the people with which I was conversing. These four guys of my age are all studying doctorates in nuclear physics of some form or another, with the exception of Christof who is doing it slightly differently due to the German education system not lining up quite the same as ours does. Paul is concentrating on theoretical nuclear physics, whereas the other three are known as experimentalist physicists, specifically in the field of "atom optics". Basically this means that Paul spends most of his time thinking with pen and paper, whereas the other guys spending it thinking whilst playing with funky toys and lasers. I have a basic understanding of nuclear theory and quantum mechanics, but I'll admit to you, dear reader, that most of the time when the conversation turned to this realm, my contribution was restricted to clarification questions, or the old faithful "smile and nod". Paul and the others attempted to explain various concepts and ideas where it was pertinent, but for the most part I was just interested in hearing how hardcore academics interacted with each other, especially when it came to a more cotentious issue. One of the most interesting things to come of this was to hear them talk about other people within the physics community, which became (to me) more and more like a strange, highly political cultish kind of organisation where everyone seems to know or have heard of everyone else. There was admiration and derision alike, but what most interested me was that most opinions held for any particular person were generally based on the quality of their "physics". To illustrate how this term is used, it may be placed into a sentence as follows: "Oh yes, Joe is doing great things for the department, but really, his physics just isn't that strong" or "John can be a real pain in the ass sometimes, but man that guys physics are excellent". I had never really contemplated the word being used as a metric before.

Our conversation lasted for several hours, after which we were shown our respective sleeping quarters, and a plan to check out Zurich the following day. We rose about 9AM the following morning, and after showers were had, went down to organise some breakfast, only to be confronted with the next episode of our gracious hosts organisation. The table was now laden with various types of bread, immaculatly arranged, different types of meats, cheese, spreads, coffee, juice and yoghurt. This had been prepared for us by Christof's parents once more, who, like the previous evening, were constantly up and down refilling coffee, getting more bread, and basically ensuring that we had an abundence of everything available.

After we'd been filled to bursting point once more, Paul and I made our way to the train station to head to Zurich, whilst the others were getting a lift there from Christof's parents who were heading out to Lake Constance on a short getaway. We met up in the massive train station, which had various artworks peppered through it including a large, square and very cool colored light display hanging from the roof. We got some maps from the tourist office and began our wanderings of the city, checking out some cool tall, very swiss looking tall buildings with green roof and clocks on them, a small market area and then a small cafe to determine the rest of the day.

I knew that Switzerland was a rich nation populated by generally rich people, but what I didn't realise was how much they like to show their money off. Basically Zurich was what I expected Monaco to be, with the amount of Porche's, Ferrari's and generally very expensive cars driving about the place. It was really quite incredible!

After our coffee we decided to check out the fine arts museum of Zurich, which contained quite a collection of paintings both Swiss and international. A couple of the names that I recall were Monet and Van Gogh, however my arts knowledge is quite limited and a lot of it was probably wasted on me. However there were a few works that I liked, one in particular was a large (wall sized) photograph of a guys stuff. Entitled "My Things", it was basically a top down photo of a very carefully arranged mess of general items, from lighters to books to a Snoopy doll. Another part that I really enjoyed (and found out later that I shouldn't have been in at all due to my ticket type) was about 50 simple little clay sculptures with interesting names. One was a sculpture of two guys walking down a street holding guitars entitled "Mick Jagger and walking down the street satisfied, after recording 'I can't get no satisfaction'". Another was of a guy looking through a window entitled "Mr Spock contemplates his home planet, Vulcan, and is sad that he cannot have any feelings". It was all very clever, and definitely my favorite part of the gallery.

We were there until 5, at which point we were told (not asked) to leave. Our next stop was the park area near the large lake in Zurich, at which point Paul decided it was nap time, whilst Christof, Simon, Thijs and myself threw a frisbee around for a while. The park was large and busy (though not crowded), and it seems that seeing as there is no beach in Zurich, people go to the park to sunbathe which makes for for some very nice scenery. Several people also took along small portable bbq's (kind of like small webbers), and had a meal there. The whole place was very relaxing, and as the sun started to wear down we went for a walk along a portion of the lakeside, checked out another park in the city and decided to wrap it up for the day. It was a bit tricky getting home, as we had to change trains at least once and as we didn't have a car anymore, also catch several trams along the way. Whilst waiting for one tram back in Basel, we discovered a life size chess setup and proceeded to have a game. Thijs was unfortunately on the other team; unfortunate as he actually knew some chess strategy. The game actually never finished, but given a further few minutes I don't doubt that Paul, Christof and myself would have not done our team proud.

Eventually we made it back to Christof's parents place, whipped up a quick pasta dinner and packed it in for the night. The next day would see us travel to Freiburg, where Christof lives and studies. Stay tuned!

Verona Ventured, more than meets the eye in Barcelona

2007-07-26T13:33:00.000+01:00

I decided to skip the second day trip to Venice, as I didn´t really feel there was anything left to do, sside from the glass blowing demonstrations, which I didn´t feel warranted an entire trip back to the city of islands.

So I spent the next two days just hanging out in Padova, moving from my hostel for the Saturday and Sunday nights to the cheapest hotel I could find. The only hostel in Padova has a lock out curfew of 11:30PM, which stunted most nights spent at the Highlander pub shack with Paul. Deciding that we were going to spend a good couple nights of the weekend hanging out in the pub shack area, Paul and I rocked up about 7PM on Saturday to the Highlander, only to find they were just beginning to set up. We left and found some kebabs for dinner; kebabs which had no less than three different types of sauce and a few other bits and pieces that differentiate from what we get at home. They were excellent, and by the time we got back to the shack they were able to start pouring drinks. We would alternate between Aperol Spritz´s, Corona´s, and in not to long a time, we decided to try the Bulmer´s. I´d heard of the stuff not too long ago from Ian, who described it as quite a nice drop, and this resulted in us cleaning the place out of every bottle within the next 48 hours.

We made friends with the bar staff, Albani (the Albanian), Angela (the hot chick) and a greek dude who was only there for the Saturday night. It was on this particular Saturday night that Greekguy, as he will now be known, was playing with the music on his phone along with Albani. They weren´t allowed to put on a stereo, lest they be fined for some reason, and so between the two of them, they piped out a tune or two on their phone during the quiet periods. At some point Greekguy started playing the Zorba dance, and tried to teach Albani the steps. If you´ve never experienced the Zorba dance, basically it consists of everyone linking shoulders, kick to the left, kick to the right, do a sidestep to your right, and repeat. The speed slowly increases until the end becomes a flurry of kicks and people tripping over. Albani just couldn´t get the hang of it, and Paul and myself offered to give it a try ourselves. Even in our semi-lubricated state we were able to work it out, and proceeded to scare the rest of the potential customers away from the joint for the next 5 or 10 minutes.

We also made friend with the Irish owner, Kevin, who was happy to provide us with a couple free drinks whenever we caught up with him. So not to look like barflys who just kind of cling to the one place (no matter how true that may have been), we were sure to change venues for about an hour each night, which involved walking up the road a couple hundred meters to another shack with some funky red couches, a venue at which Paul attempted a drunken pickup of a very attractive Argentinian woman. Unfortunately his attempts were not quite successful, but in his stout defence neither were those of several other potential suitors who gave it a crack themselves. It was after this little sabbatical that we returned to the Highlander and reclaimed our spots at the bar, and finished off our night there. This included Angela informing me through Paul´s translation that I had ¨very beautiful eyes¨ and also resulted in Paul prodding me about this for the rest of my stay in Padova. In his drunken state he also tried to convince me to go for her phone number, despite the fact I was leaving in two days and didn´t speak more than about two words of Italian. We tried to get Albani to put in a good word for me, but unfortunately nothing further eventuated. Still, being told you´re pretty by some hot chick is always fun, and no, she wasn´t just trying to sell us more booze....

On Monday I headed to Verona to see the sights, and a half hour train trip later and the same amount of walking time saw me in the heart of the place with a map and a few a few highlights circled. I started with the arena, which is a large old Roman amphitheater, which I was highly recommended by Paul to check out after my dissapointment at Trier. Unfortunately it seems I don´t have a lot of luck with amphitheaters, as this one too was being kitted out for some kind of opera, and there were plastic seats and stages being set up in it also. However, it wasn´t quite as offensive as the one in Trier, and there were still good sections where you could clearly see the structure itself, including one large wall piece which I think is supposed to be one of the main original parts. I wandered around and checked it out, and it was indeed quite impressive and in good condition, however I´m certain most of it has been rebuilt once or twice.

Next I wandered around the town a bit, had some lunch in one of the main squares, and then checked out some of the surrounding buildings and statues. I found another statue of Dante Aligheri (I´m not sure why I thought the on in Barcelona would be the only one around), and there seems to be quite a lot of monuments to him in the area. Eventually I stumbled across Juliet´s house (of Romeo and Juliet fame), where you can see the balcony that Romeo climbs up to see his girly (although I am skeptical of the authenticity of this balcony, considering R&J is a work of fiction), and there is also a bronze statue of Juliet standing in the courtyard. This statue is, like most old, weathered and kind of black, except for her right breast which is brightly polished from the hojillion tourists who come here to have their picture taken whilst groping said boobie for good luck. There were hundreds of people in this little courtyard, all queuing up to have a picture taken with the statue, and yes, I also followed this little ritual and will hopefully have some funkiness headed my way soon.

The entrance hall to Juliet´s courtyard is plastered with little love notes stuck to the wall with gum, and the gates also have quite a number of padlocks linked to it, all of which I´m assuming is to provide some kind of good fortune to a relationship. The whole wall of gum is actually pretty gross, and some of the more oblivious didn´t seem to realise as their would sit and rest their backs on said wall, and probably came away with some of it as a souvenier.

I left the throngs of tourists and checked out a small castle on top of a hill looking over the city. The walk up the stairs was quite an effort in the hot, humid weather, and whilst the castle didn´t seem to be open for inspection, the view from the hill was pretty cool, and allowed you to see over most of the city. I left this vantage and headed to one last museum containing Juliet´s tomb. There were some nice marble sculptures by some artist I´d never heard of, and I eventually made my way through the place and found the tomb itself, which consisted of a graffiti strewn room with an empty sarcophagus (save for a couple of lillies).

At this point I´d had enough of the town, having seen all I´d come to see and not finding interest in other of the locations listed on the map, so I made my way back to Padova, checked into the hostel for one more night and met up with Paul for a final drink at the Highlander. After a few drinks, I gave my goodbyes to the bar staff and received a farewell Aperol Spritz from Albani, organised when I´d meet Paul in Germany the coming Friday, and headed to my bed.

The next day found me up at 5:30AM to get the series of trains and busses to Milan Malpensa international airport, and I got back to Barcelona at about 2PM. I was quickly reminded of the Spanish work ethic as I waited over half an hour for my bag to arrive on the carousel. I found my way to the main train station, and transferred a small amount of clothes and essentials into my small backpack, leaving my large case in the lockers of the train station. In fact, I used the exact same locker I did last time, a moment filled with nostalgia and memory.

I had about 8 hours to kill before I was to meet Miriam at her hotel, so I used a few minutes of this to transcribe some of the more interesting sounding bars and pubs from my guidebook onto a small sheet of paper. It was during this that I found in the guidebook a cinema that showed English movies, and nearly losing myself in excitement, grabbed all the things I had together and high tailed it as fast as I could to said venue. I had been killing myself trying to find somewhere to see the new Transformers movie since I found it had been released, and this was my best chance so far. It turned out the movie wasn´t on for another three hours, having just missed the more recent session. I decided to fill some of that time by seeing Shrek 3 as a prelude, which was OK, but not really as good as the last two.

When the time came close, I excitedely found a good seat in the cinema, and to my surprise the previews and ads all happened before the scheduled time of the movie, rather than after, and at almost precisely 6:30 the actual movie started. It was pretty awesome, and seeing and hearing Optimus Prime in full live action was very satisfying. They got his voice just right, and whilst I think it could have used a bit more robot to robot fisticuffs and laser blasting, hearing many of the original sound effects and themes through the movie was very cool. However I think they spent way too much time dealing with people and the army, rather than just having robots smash each other around. There was no space stuff at all (aside from them crashing into the planet), and there should have been some more actual Transformer characters. I think what I´m saying is summed up pretty well in this comic, but no matter how much whinging is involved, the movie still kicked ass.

After this I headed to Miriams hotel and met up with her about 11, showed her around a few of the main night sights of Barcelona, and got some dinner. Yesterday we met up with a couple of her friends from England who had come over for a weeks holiday, and spent the day checking out the Sagrada Familia (I actually went into it this time, it was so-so), checked out Gaudis park, had a siesta and then met up for dinner and drinks later that evening. I don´t really have much to say, as I´ve already seen and described all there is to do in Barcelona, but it has been fun hanging out with another bunch of friends. The girls have met up somewhere today to go shopping (I respectfully declined), and after finding somewhere to do my washing, I´ll pack up my stuff ready to head to Freiburg and meet back up with Paul in the Black Forest tomorrow.

Pics of Monaco and Nice now available!

Halfway Reflections

2007-07-24T20:50:00.000+01:00

I'll get to my last couple of days in Padova in the next entry, which includes my trip to Verona for the day and learning from a very cute barmaid that my eyes are "Belissimo!".

I have hit the halfway point of my planned journey. Today is actually slightly past that, at about 43 days of my original "Around Europe in 80 Days" plan, with my acknowledgements to Jules Verne. In fact, that came a very close second to being the name of this blog. I do have a fascination with the word "shenanigans", which is why the current title won out.

I've more or less been on track with my original itinerary, with some changes in duration and some extra stops along the way. The second half is going to vary greatly from my original plan due to my return to Barcelona, and then the excursion up to Germany to the Black Forest with Paul.

So what are my thoughts so far? I have seen many different countries and cities by this point, tried a variety of beers and food, talked to and met many different people from all over Europe, been chased by some rowdy bovines, seen many famous icons and taken a lot of photo's. Let me take each of these points in turn.

It has been good to see the different countries and cities around Europe. It has been very interesting to see each country essentially merge into the next one, as because I haven't taken many long journeys, you can see the cultures blend near the edges. I'm glad to be able to say I've visited these places, and whilst I still think that humans are humans no matter where they're from, there have been some distinct variatins in culture as I move around. It is interesting to see that the Italians take their siesta much more seriously than the Spanish do, as every Italian shop (except more popular restaurants) in Turin, Padova, Verona and even Venice are shut between about 2 and 4. Contrastly in Spain, though I only saw a small portion of it, there doesn't seem to be as much of a ghost town during these periods. It is interesting to go from France and Belgium, where while the service isn't always terribly polite (north Belgium excepted), it is usually prompt and reasonably efficient. In Spain and to a lesser extent Italy, you get served with a smile, and they are usually genuinely trying to help you, however there is a definite lack of urgency about the place, and if you want anything done quickly, these are not the places to be.

I've tried to sample the local cuisine at most of the places I've been, and certainly Belgium was a highlight in the beers department. Certainly there was some nice French food, and some occasional highlights in Spain and Italy, but to be honest, generally I haven't been quite taken aback by the international cuisine. I'm not a hardcore food critic, but I know what I like, and so far I think we have a better variety of food of much higher quality back home. Italian pizza, while nice, I didn't find terribly exciting, and for the life of me I couldn't find much pasta on the menus (apparently southern Italy is better for this). Those who know me, will also know my signature pasta dish, and I did not find one lasagne on any menu in Italy. Spanish food didn't grab me, but that's because I'm not too big into seafood, and I was too busy browsing the beer lists in Belgium to really care about what I was eating.

I've definitely met a lot of people in my travels, as most would expect this happens primarily in the hostels. It's difficult to meet people out and about, primarily because of the language barrier. I have taken a lot out of just talking to different people and seeing what they think about various topics and why. I've also spent a lot of time interrogating people about their respective countries and what makes them tick, which has yielded some interesting ideas, including what seems a complete lack of German nationalism, the expense of living in Norway, that somehow even with all the oil and carbohydrates in their food, the Italians are the skinniest in Europe. Given all this, though, it is difficult to form long term friendships with people when you only know them for a few days at the most. So this exchange of ideas is very interesting to me, but I also realise it is the most I can expect out of most encounters on my journey. It is always fun to run into other Australians out here (and trust me, there are plenty of us around) and see what their experiences have been like so far. It has also been a huge bonus being able to hang out with friends I know whilst on the trip. Travelling by oneself doesn't get lonely per se, but hanging out with close friends can make many experiences shine that much more. That said, I have thoroughly enjoyed spending days with new people I've met, as they often offer a perspective that you and your close friends may not consider. Oh yeah, and as far as the scenery goes, Italian girls take the gold so far. That said, I'm yet to visit any Slavic or Scandinavian countries, which I've heard good reports of quality from also.

I haven't been a lazy traveller, and I manage to see the main sites in each city. Eiffel towers, crazy buildings, nice views, to be honest, they're cool to see, but each does little for me in and of itself. I've always been much more of a 'doing' kind of person, which is why I am generally enjoying myself more when there is activity going on, such as the bike tours, walking tours, etc. I have taken many, many photos (there are so many left to release on the gallery), and my little mascot Donald is making more appearances here and there.

I haven't experienced many real "wow" moments that a lot of travellers talk about, however I will re-iterate that the Running of the Bulls was one of the most incredible things that's happened to me, and I still get a cool buzz just thinking about it. I do, every now and then, stop and kind of "realise" that I'm actually half way across the world, for instance "I'm in Italy having dinner... that's a bit bizzare", or "I'm in southern France, just walking around... hmmm!".

All in all, it's been pretty cool so far. I fall short of saying that this whole trip is "life altering" or anything like that, as you often hear from travellers. I expect that I will actually appreciate a lot of these experiences after they're all said and done. I will be able to associate things that happen to me, or that I see in the future with things I've encountered on this journey, and it will hopefully give me a broader perspective with which I see the world at the end of the day. As stated in the caption, I'm only halfway there, and there is surely a lot left to be explored. I am intrigued to see at the culmination of this journey, what my reflection on this trip as a whole will be, and whether I will take anything singularly profound out of it, or if it will simply be one of the more interesting chapters in that book we call Life Experience.

Pamplona Pics Published!

2007-07-23T13:30:00.000+01:00

Photos

Voyage to Venezia

2007-07-21T13:08:00.000+01:00

It takes about half an hour to get to Venice from Padova. I undertook this journey with an American guy in my dorm room, Graham. He'd been travelling Italy for a while with a large group of family (about 25 people apparently!) and once this had finished up, he decided to continue his journey backpacking style for a couple more weeks.

The previous night I had spent a couple hours having a drink with Paul at one of the shack pubs known as the "Highlander", one of a series of pubs run by an Irish bloke who moved to Italy some years ago. He happened to be running the bar on this particular night, and we got to chatting. Once I mentioned I was headed to Venice the next day, he became quite exasperated and held back no small opinion on the crowds which he described as annoying obese Americans, albeit in a much more flowery language than I am willing to publish here. Assuring me that upon encountering these crowds I was more than likely to turn postal and throw several of these walking jelly-bowls into the Grand Canal, he wished me luck, and then I had to return to my early closing hostel for the night.

Graham had spent the previous day wandering Venice already, so he had a bit of a feel for where things were. Not exactly knowing what to expect, we arrived at Venice central station about 10AM, and entered into the throngs of people crowding the place. The description that the Irishmen had given me wasn't far wrong, the crowds of people were indeed dense, however it was a bit more multi-cultural than a group of fat Americans. Graham and I began to wander the streets of Venice, and essentially continued to do this the whole day. Except for the main thoroughfares, the streets of Venice are quite narrow, often being difficult to fit even two people abreast, but the buildings and architecture were quite interesting. Most of the houses look quite similar, flat faced buildings of old construction, puncuated by churches and other important and official looking buildings. I had hoped that this wandering would follow the Grand Canal, but unfortunately the canal doesn't actually have a footpath following its route. There are also only three bridges to cross the Grand Canal, one up near the station, another somewhere in the middle, and the final right near the end.

It is said that it is quite easy to get lost in Venice, and this would probably be true if you were trying to get to particular spots. Due to our general wanderings, we didn't ever get lost, per se, but we did run into a couple of dead ends here and there. Something that surprised me was that Graham hadn't seen San Marco's Square, somethind I'd heard about and was quite keen to visit. Luckily the main parts of Venice, such as the square, have many many signs pointing in their direction, so it wasn't too hard to find. Eventually we made our way down through the windy streets into the square, and it was very impressive indeed. There are large, kind of uniform buildings down one side of it, with a very large bell tower known as St Marks Companile in the middle. There is the Basilica which looks quite impressive, however the entrance queue to get in was equally as impressive, and the concept of waiting at least half an hour in the (very) hot Venetian sun did not appeal to Graham or myself, and we satisfied ourselves from admiring it from the outside. I took a bit of a fancy to one of the lion statues on top of a large column, which was one of two such statues that you can see as you look into the piazza from the water side.

Another thing that should be pointed out are the millions (exaggeration) of pigeons that flock to the piazza every day. This is apparently one of the famous aspects of the square, and one they are apparently not too worried about losing. They encourage these rodents of the sky to overrun the place by selling bags of corn to the tourists who either scatter these kernels amongst the pigeons, or hold some in each hand with their arms outstretched, at which point these flying rats will jump up onto their benefactors arms and peck the corn out of their hands. I saw some with no less than 7 or 8 pigeons perched upon their person, and secretly hoped I would see them all expel their white gunk en masse onto these crazy people. Actually, for all of the many thousands of pigeons that were in the square, the place and statues were suprisingly free of bird dung. I'm not sure how this is possible, but someone, somewhere must have either devised a mirical bird poop cleaning system, or the corn they're stuffing these animals with is some kind of special, poop inducing free variety.

After spending a while in the square, we went over a bridge to the left of the piazza to have a gander at the Bridge of Sighs, a monument that Graham was familiar with, and was apparently the last sight that prisoners would see of Venice just as they would be incarcerated. It is a nice bridge, and one that you can walk across (if you can find the entrance). However, it was difficult to get a clear photo, as hundreds of kids managed to trump along the bridge, and every single one of them insisted on putting his or her arms through the small gaps in the walls, and wave out to the people examining the structure.

Graham and I spent the last few hours of the afternoon continuing our wandering through the streets, stopping here and there to chat or grab a drink (I must have gone through several liters of water that day), having a look at the shops, most of which were selling the exact some variety of wares, usually Venetian Masks, and come about 5PM, Graham headed back to Padova. I decided to hang around until the evening, as I've heard sunset in Venice is quite nice. I bought myself a ticket for the water bus, and headed off to the island of Murano, the famous glass blowing island just off Venice. Unfortunately the actually demonstrations had finished by the time I got there, but I spent a nice hour or so wandering around checking out all of the shops selling their blown glass wares. Some of if was very creative, and had I not been required to carry it around for the next couple of months I would have considered buying some of the smaller items. However, I knew that these would simply be ground back into the sand from whence they came in my bag, so I was content to snap a few photos.

I made my way back to the main island, and got the water bus (Vaporetti) to the top of the canal by the station. Come about 8PM, I then reboarded another Vaporetti and took my first trip down the Grand Canal, just as the sunlight was starting to fade. This turned out to be timed extremely well, and seeing the buildings in the twilight was quite picturesque. Also, it was at this point that I understood why there were no footpaths along the canal, as having throngs of people in the way of the buildings would really have detracted away from their natural elegance. The boat made its way along, under the famous Rialto Bridge, and eventually deposited me back at San Marco's square. I spent 15 minutes or so snapping some photos of the square in the evening light, and quickly reboarded the Vaporetti to go back up the canal to my waiting train. Seeing the canal in proper night was also quite interesting, with many of the larger buildings and churches lit up well. I chatted to an Australian couple that were spending the night in Venice, and once the boat reached the station, I helped a lady work out her train ticket to Rome (she looked very confused in front of the ticket machine), and headed back to Padova.

Venice was quite nice, but I don't think I need two days there. I was able to see everything I wanted (except perhaps the inside of the Basilica and maybe some glass blowing), and after walking around for 8 hours, many of the buildings begin to look the same. The place doesn't smell at all, contrary to what I had heard, save for a slight ocean scent, and aside from the huge crowds of people, the whole place is very cool to look at. San Marco's square is definitely the highlight, though the canal ride in the twilight would come a very close second.

Catching up on nothingness in Padova

2007-07-19T16:31:00.000+01:00

Catching the 5AM train to Padova was tough. To begin with, we had to change trains in Milan, which meant our 4 to 5 hour journey was split right down the middle, and secondly, what we expected to be a night train (it has beds) turned out to be a regular train without said comfortable flat surfaces. As a result, Paul and I tried best we could to curl ourselves onto the seats provided, Paul opting for the rest up against the window and stretch your legs over the end of the chair, whereas I went for the curled up along two chairs in the fetal position maneouver. Either way, neither of us got truly comfortable and sleep was fleeting. We had an hour stopover in Milan, during which I somehow managed to catch half an hours shut eye on the hardest stone bench you've seen in your life, waking up with some of the most excruciating pins and needles in my left arm I've ever experienced. The train from Milan to Padova wasn't much better, as it was quite full, which meant we were restricted to our own, single seats. I tried my best to rest my head on the table between us, but this ended up hurting my neck more than the stone bench did, and after a couple hours travel we'd finally ended up in Padova.

My hostel was a kilometer and a bit down the road from the station, and a short ways down the road Paul split off to go and lose consciousness in his apartment. I continued on my way, sweating continually into clothes that already had over 24 hours of constant wear in Italian weather, and combined with the previous two days of long distance walking, my entire body was about ready to self destruct by the time I'd managed to hobble through the door of the hostel. This was about 11AM, and I was informed that I couldn't actually check in until 4:30. I was, however, able to leave my bags in the luggage room, but it meant that the relief shower I so desperately craved was currently out of my grasp.

Not completely dismayed by this point, I walked back to the station, where a public park was situated, only to find it closed for some reason. In fact, every park around the area seemed to be locked up on this particular day. I spent nearly an hour trying to find a suitable patch of grass to rest my aching body, and nearly losing my marbles completely, I finally found one under a tree near a road intersection that I settled for, and feeling like a regular bum managed to get a couple hours fitful rest there. Finally my hostel opened for business just as I'd made my way back down, and thankfully the showers were of high volume water and I was finally able to bring myself to some level of respectable personal hygiene. Unfortunately by this stage it had hit 6PM, and I got a call from Paul enquiring as to whether I was ready for dinner. This meant I didn't get a chance to have a proper nap, but we met up all the same and managed to find a pizzeria that he was aware of, followed up by a couple of beers.

It is interesting to note that at this point in time in Padova, all of the pubs have closed up, and moved into little shacks along the river. This is pretty cool, as they are all centrally located, and apparently this event happens every year. We spent some time up there, although only until 11PM, as one disadvantage of the hostel in this city is that it has an 11:30PM curfew. The local beverage of choice is an "aperol spritz". It tastes kind of like Campari mixed 50 50 with a pale beer, and is quite nice. It is also quite cheap, and we generally alternate between an ale and one of these.

The next day I committed to finally having some rest, and I spent a good portion of the day in the park just near our hostel. I was a bit frustrated that I didn't check out this park the day prior, as it is in the main square of Padova. In fact, the Prato della Valle, Paul informs me, is the biggest square in Italy, and the second biggest in Europe behind Red Square in Moscow. The place is awesome to relax in, as the elliptical garden area with a nice little fountain in the middle is encircled by a moat/canal, with regularly placed statues of famous local figures on either side. The day consisted of a lot of nothing, including a lunch with Paul, which no doubt consisted of pizza, followed by the dumping of photos onto the inter-tubes. We met again later for dinner, on this particular night dining on a new animal, known to the Italians as "Caballo", or to the rest of us, "Horse". The meat is nothing special, and kind of tastes like a poor beef steak. I won't be rushing out to get it again, but there's something novel about being able to add another species to my carniverous repertoire. We followed the experience with another few drinks at the pub shacks.

I spent the next day seeing some of the sights around the city, after catching a morning nap in the park. I saw a couple of churches, one which is supposed to contain the body of St Luke, however Paul is (and I tend to agree) quite skeptical of the validity of this claim, as the story of how the body was lost, found many hundreds of kilometers away a good deal of time later, and then brought to the church is sketchy at best. There is also the Basilica di Sant'Antonio da Padova, which contains several relics of the old saint, and one of the interesting things about it is that you can walk around the back of his tomb and touch it. This is actually a bit depressing, because as far as I can understand it, the saint is involved in finding lost things, particularly people, which is expressed all too painfully in solemn expression on the faces of those praying whilst holding their forehead or hand on the sarcophagus. No cameras were allowed in the place, so I can't show you some of the fine artwork and opulent relics, which included the lower jaw of the good saint, and, as Paul informed me later, apparently his tongue. Needless to say, these things looked particularly disgusting, but the golden viewing cabinets they were contained in were quite impressive.

After a longish lunch with Paul, I went back to his university office and helped him work out a problem he had with a Fortran program he was writing (which means I can now say I have had something to do with developmental research in the field of nuclear physics), and spent the rest of the day in my now favorite park della Valle.

I spent the following morning from 10 till 1 at the local hospital (they don't seem to have private doctors as such) trying to get a prescription for some antibiotics for a minor skin infection I have developed from all of the stress I've put my body through. I had to wait in the emergency room amongst a bunch of other patients waiting to be seen. There was one other Australian in the room who wanted to get his finger looked at which he'd dislocated a week ago in the Ukraine, as apparently the Ukrainian hospital system isn't too flash. The guy was a roadie for the George Michael concert that is touring Europe currently, and had a few interesting stories to tell about what he'd been up to for the past few weeks. About two and a half hours later I finally managed to see a doctor and tried to explain the situation. I had no less than three people all in the room trying to communicate with me and they began discussing anaesthetic and surgery, and it took me a while to convince them that I knew what was going on, and that no, blades and needles were not required, but please give me some antibiotics to treat the infection. This is one situation where the language gap becomes somewhat scary, however one of the nurses involved with looking after me during this whole ordeal managed to speak a word of two of English and between us we managed to get through it. She was very happy and helpful, and also pretty cute. She looked kind of Spanish, and got very excited when I mentioned that I was headed back to Barcelona to meet up with a friend of mine. Eventually they agreed to give me a prescription, and also gave me a referral to go see the specialist surgeon on the upper floor. I assured them I would (I won't), and the cute nurse took me down to pay my bill, which luckily only came to about 20 euros. I thanked her again, and after she had dissapeared back into the wards, I quickly made my way out of the place. I caught up with Paul and his recently returned supervisor for lunch, and then made my way to the pharmacy to pick up my medication.

I expect that tomorrow (yes, I've finally caught up to current time with this thing) I'll head to Venice with an American guy from my hostel. I'll be in this general area of the world until my flight back to Barcelona on Tuesday to meet up with Miriam, and between now and then I expect to spend two days in Venice and one in Verona as day trips from Padova. It's been good to finally get some rest here, and the run-down sniffles I'd developed from Pamplona seem to be all but gone. There's not much to see generally, but I'm a huge fan of the Prato della Valle for chilling out, and it's a good central spot for anyone looking to check out Verona, Venice, Bologna or any part of north east Italy.

My general plans have changed somewhat from my initial idea, and I've decided to give the rest of Italy a miss for now. I can barely stand the heat even up at this latitude, and heading any further south with the stories I've heard from Rome and Naples would surely spell my doom. Instead I plan to head to Munich from Barcelona, possibly stopping off at Freiberg where Paul will be exploring the Black Forest, from there to Innsbruck, Austria, to Salzburg and then to Vienna. It will be interesting to see how this affects my 80 day timeline, and it may turn out that I have a bit of extra time to explore some of the eastern countries. This could involve parts of Poland, or perhaps further north to Scandinavia. If anyone has suggestions, I'd be interested to read them in the comments!

Touring Turin

2007-07-17T14:34:00.000+01:00

Friday's train trip to Turin was uneventful. There was a minor scare when I got to the station in Nice to start my trip, finding the place very over crowded and struggling to work out which train to get on. It turns out my ticket required two train changes along the trip, and I had to find out what the intermediate points along the way were. Once this was shown to me I slowly made my way towards Turin (these are not the high speed trains), missed one of my changeovers and got delayed by an hour, but finally arrived around 6PM.

At the station in Turin I was waiting by the information booth to get a map, standing next to a young group of Brits doing the same. I struck up a conversation with what has become the standard travellers conversation of "Hi, how you doin, where you from, where you going, etc", and they asked if I was here for the festival that night. Of course I'd heard of no such festival, and upon enquiring about the entertainment to be given at said event, found that the Arctic Monkeys would be playing, and that it was free to boot! Once again abandoning my plans of having a proper nights sleep and a relaxing couple of days, I joined them in interrogating the information booth employee about the shenanigans, and she showed us where the event was and the free shuttle bus to get there. I quickly took my bag to my hotel (I couldn't find a hostel in Turin city, and got a cheap hotel instead, again, trying to have a quiet evening of effective sleep), dumped it, showered and hurried off to the bus depot. I got on with many other people, but the bus didn't seem to be leaving any time soon. The Italian weather is hot and humid, even way up north, and rather than sweat on the bus with the other peeps, I decided to stand outside the door. However, I think this bus was being driven by the grumpiest guy on this earth, as he stepped on the bus and shut the doors immediately, when it was clear that there were several people standing outside waiting for an indication to get on. A few Italians threw some stern words his way and the doors opened for long enough for us to shoot through, and then we made it towards the park where the festival was being held.

Grabbing a Corona, I made my way to the stage square, and one of the Brits I'd run into at the station spied me and brought me over to their group. I spent the evening rocking out with them, the festivities starting with a band known as "Art Brut", which were a bit shit to put it mildly. The music itself was ok, fairly generic English rock, but the singer just kind of spoke the words in a cockney accent, and the lyrics themselves were completely inane garbage. After about 45 minutes of this they finally left the stage to be followed shortly after by "The Corals", who were again an English rocky kind of band, but actually had a bit of talent. Their music had overtones of Americana rock. Think of a cool grungy rocky version of the theme from Bonanza and you'll be getting close to what I mean.

They finished up and were followed about 20 minutes of stage setting later for the Arctic Monkeys. I remember wanting to see these guys when they toured Melbourne, but between the $80 ticket price hesitation and the thousands of people wanting to go I missed out. This gig was excellent, and they played most of their songs from the first album and several from the second. They had a great stage presence, and I was surprised to find out that they're all only about 19 or 20 years of age. The Brits I was with couldn't understand how they could go from playing at the biggest music event in Britain not more than a month ago that cost 150 pounds a ticket, to a free concert in Italy. Their set was longer than the others, continuing on to just past midnight. Once the applause died down I bid farewell to my British companions, who were planning on bumming around Turin until the first train out of the place to Venice arrived, and got on the shuttle bus back to the center of town. Unfortunately the bus didn't stop where it had picked me up from, and after a bit of confusion and a lucky encounter with an English couple who were able to point us out on the map, I finally made it back to my room by about 2AM. So much for the good nights rest, I hit the sack and made ready to meet Paul the next day.

My bags deposited in the train left luggage counter, Paul spotted me halfway up the platform and we began our tour around Turin. We had a wander through a couple of squares and decided our first real stop would be, as Paul decribes, "The Holy Tea Towel of Turin", better known as the "Shroud of Turin". This is basically a big old rag that Jesus was apparently wrapped in after his crucifiction, which has an image of his body somehow imprinted upon it. The actual shroud is carefully locked away in a large sarcophagus, and a replica is on display in the church. Paul noted that if the scale was accurate, Jesus wouldn't have been much taller than about 5". The church itself was very basic to say the least, especially compared to others I've seen along the way. I would have thought a place containing such a holy relic would be better adorned, but apparently these guys are going for the spartan look. Perhaps it's to less distract away from the Shroud itself...

After a quick Greek snack of some kind of cheese filled pastry, we headed into the cinema museum. This turned out to be a great decision, and the next 3 or 4 hours were spent looking at the history of cinema, from static images right up to the latest special effects. There were several floors in chronological order, with some cool cinema relics of their own. I was most excited about one of Charlie Chaplins' hats that were on display. Honestly though, the first floor which contained all of the really old stuff like the first steps of motion pictures using such technology as the Magic Lantern I found quite dull. Some of the stereo images were cool, which also included some of the first recorded pornographic images (I'd never seen porn in stereo), but overall I didn't get that interested in the exhibits until it started hitting stuff like the silent films.

Once it got to this point I became much more interested in the exhibits which showed the different techniques used to create a movie, from shooting to editing to sound production, showed various famous actors (there seemed to be quite a love-in affair with BridgetteBardot, who I'd never heard of) and there was one section of the place that involved walking in a square around the whole building where famous movie posters were hanging. There were also several areas with examples of cinema of different themes (Horror, Romance, Western, Sci Fi). Paul and I sat through some of the more interesting ones, and each of these sections was decorated in relation to that theme. One of the more interesting rooms was filled with about 10 toilets which you could sit on, and one of the movies presented in the room consisted of a family sitting down to their evening dinner, however instead of sitting on chairs, the sat, pants down, on toilets. I cannot remember the movie this scene was from, and it was either in Italian or dubbed in Italian, so I've no idea what they were talking about, but it was quite bizarre.

There was also a small section which superimposed your moving image onto a small part of the lobby scene of The Matrix which Paul and I spent a bit of time have some juvenile fun with.

The cinema museum took us to about 5PM, and it was time for the main reason Paul had come to Turin, which was to see the Beasts of Bourbon (Tex Perkins + Friends) playing at a local festival. We walked at least 3 kilometers to find the venue, at which point my body had started to rebel from the increased amount of movement it had been subjected to recently. Unfortunately Paul had mixed the day or the dates up somewhat, and after an entertaining conversation through the fence with one of the security guards, we were to find that the concert was actually scheduled for the following (Sunday) evening. Paul was most dismayed at this eventuality, but being on no particular timeline myself I suggested that we stay here a night and catch the festival at its scheduled time. Paul agreed, and we slowly walked a further 3 or 4 kilometers back to my original hotel, much to my bodies complaint, booked another room and headed out for dinner.

Paul was excited to show me some authentic northern Italy cuisine, but we found that we'd happened upon a Napolese restaurant, and so just stuck with the common Italian food of pizza. My compadre explained the local custom of eating, which usually involved an entre and main, or simply pizza, but almost always followed by a coffee. Unfortuntely by the time we'd had our pizza, it had hit about 11:45, and the left luggage at the station closed at midnight. We declined coffee and got a rather unusual look from the waitress, paid our bill and scurried painfully down to the station to get my bag. Luckily the staff hadn't decided to knock off 5 minutes early, and I was able to retrieve my belongings and take them back to our domicile, stopping at a pub on the way of course. We passed the first pub which had a clear sign "Discogayfashion" (wait for the photo) on the window and went to one a few doors up which seemed a little more low key and more our style. Eventually we made it back to the hotel and quickly crashed out to sleep.

Luckily the following day the hotel staff, whom were very excited to hear we were going to a concert in their fair city, agreed to take care of our bags until the we hours of the morning, and we set about on a second day of Turin wanderings. We headed down to one of the main piazza's, Vittoria, and ended up spending a couple of hours there over some beers discussing all manner of things and catching up on each other's lives in general. This liquid lunch was followed up by checking out the large, Pantheon-esque building at the end of the piazza, which Paul had estimated to be some form of goverment building, possibly chamber of commerce, whilst I had gone with department of justice. It turned out to be some kind of church, and further to this was closed. Taking a few photos and continuing down the river, we eventually happened upon our actual destination that was a replica medieval village, which Paul aptly described in his blog "in a country of medieval buildings, a 'replica' is as lame as it sounds". The whole place was very sub-par and not worthy of the time taken to walk there, and we quickly left the place.

Next on the list were the "Gates of Hell" which were described in Pauls guidebook to be a place of very black and evil energy. This was abundently clear by the pretty flowerbeds and fountains in the area, and we delighted in taking some photo's of each other being smote down by evil demigods in front of a bunch of pansies that apparently marked the spot. After tempting fate for a while we again walked the several kilometers to the festival venue, had a hamburger-ish meal at a cool little shack by the road. I've dubbed this place since as the "Melon Shack", as it did a roaring trade of selling primarily watermelons. Every few minutes a car would rock up, someone would get out and request a melon of certain volume, and the supposed owner of this place would walk over to his large crate of watermelons, slap a few of them (I assume to test their ripeness, though further observation seems to disprove this), and hand one over. It was a very unsual little situation, but the people who owned the place took good care of us and made a very nice meal.

Eventually we made it into the festival, which wasn't very large by any stretch of the imagination, got a few beers and waited for the shows to start. Paul managed to get photo's with a couple of the band members who were wandering around, Charlie Owen, the drummer who barely gave us the time of day, followed by Brian Hooper the bass guitarist who actually stood around and chatted for a while. About 9:30, the Beasts of Bourbon were brought forth to the stage and started busting out their blend of "Swamp Rock". The crowd wasn't huge, probably a few hundred strong, pretty much all Italian. The music was pretty good, but the lead singer, Tex Perkins was, to put it midly, quite a lot of a wanker. During the half hour set he managed to hurl a mostly full beer can between two security guards, shake one up, crack it slightly so it spewed forth its foamy contents, and launch this a good ten meters up in the air above the crowd to come crashing down on one unfortunate girls arm and drop a microphone stand on one security guards head. He wore a button shirt that become more progressively undone as the show continued, and to my minds eye was trying to strut around like Mick Jagger for the entirety of the show, something he impersonated very poorly. He then left the stage at the end of the lyrics of the final song, however the band still had a couple minutes of actual melody to bang out, at which point the Beasts of Bourbon's performance was apparently over.

The band was the supporting act for a more popular grunge group known as "Mudhoney", so the only person there who actualy seemed to know any of the BoB's lyrics was Paul and one other chick who was down the front. As a result I'm not sure how the Italians took the performance. The music itself was quite good, as far as hard rock goes, but the performance itself? I dunno. I'm not that into the rock scene, so perhaps this is just how they go down, but to me, the talented musicians that make up the sound of the Beasts of Bourbon might want to look into getting a new lead singer.

Mudhoney by contrast were quite good, and a little more composed. They performed a great set (even though I didn't know any of their songs), and contrary to usual practise in Australia, kept coming out for a total of 3 encores to the crowds cheers. The crowd, who'd obviously come specifically for this performance, had grown by several hundred by this point, and the entirety of them were very into the music. It was during one of their songs that the lead singer / guitarists suited up Spencer P Jones from the Beasts of Bourbon with his guitar, and motioned for him to come crack out a ripping guitar solo with the headlining band. Spencer came out and proceeded to rip out the worst guitar solo ever heard by human ears, completely out of musical tone with the rest of the band (though the crowd still cheered as loud as ever for the novelty factor) and then made his way back to the sidelines. The reasons behind this became clear after Mudhoney had finished, as Paul, who was intent on getting a picture with each member of the BoB, called Spencer over for a photo opportunity. Spencer did so, along with another member of the band, Brian Hooper, and they were both so drunk that Spencer could barely stand and Brian could barely talk, except to describe slurringly to Spencer how proud we all were of Paul studying his physics PhD, a fact he astonishingly remember from a previous conversation earlier in the evening. Paul described to me later how Brian and he were basically holding Spencer upright, as he stared vacantly towards the camera, barely moving between a couple of snaps.

Not long after this, Paul waved over the drummer of the group, Tony Pola, who exclaimed "Are you blokes Austraaaalian?" and a couple minutes later Tex Perkins strolled past and we grabbed his attention. Paul got a shot with these two, also very drunk musicians, and before we had a chance to move away, Tex pointed in my direction and slurred "What about that guy?!". Not wanting to dissapoint the man for the unique opportunity to have his photo taken with me, I swapped positions with Paul, Tex wrapped his arm around my throat not far from the choking point, and Paul quickly snapped a photo. The guy was disgustingly sweaty, and to say I was glad when released from his hold would be an understatement. Instead of making you wait, dear reader, for me to organise all of my Turin pictures for you to enjoy these wonders of photography, I have created a special album of them here.

Shortly after midnight the festival was over, and after souveniering a poster from one of the barricades, we made the long walk back to our hotel to pick up our bags. Even past 1AM, the lady was very courteous in allowing us entry to recover our belongings, and we slowly walked our sore, tired bodies over to the train station. We then proceed to have some slightly drunken ramblings until about 5AM when our train to Padova finally arrived.

Revealing the Riviera

2007-07-16T11:43:00.000+01:00

It was my first overnight train experience. It took another train to get to the French border before I was actually able to board the "coche" train (which in some way or another translates to sleeper train). On this preliminary rail trip I met a couple of Americans who'd been travelling for a few weeks and another who'd been in Pamplona and was doing a tour of the festivals of Europe, in essence, chasing each one from town to town.

Reaching the sleeper train, I found my cabin and was a little surprised. I'm not sure what I expected from the outset, I certainly wasn't visualising a hotel room on wheels, but the cabin itself was quite small with three beds on each wall. Sort of ground level, middle of the wall and above. The bed was about a meter wide, and whilst there was a place to put your luggage, my bag was a bit too big to fit there. It went at the end of my little stretcher, and whilst it resulted in me not being able to stretch out the whole way, it was comforting to know where it was the whole time. I'm not saying the train felt dodgy in any way, but when my bag is out of sight, there is always the niggling concern that someone might be screwing with it.

I slept fairly well on the 7 hour trip to Nice, all things considered. The constant movement of the train and the noise from outside were a little distracting, but I'd become so drained from Pamplona and still hadn't really caught up with the sleep debt. As a result my body was starting to rebel, and a run-down cold was setting in. I made a commitment that Nice would be spent relaxing and sleeping, in order to fend off this illness which would only cause me trouble if I allowed it to linger. One of the problems pointed out to me in Europe by Ian, is that you actually need a prescription to get something as simple as cold and flu tablets, so I knew I wouldn't be able to find relief there.

Once I arrived at Nice, I worked out where the hostel was and made my way down. The weather was hot, and by the time I'd made it, I was very sweaty and uncomfortable. Unfortunately I wasn't able to check in until after 3, but was allowed to leave my bag in the luggage room. I did so and went to check out the city in general.

Basically there's not much to see. I'm either starting to become a little jaded at finding a new city, or perhaps I did all the exciting ones first. At any rate, Nice has one fairly bland cathedral, one main shopping strip and quite a nice plaza. I stopped at the plaza for a baguette for lunch, mostly to cool down from the hot sun for a while. There's a pretty cool fountain in the middle that increases and decreases the amount of water and the height at which it is spraying. That was entertaining while I finished my meal, and then headed past it to check out the beaches.

The water of the mediterranean in Nice is very very clean. There's no sign of seaweed anywhere, and the first 30 meters or so are very light blue, darkening significantly as you get further out. The coastline itself is also very spectacular, and there were thousands of people enjoying the sun, sailing, parasailing and the like. I hadn't brought any of my swimming gear, as I'd decided just to do walking around thing, so I made my way back to the hostel to get a towel and change into some shorts. I was also able to put my bag in the room, and with a combination of the heat, the walking around I'd done, and general lack of sleep, I promptly passed out on my bed for half an hour.

I then made my way back to the beach, and found myself a spot on the shore. At this point I'll make clear that when I say beach, I'm actually talking about a short of small rocks and pebbles. Not a grain of sand was to be seen, and whilst this may sound horribly uncomfortable, the rocks aren't jagged, so while not soft and cushy like the sandy beaches back home, it was still able to be lay upon. The water itself is quite chilly, but I think that was primarily due to the heat of the environment outside. The body adapts to the cold water quickly, and swimming about was very refreshing after a couple days without a shower. One interesting thing I did note was how rapidly the rock shelf became deep. It stays shallower than a meter for the first 10 or so meters into the water, and then quickly drops off well below head height beyond.

After letting my body rest here for a couple of hours, I went back to the hostel and grabbed myself a pizza. There wasn't too much open, and I grabbed the first opportunity for food I had. I ordered a pizza of various meat and cheese, including an egg. This isn't like the good ol' Aussie pizza back home. Due to the Italian pizza's being (generally) quite thin, they don't spend nearly as long in the oven as we expect back in Oz. Due to this, the egg they crack in the middle of the thing is essentially raw. Further to this, they don't slice it up for you, as generally over here it is one pizza per person, and it usually eaten with knife and fork, as the thin base is generally not stiff enough to pick up by itself. At any rate, I met a Canadian couple in the hostel kitchen as I was rummaging around for a knife, who finished serving up their gnocci and joined me for dinner. Louis and Whitney, both from the Montreal area were great company, and it was interesting to see how Louis, whose first language was French and Whitney, whose first was English were able to complement each other in conversing with English. They both spoke English perfectly, but occasionally Louis would want to describe something complicated that he only knew in French, and between them they worked out the best way of converting that to English. Even though I'd wanted to get to bed before midnight that night to begin my relaxing mode, through the chatting and general good times I didn't quite make it before 2AM. We made plans to head to Monaco the next day.

Meeting at breakfast, we got our stuff together and headed for the bus station. There are two ways to get to Monaco from Nice, which is only about 20KM's away, and that is either bus or train. We were recommended to use the bus, as you get to see the entire coastline between Nice and Monaco, which was very picturesque. Unfortunately it seemed everyone else had been given the same advice, and it was very cramped standing room only for the hour it took to arrive, as the busy, thin windy roads along the Riviera make for slow going. Honestly I don't know how the bus made it without side swiping several other vehicles, but it seems with a bit of practice these drivers have gotten a good handle on how to manoeuvre their massive machines around the obstacles.

Eventually we made it to the main marina and checked out all of the boats in the harbour. There were all shapes and varieties, but it was quite clear that the majority of these vessels were extremely expensive. Massive yachts with opulent open lounge rooms floated one after the other in a row down the marina, many with several other small marine vessels attached to them. Most had at least one jet ski sitting on the top, most with a couple. Some home several side boats hanging off the edges, but all were very clean and of the highest class imaginable. Most were white, with various names that elude me now, but later in the day we would see a very sleek black cruising yacht pulling into the marina that looked very bad-ass indeed.

We walked up and around the marina now searching for the famous Monte Carlo casino, and we passed a few buildings, Louis querying "Is that it?". We were the only couple of people walking around, and the buildings themselves didn't look that opulent, so in each case I replied "Nah, I don't think so, we'll know it when we see it". We reached the end of this strip of buildings, only to see more apartment and residential areas, and it turned out that this indeed was the casino. We had been walking along the strip behind it, and with the lack of people and general ritziness, I had been convinced that it must be elsewhere. We wandered around to the front, and finally saw the main entrance with its garden and flower arrangement, and I have to admit I was underwhelmed. Being considered the richest, or one of the richest, famous casino in the world, I expected something incredible. I don't know what it would have taken, perhaps hundreds of pure gold fountains spraying crystal water as semi naked super beauties frolicked under them in the sun would have worked, but all I was treated to was a fairly nice building with a flower garden and funky mirror out the front. Either way, photo's were taken appreciative comments were made, and we moved on. Apparently we had the option of entering the place, I found out later, as I'd was under the impression it necessitated a suit to get even through the doors. However, we skipped this part and got some ice cream which consisted of the the biggest two some Haagen Daaz I've seen in my life.

Hiking up the other side of the hill to see the royal palace was hard going, but the result was quite impressive. The palace itself is nice, but nothing incredible, but the view over Monaco city and the coastline in general is quite amazing. The flag was up, which indicated the Prince was at home, however the main gate is roped off in a 20 meter semi circle from the public. Within this circle a lone guard in whites holding a large machine gun paces in a 15 meter line. Foward. Stop. Slowly turn. Back the other way. Repeat..... and repeat.... and repeat. This poor bugger had to do this all day, and it was clear where he was walking, as there was a definite strip of worn asphalt along the path of his pacing. I'm sure it is quite an honour to have this duty, but honestly it looked like the most boring job in the world, and add to that the heat of the place, and there was no shade, I do not envy his position in the slightest.

More photos were taken and we checked out some of the souvenier shops, grabbed a beer and then took the train back to Nice. All in all, Monaco only took about 3-4 hours to see, and then it was done. The whole place is only about 2 square kilometers, and once you've done the marina, the casino and the palace, all that is left is residential areas. There is the occasional Porche or Ferrari that will wizz past on the road, the main road being the same used for the Grand Prix. There are little sections of the road where the red and white edges are visible, but for the most part it just looks like a normal old road, quite thin really, considering the speed at which the F1's go tearing around.

I guess I expected the most extreme opulence, celebrities all over the place, and streets lined with the most expensive of automobiles. All in all, it was still a nice city with an incredible view, and probably the nicest collection of boats you'll ever see. It did indeed re-ignite my desire to own such a vessel, and I'll be sure to start poking Dad about getting his boat when I return. Perhaps I should start the poking earlier, so that it will be there for my arrival. One thing I wasn't sure about is how big a vessel need be before it becomes seafaring. Are all these nice cruising yachts restricted to the mediterranean? Is it possible to take them across the Atlantic to other shores? If anyone has knowledge on this area, please feel free to leave a comment!

Once back at the hostel, I hung out for a while in the bar area. I got chatting to a couple of Americans from South Carolina. We had a few beers and tequilas, I tought them how to play the card game I learnt in Toulouse, and after an hour or so of this, a few Germans on the table behind us talked us over into joining their drinking game. Called "Maya", it was a bluffing based game, where you would shake two dice in a cup and announce your score. The person to your left either has to shake the dice and get a score higher than you, or decide that you're lying and look at your dice. If your dice are not what you proclaimed, you would have to take a drink. There were a few other complications, but that was the jist of the thing. This turned out to be very entertaining, and continued on past midnight at which point the hostel staff decided we'd become too rowdy and told us to leave. Most of the group headed out to continue on at some bars around the city, but I'd again broken my curfew and I knew I was heading out to Turin the next day and again wouldn't get the amount of sleep I was hoping for. I think this turned out to be a good decision, as the two Americans who happened to be in my room got back a couple hours later. One of them, Scott, managed to make it into bed and pass out, however I think shortly after making to his bunk, Matt, wasn't quite able to make it out again and ended up painting his bed with his stomach lining. This was the only time that I didn't curse my blocked nose, and aside from the rather unpleasant sound of the event, the smell which I'm sure was prevalent didn't have a chance to enter my sinus.

The next day I gathered all my stuff, and got on the midday train to Turin, Italy. All in all I thought Nice was a bit boring. There wasn't too much to see, and the beach, though the water was great, was a bit uncomfortable and not very conducive to lounging about due to all the pebbles and rocks. I've heard the other main cities of the Côte d'Azur (French Riviera) such as Cannes and Antibes have quite nice, white sandy beaches. Monaco was cool to see, it was one of the places I'd been most excited to check out during this trip. I may have over-hyped it a bit for myself, but was still a very nice view and the yachts were awesome. Also, there's just something kitchy and cool about saying "Yeah I just kinda hung out in Monaco for the day". I'm not sure I'd be running back to either place in a hurry, but I think I should return to the Riviera itself at some point, if nothing else but to see one of the nicer beaches.

More Pics

2007-07-16T11:25:00.001+01:00

Photo Gallery has been updated!

Back to Barcelona

2007-07-13T09:34:00.000+01:00

All did not go as smoothly as one might expect on the train ride home. The nice part was that I was in first class (which somehow cost less than my second class ticket -to- Pamplona), so I had a slightly larger seat, but being on the aisle I struggled to make use of this extra room, as trying to sleep with no head support is a difficult task to say the least. Even if you haven't slept in the past two days included.

As usual the Spanish train was late to Barcelona Sants (the main station), but as it pulled in a few minutes before midnight, I held the hope that I would still be able to retrieve my main bag from the locker storage. I bolted up the stairs and to the locker area. To my dismay, which I illustrated by punching the door a few times, the locker area was itself locked away, informing me that the opening hours were 7AM to 11PM. Frustrated, and with a small backpack only containing the clothes that reek of the stench of Pamplona, I made my way to the hostel. I just made the metro as the doors closed (a fact Jeanine would later rue as she happened to the station not five minutes later to find the metro closed altogether), and got to the hostel around 12:30. I struggled again with the girl at the reception, who was as useful as nipples on the Pamplonian bull, didn't speak a word of English, and in true Spanish fasion, was not in a hurry to get anything done. Even though I'd already booked, payed for and knew my room number, this didn't help the blank expression staring back at me. One thing that swung in my favour, was as I'd spent nearly a week at this hostel by now, the security guard had become accustomed to my face, and whilst he too didn't speak much English, he found a friend of his outside to help with the interaction. I also requested a towel, which was above and beyond the usual supplication of sheets, and whilst Ms Useless began to refuse, I believe the security guard again fought for my honour as he told her (I think) that I'd been here for some time, and I was in enough VIP status to deserve a small towel. Thanking him graciously I found my way upstairs, had a rinsing shower (no toiletries) and found my way to bed by about 1AM.

Thinking myself lucky to be in a 3 bed dorm, and this likely to be fairly conducive to a good nights sleep, at about 5AM, a guy entered the room and started to organise his own nights rest. This wasn't a problem, as he made an effort to be as quiet as possible, however after his own all night effort, he eventually fell onto his bed, face up, and began the loudest snoring effort I'd encountered in my own reality. Snoring is caused by the reverberation of a flap of skin in the back of the throat. For this reveberation to occur, the lungs must build enough internal vacuum pressure to break the seal this flap has created, at which point air will start to flow erratically through the throat. This was demonstrated quite clearly on this gentlemen, as you could see his chest start to rise as this vacuum was created, his mouth would extend slightly, and once the breaking point was achieved, his whole body shook with the resultant explosion of air. There was a noticeable cycle to this symphony, as it would grow and grow to crescendo, as clearly he was not getting enough oxygen with each subsequent breath. At the peak of this, would be an almighty sort of snorting noise, at which point he himself would wake up, wave his arms a couple of times, and then immediately fall back asleep into he same pattern. This noise could be heard well into the corridor with the door shut (I know, as I exited the room to try and find a free emergency bed in the corridor, of which there were none on my floor), so I was stuck with this horrible cacaphony not two meters from my own bed. A word on said bed, which was jammed into the corner; the last few elastic slats had long since been destroyed, and the mattress itself was bigger than the base. This resulted in an interesting experience, as every movement caused the mattress to work itself down and across from the base, eventually reaching a point where it would nearly slide off to the floor altogether.

Needless to say I acheived no sleep from this point, and at 6:30 I decided to head back to the train station to retrieve my things. I did so, made it back to the hostel by about 8, and was able to get about an hours dozing in, as my good friend had managed to reduce his little performance somewhat. After waking up I had my first soap based shower in over three days and went down to the station to meat up with Jeanine, one of the girls I hung out with in Pamplona.

This turned out to be a very enjoyable day, I showed her some of the cooler sights I'd managed to uncover during my time in the city, and we ourselve found some new parts of the city in our own wanderings. We both bought bright, cheap (9 euro) watches and generally just checked out various parts of the city. I convinced Jeanine to pose with a very authentic Edward Scissorhands living statue, one that would clack his scissor fingers at the people who gave him money. Having seen him before, I knew the danger was low, however Jeanine took a bit more convincing. Eventually she creeped up and I got a few photos, of which I'll upload as soon as I find somewhere that accepts my camera. The main place we ended up at that I had not seen yet was Park Guell, which has a variety of Gaudi buildings and structures, including what I am assured to be the worlds longest bench, but it was about halfway through the afternoon at this point, and the main reason I'd wanted to go to said park was to have a lie down on the grass. The park is a good way out of the central strip of Barcelona, and it wasn't until we'd completed the trek there that we found that this park actually didn't consist of grass. It was more shrubs and cactus, which I determined weren't too conducive to a lie down and a snooze. So we checked out some of the exhibits, and made our way to another park not too far off, grabbed some fruit and relaxed for the final hours of the day. This park itself wasn't brilliant, and I may have been heard to exclaim something along the lines of "What a shithole!" after spending near on an hour finding the place. However, we did find a bit of grass to relax on, and when the light of the day started to wane, made our way back to our respective hostels.

I left Jeanine on the metro, fulling intending on going to sleep immediately, only to find Ian and Lisa sitting in the hostel lobby. Having completely forgotten about them arriving back from Valencia that day, I agreed to go and have some dinner with them which ended up being the best tapas I'd had so far on the trip. I gave them the dump of my time in Pamplona, and they gave me the skinny on theirs in Valencia. I still reckon my story took the cake, though Ian's description of the nice beaches, and more particularly, the topless women did pique my interest. After dinner we went back to our favorite Mojito bar, shot the breeze for a while until nearing 1AM once more, my concentration started to wane and we retired to the hostel. I bid them farewell once more, and managed to get in about 8 hours sleep, as the only people in my room this night was an older lady and someone I didn't see at all, but only for the bulge in the top bunk above my head.

The next day I was to meet with Jeanine, however our timetables or directions must have become tangled, as even though we both waited for quite some time (of which I was informed later), we were not able to spy each other in the mass of people. I spent a few hours in the pub and a couple in the internet cafe catching up, and eventually made my way to the train station for my overnighter to Nice. Committing myself to simply getting some rest, as I had a run-down cold setting in, I bade farewell to Barcelona for the second time and started on my next leg of my journey.

El Encierro

2007-07-10T11:32:00.001+01:00

I made my way to the train station around midday on Saturday. The train ride was about 6 hours to Pamplona, and fortunately the seats were a bit more comfortable than the flat, unpadded shockers I had from Toulouse to Barcelona.

Unfortunately the air conditioning in my cabin wasn´t working, and a couple of hours into the trip, the Spanish sun started to make the place unbearingly hot and uncomfortable. Being in allocated seating, I wasn´t too confident in the option of moving seats, but talking to the American chick next to me, she informed me that the cabin she was supposed to be in (she was in mine so as to sit with her friends) had a few free seats and was of a temperature that involved people wearing jackets. Jumping at this opportunity, I scurried into the next cabin and found plenty of empty seats. An American guy from my cabin that I´d been talking to joined me, and we both tried to get some more sleep, fully aware of the long hours we´d be pulling after we got off the train.

This lasted for a while, but about an hour out of Pamplona, the train stopped at a station and decided to take a 20 minute siesta so that those who were in the cabins without air conditioning could take a break. I questioned the usefulness of this, as the heat outside was just as unbearable as that in the cabin, and all it resulted in was us being a further 20 minutes later, on top of the extra hour we were late because the Spanish trains seem to travel a lot slower than their timetable dictates.

Reboarding the train after this breif hiatus, a different American guy with a very thick Brooklyn accent informed me I was in his seat, and rather than return to my stifling cabin, I chose to stand in the air conditioned one for the remainder of the journey. I got to know the group of Americans that were travelling together, which would turn out aiding me quite significantly later on that weekend. Eventually our train trundled into Pamplona, which sparked several cheers and chants from all those in the cabin.

After leaving the station and heading towards the Old Town proper, where most of the action was to occur, I quickly realised that my attire was grossly unprepared for the event. I was walking around in a blue polo and black shorts, whereas 90% of everyone else was in traditional San Fermin garb, which usually consists of a white shirt, with white pants or shorts, a red neckerchief and red waist sash. I understood I would need to appropriate these items, and was hoping I could do this at the event. I wandered around for about 45 minutes, seeing thousands of revelers drinking and partying (this was at about 9PM, and the party was even at this point pretty crazy and intense), but somehow I managed to miss any place selling these items. I eventually happened upon something resembling a newsagent which sold the neckercheif and waist sash, and some touristy white shirts with logos all over them. I found the plainest white shirt I could, threw it on and headed back out the party. It was only at this point that I managed to locate the hundreds of market stalls that were selling this stuff in every which way shape or form, and ended up buying another touristy shirt which was more plain, and some white pants, and then another plain white shirt to finally get the exact outfit I was after. I should point out that all this still only cost me about 25 euros, so it wasn´t exactly bank breaking stuff.

I continued in the touristy shirt with my jeans, neckercheif and sash, deciding that I´d put on the plain white shirt and white 3/4 shorts (which I would later be informed by some American girls were known as "mens capris"), when I actually got around to doing the Encierro. Having all my artifacts in place, I turned to the party and exploring the town.

The place wasn´t too big, but the winding streets made it quite easy to get lost. I was mostly trying to walk the bull run course, so I knew exactly where I would be running, on what surface, and about how far the whole course was (about 850 meters all up), but this effort seemed doomed to circumvention every time I attempted it. The first time I tried to walk the course I got lost, and ended up in some other part of the old town. It was dark by this point, and I found a Spanish rock band playing in the street which were excellent. They mostly played covers of rock songs by bands like The Doors, Arctic Monkeys, U2, etc, but also played some Spanish rock stuff as well which was nice to hear. I ran into a Spanish guy who was drinking some weird orange Fanta and alcohol concoction, but as I´d resigned myself to staying fairly light on the booze that night, I didn´t partake of more than a sip. It was about 11PM by this point and the whole city was in super party mode. It was an incrible vibe, as people everywhere were having an awesome time, the music was good, and probably one of the best parts was that everyone was in the same uniform. The white shirt and red neckercheif/sash combination was on about 95% of people by this stage, and the feeling of unity was palpable. More than a few times I just felt an intense rush of positive energy just by walking around, sharing in the huge grins of everyone in the city.

I should point out at this point that the old town itself was not all peaches and cream. Whilst the party was incredible, and the vibe amazing, the state of the city grew progressively more and more rank as the night wore on. Garbage was strewn -everywhere-. I saw few bins around the place, and even in there had been more, they would have filled so quickly to be completely useless before the sun went down anyway. Everyone just threw their crap in the street, and whilst there were a few WC´s (toilets) around the place, nothing would prepare you for the rivers of piss flowing down the street. Imagine many tens of thousands of people all drinking and partying throughout a fairly small and dense old style city and the amount of urine this tends to generate. Toilets were simply not on people´s minds, and the smell of the stuff permeated every street and avenue, the only relief from which usually came from finding a large open square, as the gents usually, and I will repeat, only usually prefer a wall to handle their business rather than open air. Clearly with this many partiers there will be several that go too hard too early, and by the early hours of the morning, most streets started to become littered with passed out bodies as well as general garbage. All I can suggest to these poor souls is that they burn their clothes and get some form of sterlising shower as soon as possible.

After seeing the band and continuing my wandering, I decided to try and walk the bull run path again, and reaching about the halfway point, ran into another Spanish guy who started up an interesting conversation. We talked about the running of the bulls, and he tried desperately to convince me to reconsider my intent of participating, citing the wet streets (it had rained a little earlier, but most of the moisture was due to spilt drinks, etc). I wasn´t surprised to hear this, as I´d heard of other people talking to Spaniards, enquiring if they were participating in the run, only to be told "Are you kidding? Only idiot tourists actually run with the bulls!". After a few minutes discussion of this, some of his friends came over and took me and themselves to another bar in the town that was so packed you couldn´t even walk in. At this point I might describe what people were drinking. There were several stores selling liquor by the bottle, and rum seemed a popular choice to a lot of people, huge plastic cups of beer (probably half liters) were being held by nearly everyone, and if it wasn´t beer inside then it was generally either Sangria, or more commonly, a local concoction known as Kalimotxo. This is basically a 50 50 mix of red wine and coke, something which I decided was not in my best interest to try. Also, nearly all of the bar floors were coated in sawdust in order to soak up the incredible amounts of spilt booze. This was easily apparent, as everyone who left one of these bars would do so either with several blotches of Kalimotxo stains on their white shirts, or completely drenched by the stuff.

I chatted to my new Spanish friend outside the bar for a while (it was far too crowded to move inside, and I didn´t feel like a Kalimotxo shower), and departed to try, once again, to walk the bull run. I found the starting point once more, and talked to some very drunk Spaniards with poor English about the run and any advice they might have for me. All that ended up happening was a lot of joking around, which was actually hilarious. One guy was trying to convince me that he spoke perfect English, while the others were indicating that he was very drunk and had an extremely small penis. We all had a laugh and they took a photo of me with them (with their camera, I didn´t really dare give them mine considering their state) and I finally managed to walk the rest of the bull run. I sat down on a park bench at one point to ponder my map, and a girl came running up to me jibbering something in a dialect I didn´t understand (which would be anything other than English). I informed her I only spoke the British born dialect, and she had a quick think and said "Oh, Hi! Look, one of my friends really wants to meet you!". I got a bit excited at this point, and thought there could be some very interesting events on the horizon coming my way. She quickly followed this up with "So yes... do you like boys?". The little Spanish fantasy that I had been running through my head quickly dissapeared in a shower of realization, and I replied with "Uhh... No!". She thanked me for my time and quickly scurried off. To say I went through a wide range of emotions in the space of about 20 seconds would be something of an understatement.

I ended up walking the whole bull run, and my mission accomplished, and the clock hitting about 3AM, I decided it was time to find a piece of quiet park space to have a short nap. Somehow some people managed to sleep in the old city itself, but with the incredible ruckus that was going on around them, they were either completely deaf, or completly drunk. I walked about a kilometer out of the city to a nice quiet park devoid of people, stuffed my bag with the extra t-shirts and tried to get some shut-eye. Unfortunately lying down in a cold park isn´t very conducive to sleep even without a massive party bustling around you, and the most I got was two hours of gentle dosing. My phone informed me it was 5AM and time to get up and get myself organised for the primary reason I´d come to Pamplona. I put on my clean white shirt, my white 3/4 shorts, re-tied my red sash and neckercheif and headed back to the old town. I found the plaza that had a luggage check in, and checked in my small backpack (I´d left the big one in the train station at Barcelona). I found my way to the bull run path, and found two other Australian guys who were preparing themselves for the even as well.

We chatted about stuff in general, and slowly the path became more and more compressed with people. Despite the claims earlier, the group was primarily made up of Spaniards, Americans and Australians. I would argue that some of the Australians were the most nationalistic, with aussie flag stubbie holders around wrists and flags around necks being prominent in a few places. As we waiting, there were a few Spaniards reading the morning´s newspaper which detailed the results of the previous day´s (Saturday) run. It was very interesting and confidence boosting to see what kind of information they documented. It started with a description of how long the bulls took to run the course, followed by the injury report. According to this very informative paper, which used graphs and charts to transcend language, there were 104 first aid calls during the days run. It detailed at exactly which points along the run these calls were made, and then gave a pie chart of types of injuries inflicted. It is probably known to a lot of my Australian readers that two of our countrymen were injured on this particular day, including one guy getting gored through the butt / thigh area. This paper showed in graphic detail how this occured, and then we pondered the pie graph showing what kind of injuries we were likely to receive if we were hit by the bulls.

The following page then showed the six bulls that were running today, on our run, and the class of bull it was. Being a Spanish word, I had no idea what it meant, however a Spaniard looking over our shoulder quickly informed us: "Oh, yeah they´re the biggest class!". The smallest bull we were running with weighed in at 650KG, the others being very close to 700KG, with one breaching that mark.

Needless to say, the progressing minutes got more and more intense, with the crowd really starting to get into it, various chants of various languages went up, and us three Australians looked at each other a little nervously and we mentally steeled ourselves for the ordeal ahead. Tightening our shoes, and then following suit with the rest of the Spaniards and rolling up a few pages of newspaper which were supposed to be used to whack the bulls as they run past, we got ready for the start of the run. I started at about 300 meters from the start of the course, basically at the top of the first hill. From here, the course kinked left for about 50 meters and then had a sharp right turn for the final stretch to the arena. The place was absolutely packed with wall to wall people, and I had no understanding of it was possible for anyone to move, let alone 6 massive bulls to go charging through the group. At about 7:55, however, the crowd started to move a little and people spread throughout the length of the course. I moved another 50 meters or so up the course, and then before I knew it the first gun sounded.

The crowd of runners roared, and people started lightly jogging up the course. Some more brave souls stayed on the sides of the roads, firmly holding their ground. The first gunshot only indicates that the bulls are being prepared for release, and that they´ll be on their way shortly. About 20 seconds after this, the second gunshot fired to indicate that the bulls had been released. At this noise, the noise level tripled, and the crowd surged forward with an indescribable urgency. Everyone ran as hard as they could, and turning the final corner, unto the last 400 meter stretch, I was running like I never have, constantly flicking my head back to see what if there was a rather annoyed looking male bovine behind me. Everyone else was doing pretty much the same thing, and the problem this invokes is that many people slip over on the slimy cobbled surface. Dodging these unfortunate souls, and maintaining my own uprightness, I continued to surge up the street, and about 100 meters up the stretch, the clamoring of hoofs and the roar of people gradually built up in crescendo until suddenly I was forced, nearly unwittingly, to the right side of the road. At this point I might describe that this final strech of path was about 8 or 9 meters across, including about 1 meter either side of curb.

Suddenly the bulls, packed in a tight group came roaring past, and luckily by this point everyone had managed to get to the wall, at least 5 people thick managing to squeeze into less than a meter of space. The massive animals thundered past not more than 2 meters away from me, and knowning that the worst danger was now in front of us and moving away, the crowd roared and started charging after the bulls. The bulls run at about 20K´s an hour, and understandbly no human runner could get close. So we charged in their wake and got another few hundred meters up the course, when the steer came up behind us. A few people thinking it was another rampaging bull freaked out and charged to the side. The steer is brought up behind the bulls to ensure that they keep moving forward and don´t get distracted and start charging people, but being a neutered animal with a cowbell around its neck, it is a fairly placid creature, and whilst I wasn´t able to give one of the bulls a whack with my paper baton, I was able to give the steer a good couple of smacks on the rump.

A minute or so later, completely out of breath I made it to the final corridor into the arena, and thinking that my adrenaline was all worn out, I got closer to the entrace gates. Even as I type this I can feel an incredibly chill through my whole body, as walking through the doors to the bull arena is definitely the biggest rush I´ve had in my entire life. Ten thousand or so people in the spectator stands are all cheering at the top of their lungs, and walking through those huge doors into the arena at the centre of their discourse makes you feel like the absolute king of the world. I felt it start a few meters before stepping through the door and yelled "Yeah... Yeah... YEEEAAAAAHHHHH" in the biggest braveheart style scream you could imagine and ran around with a couple hundred other people that hand managed to make it that far before they closed the arena gates. The rampaging bulls had been ushered back into a safe area, and those left in the arena were left high fiving and cheering each other on. The look on everyone´s face, regardless of nationality spoke exactly the same words that were "Yes, we made it, and we´re OK!".

This revelry lasted for about 10 or so minutes, and I can garauntee you, dear reader, that the chills and excitement didn´t subside for this entire period. However, at the end of this time, it was time for the next round of activities as a younger bull, probably about half the size of the big bulls was let out into the arena to frolic with the runners. This bull had its horns taped up with cork to remove the dangerous sharpness of a natural horn, but bursting through the gate he picked up at least one revelrer, and carried him halfway across the arena before flicking him into the air. The young bull then ran around through the crown, and all of the runners now left in the arena ran from side to side trying to avoid his charge. This wasn´t too difficult, as if you saw the bull running directly toward you and you weren´t one of the more braver souls bent on becoming the next champion matador, you would run at a right angle to his path. Assuming you hadn´t made direct eye contact with him and he´d fixated on this new challenge, you could run at a right angle to his path and would generally remain unscathed. That said, even those who copped a full on charge by the young bovine and were flicked up into the air, got up a few seconds later, seemlingly unhurt. The main trick was, if you were struck by the bull, you simply stay in the fetal position on the ground. If you begin to get up whilst the creature is still warily eyeing you, he will charge again until you stay down for the count.

The crowd in the arena, at least ten thousand strong, cheered and roared in accordance with what was going on. If the bull struck someone, flicked them into the air or carried them for some distance along the arena, the crowd would respond with a loud "Oooohhh", and if someone managed to jump the bull whilst he was standing still, the crowd would give a loud cheer of appreciation. What the crowd didn´t appreciate was ganging up on the bull. Occasionally the bull would stop to take account of his situation, and some of the runners would whack him with their batons, or several would grab him at once, much to the dissaproving whoots and whistles by the crowd who felt it unfair. Probably the best hit I saw was when the bull charged a group of runnings lingering near the fence, and threw no less than 6 or 7 directly over it into the air gap between the fence and the crowd.

Personally I was content in simply dodging the angry bovine, letting the more adventurous do the whacking and the jumping. After 5 to 10 minutes the young bull would get tired, and the herders would send out the fully grown, cowbell wearing steer who would settle the young bull immediately and guide him back out of the ring. A fresh young bull would then be sent out, and this cycle repeated itself 5 or 6 times. After this, the whole show was ended, about 10AM, and the crowd left the arena, and the runners left the stage.

The incredible buzz stayed with me for the rest of the day, and after gathering my wits, I found my way to the baggage reclaim to get my things. The line was about an hour long, and I met up with some of the Americans I´d talked to on the train. It was within this group that I met a 3 very cool American girls who´d been studying Spanish in Grenada: Jeanine, Aleen and Chelsea. After some chatting in the line, and a lot of waiting, we eventually recovered our belongings. The girls organised their bus tickets out of Pamplona, and we then grabbed some food and spent the rest of the day in a park away from the ruckus of the old town. Within this park there was some kind of lumberjack olympics going on, with wood chopping competitions and the like, but we were content to sit on the grass and catch up on some missed sleep from the previous 24 hours. I learned that Jeanine was heading to Barcelona herself for a couple days, and I gauranteed that I would meet up with her the next day and show her some sights. After handing her my Barcelona map as collateral for meeting up, I hung out with them for the remainder of the day until my train arrived, at which point I bid my farewell and headed back to Barcelona.

The whole weekend was probably one of the most incredible experiences I´ve ever had in my life, and I doubt that I´ll ever see as big a party as I did in Pamplona that weekend. The vibe of the place was unbelievable and the rush I got from successfully completing the run, and then challenging the bulls in the arena is second to none. I cannot describe how happy I am to be able to say that I partied in the Festival of San Fermin, participated in the Encierro (Running of the Bulls) and came away unscathed with such an awesome story.

Short Catchup

2007-07-07T10:24:00.001+01:00

Ok, so this post is just going to be a quick roundup of the following two days from the last post, because I really want to get stuck into the weekend following them.

So here we go: Basically we slept in a bit the next day, mainly because by the morning Ian and Lisa had been struck down by the evil Paella illness, and none of us were in a huge mood to do anything. Part of this mucking around involved going to the train station. Ian got tickets to Valencia for himself and Lisa, whilst I got myself a ticket to Pamplona. We went out and got some lunch, mucked around for a couple hours and then went back for a nap.

After this we decided to go get a coffee and beer. Whilst sitting in a nice little cafe on the middle of Las Ramblas (the main Barcelona drag), I happened to notice Adam, a guy who I´d hung out with the first night I was in Paris. Waving him over, he and his New Zealand friend, Holly, he´d met at his hostel joined us and ordered some food. They convinced me to join them on a pub crawl that evening, Ian and Lisa weren´t so keen as they were heading to Valencia the next day.

Adam and Holly went off to get themselves sorted for the nights shenanigans and Ian, Lisa and myself went off to find our own dinner. After a nice Italian meal, sort of like a ritzy La Porcetta, I said my goodbyes to Ian and Lisa, not expecting to see them until London, and headed off to the pub crawl.

I arrived late, just before they were moving from the first to the second bar. I quickly downed my first free beer and shot, and followed to the second bar. I´m not going to detail what happened very thoroughly, because honestly, it wasn´t a great night. At the second bar one chick grabbed my ass a few times, only to turn super cold a bar or two later, and the whole crowd just became less and less social as the evening progressed. I wasn´t drinking that heavily, and tried to talk to as many people as I could, but the vibe was just all wrong. I left with Adam after the 4th bar sometime after 1AM, deciding that the final destination (some club) wasn´t worth the effort.

We found the main intersection, however I wasn´t too sure on which direction we should head. I asked one Spanish guy who wasn´t much help, and there were two girls standing a few meters away with suitcases and such. I asked them for the direction to Las Ramblas, which they were able to provide. I´m still not sure exactly how I kept the conversation going, but I learned in short order that they´d just flown into Barcelona and hadn´t worked out a hostel to stay in. This is past 1AM on a Friday night, and Adam and I looked at each exchanging the "I think they´re screwed" glance. We convinced them to follow us to the main strip assuring that we´d be able to find them some accomodation. After checking a few hostels around the place, we ended up at Adam´s that had a few spare beds. He sorted that all out and I headed back to mine.

The next day I met up with Adam at his hostel. The Norwegians were just getting their stuff together and were heading out to find an apartment to stay in for the next week or two, so Adam and I went to do some sightseeing. Not much to talk about really, I took him to the main sights and such. We both organised train tickets to Nice, which took about 2 and a half hours of waiting at the train station. I also had the opportunity of helping a very attractive French girl to get her ticket to Valencia, as she had arrived at the station too late to be served by the ticket windows. There are machines that allow you to buy train tickets to common destinations (such as Valencia), and she informed me that she couldn´t use these as she didn´t have a credit card. I suggested to use mine and she pay me in cash, an opportunity that she was overjoyed to engage. I sorted that out, Adam and I left to get some dinner and checked out the Magic Fountains. These were pretty cool, basically a massive fountain display that moved and changed colour in accordance with some generic classical music. The whole thing was pretty nice, and after the show was over we parted ways and I crashed out at the hostel.

The next day, I headed to Pamplona....

Barcelonian Extravaganza

2007-07-05T11:04:00.000+01:00

The first full day of Barcelona started with a wander through the main food market. It's quite an incredible place, the amount of fresh fish and fruit was mind blowing. Certainly seafood is in the majority, however there were various other meats available as well. This includes whole skinned rabbits, skinned lambs heads and various other animal body parts which I'm not sure I want to identify. After a few minutes of walking through the place my stomach started to turn a little, indicating that that it was time to leave. I should make a point, however, about the freshness of the seafood available. Most of the lobsters and crabs were still moving their appendages around in a slow dance announcing the recentness of their catch. If you can't wait to get the stuff home to eat or perhaps, like me, you don't have a kitchen to take it home to, there are several of the fish stalls that are also like kiosk restaurants where you can pick your catch of the day and they'll cook it up for you on the spot. Ian was very impressed, and made the commitment to come back for dinner. We did so, however the whole place was completely closed. It was surreal to see an area that was so incredibly bustling with life shut down into such a ghost town. It took a minute or two of Ian's convincing to make me believe we were actually looking at the same place.

The fruit part of the market was just as amazing, and I have had several fresh juices from there already. You can also get a plate of sliced fruit for about 2 euros, the quality of which is fantastic. We got an english breakfast of bacon, eggs and potato at one of the stalls and continued some general wandering throughout the day.

We didn't see a lot, though the main strip, Las Ramblas, is very very busy the whole time. It is basically the main walking strip of Barcelona, and the number of street performers is truly amazing. Most of them do the living statue thing, and there is a lot of interesting variety in this. Some will simply do the ¨Look at me stand still for ages¨, though others are a lot more original and will do a little movement or trick when you give them some money.

After killing a few hours wandering up and down the strip, we did a bike tour run by the same company we did in Paris. The guy running this one was an Australian (Perth), and had been living in Barcelona for the past 4 years. He explained various interesting quirks about the city, describing how the locals call themselves ¨Catalan¨ or some such, and that they don´t exactly consider themselves Spanish as such. They have their own language, which apparently isn´t as close to Spanish as you might reckon, and they deliberately change laws to separate themselves from the rest of Spain. This includes the legality of street drinking and public nudity. As you might start to realise, this is a very liberal city. The bike tour took us to some of the major sights of Barcelona, of which there are not too many. There is a massive cathedral that they´ve been building for the past hundred years or so and are only about half way. The government isn´t helping with funding and neither is the Catholic church. Apparently the whole thing is funded by the money it makes off tourists going in and out of the joint. It was designed by a guy named Gaudi, who has a very unique style of architecture. I like some of the cathedral, the Sagrada Familia, but it has some weird sculptures of bunches of fruit on top of some of the towers which I just find plain weird.

The tour continued to their version of the Arche de Triomfe, a cool park with an awesome fountain full of ducks and little baby ducks, and by this stage I hope I don´t need remind the good reader of my fondness for the Anatidae. We continued on to the beach, where various art works both constructed by man and of man himself, or to be more precise in this case, herself, were to be found. We lounged here for half an hour or so, sampling a generic local brew, before heading back to the the bike shop. I might point out at this stage that it was not a simple matter of just riding from place to place, primarily because the tour guide wasn´t too concerned with keeping a lesuirely pace that garaunteed all would follow. Neither had he instituted something like Team Kaboose, that those who´ve read the Paris entry might recall being quite an excellent idea. Considering it was the same tour company I found this a bit odd, but there were several instances where he had to stop the few that had actually kept up with him, whilst he turned around and herded the stragglers. This was not for lack of athleticism on their part, but the lights change quite quickly in Barcelona, and many were left dangling simply because they didn´t want to brave the significantly heavier vehicles that tend to cross your path on the regular Barcelonian street.

Eventually we made it back, and after a nice dinner of Japanese fare, I convinced Ian and Lisa to accompany me to a local jazz bar known as ¨Harlem Jazz Club¨ not too far from where we were staying, on the recommendation from a very nice English girl I met on the bike tour. As I expected, Ian wasn´t too keen on the music and they left after a song or two, but I enjoyed my time there until close. The interesting thing about this place was that it consisted of improvisational artists. Every song or two one of the musicians would change, and it astonished me how well they could play together when I expect they had never rehearsed as a group. Excellent musicians obviously, though one guy who took the mic wasn´t so great. There was a Spanish girl who ripped up the mic, and a black guy who could scat very well, but it was definitely those with an instrument who stole the show. The main guy who seemed to be running the show was wearing an American cowboy hat, and I assume was from the south, as all of the numbers he was involved with (about 50%) had a very country bent. Some were definitely blues jazzy, however a couple were real knee slapping, hoe down stuff. Nice for a change, but I hope it´s not like that every Tuesday. I wandered back home a couple hours after midnight.

The following day we decided to take the cable car over Barcelona which offered some nice views of the city and its expanse. The whole place is fairly sprawling, with very few high rises to speak of. It is quite clear where the new, business area of town is being built up. Before heading off to the launching tower we decided to try this Paella thing that Ian was so keen on. We were directed to a very authentic Spanish restaurant not far from the market. Greeted in Spanish by who I think was the owner that didn´t speak a word of English, we eventually managed to order the seafood paella. Originally Ian was going to get the seafood one, and I another, but we were quickly informed in a roundabout way that the paella was for at least 2 people. Lisa decided to jump on the wagon and we ordered for three, and half an hour later a very large and very hot baking dish was brought out with the dish inside. It was very nice, very salty and consisted of rice, mussels, clams, two types of prawns, and other seafood bits and pieces which my limited knowledge of seafood could not identify. The whole thing was very good, and it was cool to eat in a real Spanish restaurant.

The cable car queue wasn´t short, but after about a half hour of waiting, we were in the little cabin with about 10 other people, slowly winding our way across the harbour. Hovering above docks and water at about 50 meters gives quite a view, and not the smallest amount of vertigo. The whole trip only lasted a few minutes, but I was able to snap some good photo´s that give a good sense of how big Barcelona actually is. It was quite clear that the places we´d been hanging around (where most of the entertainment is) is really quite a localised area of the city.

After getting to the hill, we caught another gondola up it, to see some of the parkland which we were assured by an English chick from whom we asked for directions was ¨Loads of fun¨. Intrigued how a simple park could harbour such wonders, we had a wander around and quickly found a castle or fortress like place that looked over the docklands. This place was pretty cool, and had several large cannons mounted on the precipes. We overlooked the docks for a while and the little trucks that were buzzing about all of the crates, moving them from ship to truck and vice versa were almost comical. There were no less than 10 moving at any one time and, it appeared, in no particularly orderly fashion. They really resembled ants running around the place, however I can assure you that even though I say little trucks, these things could straddle three shipping containers high and were about half as long, as they were used to stack and destack the containers. It was during this little visage that Ian got shat on by a seagull, and so we decided to head back down the hill.

After a short siesta back at the hostel the three of us went out to an Irish pub and tried to guess the songs that were being played on the TV before the little blurb came up informing you of such. This mingled in with some interesting conversation on music in general coupled with some musings on life, goals and the purpose of each of our trips proved to be one of the most enjoyable afternoons I´ve had so far.

Later on we found ourselves heading down towards the marina area we had visited a couple days earlier, had some Italian food for dinner, continued our musical discussions and headed towards another bar I wanted to check out. This proved an interesting walk, as Lisa had managed to ingest the perfect amount of alcohol for her system and was coming out with some of the funniest and weirdest stuff I´d ever heard her say. Anyone that knows Ian and Lisa even slightly will understand the coochie coo and baby talk stuff they seem to let out every now and then, and Lisa started posing the questions of whether Ian ever broke out in the stuff with me. The whole thing was quite funny, and eventually we ended up at Chupitos shots bar. This place was packed with Americans celebrating 4th of July, and we were quickly greeted inside by a guy who told us as much, and quickly started rambling a bunch of crap before telling us that we couldn´t be Australian, because of the way we pronounced ¨Past¨. We later found out that this guy was actually a gay kiwi pretended to be American because he´d been hanging out with some of them since the early afternoon. We bumped into another Australian girl from Gundagai, Cheryl, to whom we directed several jokes related to dogs sitting on various types of food bearing rectangular objects. I ordered a round of shots, as is the custom in the venue. The wall was covered with hundreds of different types, however this proved absolutely useless as the chick behind the counter couldn´t understand me enunciating any of them. I reverted to ¨Just give us 4 shots¨, ¨Strong?¨, ¨Yeah sure, why not!¨. She whipped out 4 glasses, poured about 4 different somethings in them, lit them all on fires and gave us a series of straws. These we proceeded to suck down quickly, as I was concerned the straw would melt and I´d soon be inhaling some kind of toxic straw smoke. Luckily this wasn´t the case, but we decided not to hang around the place too long due to the packed crowd of Americans, and headed down the street a couple places to the one we´d had those wonderful Mojito´s a few days before. We spent the next hour or so there having a drink and discussing things Australian and British, as Cheryl had been living in London for the past year or so.

On entering this place however, I felt the urge to rush directly to the toilet. A sudden panic attack struck me as I realised there was no toilet paper, yet the urge to use the facilities was rapidly increasing. I spied a roll in the womens toilet, and in quick ninja style swiped it from their counter (the absence of which Lisa would later bemoan), and quickly realised that perhaps the paella we´d eaten earlier that day may not have agreed with my system as well as I´d thought it had. Ian and Lisa would confirm this the following day as they too were struck with the same rather uncomfortable affliction. I felt pretty poor for the rest of our time in the bar, and thankfully not too long later we made our way home.

Thankfully this was my only episode, however Ian and Lisa´s lasted most of following day, Lisa informing me the next morning that come 4AM, she´d hardly been able to lie in one place, for fear of rupturing. Luckily I´d packed Immodium, of which Lisa quickly and gladly partook, however Ian decided to take the path of running it´s course. Considering come Monday I´ll have been travelling for 4 weeks, and I´ve been trying several of the local cuisines in each place, I think I´ve been quite lucky to only have been struck down once.

The next day would be a very quite one, with a couple of unexpected surprises.... Stay tuned!

The Pyrenees to Barcelona

2007-07-03T12:40:00.000+01:00

The electronic music festival was pretty funky. We got there a little late, probably with about 2 hours of the thing left to go, and the DJ´s that were on at the time were, well, lets just say they were experimental. They were producing live, and the tunes lack a lot of consistency and it felt like they were just kinda "Ooh, press that button!". However they finished their set about half an hour later, and the next (and final) group were much better. Kind of like ambient electro. The whole thing was in a park along the main river in Toulouse, and it was basically hippy central. Apparently they´re not called hippies over here, but take that vision you have at home of the quintessential hippy and you´re pretty much on. Most of them have dogs too. The interesting thing about this is that the dogs are rarely on a leash, however they all get along really well. No bitch fights here!

The other interesting thing is that the French don´t really care what happens. The toilets (known as water closets) were a fair way off, so all of the French guys just use the massive brick wall that runs along the side of park. They care so little in fact, that there were people sitting on the grass not more 20 meters from this pissing wall who didn´t bat an eyelid. Well, I´d had a few beers by this point, and when in Rome...

Following the electronic music festival we went to the main square (Capitol) where we were treated to an orchestra of the finest quality. This orchestra was big, so much so that it comprised of no less than 2 harps. A lot of orchestra´s I´ve seen in the past struggle to have one. It was a great combination of classical music, some which I was familiar with, and other compositions not so much. There were no less than ten thousand people all crammed into the square to watch this spectacle, which included acrobatics of trampoline, juggling and one guy who sort of twisted and turned on this crescent moon thing. It was quite amazing to see, as he would hold onto some bars and extend himself fully out horizontally without the slightest shudder. This dude had abs. He was about to just gracefully move himself around, upside down, wherever without a hint of effort. It was like his little moon thing was in zero gravity, and I´m sure that was the intention.

We were even treated to a small scuffle than started out between an older chap who clipped a younger lad around the back of the head for making too much noise. This was quickly broken up by all around; oh those fiesty French!

The next day Christian and Heather treated us to a drive through the Pyrenees in their car which they´d picked up the previous evening. The hills and such were interesting, and a good change of scenery from all of the cities we´d seen so far. Unfortunately the day wasn´t the clearest, but the low hanging coulds made for some good sights. My camera really didn´t do them justice.

The excursion included a walk around a little lake hugged by the hills, along one side which was quite challenging and rocky. The result of this was that Heather went tumbling down one side of the hill, headed straight toward the lake, however managed to stop her acrobatics just before the big splashing finale. What was most surprising was even though this somersault was along a bunch of very uncomfortable looking rocks, she stood up without a scratch! A little shaken to be sure, but it was good that she remained unharmed. After hauling her back up to the path, we finished the walk and returned to the relative safety of driving our way around the hills rather than trekking them. I say relatively, as the roads themselves weren´t short of hazards themselves. Between the impossibly skinny width which resolved in very slow car passing so as to not scratch ones vehicle against one side, or more importantly not to roll it down the other, to the variety of bovines that were littered around the place chewing their cud. Most of them had the sensibility to stay off the asphalt, but occasionally one would meander across the path oblivious to the danger of that strangely shaped metal bull barreling straight towards it. Thankfully we didn´t end up attempting the ultimate cow tip with our car, and we got a few interesting photos of the white creatures milling around the grass. There were hundreds about the place, and each had a cowbell around their neck. This is one part of the country where I needn´t reiterate Christopher Walken , as with the cacaphony of noise, there was definitely no need for more cowbell.

The whole drive went quite well, and upon returning home we polished off a few bottles of wine and played some cards.

The next day saw us boarding a train for Barcelona. The first couple hours of the journey were as uneventful as any train ride, however upon reaching Spain and having to change to a Spanish train, things turned a bit more more interesting. It was a mix of backpackers and general Spanish folk hopping on and off which saw the train getting more and more full the closer we got to the city. It was at one point that the guy next to me got up to give his seat to two older ladies, who gave that recently vacated position to who I imagine must have been a grandson/son. He was a little Spanish kid no more than a couple feet high, and seeing his mother was standing he squashed up as close as he could to me so that his mother could share the seat as well. I think she was a bit concerned that I might take offence and tried to urge him to sit properly in the seat, but he was a cute kid, and I assured her that he wasn´t bothering me, although I did move my ipod to the other knee in case he got curious and decided he wanted to mash some buttons. His grandmother sat down and he spent the next half an hour propping himself up and down on my leg trying to look out the window, and the whole thing was quite funny.

Upon arriving to Barcelona the feel changed from France very quickly. I really like this city and I haven´t even been here for 24 hours yet. Any words I´d been told about the Spanish not being any friendlier than the French are outright lies as far as I´m concerned, and I´ve enjoyed the atmosphere quite a lot. We checked out the Australian pub just to see what it was like, and I can confirm that Foster´s overseas doesn´t taste too bad at all. It was very bland compared to all the Belgian beer I´ve been drinking recently, but it was a nice refreshing lager in the Barcelonian heat. It´s kind of like Carlton Cold, but with a bit less bite if that makes any sense. I look forward to trying it when I get back to Oz to see if it´s the same.

We had some late night dinner, as is the custom over there, and after depositing Lisa back in the hostel who was getting tired, Ian and I went to another bar and met up with a couple of American girls with whom we spent the remainder of the open hours of the night. We got kicked out of the last joint about 3:30, and headed back home.

I am very keen to check out the rest of this city, and expect that I am going to enjoy it very much. In other news, the Parisian photos are up.

Cheese in Toulouse

2007-06-30T16:19:00.000+01:00

The last day of Carcassonne was fairly uneventful. After seeing around the castle, which by night is very impressive from a distance, there wasn't a lot left to do. After seeing that the train station had lockers the previous evening, we checked out of our hotel at 10 the next morning and caught the shuttle into the new town. It was at this point, however, that we realised that the train station lockers weren't actually available for use. They themselves were locked away from the general public, so we were stuck with our big ol' bags for the rest of the day. Deciding that we'd seen as much of the city as was necessary, we found a nice little patch of grass by the canal (and apparently the canal runs from coast to coast along southern France. Quite a feat really), and set up camp for the next 5 hours.

This was a pleasant enough day, although we bought a bottle of wine which we were subsequently unable to open. I went to a few different shops trying to find a corkscrew, but the only ones available were relatively expensive souvineir styles, which I didn't really want to carry around with me. They also looked like they would break after a few uses. So Ian decided that warm beer (they don't refridgerate their beer in many stores, it's all on the shelf) would be ok, but after a few sips of a room temperature Leffe , I think he quickly changed his mind.

Eventually the train arrived and we made our way to Toulouse. A former work mate, Christian, was very gracious in offering us his abode for a few days. This is great, as finding accomodation in Toulouse is very difficult. We had a nice home cooked meal (having some real vegetables for the first time in a long time), and they showed us around the city of Toulouse. We stopped off in a Belgian beer cafe, with at least 15 different taps along the bar. This was great, but smoky, and we finished the night off with a walk along the other side of the city.

The next day we slept in a bit and did our own exploring of the town. There's not much to speak of really, it's a fairly simple city without a lot of different touristy sites, but a lot of different shops. There's an interesting period happening in France at the moment, which is that all of the shops are having sales. Apparently the pricing is very tightly regulated, and shops are only allowed to sell below the recommended retail prices twice a year. We happen to be here during one of those periods.

Lisa bought a new handbag, and I decided to get a pair of Birkenstock rip off's, as Ian and Lisa were having a lot of success with their genuine articles. I quickly regretted this decision, as every step felt like they were going to kick off into the distance, and I determined that karma is telling me that I simply was not designed to own open footwear. I haven't ditched them yet, but I hold low promise for their future in my already bulging backpack.

We met up with another former Permian workmate, Seth, who had been telling me for quite some time about a local Toulouse specialty, that is a cheese fondue. We went to a tea house to have tea and cake. There was extreme confusion with regards to Ian's cake, which ended up being that the cake he ordered was too small and required him to choose another. After this we had a couple of Heinekens waiting for Christian to finish work, and then got a group together of the 5 of us (Ian, Lisa, Christian, Heather (Chris's girlfriend), and myself) and Seth with 3 of his friends from the area.

Finding the cheese restaurant, we ordered the fondue and also what is known as a Raclette. It is basically half a wheel of cheese with a heating element above it. Upon waiting a couple of minutes for the top of cheese to melt, you scrape this melted layer off of the wheel and over a bunch of potatoes. The fondue is fairly basic, essentially consisting of a pot of melted cheese into which you dunk pieces of bread. I became quite adept and the dunking and twirling, pulling out very large globs of bread and cheese from the pot. I was named honorary 'Cheese Twizzler' for the evening. White wine was served with the meal and one of Seth's friends, the Norwegian Frederick from Fredericksta, urged us to drink as much of this as possible, as apparently it dissolves the cheese in your stomach.

The amount of cheese eaten by all was nothing short of extreme, but the whole meal was very satisfying. I believe it will take several days of fasting before even a portion of the energy ingested from that incredible amount of stored fat will be burnt.

Following the restaurant, Seth ushered us into a very dark little venue full of Shisha's. He apparently knew the place well, and after chatting with the lady running the place, took us downstairs to a darker room, even more reminiscent of an Arabic or Indian opium den. Strange lights and curtains were strewn around the place with couches and cusions adorning the walls. One very large Shisha was in the middle of our group, and a flavoured tobacco cone was inserted. Upon this is placed a hot coal, a new mouthpiece was inserted into the handle thing and the puff-puff-pass ritual began. The smoke is surprisingly fine and I was hardly able to tell I was inhaling any smoke at all, until you exhale and a very nice apply flavoured smoke escapes from your lungs. The Shisha is essentially a massive water pipe, so the smoke is very well filtered. The whole thing lasted for a good half an hour to an hour, and was supplemented with tea. The tea was incredibly sweet and fruity, which was very nice and complimented the Shisha well.

After we had exhausted the tobacco in the thing, we left the venue. Seths part of the group dispersed at this point, needing to get to public transpot before it shut down. The rest of us found another Belgian beer bar, and had a round of drinks. This was done outside, as the place was far too full and smokey. The bartender was very pleased to serve some Australians and informed us that his ex-girlfriend was from East Doncaster. I was informed of this fact later on, and didn't have the opportunity to let him know that was essentially where I lived. I'd like to think I'd have gotten a free drink or something, but Ian took a more cynical bent and seemed to think I'd have been lucky to get a reaction at all. One of the patrons tried to start a conversation with me, but finding I didn't speak French, it quickly dissapated. She was looking over in my direction for the rest of the time we were there, however, and it was definitely the most infuriating experience I've had with the language gap so far. Bugger being able to order a meal in the local dialect, I can point out things that sound tasty in whatever language you care to present me. However if a pretty French chick starts talking to you in a bar, they don't exactly provide you with a menu of responses to progress the encounter. We left the bar soon after, and finished up with another beer at Christians place before calling it a night.

Today Christian and Heather took us around Toulouse to see some of the few daylight sights to be seen, and after having a tomato, cheese and herb pancake for lunch, we've retired back to the house whilst the girls check out some of the shopping sales. I look forward to checking out the electronic music festival that is happening in one of the parks in a few hours, and sometime during that we're moving to the main square in Toulouse where an orchestra and acrobatic show is being performed in honor of the new metro line that has opened up this weekend. It has been free metro for all this weekend, with a lot of fanfare and general hoo-hah. I've never seen a town so excited about a new piece of public transport.

Trier Photos Updated

2007-06-29T12:21:00.000+01:00

Pics

Disneyland and Castles

2007-06-27T14:14:00.000+01:00

After carefully planning our route to get to Euro Disney (not that anywhere called it that), we got up early and began our journey. Aside from a brief rain scare the trip was uneventful, and we made it to the park about 10:30, half an hour after it opened. Our hope that a weekday would be relatively quiet was quickly quashed, and the queues had begun. The first was to get our ticket into the park, of which there were a few options.

The park is actually split into two. There is 'Disneyland Park' and also 'Walt Disney Studios' park. We chose a ticket that only let us into one (as we were only spending a day there, we determined that we'd only have time for the one) and chose, of course, the Disneyland park. I can only assume that the Walt Disney Studios is basically like Warner Brothers Movieworld, but am not exactly sure. At any rate, we made our way into the park, along with several thousands of other peope, and started to look around.

Disneyland in Paris is broken up into Frontierland (like the old west), Adventureland (Indiana Jonesey), Fantasyland (faries and pretty stuff), and Discoveryland (Buzz Lightyear and sci fi stuff). Each of these 'lands' had usually one premium roller coaster or form of ride. We went to Adventureland first and queued for a while to try the Indiana Jones ride. I say 'we', but actually only Ian and myself went on this one, Lisa was still paralysed with fear of rollercoasters. It was pretty good, if quite short, but got us in the mood for the rest of the day. As I mentioned, the queues were considerable. However, there was a thing called a "Fast Pass". For several of the more popular rides, you put your ticket into a machine which gives you another ticket to come back to this ride at a certain time (in a half hour window). At that time, you use this Fast Pass ticket to bypass the regular line, which seemed to cut the queue time in about half. Otherwise, each ride had an expected wait, which turned out to be quite accurate. The trick is you can only hold one Fast Pass ticket at a time, which prevents you from running around to all the rides collecting them. However, if you do end up waiting for a ride, they've been quite clever in making the lines quite entertaining in and of themselves. Each one is decorated in the theme of the ride, so in the case of Indiana Jones, we were walking through jungly areas, with jeeps and tents and so forth. It was very well done. In the case of Space Tours, the whole place was done up like a Star Wars base, with droids yapping on (mostly in French) complete with an animatronic C3PO and R2D2 arguing with each other, again in French. At least R2D2's bleeps and bloops seem to transcend language.

We got our Fast Pass ticket to the Space Mountain ride, which from my previous trip to Disney in LA, I expected to be the biggest and baddest. While waiting for our time window, we grabbed some lunch, and tried to convince Lisa to join us (we'd gotten her a ticket also). This failed, so we left Lisa to watch the Lion King musical production in the food area and headed off. The line again was fairly entertaining with a video of a lady explaining our mission and the safety procedures. The coupled with the screaming of the patrons already enjoying the trip made for an interesting atmostphere. The ride itself is indoors, and pitch black. There are several lit up asteroids that you go hurtling past, and various other lighting effects. It is by far the fastest and most enjoyable ride on the park. Later on in the day we would convince Lisa to join us, and she, while pale as a ghost, enjoyed it just as much as we did. In fact, on this second trip, I had the opportunity of being in the front of the thing which was even more intense.

Other rides we went on included Star Tours, as mentioned before, which includes the trip in a star speeder (more like a transport ship) which is actually one of those simulators that you sit in and it moves up and down, etc, whilst you watch a video screen which flies around in synch with the motion. The whole thing is very realistic, and I'd be extremely interested to see the whole thing from the outside, to see how they actually emulate the g-forces and feeling of movement in such a static context. The Buzz Lightyear ride involved sitting in a little pod which ran along a fixed track. You could spin the thing left and right with a joystick, and the aim was to shoot various objects within the environment with a laser gun to rack up points. The other significant ride was the Big Mountain Thunder somethingorother, which we didn't have a ticket for. This resulted in a line wait of just over an hour, complete with annoying kids running into the back of me. I soon learned that if I shifted my body left and right, the bag on my back would lightly bump their little heads, but they didn't really manage to learn the lesson of keeping a bit of distance. Oh well, the ride itself was pretty cool, but we certainly weren't going to wait another hour for the experience a second time.

Other interesting occurences included a couple of parades, one of which was very detailed. Several floats went past with all different characters from various Disney themes. We only caught the very start of another parade, as the characters were beginning their journey around the park, and this was the only chance I got to be anywhere near Donald. He didn't seem real keen on shaking my hand, but I got a couple photo's none the less. It's ok Donald, I can't stay mad at you!

The other rides included the famous "Its A Small World" with lots of little puppets dressed and acting in different nationalities, the Pirates of the Carribean ride, the Snow White and 7 Dwarves ride and a couple other small ones which elude me. These were all pretty tame, although the Pirates one was pretty cool, lots of animatronic pirates drinking and chasing wenches about the place.

To Willy and Mel, no, I didn't see or hear anything about the girl who died on the roller coaster. Also, I didn't see any roller coaster with that name either, so I think she was at the Studios park, but all the rides I went on at the Disney park seemed perfectly safe!

All in all it was a busy, crowded, but ultimately enjoyable day. Certainly didn't need more than a day there, but it would be interesting to see what the Studios park was all about.

The next morning we got up at 5:30 to get on the train down to Carcassonne, which was a 4 and a bit hour journey from Paris. Using my laundry bag as a neck pillow allowed a small amount of sleep on the trip, and upon arrival we found a shuttle to take us up to the medieval city, where our hostel is situated.

The medieval city is basically a very old fort that has been around for over a thousand years. Rebuilt a few times, the place is massive, and I could easily understand how impenetrable it must have been for armies of the time. There's plenty of the castle to see, even if the whole thing is a bit touristy. We had a local specialty, Cassoulet which was basically a bean stew with pork sausage and a bit of duck. It wasn't bad, but I'm not that keen on beans (the baked bean style). There's not a lot to say about the place, but we spent this morning doing an audio walking tour of the castle part of the fortress (they give you a little handheld MP3 player thing, and you press a button related to which part of the castle you're in and listen to the info) which was very interesting. The place has a rich history of being captured and recaptured several times over the centuries, and each time they do something different to the place, including buliding another wall around the place and more turret defenses, etc. At night they light the whole place up with many well positioned floodlights, and I look forward to going down into the new town tonight and getting some good photos of the lit fortress.

Unfortunately the computers in France have been fairly well locked down, and I haven't had a chance to upload any new photos yet, except for a couple of Trier, there's more of Trier to come though.

All in all, things are well, and it's been fun travelling with Ian and Lisa, both to have someone talk to, and also to have someone to laugh at my crap jokes and puns. I think Ian has enjoyed the reciprocal, however I don't think Lisa is quite as appreciative of our comedic genius. I've also had "It's a small world after all" stuck in my head for the past two days, and it shows no signs of relenting yet...

Paris au Trois

2007-06-24T21:30:00.000+01:00

I met up with Ian and Lisa a couple nights ago, though they didn't manage to arrive until about 9PM or so. I spent some time waiting for them in a bar talking to a French guy about various things. Not long after we'd started, a rugby league game between France and Great Britian started on the TV. He hadn't seen such a game before, so I tried to explain it to him and his mate, I hope they got the gist of it.

Eventually I found Ian and Lisa, who were ready to go and get some dinner. I hadn't eaten myself, so I joined them. They'd invited two other Australian guys, Matt and Brett, along with us, and we had a nice meal at the restaurant a few stores down the street from the hostel. After this I took them up to the Sacre Cour, as the view I'd seen from it during my wanderings through the day were quite impressive. Acting the tour guide, I found our way up there and after a few photos and a walk around it was time to call it a night.

The next day called for a sleep in, which unfortunately resulted in the missing of the hotel's breakfast. Ian picked up some fruit from the grocery store and we began the days touring. It took us from the hotel down to the "Latin Quarter" of Paris, named due to the high level of historical academia in the region, and that they all used to speak Latin there, rather than due to the current ethnic connotation. There was no salsa dancing. There was, however, the Notre Dam cathedral that we meandered around. Admittance was barred due to some kind of music spactacle that was being prepared, and a pile of chairs was being created in the doorway to block entry. An novel method to be sure.

Following this we bought some wine and baguettes and had lunch in the Luxembourg gardens. This was quite nice and there was an orchestra about thirty meters away from our bench playing various classical tunes. This was followed by a marching band that went around the gardens a bit and then started performing in a different section. I'm not sure if that is a regular Saturday occurence, but it was nice to see.

We moved from the gardens around more of this part of the city and I directed us to the Pantheon which was most impressive. A huge building, I got some nice shots of it, as it was sunny for the first time in a long time, but the queue and high entrance fee caused us to skip checking it out inside.

The Eiffel Tower came next, and we waited around for the "Fat Bike" tour guides to arrive. Ian and Lisa had coupons for the ride, and I decided to tag along for fun. Whilst waiting at the bike collection point, Ian happened to recognise a girl by the name of Kim, whom with which we'd attended primary school. His facial memory was excellent, and we spent the evening hanging out with she and her boyfriend, Cam. Cam, Kim and myself were allocated to the "Kaboose" part of the bike ride, which meant we got to wear flouro yellow jackets and ensure that no cars tried to drive in the middle of our bike group. This seemed a bit odd when we were told about the job, however made perfect sense as we started to clog up the roads of Paris. As a lot of the time, our group literally took up the whole road, it was our job to spread out and ensure no cars tried to overtake and take out any cyclers in the process. It was fun, and Cam and I also took up the guides challege of high fiving as many Parisians as we could to beat the previous record of 13. He got 21 and I got 20, and we both managed to high five a cop. The bike tour ended with a boat ride up and down the main river in Paris (the name eludes me at the moment), upon which we were given a few complimentary wines. The tour all up was quite enjoyable, however not much actual history was given of the buildings. It was more a sight seeing affair which included Notre Dam, riding around the Louvre (this was cool) and a few other significant monuments.

We made our way back to the hostel, and Cam used some of his Bali-tuned bargaining skills to pick up a flashing light Eiffel tower for $2.50. He then tried to sell it to a few other groups for $3, but wasn't so successful. Kim decided she wanted to keep it at any rate, and the nice little trinket was quickly tucked away in a bag.

The next day was a trip to Versailles. There wasn't a lot to see, except one -massive- garden with a huge variety of fountains. We arrived a bit late, 3PM, which was due to getting the wrong train which caused our 30 minutes trip to take about 2 hours. We also got up a bit late and missed breakfast again. At any rate, the gardens were very well maintained, and included quite a big rectangular lake upon which we rowed a small hired boat across for half an hour. Unfortunately after completing this, it was past 5 and all of the fountains had been turned off. This was a shame, as we'd only seen about half of it, if that. We cut our losses and headed back to Paris, finding the correct train this time.

For dinner I had my first try of Escargo (snails), which while after being pulled out of their shells look pretty horrible, don't taste too bad at all. My main meal consisted of Beef Bourguignon (I still don't know how to pronounce that correctly), which was excellent.

I'm very much looking forward to tomorrows adventures, which consist of a trip to EuroDisney. My main goal is to get a photo with a certain blue capped duck . The Indiana Jones ride sounds pretty fun too!

Dashed Dreams

2007-06-22T11:25:00.000+01:00

Well I got to Trier, booked into a very quaint little hostel run by a lady named Hille. The train trip was quick; Trier is only 50km from Luxembourg, just into Germany. I made my bed (every hostel gives you a set of sheets and you're expected to put them on. For 15 euros, I guess thats not unreasonable!), and headed out to wander.

Trier is apparently Germany's oldest city, claimed by the Romans in the first century BC. It was essentially a capital city of "Gaul" or as we know it, France. There are a few relics of this age, the most famous of which is the Porta Nigra, which was the gate to the city in those ancient times. There are still remnants of the wall that surrounded the place, and walking along the Moselle river was nice.

I made the comment in the last post about the French Luxembourgers not being particularly friendly, however just across the border in Trier, I sat down on a rock near the wall to study my map, and no sooner had I opened it up than a German lady spoke something to me, and after the puzzled expression I must have given, quickly added, "Can I help you?". She showed me where I was on the map, though I'd already worked that part out. Much more importantly she showed me which direction we were facing, which got my orientation in order and I was able to continue on my way. The service in the restaurant where I had a goulash with spatza (a kind of weird noodle) was also great, and generally I found everyone much nicer.

However, the main reason I went to Trier was to revisit the Amphitheater. I got more and more excited as I got closer to the place, and upon entering, the ticket guy directed me up a flight of rocky stairs. I was kind of hoping to enter through the front, and have the majesty of the place opened up to me just as I recall, but I decided to take his advice and headed up. At this point as I got up to the vantage point, my soul was crushed, as the whole place was covered in black tarp and stage, as the roadies were preparing the place for some mammoth concert. My dissapointment was palpable, and I spent about 10 minutes sitting up on the hill pondering my incredibly poor luck, meanwhile a tour of high school kids and very old people also arrived in various places and on top of the disspointment of the place being hardly recognisable, it was now also overrun with tourists. I decided to make the best of a bad situation, and had a look at the places the roadies hadn't sullied with their signs and banners. Thankfully this included the underground area where the gladiators and victims of various sports would prepare, and the dark, wet caverns reignited my imagination somewhat, and being alone I broke a few rules and got some photos in the more interesting areas. All in all I wouldn't describe it as a total failure, but I still have a mind to revisit again sometime and see it without the unholy fixings of touring spectacles.

I left the amphitheater and visited some Roman baths not far off, and this was great. There were some cool old relics here and there, and being alone in the whole place I delighted in playing with the timer on my camera, and running about the place taking photos of myself.

Back at the hostel, I had a drink with the other patrons, an Australian and a Quebecan (dont call them Canadian). The Aussie shared a bottle of white wine he'd been given, but it was warm, and I'm not huge on the white stuff. I had a small glass and headed to the room. In there, a German girl was unpacking her stuff, and she too was doing an internship in Luxembourg. Thats the third person Ive run into, staying in hostels and doing internships in Luxembourg. We chatted for a while, and then I went to get my goulash.

After returning to the hostel, the same group were gathered about the table, with another Quebecan and an American who turned out to be a soldier. Between him talking about the army and describing his friends wiccan religion, which included a story about how he saw some boys spirit in his closet, and the 5 bottles of wine they drank between a couple people, I decided to check a pub next door full of 50 year olds. It was as you would expect, but with a cool darts game, which I dared not disturb the couple of guys playing who were quite accurate throwers. So after a beer I went back to the hostel and seeing that the conversation in the living room wasn't much different, packed it in for the night.

The next morning I high tailed it to the station to get my train to Paris by 10. It was a normal train to a city called Saarbrucken, at which point we boarded a high speed train. However, something was technically wrong with this particular train, and as such it was relegated to the speed of a normal train. This was rectified in Lorenz, where we boarded a French TGV fast train, which didn't have such a fault, and whisked us in to Paris very promptly.

Paris is -huge-. I don't mean kinda big, I mean huge, like kilometers of city. My hostel is in the city, and it's still 5k's to, say, the Eiffel tower. I'm yet to see any of this stuff, as I spent the night with a bunch of people from my hostel. A Canadian guy, and American girl and a bunch of Australians. We went to a couple pubs and eventually I convinced them we should go out and check out some of the music festival that was all over the city. Unfortunately we didn't really move far. There were a couple of street performers we passed, but after talking with people this morning about what they saw, it appears I missed the majority of the good stuff. Pretty dissapointing considering the timing of when I was in Paris to see it, but sometimes things don't go as you expect.

Anyway, Ian and Lisa are supposed to arrive sometime tonight, so I'll probably go for a wander around some areas, but I'm not likely to go into any places until they're here. I'm sure they'll want to see the same things. It will be good to see some familiar faces. Whilst I have met plenty of friendly people (especially last night), it feels like a lot longer than 11 days since I've seen someone I know.

Luxembourg: The city of banking!

2007-06-20T13:30:00.001+01:00

Well there I was in Luxembourg. I've noticed as I get further and further away from the UK, the less and less people speak English. I guess this shouldn't come as such a surprise, but it does make getting around a bit more frustrating. I found myself at the bus stop, and one driver shot me an awful look when I tried to ask him if he spoke English, but in French. If you speak English straight up, they don't like you for being a foreigner, and if you -do- give it a go, they like you even less for buthchering their fine vocabulary. It's a no win, but c'est la vie. See what I did there? Ohhh yes.

Anyway, as the title says, Luxembourgs claim to fame is that they're one of the world centers for banking. Riveting stuff to be sure, but at the same time they have a lot of very nice scenery about the place. The whole place has been captured and recaptured about 20 times throughout history, so there are many relics of the place as a fortress. There is a lot of the original wall left, and I took a stroll along it, the day after I got there, snapping pictures here and there. It was quite nice, but it is also a city of hills. Amsterdam was dead flat, as was Antwerp and most of Belgium. Brussels had sort of one big hill, but Luxembourg has the city on top of a massive hill (where the fortress was/is), but also a lot of stuff in the valleys between the mountains. My hostel was included in this. As I trudged down one of these massive hills, I couldn't bear the thought of having to all my stuff back up it as some stage. Thankfully, the hostel offered a shuttle service back to the station for 2 Euro. Sold! My guidebook described the place as having "rolling hills". I can just see this authors description of Everest: "A challenging climb with a chilly summit. You may want to pack a jacket."

The hostel was quite nice, and very new. The place was finished about two years ago I think, and it was quite busy. The first night I got there I was fairly late, about 9:30PM, and I managed to convince the cafeteria to make me a pizza. I then shared this with a bunch of poms from Manchester and a Korean girl whom were all good company for the night, but left early the next morning. I had to move rooms myself (I stayed there two nights), after I got back from wandering, and found a very friendly French guy in there, by the name of what sounds like "Yoog". I'm sure its spelt differently. Anyway, he was poring over his laptop, programming a version of Tetris in Java. We chatted about programming for a while and grabbed some dinner in the cafeteria, along with another French guy. They were both actually living at the hostel, with internships in Luxembourg. Both of them were waiting for their respective flats to become available in France, from where they will commute to Luxembourg. They were both good company, and we discussed many things French, one such thing being that they use Belgians in their jokes the same way we would use the Irish. We all agreed that blonde women could be used in the same context. One interesting facet of the evening was that Yoog didn't like wine. I made the comment that he must have been excommunicated from his country for this; a Frenchman that doesn't drink wine? Sacre Bleu!

The next morning they both left quite early for their respective jobs, and there was one guy in our room who decided that because he had to get up at 7AM, so did the rest of the room. Throwing bags around, and causing zippers to make so much noise it was unbearable, I cursed him silently until he finally left the room, and its occupants, in peace. What a knob, tho I wouldn't say it to his face. He was a lot bigger than me.

About 10AM I had eaten breakfast, packed my things and was in the shuttle to the station, driven by a person of whose sex I was unsure. The painted nails spoke female, but the gruff voice and masculine face suggested otherwise. Either way, this driver was very cordial, if a bit aggressive in driving, however it seems Luxembourg traffic is quite brutal.

I then made my way to Trier. I was supposed to be meeting Ian in Paris today, but he has been delayed by a few days due to accomodation issues. Apparently he couldn't book any, though I had no such difficulty. I shall be preceeding him to Paris tomorrow, and ensuring that we all get the same room in the hostel. Until then I plan to explore Triet a bit. This place holds a special significance to me, as on a tour of Germany and France with my parents a good 12 or so years ago I recall stopping in a place called "Trier" and seeing my first Roman Amphitheatre. This made quite an impression on me, as it was quite a grand site, and at the time I was heavily into Asterix comics, and as such I had an understanding for what this place actually was. I am very excited to revisit the spot and see if I can recapture some of the childhood wonder. The only other thing I remember from that trip was a cruise along the Rhine river, which my brain has fused an association with boredom to. Whenever someone talks about boredom, I visualise the Rhine river.

Pics are up!

A Mexican, a Canadian and an Australian walk into a bar...

2007-06-19T10:28:00.000+01:00

Well the last few hours of Bruges were Ok. I went to the chocolate museum, and saw the history of it from the Aztecs to modern day chocolate production, including a demonstration of how the Belgians make pralines (filled chocolates). To George's daughter: Yes, the chocolate is a lot better over here!

So I left Bruges, and made my way down to Brussels. It is a pretty busy city, and by time I got there (around 9), there was little I could do except get my room and have a quick look around. In the map guide I had, it discussed a 1930's jazz bar that piqued my interest more than a little+ I wandered around the general area trying to find something that looked a bit old school, and eventually realised that the ultra-modern bar that I kept walking back and forth in front of was actually the place listed in my map! It would seem it has been refitted since the printing of my guide.

I found my way back to the hostel to find that there was a concert happening in the bar area. I went to check it out, only to find the last song in its final throes. Grabbing myself a drink, I started to chat to some of the people around, and it seems that most of them were involved in some kind of development program for underdeveloped countries. They come to this hostel a couple times a month and either present classes or attend them (I couldn't quite work out which), and this was something the hostel organised in conjunction with that. I chatted about this to two Belgian girls, however I have a feeling the seconds' English wasn't great, as she spent a lot of time smiling and nodding with a big smile, but albeit blank look on her face.

Not long after, another band came on and started performing. It was about a 7 or 8 piece band, with plenty of brass which is just my style. They were really good and moved from a great rendition of Herbie Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island" to some mambo and latin stuff, all the way back to old time jazz. It was really good, and Ill have some photos of them up shortly. Halfway through this I started to chat to a guy in an All Blacks shirt, though he was Belgian, not New Zealandish. We talked about Brussels and what was around and Belgian culture in general, and it was all very informative. He marked a whole bunch of places on my map to go check out, we went through a few different Belgian beers. The band finished, and we kept chatting away until early morning, and which point I figured I'd best get some sleep.

The next day I started wandering around Brussels with the Mexican guy from my dorm. He had been living in France for the past couple of years, and had come up to Brussels to open some art exhibition somewhere. We wandered about taking photos of this and that, but the pace was quite slow. Having had to get through the last few cities fairly quickly, I had developed quite a quick touring style, and I dont take many breaks. Antonio was much more content to stroll around and stop frequently. It didnt help that we got sort of lost and ended up walking in the same circle a couple of times.

I was most interested in checking out the comic museum. Belgians take comics -extremely- seriously, and they´re very ingrained into their natural culture. We found one place, but misread the sign, and it ended up being a scouting museum (more of a corridor, it was very small). We left that and went back to the hostel, but on the way found the real comic museum. I stayed to check it out and Antonio left for the hostel and a nap (siesta?).

The comic museum was pretty cool, so many different comic strips but -heaps- of Tintin stuff which I appreciated. I´ve read all the comics and seen the cartoon versions, so it was fun to pay homage to it a bit. He seems to be their biggest comic export, but the Smurfs aren´t far behind. Unfortunately my camera ran out of juice before the end, so I didnt get too many Smurfs pics, sorry!

After the museum I did my first load of washing. However I was overcome with fear when it came to the dryer, and ended up taking most of it back to my room to hang up. There was only myself, Antonio and Matt the Canadian there, so I figured I could get away with using a few more hangers. We then got some restaurant advice from the chick down the front and headed to dowtown Brussels for an authentic Belgian meal. Antonio, being kinda French ordered a bottle of wine, Bordeaux I think, and Matt and I had the Waterzooi . It was a very nice chicken stew in a white creamy sauce, Antonio had Carbonades, which is like a beef stew. Speaking of food, in Bruges before I left I got some more fries, but this time I got Frittes Stoofrees (spelt wrong). It was basically chips covered in meat goulash, it was great stuff.

Anyway after the meal, we walked back through the Belgian rain and chatted with some people back at the hostel. Belgium rains a lot. Every day seems to start cloudy, get sunny and then start raining about 6.

The next day I wanted to finish off Brussels quickly and get off to Luxembourg. I headed on their "metro" which is basically an underground tram, about 15 minutes out of the center of the city. Here there is the "Atomium", which is a massive great building in the shape of an iron atom. This was pretty cool, and the view from the top sphere was impressive. Apparently the lift was extraordinarily fast, getting us up 100 meters or so in 20 seconds. I felt my ears pop pretty quick. All in all though, its not worth a 9 euro entry fee.

After this I discovered "Mini Europe" which is basically a little park full of 1:25 models of all the famous sights in Europe. The whole thing is based around "Look how awesome the EU is", and the whole thing was a little cheesy. I took a lot of photos, but really its not the sort of place you want to check out by yourself. Its more a thing you go to with a bunch of mates to point and laugh at stuff and take dumb photos. The highlight of this park was a cat that was walking around one of the models, giving a very godzilla like performance, stepping on little cars and stuff. Hilarity! I have photos, but haven't found a place to upload them yet. Some cafes are more locked down than others. So I finished going around Mini Europe, probably spending a lot less time than the average visitor. It was cool to see a few of the monuments I had actually visited in mini form.

Making my way back to the hostel, and picking up another wonderful Belgian waffle on the way, I grabbed my bag, found the train station and headed off to Luxembourg. The train ride was nice, as the train went through various parts of the Ardennes which was very lush and green. With all our water problems back home, its been a while since Ive seen such healthy vegetation!

Bruges: Spot the local

2007-06-16T12:59:00.000+01:00

I read in my guidebook, and in several other places that Bruges is quite a touristy place. I had the philosophy that, well, how could that be an altogether bad thing? After all I am, for all intents and purposes, a tourist myself. Then I got to Bruges.

There are people everywhere, and they're certainly not Belgian. Spanish, French, pretty much everyone you could think of (not that I hear much English being spoken), but its just crowd infested. It's almost like a theme park. Every few shops is either a chocolate shop, a beer cafe or a waffle shop. There's a few cathedrals / towers thrown in for good measure, but it basically feels like the city is screaming "Hey, check me out! I'm Belgian!!". At any rate, it hasn't done much for me and I expect to be leaving soon. I'm going to check out the chocolate museum, the belfry to get a panorama shot, and maybe check out the "Holy Blood". Apparently they've got some vial here which is supposed to contain some Jesus blood. I am skeptical at best.

At any rate, here is a link to a map that depicts my journey so far:
Map!.

One interesting thing I wanted to note, is that when I travelled from Amsterdam to Antwerp, the train crossed the Netherlands / Belgium border. I didn't even see a "Welcome to Belgium!" sign, let alone be asked for something like my passport. I find it interesting and encouraging that they have such open borders here.

Oh, and the Photo Gallery is updated!

Gent and Norweigens

2007-06-16T12:45:00.000+01:00

Well Gent was fun. I spent the day looking around, making my feet sore again. I checked out a whole bunch of churches and a castle. Drank some more good Belgian beer and tried their chocolate. I'm not really an authority on chocolate, and while I appreciate its creamy, goo-filled flavour burst, I probably don't get as much out of it, as say, anyone with a pair of X chromosomes.

I don't have a lot to say about the sightseeing of Gent, other than there was a lot of old, medieval architecture, apparently a lot of which was only built in the past century to give it that authentic kind of feel. Even if it may not be for realz, it feels quite legitimate. The guildhalls were cool, with their little golden statues above them, and the Kulminator was a lot more quaint than I expected. I was thinking it would be a raucous pub with many drunkards, but it was just a quiet little establishment with an old lady behind the beer tap. It was in the middle of the day though, so I guess most people were still at work.

There were a lot more people out and about in Gent than there were in Antwerp. After finishing my tour about 6PM, I went back to the hostel to look up the information I'd picked up on Bruges and Brussels. Shortly thereafter, a Norweigen by the name of Fleming entered and we had a chat about various things. He looked familiar, and it turned out he was one of the few people I'd seen in Antwerp at the previous hostel. We discussed the proliferation of Jews in that area, and he explained that they were 'Ultra Orthodox', which explained why they all had the little curls, funky suits and hats. He took some pictures of them apparently, I wasn't really game to, in case they thought it a bit rude.

We went out for dinner at a fairly fancy establishment, it cost about 25 euros each. It's not really my thing, I prefer to the smaller, quieter (and cheaper) places. It's my opinion that you're more likely to get authentic local cuisine. I ordered a pint of Hoegaarden, and it came in the most massive glass I've ever seen. I should have taken a photo.

We finished up and bought another beer at a place not far from the restaurant and had a few more chats. It was good to have some company for the first time in a few days. I'd realised earlier that day that I hadn't really met anyone for a couples of days, and as a result had barely spoken for that period of time. It's a weird feeling. At any rate, got plenty of chit chat in with Fleming, although I will add that he is the slowest beer drinker I have ever met! At any rate, we went back to the hostel about midnight and so endeth the day.

I got up, booked my hostel room in Brussels and headed out to Bruges.

Its all quiet on the Antwerpian front

2007-06-15T14:27:00.000+01:00

Well Antwerp is done. It was pretty cool, plenty to see, and the beer there is as good as I had been led to believe. Strong stuff too!

The only issue I had with Antwerp is that it was so quiet! Compared to Amsterdam, there was pretty much no one around. I figured when it got later it might pick up, so I freshened up at the hostel, and headed back out. It was absolutely hammering down with rain, and one of the cars that drove past managed to hit a massive puddle at just the right angle and I copped the lot. Umbrella's don't really protect from water coming sideways. Anyway so I ended up at a bar that served food and ordered cheese and tomato on bread. It sounded a lot more interesting in Flemish (what Belgians speak). It was still quite nice, and the bread was so heavy it filled me up without difficutly.

Another major food here appears to be fries. Woe be to those who describe them as 'French' though, as the Belgians consider themselves the inventors. I tried their magical fries, and they're really nothing special. I think they are just there to give you something to eat the sauce that drenches them. Chips are always served with sauce, and at one of the fry huts, there are about 20 to choose from generally. From curry to mayonaise to good ol' tomato sauce, or ketchup.

Anyway so I had a few different beers at the bar which were all good, and strong. I wandered out from there to try and find a medieval bar which was described in my little map / guide thing (www.use-it.be, fantastic!) but failed. I went to the irish pub and it was also pretty dead. I spied a sign on the wall indicating a sports / pool area downstairs, jumped with glee to get down there only to find it completely empty. I don't mean just quiet, I mean -empty-.

So I decided to head home. My hostel was in some kind of jewish district; nearly everyone I saw was in their black coat with hat and curly sideburns. Even the kids! I got lost fairly quickly, probably a combination of the rain, not looking at my map and the Belgian beers still doing their work. I walked far too far before asking for directions, which one of the top-hatted jewish men was able to give me. I travelled for a while longer, and another Belgian guy gave me some pointers and eventually I made it back. It was a long day.

So this morning I got the train to Gent, and have spent the day looking around. I'm in a bar drinking another Belgian beer, Hoegaarden (yes, I know its not exactly obscure), using their free internet spot. I've probably tied it up for long enough though, so I'll give an account of Gent sometime later. Hopefully the nightlife is a bit more interesting than Antwerp. Tomorrow I am doing a day trip to Brugge, and will be heading to Brussles that night.

Photos are up!

2007-06-14T14:12:00.000+01:00

That is all.

Churros in Antwerp

2007-06-14T13:23:00.000+01:00

I found spanish donuts!! I had to fly all the way to Europe to get them, but i´ve finally had me some spanish donuts!

Amsterdam concluded

2007-06-14T09:44:00.000+01:00

Well I spent the last day of Amsterdam down in Den Haag (about 40 minute train ride out of the Dam), their parliament district. It was pretty cool, and after wandering around a bit, I found myself in an old castle like district, and after asking an old lady selling tourist junk what it was, she informed me that it was in fact the parliament building itself! Pretty cool that they do parliament in a castle.

I then went to the MC Escher museum (the prime reason I went to Den Haag) and it was great! Heaps of different Escher drawings (or I should say prints, as most of the stuff he did was either wood carved or lithographed. He figured he´d be able to distribute more works that way. Fair call really!) that I´d never seen before. Also an optical illusion that you could walk into and a virtual reality experience where you got to walk around inside various Escher kept me there for a fair while!

I trained it back to Amsterdam, picked up my bag and got on a train to Antwerp. If I´d done a bit more research I´d have taken my bag with me to Den Haag and left from there, as it turns out Den Haag is directly on the way to Belgium.

All in all Amsterdam was pretty good. There are about 600 coffeeshops, all the hostels were basically massive stoner dens, and the red light district is something different. They seem to group the prostitutes into whatever your fancy might be. There seemed to be an area for the young white chicks, another for the more mature and exotic flavour, but there´s probably not as many as you might expect for a city famed for this profession.

Just as I had worked out navigation of the place (I got lost several times each day) it seems I need to move on. I´m in Antwerp now, and it seems pretty cool, if a bit quiet compared to the Dam. My hostel here has 3 people that I´ve seen. One guy is living here for a couple weeks waiting for his apartment to be ready. Apparently had a fight with his girlfriend and had to move out. The other guy is a Japanese tourist who took a photo of me and the other guy eating breakfast, gave us a thumbs up and scurried out the door. He´ll be in his element here, there´s a lot to photograph. I haven´t been able to upload any of mine, the few internet cafes Ive used so far dont have USB enabled, so stay tuned on that front. This particular cafe has a keyboard layout I´ve never seen. They keys are all over the shop, and you need to press shift to use the numbers rather than vice versa. It should have taken me about 5-10 minutes to type this out, its been close to double that.

Anyway I´m off to wander a bit more and find some of these hundreds of Belgian beers!

Amsterdam Continued...

2007-06-13T11:17:00.000+01:00

Yesterday day I decided to take a free walking tour of Amsterdam, as I'd done enough exploring on my own and figured it was time to be told where some of the good stuff was.

The guide, Elysia, was quite entertaining and gave us a lot of history about why certain buildings where were they where, and took us on a tour in basic chronological order, starting from the oldest district (the red light district), through the 'Golden Age' district where most of the city was built up during its sea trade years, and then through some of the newer parts.

The whole thing went for a touch over three hours and was quite interesting. It finished up at the Anne Frank house which I'd been meaning to visit, and so I finished the tour off with that. I was planning on going on another tour later that evening, but the jet lag caught up with me a bit and I was out not too much later that night. Not that you can really call it -night- here, as it doesn't actually get dark till about 11PM, and the sun starts peeking its head over the horizon not long after 4. It's pretty surreal walking around a city at 10PM in more or less broad daylight.

Today I've checked out the Sex Museum which was basically a chronology of porn. I walked around the city a bit more, checked out the Torture Museum which informative, but not as gruesome as one might be led to believe. I'm trying to book a hostel in Antwerp, as I plan to head over there later on tonight. I want to make time to go to the Haag so I can check out the MC Escher museum before I leave Amsterdam. My mobile doesn't seem to want to call the place, so it looks like I'm going to have to work out how to use their public payphones. Hopefully thats not too difficult, and more hopfully still the hostel will actually have a bed available. Seems there's only one hostel in Antwerp, so I imagine it'll be busy. I was talking to an American dude yesterday, and he informs me that I must check out the "Culminator" in Antwerp. With a name like that, how could I refuse?

Amsterdam: First Thoughts

2007-06-11T19:52:00.000+01:00

Bikes. Bikes are everywhere. I knew to expect this, and still I was a bit taken aback. Bikes were everywhere, and not only this, in several different configurations. People ride bikes singularaly, some have children in front of them, some have children in wheelbarrow-esque boxes in front of them, some ride on the back, side straddle style, and some ride those two person bikes with the two sets of pedals. I'll have some photos up soon showing some of these interesting combinations.

I walked and walked and walked. I plan on putting it into Google's pedometer at some stage, but I would think it was in the order of about 7km's. I saw a lot of stuff, including a church with a spire/tower thing that just kept on going. I didn't go into anything as such, I'll probably start that stuff tomorrow, but I got a good appreciaton for the different things that are around. I'll have pictures up soonish I hope. The hostel (The Flying Pig) doesn't have usb available on the PC's.

This extended walking wouldn't have been a problem, but the first thing I did when getting to Amsterdam was to have lunch. I ordered a mixed grill souvlaki, which I expected to be wrapped up and handed to be ala Australian style, but I was ushered into the restaurant, and served it on a plate. I probably would have filled about two Aussie style souvlakis. I got through a good portion of it, and in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have pushed through that far. Near the end of my walk, a few hours later, I become quite unwell. It was probably combination of the fatty, greasy stuff mixed with dehydration and a significant lack of sleep, but I found myself about 3 kilometers away from my hostel realizing that there was no chance in me walking back. I managed to struggle myself to a tram and eventually made it back.

An hour and a bit of lying down and a bottle of water later I was feeling markedly better, if not completely back to normal. Hopefully after a sleep I'll feel better. Thing is, it's 9pm over here and it hasn't hit darkness yet. This could pose a problem, but hopefully it won't be too long until the sun sets. Until then I think i'll pass on dinner.

Lesson 1

2007-06-11T19:38:00.000+01:00

Lesson 1: Don't annoy the Qantas crew.

After getting back on the plane from Singapore, I noticed that the flight wasn't quite full. I also noticed that there was a row of four in the middle with only one guy at the end of it. I noticed further that I was in the window seat of a full triple. If I wanted to get up, I'd have to annoy the very nice Italian elderly couple sitting aside me.

The plane started moving to its take off point, when we were informed that we would be sitting here for 15 odd minutes while something got sorted. We were also poiltely informed to stay in our seats with our seatbelts fastened. Deciding we had at least 2 minutes before the plane even thought about moving again, I took the opportunity to jump up and claim the other end of that 4 person row. It meant I had a spare seat next to me and also I wouldn't be annoying anyone to go to the lav, and vice versa. About 3 Qantas personel intercepted me just as I was sitting down in my new seat. I was given a quick word that I should stay in my seat with my belt fastened as indicated, but no further fuss was made as they scurried back to their own seats.

The flight takes off, and as soon as the seat belt turns off, one of the staff inform me that there is a family moving to this location and I must return to my seat. I obliged, after all, I was thinking of the children. I had a look up and down the plane, and there were several lucky passengers that had appropriated entire 4 person rows and prompty lay themselves across them. I happened to sit on the end of a three person seat on the side of the plane, as the gentlemen there was quitly snoozing in his window seat. He rustled awake soon after and gave much such a dirty look that would have killed a person of not of stern constitution. I went to move back to my original seat and the Italian couple were surprised to see me. I looked over to the place I'd moved from, and the family were nowhere to be seen. It had been about 15 minutes since I'd moved from that place, and I thought perhaps that family had found themselves a place further back in the plane. I discussed this with some other staff who had heard nothing about said family. I put myself back in that seat. A few minutes later the earlier stewardess came to inform me that there was indeed a family coming to sit here, and that they had been eating.

I vacated again, and moved back to my original seat. About 5 to 10 minutes later a single woman of large proportions was ushered into my coveted seat. She remained there for the rest of the flight. She even had a meal, which if I am to believe the stewardess was her second. So whilst she made herself comfortable in the place I'd so wished for, I went to watch a movie to find my tv didn't work. It had worked on the flight from Melbourne to Singapore, and I was in the same seat on the same plane. A couple requests failed to bear my audio visual fruit, and I resigned myself to a flight of my own entertainment, some of which was provided by the nice Italian couple next to me in conversation.

Oh vengeful Qantas cabin crew! Hell hath no fury compared with your spite!

Intermission...

2007-06-10T15:34:00.000+01:00

Well, I've landed in Singapore and am whittling away a short stay while the plane gets refuelled.

No major events so far, although my toothpaste was confiscated in Melbourne by a grumpy security gaurd who informed me that it was 10 grams over the limit for the airplane. Slightly frustrating, but the Qantas lounge in Singapore gave me a little toothbrush and toothpaste when I went to have a shower. And what a shower! I had my own little bathroom with all the usual bits and pieces. A refreshing break.

Add alongside that a nice french onion soup and a self serve bar, and it's been quite a nice little layover.

I'll be sitting in the same seat on the way to London, and hopefully I'll get some sleep with the help of a little friend called
Stilnox, so with a bit of luck I'll be hitting the ground running when I get to Amsterdam. Thats assuming I didn't contract TB from the Indian dude sitting next to me who kept toweling himself down every half an hour and looked like he had a _very_ big night before getting on the plane.

Anyway, so far, so good. Next stop London!

Welcome!

2007-05-28T10:50:00.000+01:00

This will be the site of future updates of my trip to and around Europe.