I'm the one they frame

This afternoon I left Salzburg and got into Vienna. The place I'm staying at is completely, undoubtedly, the best hostel ever and I've only been here a few hours! All the reviews for it online practically unanimously said "best hostel ever" and I figured I had to check this out for myself!
I'm staying in a converted apartment, only 2 dorm rooms and then a shared living room, kitchen and bathroom. I imagined that "converted apartment" would mean "pretty standard place with some Ikea bunk beds", but in actual fact it is a mega-nice apartment. The beds are built into alcoves in the wall and in my room some of the beds are raised with a mini-wooden spiral staircase leading up to them. On top of all of this, the place is filled with free stuff! Laundry is free, everything in the kitchen is free (tea, coffee, pasta, milk, cordial, wine!), there's free stuff all through the bathrooms, free towels. There are no words for how great this place is after staying in all-up pretty similar hostels for the past 2 months. Plus, I'm living in an apartment in Vienna!
Sadly this place was booked out for my third night in the city, but I at least get two nights here living the good life.

I went for a walk around the neighbourhood after getting here and discovered I'm in a part of town that's completely filled with trendy t-shirt shops. I found one place that pretty much just re-sells shirts from the internet, all from sites I go to, with an emphasis on Star Wars shirts?! They even had the shirt I ordered that got destroyed in the mail and which I couldn't get again! Going to investigate this place further later on, so that I don't straight away blow all my money on t-shirts.

After this I went to an Indian restaurant and ate a conspicously huge amount of Indian, which I'd been hanging out for. When I got the bill they gave me some kind of complimentary, delicious schnapps. Vienna is the greatest!




In Salzburg I did indeed watch Sound of Music as mentioned and then went out and saw some sights. It had been ages since I last saw it, but you know what is my current vote on the best scene in the movie? It's only lasts for about a second, but it's when Captain Von Trapp is about to step in and dance with Maria at his ball, and he pulls the biggest pimping face whilst adjusting his gloves (this is the best description of it that I can think of). Check it out. It's great stuff!

I've uploaded my Salzburg photos and you can check them out: here!

In other news I've now finished all the books I brought with me. I enjoyed Great Expectations but it seemed more like "Great Coincidences", right? I also read Robinson Crusoe which I thought was pretty awesomely readable for something written in 1719 and surprisingly relatable, up to that bit where he has to fight off 300 wolves.
I'm now starting to make the most of hostel book exchanges and have already fortuitously stumbled across Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Graveyard Book, both of which I consider to be pretty great scores!

I have a few missions for Vienna. One is to go and watch The Third Man at the movies on Friday and the other is to go on the ferris wheel and possibly before that, to find a classically trained cellist to go on the ferris wheel with. I also intend to listen to plenty of "Where Has Everybody Gone" on my iPod, but I don't plan on strangling anyone with my headphones.

Surprise! I'm doing the Bond references tour of Europe.

Grey Cell Green

So, apparently in Slovenia they like to play "Let's Get Physical" all the time?

This is the impression I got from the few trips I did outside of my hostel during my time in Ljubljana. I did indeed brave the rain on my second day there and wandered for a small bit around town. Then, the next day, I went on a trip to Lake Bled where I heard there were very nice views of a church on an island in a lake under the Alps, which was exactly true. In fact, in many ways I found the views on the other side of the path, of all the autumn trees, even better!



I didn't end up getting to try horse burgers as the Hot Horse branch I'd tried to find had shut down, but I did try something called "Human Fish Beer" which is actually one of the best beers I've had on my trip so far!

My down-time in Slovenia was spent struggling with the beginnings of a cold, which I've gotten over the worst of now but am still coughing around the place like crazy.
I also spent my time around my hostel watching Sherlock, which really was as good as I'd hoped! So many things I like.... all in one show! Now I'm doubly glad they're splitting the Who season next year to (presumably) make more.

Photos of Slovenia: here!

Today I've made it to Salzburg, where I'm spending two nights before heading to Vienna. As far as I can tell, everyone here (except for the locals) has Sound of Music madness! My hostel shows the movie every day, and I think I'll sit around and watch it tomorrow. It feels like a long time since I've gotten to watch a DVD! Then I'm going to go out and have some good Austrian coffee. Sounds like a plan!

All aboard.... the night train!

Here are some stories about culinary greatness:

The other night I became a master of the supermarket cooking art when I made vegemite, gruyere and fried egg toasted sandwiches, served with salad with a white balsamic vinegar and maple syrup dressing (being the two ingredients I found in the “free food” box).
My kitchen madness is also my kitchen genius.
Turns out vegemite and gruyere is really good, and why don't I eat maple syrup on salad all the time?

I also drank something called “Jungle” containing “Yumberry & Granatapfel”. Whilst I'm sure these are just Swiss/German names for normal fruits, they sound like something somebody has completely made up, from the Wonka fruit family.

My decision to make these sandwiches came after hiking around the Bernese Alps all day, where I went on a quest for the Alpenvogelpark but no matter how much I walked never seemed to actually get there. Until I did and I saw some cool owls. The walk was good, just very tiring, and I didn't end up getting to Zurich til 7pm where I crashed until my body said “give me vegemite and fried eggs stat!”

After that I spent a day walking around Zurich and then the next day walking around Vaduz in Liechtenstein, after which I caught a night train to Ljubljana where I realised that I was incapable of doing any more walking for the time being and forced myself to spend a whole day at my hostel. I only left once to get groceries for another supermarket cook-up. Today my plan is to finally see some Slovenia but joke's on me: it's raining! I'm going to have to find some way to see as many interesting things in Ljubljana as possible without getting stranded too far from my hostel.

In the meantime I uploaded a somewhat ridiculous amount of Switzerland photos which can be found: here!

Far up! Far out! Far more!

Today I got up at 5:30, caught 2 trains, a bus and four cable cars spending about $100 on transport and it was completely worth it:



(this picture isn't doing it justice but it's the only angle I could get from the cable car)
I was under this impression that Piz Gloria would look just as it does in the movie on the outside but that inside they would have completely revamped it after the movie, or possibly some scenes were filmed on sets rather than in the complex itself. I was wrong!


They've changed a few things but have kept a whole stack of the original furnishings. There were even some Christmas decorations up! Also the layout of the building is practically the same, with the lifts and the stairs. There were heaps of doors marked "privat". This must be where all the bedrooms with cone fireplaces are.



Comte de Bleuville coat of arms



Helicopter pad
(through the window: not a great photo but you get the idea!)



I am excited to be here!
I was pretty enthusiastic about paying extra to eat "Diana Rigg icecream" before my James Bond breakfast buffet (with champagne!) but several courses later, which included such classic breakfast fare as 'cheese platter', realised this was no longer going to happen. Still amped that they had it though!


I got a few pictures of the view but this was about all I managed before my camera battery died. I'd been so focussed on getting all my stuff ready for my 5:30 start I'd completely forgotten to charge it.
I think this occasion calls for an uncharacteristic display of emoticon: :( :( :(

As a result, I've just had to try and commit as much of my day to memory as I can. Somehow I ended up spending 3 and a half hours at Piz Gloria, with non-breakfast activities also including going to a theatre room and watching movie clips, and climbing down onto mountain just below the complex where there was a patch of snow I could play with and wrote my name in (with my boot).

I considered climbing down the cable ropes by hand to save on the cable car fare but decided against it because I need pockets in my pants to keep stuff in. But I scoped out the place and climbing out onto the cable car roof would have been completely possible. Getting away with it, maybe not so.

On my way back down I got off at some of the stops and found the Alps to be pretty much real-life stereotypical Switzerland but in the best kind of way: green mountains with snowy peaks in the background, chalets, goats with big bells on, cheese shops everywhere. In Lauterbrunnen I also found the place where Bond jumped out of Tracey's car to use a phone booth during the Piz Gloria escape. You'll just have to take my word for all of these things because I couldn't take photos, or maybe not (except for the last one), because I'm now planning on going back to the Alps tomorrow because I thought the Bernese Oberland was so great! This time I'm going to Grindelwald where I intend to find an ice rink, or at least, a place that would be an ice rink if it was colder.

New life plan:
1) get rich
2) learn how to ski
3) get really good at skiing
4) go back to Piz Gloria in winter
5) ski down the slope

I've only put up a few of my photos because I still need to sort through or clean up the rest of them. You might have noticed I've taken a fair few photos of fountains. Turns out Bern is pretty much the city of fountains (and bears) and there are fountains all over the city. Once I realised this, I went on a quest to find as many of them as possible. Be prepared for even more photos of MANY FOUNTAINS.

The Life I Live

Hello from Switzerland! I've just arrived in Bern after an 8-hour train trip, a few good days in Amsterdam and a few tiring days in Luxembourg and Bruges.

Here are my stories about the above!

As mentioned, before heading to Amsterdam I got two unexpected stops - one night in Luxembourg, one night in Bruges! These passed very similarly: trains in the morning/afternoon, dinner and some internet, sleeping, walking around town, leaving for the next place. I also got to talk about Slovakian politics with a cool guy I met in Luxembourg, and went out for beers in Bruges with some Australians.

Luxembourg was pretty impressive to look at though not so cool to navigate with my backpack (the train station was high up and my hostel was low down). But it was good to return to a French-speaking land and drink some Orangina!
Bruges was also cool, I enjoyed how on my city walk I went from mostly-empty streets to dense tourist-town as I walked further towards the city centre. Nice houses but bad Stella! Give me BBC any day (though my cumulative time in the BBC is probably longer than the amount of time I spent in real Belgium, possibly making me a biased judge).

Conclusion: 1 day is plenty of time to see a small town, but isn't really a great amount of time to spend in a place. Lots of train travel in 3 days = very tiring!



Luxembourg and Bruges photos: here!

After my quiet first night in Amsterdam I was ready to see some of the town! I went on a free walking tour on my first day which was really good, our guide was real energetic and took us all for lunch afterwards. I found a fellow Australian on the tour (we had the same backpack), Nick from Brisbane, and we went out for beers later that night along with two Ukrainian guys he'd met at his hostel.
The Ukrainian guys I am now calling Han Solo and Chewbacca. Han Solo could speak some English, and would make a comment every now and then - but Chewbacca couldn't speak much English at all, so instead talked constantly in Ukrainian with Han Solo occasionally translating. Much like with Chewbacca, he was always part of the conversation and often interjecting emphatically, but you know you have no hope of ever really understanding. This illusion wasn't helped by the fact that I swear I heard Han Solo call him "Chewie" several times, though I probably just misheard a Ukrainian word.

The next day I saw the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum and that night set off to do something I hadn't done in almost 2 months: go to the movies. Far out, I had no idea how much I missed movie cinemas until I was sitting in one! I went to see The American, which was a bit of a mixed bag but was definitely the kind of movie I felt like sitting down and watching (lots of running around Europe).

On my last day I had a most excellent Dutch day! I rented a bike to do some cycling around the countryside and when it turned out the bike hire place had run out of maps the girl suggested a route to me, wrote some place names down on a post-it and said to just follow the signs! Turned out the first place I was headed to wasn't signposted until after heading to another place first, something I found out after an awesomely helpful local gave me directions. But after that it turned out the girl's suggestions were great, I saw a lot of black and white cows, green fields and, succesfully, one windmill. It rained once for about 15 minutes but after that the skies were pretty much blue!



After I'd ridden around for most of the afternoon, and was completely beat after riding against the wind for a while, I headed to my last stop in desperate need of some food but with no sign of a cafe/restaurant anywhere. I asked another helpful local and was directed to a Pancake House, where I bumped into some fellow cyclists who I'd seen on the track - a family from South Africa and their Dutch friend Famke (!!), who invited me to join them for lunch! In the cafe I had tea with rum, greatest post-cycling drink ever, and a massive Dutch pancake with bacon, apples and sugar-syrup. So good! (Lola, I think you would like Dutch pancakes)

With the combination of cycling, windmill, traditional Dutch farmer pancake (which apparently my bacon-apple choice was) and meeting someone called Famke, I feel like I've appropriately lived the Netherlands dream.

Netherlands photos: here!

Frustratingly, some dust has gotten into my camera and has been showing up every now and then as dark blurs on my photos, particularly when I zoom in on things. Not cool! The only way I can think of getting rid of it is taking my camera into a repair shop, which would probably be pretty costly. Maybe I can photoshop some of the blurs out when I get back home? Does anyone know more about cameras than me and have any tips (I've tried looking through forums to no avail)?

I'm liking the look of Switzerland so far. Swiss 5 franc coins are so massive you feel like you're trading with doubloons and I've only been here four hours but I've already eaten a copious amount of cheese.
Also, the receptionist at my hostel here said my hat was cool, and then said I had a cool voice and should take up singing. Hooray! (this is so much better than "you have a weird accent", which I'm still getting everywhere)

In just a few days I will be in Piz Gloria, spending exorbitant amounts on the cable car and being rewarded with champagne and a chance to practice my genealogy. Note to self: remember to wear kilt.

Out of Bruges

Hello from the Netherlands! I'm now in Amsterdam, though there's so much rain and neon lights it feels like I'm in Blade Runner. I am excited to be in Famke Janssen and Q'65 country though also, more noticeably, Paul Verhoeven country.

There's just been some kind of expo here, meaning that on the last two nights accomodation prices were way up in town - so to avoid paying exorbitant prices I threw in two nights of unexpected stops at Luxembourg and Bruges. More on these soon! It turns out stopping places just for one night is interesting, but pretty tiring!

I learnt in a very short space of time that:
a) Paul Weller is playing in the Netherlands while I'm here and
b) "UITVERKOCHT!" means "sold out!"

Then I got some cheap Surinamese food and decided to have an early night, to further sleep off three days of train travel.

The Beast Without

So it turns out everything Gabriel Knight told me is true:





Same goes for Neuschwanstein except I couldn't take photos in there. There even was a cave with a hidden door! Whilst there wasn't a wolf mural, I'm still pretty solidly convinced that King Ludwig II was a werewolf. I wanted to separate myself from the group to look for hidden scrolls but I forgot to bring along my live dove to distract the guide.

My other Gabriel Knight-related pilgrimage around Munich was to King Ludwig's cross on Lake Starnberg, which I decided to rent a bike for. Best decision ever! Cycling around the lake was brilliant though I am paying the price for it today. After succesfully negating both my walking and my cycling muscles, I ended up taking it easy on my last day in Munich today and drank Hofbrau in the beer garden in the English garden in the sun. It was good!

Other non-GK-related times in Munich included going to the Deutsches Museum, possibly the most impressive museum I've been to so far (a claim I feel like I'm making for each new impressive museum I go to). This place was 8 floors of exhibits on every imaginable field of science or type of technology. There were interactive exhibits for almost every class experiment I've ever had to do in Physics, a massive boat room, a massive aeroplane room, robots, an office desk, three floors just on Astronomy, paper napkins, everything!
They don't want you putting photos from the museum online so to not tempt any museum wrath I haven't uploaded them, except for one thing which I wanted to show my brothers. Guys, check this out!

My Germany photos are now complete with Munich photos: from here!

Tomorrow I'm off on a long train ride. My original plan was to head from Munich to Amsterdam but I found myself with two extra nights which I'm using to stop over in some countries I didn't think I'd get to. First stop: Luxembourg!
I'm getting out of Munich just in time; today the tents started going up and the crowds started coming in. Whilst it'd be well cool to come back for Oktoberfest some day, turns out the week before is actually pretty wicked! It wasn't too busy but lots of places were already all decked out in preparation. And you actually see people wearing Lederhosen about the place!
Munich: brilliant.

Finally, ridiculous things I bought in Germany, or, awesome things I bought in Germany:



He bought his hat in Bavaria! Yes, in Bavaria, where the trees are made of wood!

(I'm going to be unstoppable in the next game of Diplomacy with this hat. Can we play on bus?)

Essential Munich viewing:

Danke fur den fisch

Friends and family, Berlin was a cool, cool city. I did a lot of walking around town, spent a whole day on Museum Island, saw some naked people in Tiergarten and ate a lot of currywurst. Currywurst is a truly great invention!
I succesfully stayed up to go out partying Berlin-style on the Friday, where places don't open til 11 and people don't start turning up til about 1-2. I saw a local band who were just like how I imagined Berlin bands to be but didn't think they really were: all side-parts and synthesisers and serious-sounding German vocals.

My hostel was Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy-themed and did actually have a library of Douglas Adams books, a wall of framed Hitchiker's cover variants and the vast majority of furnishings around the hostel done in some kind of space-age style. They also had good beer, and one day I suspect that they may have listened to the Stone Roses all day on repeat because they were playing when I left in the morning and still going when I came back much later in the afternoon. Then they changed to The Coral. Best hostel ever!


In other news, I also have my first inventory item required for Munich:



#computergamesarenotreallife

#actuallymaybetheyare


And also, on my last night in Munich I met up with Matt Smith!



aka. steed_peel, a longtime livejournal friend! Turns out we were both travelling around Germany at the same time and our paths crossed in Berlin. Small world, good times!

My internet here in Munich is brilliantly fast, so here are my Berlin photos.
Please be prepared for blog posts with even more Gabriel Knight references because I can absolutely guarantee that they're coming.

Ein Berliner

Today I found out that "Ritter" is German for "knight".

Heyyyyyyyyyy, that makes a lot of sense!

In other news, I'm really enjoying Berlin and here are some Hamburg photos!

A New Career In A New Town

I'm determined to stay up til 11:00 (and past it) tonight so I can go partying it up at an indie/britpop club in Berlin. And then wake up in time to go for a tour of the spy sights of the city tomorrow. Let's do this!

First impressions: Berlin is many times cooler than Hamburg. Also, my Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy themed hostel is just as awesome as I'd hoped!

Does the "25 Most Played" playlist update automatically on your iPod, or do you have to sync it to iTunes to get your new count? I listened to tons of "Low" on the train over here as predicted, and I'm curious about when the surely more listened to "Be My Wife" will overtake "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five", the solid top for a while now.

Vicarious Friday beers = two posts in one day.

Don't Fear the Reeperbahn

"Predictable blog titles I wanted to use regardless."

Success! On my first day in Hamburg I was indeed mistaken for a German when a woman came up to me and asked me something frantic about the Hauptbahnhof. I understood one word, Hauptbahnhof, and apologised for not being able to help (in English).

Apart from the words everyone knows and the words that sound like English, I consider myself to have a reasonable German vocabulary thanks to popular culture. Here are some things that I know:
geschlossen - Chuck
schnell, "die Amerikaner, die kaempfen wie wiebe" - Indiana Jones
rathaus, schattenjäger - Gabriel Knight

If I have an excuse to use any of these, I will be happy. In the meantime I'm trying to pick up as much German as I can (with varying success), and am enjoying the words I've picked up that have pretty much remained the same in Russian, Danish and German (apotek, kartoffel).

Hamburg itself has been pretty different after Denmark! Kind-of dark and gloomy, sometimes in a cool way and sometimes in a shifty way. Maybe a good candidate for the Gotham City of Germany? I've been to see some Beatles sights, but have avoided the Reeperbahn at night without the company of friends. I went for a walk around town and enjoyed the buildings, and tonight I found another open-air cinema right in front of the Rathaus – but unfortunately I was not to continue my Scandinavian luck: Vicki Cristina Barcelona was dubbed into German!

Yesterday, on the advice of some friendly New Zealanders, I went for an afternoon in Lübeck – a town I knew nothing about but which turned out to be pretty cool! I didn't do much more than walk around and eat some ryvitas in the park, but it was a good place to do both of these.

Further thoughts of the day:
1.Inspired by the Danish, I'm thinking it would be cool to have my own customised bicycle. This could go hand in hand with Plan A: getting an apartment, but both of these depend on Plan B: working out what I'm going to do next year, something I've made no progress on. (letters don't necessarily correspond to priorities)

2.Sometimes I feel disproportionate levels of sadness when I see someone wearing an awesome t-shirt that I know I'll never be able to find for myself. This happened yesterday when I saw a guy wearing a shirt that had a huge black and white print of my favourite Twin Peaks promo pic, and underneath it in block letters “All For Nothing”. True words, my friend, true words!

Today I'm off to Berlin, where I'm going to listen to Low on repeat and try currywurst! Should be good!