Tardis in the cupboard

Hooray! Despite continuing Heathrow closures and cancellations, I was incredibly lucky and managed to get out and home for Christmas after all.

My last few days in London went really well! I caught up with Barlow and we went on a (successful) mission to find Steed's flat, and then I met up with Ash for drinks on my last night in London. After heading out with Ash on both the first and last nights of my trip, I feel like it all came full circle!

I had my London photos conveniently uploaded, it's just taken me a while to get around to organising everything, because I've been lazy (or the better excuse, jet-lagged) and have just been watching TV. Now you can see them all: from here!




Here are some final figures from my trip!

Number of countries visited: 23
Number of currencies used: 12
Number of books read: 12
Number of trains caught (including best estimate of trains after my Eurail pass expired): 86
Number of different beers tried: 89
Number of adventures had: uncountable

Good to see beers > trains, if only just!
It was a brilliant trip and whilst I'm glad to be back, hopefully that's not the end of my adventuring travels.

Until next time!

Moriarty

In Regent Street and Leicester Square

Here are three stories from my first full day in London:

1) Jenny and I were walking through St James's Park when we saw a squirrel and got really excited. Then we saw a whole heap more squirrels - the park was full of them! We saw one right by the path and were surprised at how close it was and as we scrambled for cameras for Exciting Squirrel Photos, it made a dash straight at Jenny and tried to climb her leg. Did it mistake Jenny for a tree or do the St James squirrels just have no fear? Squirrel madness!

2) We headed to Buckingham Palace which was surprisingly crowded. Aha! It turned out we'd arrived there for the changing of the guard. At least, after the event, I'm pretty sure that was what was going on but whilst we were there it felt like there must be some kind of extra special event on considering the amount of people. I guess it's just a popular occasion! We saw the big brass band of guards in bearskins parading around and some riflemen walked past us. Eventually the brass band marched into the central courtyard where they set up music stands and looked like they were ready to start their Main Fanfaring event.
The band started playing and we were sure we recognised the tune. It took us a minute, but then we realised they were playing.... Don't Stop Believing?!
This then turned into "Any Way You Want It"
We went to Buckingham Palace and the guards played a JOURNEY MEDLEY.

This now ties as one of my favourite things that's happened over the course of my whole trip.

3) Later that day I went to buy a DVD, which happened to be rated UK-15. I took it up to the counter and I was asked, "can I have some ID for that?"

To reiterate: over the course of a day I saw royal guards play a Journey medley and was mistaken for being ten years younger than I actually am.

London is crazy!
London is also the greatest. I've also been to see the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, Abbey Road, 221B Baker St and plenty of other good things.

I've been to Forbidden Planet and went a bit crazy for Avengers merch:



Not pictured is my Avengers soundtrack album which I bought on a CD-buying spree at HMV. Presents for yourself - a good expense?
I also bought myself a copy of Peter Rabbit at the British museum. Peter Rabbit in hieroglyphs! It is the greatest.

Today for lunch I had a venison, wild boar, red wine and apricot baguette, washed down with mulled wine from a Christmas market and then a slice of banoffee pie. Living the good life on my remaining pounds!

Today was also Jenny's last day and we celebrated with a final pub dinner before parting ways. Two more days for me before I (hopefully!) head home.

And now for some very concerning news: (here)

Here's hoping the airports have opened up again by Tuesday. Please, please let me get home for Christmas!

Celtic Soul Brothers

I've made it! I'm here in London, the last stop on my trip before heading home and I'm very excited about one more week of adventuring before returning to eat a lot of barbecues, drink Good Stella and enjoy Christmas and Buss festivities.

Our time in Cornwall was great: we ended up making it to Falmouth (where we based ourselves at an inn that did insanely strong ginger beer), Tintagel, Penzance and St Ive's and whilst I didn't see any actual pirates or mermaids I did succeed in eating some good pasties.

On our first night in Cornwall we were, we're pretty sure, kicked out of a pub! We got completely lost trying to find the inn we were staying at so we had to stop the car and ask at another pub. Despite being completely friendly, receiving apparently friendly directions in return to "the other pub" (it was just around the corner!) and promising to return for a pint for their help, a woman got up from the bar and walked with us to the door, closing it behind us and muttering to us "don't bother coming back." What?!

Having a car to drive around was excellent and many cheers to Jenny who was our designated driver (as I am considered too young and reckless, ie. being younger my insurance would have costed more). We listened to a lot of radio but it was never as good as the Irish radio! Considering how much incredibly good British music there is I don't know why we had to repeatedly hear Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair".

My favourite car moment was when, in a sudden change of programming, the radio started playing "Killing In The Name Of" bringing back so many memories of how much we ROCKED OUT to it in the Dublin pub crawl, and as we rocked out to it one more time Stonehenge came looming up before us. I said, "hey there's Stonehenge!" Jenny said, "where?!" Me, "right there!" This went on for quite a bit, and it's funny because Stonehenge was right in front of us, looking particularly prominent. This could be one which loses something in the telling!

Cornwall poll: Which of these seagull public safety warnings from St Ives is best? Also, why would a town issue at least 3 differently-worded seagull warnings?







More photos from Cornwall and our whirlwind stopover in Oxford are now up: here!

Far out, I'm excited about seeing London. All I've seen so far is a bit of the area around my hostel in the dark but it turns out I'm staying in a very cool part of town - on Queen's Gate, the same block as the Albert Hall! I've got 6 days to fit in all I want to see and I'm determined to see a lot. London! Hooray!

I am the Blaidd Drwg

Today almost all my Wales dreams came true:



We found where they were filming Doctor Who!
It seemed like they were on their lunch break so we didn't actually see any actors, but there was definitely some interesting business going on in Neath Abbey! We didn't linger around (we actually felt a bit snoopy being there), so all we saw were some tents, serious looking security guards and a cool abbey, but strangely they did let us just wander around the site and through their stuff. Actors or no, it was mega-exciting. When I see this episode, it's going to be the best!
Just to make it even cooler, word on the internet is that the episodes that they're filming at the moment are written by Matthew Graham. Best ever!

Cardiff was an amazing place where I drank brains, didn't get rained on and where there was something eerily familiar (from Who) around every corner.
My favourite was the National Museum, which we didn't plan to go to but were lured in by the draw of a free museum and were surprised with both animatronic wooley mammoths and much Who-familiarity!





We also went to see the Doctor Who exhibition, where they house lots of the old monsters, costumes and props. IT WAS BRILLIANT.



My pictures of the Lake District and Cardiff, including many of the Doctor Who exhibition are all up: here!

It's been pretty sad leaving Who-country where our hostel was particularly great and did the best breakfast I've had yet. However, today we picked up a hire car and headed on a big road trip down to Cornwall, where I intend to find a mermaid, thwart a smuggling ring and eat lots of pasties. And keep fondly remembering that time when I walked through the Doctor Who set.

The ice age is coming

Over the past few days I've had a really unfortunate run of bad luck!
Within the space of a day I managed to lose a pair of thermal long johns (accidentally (?) taken from our hostel's 'drying room'), my GERMAN HAT (foolishly left on a train - but I'm still chasing up lost and found in case of a miraculous recovery) and a postcard I was about to send home. Also, one of our trains was cancelled meaning we almost didn't make it to Stratford-upon-Avon in time for our theatre booking for that night. Yikes! Too much in too short a space of time!

Luckily we did end up making it in time for our show and it was worth it in every way. We went to see Matilda, A Musical by the Royal Shakespeare Company. A musical version of Matilda, with music by Tim Minchin, performed by the RSC felt like something that could go very wrong very easily. Instead, it was awesome! The songs were good, the casting was good, it was a genuinely great time. Trunchbull was the best. I want to see it again!


For our crazy one-night stop in Stratford-upon-Avon (where, because of our late trains, we didn't get to see much more than a few Elizabethan houses, a pub and a play) we had to stay in a B&B. This was pricey but as it turns out, great! The B&B owner, Diana, was the friendliest lady ever and cooked us a seriously awesome full English breakfast. The whole house was decked out in Christmas decorations and we stayed up watching QI and Big Bang Theory on our free TV. Now I feel appropriately refreshed from my spate of bad English luck and I am excited about England again!

Before this we spent a few nights in the Lake District, which was very snowy but very cool. Whilst there I seemed to offend a lot of wildlife. We came across a robin whilst walking in the snow who seemed mega friendly and didn't mind at all when we poked our cameras in his face. Turned out he must have just been sizing us up as opponents because as soon as the cameras were away he tried to swoop me.
Later, we walked past a field of sheep who I tried to communicate with, with a friendly "mmeeeeehhhh". After my third attempt at the perfect sheep noise I finally got a response.... and then another.... and then another.... Suddenly all the sheep were mmeeehhhing at each other, one at a time, and each sheep that made the noise looked directly at me with what appeared to be a very menacing gaze. It was spooky and we made speedy tracks away from the field!
It's very hard to tell how much of this apparent wildlife spookiness is actually just a side-effect of me reading my first Stephen King novel, which I picked up from a hostel book exchange and which may have put me more on edge than I realised!

I haven't got my photos up yet but trust me, they are full of snow! Now we're in Cardiff where right now, somewhere in the not-too-distant neighbourhood, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan are filming Doctor Who. Am I excited about this? Yes, my friends. Yes I am.

Hoth, Coruscant, Florin and Gallifrey

The other day we went on a bus tour as a means of seeing a bit more of Ireland with our limited time - we went to Limerick, the Burren, Bunratty Castle and the Cliffs of Insanity.
This meant a lot of time on the bus listening to Irish radio. Here is a great insight into Irish radio: after reporting on the heavy snow across the country, they announced all the babies born in the county that week. Then, they played "Ice Ice Baby". Irish DJs are out of control!

Over the course of the day I also got really excited about the impending announcement of the World Cup bid winners, which they were counting down to. Hooray to World Cup in Russia (particularly as while I was there they had all their flags out for the World Cup bid)! Boo to no World Cup in Australia!

Ireland is a great country which I have loved immensely! It has proved everyone wrong: I didn't get rained on once! Heavily snowed on, yes, but no real rain and in Cork we had three days of blue skies.
Ireland has felt like a string of drinking stouts and crazy occurences.

These occurences include:

- using my voucher for a free pub crawl on a pub crawl in Dublin in which there ended up being only 4 other people (including the guide). Jenny and I were the oldest people there (including the guide) and we definitely felt it. It was a strange but pretty good time, but when we got to the last pub things went nuts! Within the space of what felt like a very short amount of time: two of pub crawl attendees started making out and then went off together, our guide mysteriously disappeared, the other pub crawl member had locals get into a fist fight over her and then they got kicked out the pub, and I found myself partying harder than I ever thought possible to "Chelsea Dagger" and "Killing In The Name Of" played by a cover band. I woke up mildly hungover and ate a full Irish breakfast, including black pudding! I have concluded that Dublin is a good time.

- going to the Great Jedi Library! Or, the building that George Lucas somewhat sneakily "adopted" for the Jedi Library. I think this could be the first Star Wars location I've ever visited and it was insane, it was just like stepping into the movie. I was exceptionally excited. Then, once I got over that, I was also excited about what a cool library it was!


(this is a photo found on google because they don't let you take photos in the Jedi Academy!)

- In Cork, Jenny and I shared wine with a completely crazy Frenchman known as "French Adrien Brody". We never found out his real name but he looked a lot like Adrien Brody. Twice we saw him cooking, and getting very excited about, potatoes.

- We went to the Cork gaol where, after doing a tour of the old prison cells which are filled with creepily life-like wax dummies, we were going to look in the little shop. When we got in a guy told us to come with him so we could watch a film. He led us down a corridor and into a big circular room and told us to sit "near the fire" (heater). We were the only ones there in this big room - except for some more wax dummies with their backs to us - and he left and turned off the lights. Instead of a movie, the wax dummies were lit up by this weird blue light and we heard choir singing for probably a good two minutes. It was completely crazy. Eventually a film did start, projected onto the walls, but for those two minutes where wax dummies that appeared to be singing in a dark and otherwise empty prison chamber, we were genuinely completely spooked.

- the place we stayed in in Cork was above a pub and we went to a battle of the bands there. We saw a wild girl with gas masks on her shoes who made mermaid sounds whilst she was singing and at one point had a guy lift her above his head. Sometimes she did punk songs with lines like "pussy make the world go round" which were not quite my thing but then sometimes she did reggae songs where her voice sounded really good. If this girl ever becomes famous I guess we can say, hey, we saw her in the Cork Bru Bar Battle of the Bands!

- Whilst down in the bar we saw a Fake Moriarty. This guy bore a very spooky resemblance to me, particularly from the side, which was also helped by the fact that we wore pretty similar clothes. Jenny and I theorised that he could be a distant Moriarty relative, and then joked that he might be the new roommate we knew we had in our dorm. Surprise! He was. We then concocted elaborate plans to find out if his name was Moriarty (which basically consisted of Jenny saying "hey, Moriarty" when we were both around). We never found out. Either way, I think he must have been the wacky Irish version of myself! He wouldn't believe me when I told him the time in the morning - for some reason never established, his phone was set half an hour earlier than the actual time.
Other than this candidate I didn't meet any other Moriartys in Ireland (to my knowledge), though I did hear a request for "Family Moriarty" when I was listening to the radio on my bus trip (it was for Billy Joel)!

Here is another classic Jenny quote from one night in Cork:
"This is the worst dinner ever. I'm having beer and two mushrooms."

After Cork we returned to Dublin for two more nights, where we decided to take a night off and ate junk food and went to see Megamind. It was good times! Today we finally made it to the Guinness Storehouse and tomorrow morning we're hopefully finally flying out to England - flying into Manchester and then heading straight for the Lake District. We're waking up at 4am so fingers crossed we're not thwarted by further snow!

My photos from the week are all up: here

They played songs by The Jam in both the first Irish pub we went to and the last. Ireland is excellent!

The sun is shining, but the ice is slippery

In Paris I got very excited when I saw this much snow:


But now we're in Dublin and there's this much snow:


It's not just snow, it's mega-snow! It's a very exciting time for me. A cold, exciting time.

So far I'm loving Dublin: I've drunk some delicious Guinness, ate beef pie and when "Going Underground" came on in the pub we were in last night I stuck two thumbs up right in Jenny's face.

As it turns out we made a bit of a mix-up with our flights and are flying out of Ireland a day later than we thought. Woops! This unfortunately means we get one day less in the Lake District but on the plus side, one more day of Ireland! No complaints here!

Charles the Gaul

Tonight is our last night in Paris and I'm celebrating by playing my "Ridiculous French" playlist (assorted songs which vary between sensible and very tenuous links to France) loudly on my laptop whilst Jenny tries to peacefully write in her journal. What a great roommate I am!

During my time in France I successfully managed to: buy things in shops, order in restaurants, give directions to strangers and navigate a particularly complicated job at the post office all in French, without being replied to in English (whether because I succeeded so well at French or because the people I were talking to just didn't want to speak English I will never know). Proud of myself! (particularly considering that upon arrival in France I felt like I'd forgotten everything I'd ever learnt)

I am also proud of myself because tonight I tried mussels for the first time, ordering them as my final meal in a French bar. They were curry mussels, they were very tasty and I ate them all up. Success!

My French success is in great juxtaposition with the most brilliant Paris scene that Jenny and I witnessed:
We were walking along and we saw a guy walk up to a policewoman and say to her, in a very strong southern USA accent "Eiffel Tower?"
Then, when she looked at him blankly, he said much louder, "EIFFEL TOWER?" whilst doing an "it's this tall" gesture with his hands.
The policewoman looked at him completely stoney-faced and said without cracking, "je ne comprends pas". She definitely must have known what he was saying. Greatest policewoman ever!

Our time in Paris has been pretty mega-busy! I bought a museum pass and we went to a lot of places, some which I'd been to before but all of which were grand to revisit.
It would take a long time to go through them all but here are some of my favourite things that have happened in Paris:

- we went to the catacombs, which are deep underground tunnels filled with the bones of many Parisians, all stacked in there after they decided to clear out the city's cemeteries for health reasons in the 18th century. They were the greatest!


- we caught the first snow of the season (we think) whilst wandering around Père Lachaise cemetery! The first snow we got was quite confusing as it was semi-snow, semi-hail but today we got definite flakes. I was mega, mega excited. Jenny was cold!
I am much more of a cold weather fan than Jenny, who is not so much, as evidenced in a quote from today: "I think the cold is making my gums recede"

- tracking down Hotel Chevalier:


- Jenny chasing pigeons in Montmartre:


I have a ton of photos from this week which probably have a lot more detail about what I've been up to! Now all up: here
That link starts at the end of my Strasbourg photos, which I realise I didn't all make public when I thought I did. Woops! Now they're all up for real!

Last night we went to see Harry Potter - in English, but it still had subtitles in French. Turns out that in French "wand" is "baguette". The very serious scene where Voldemort was going on about how he needed another baguette and would anyone like to give him a baguette was the greatest thing I've seen in a long time!
(also, for some mysterious reason Snape is renamed "Rogue" in French. Sneaky old Severus Rogue!)

I have strong suspicions that my Italian talking watch may be aquiring an intelligence of its own. For two mornings in a row it's suddenly started spontaneously playing music when I'm trying to be quiet and not wake up the other people in my dorm. Is my watch attempting to sabotage, or brighten up, my mornings?

Tomorrow we're flying to Dublin, and I'll return to countries where I'll be able to read every sign, understand background conversations and understand everything on the menu. Woah! It's going to be a crazy change.
Goodbye Paris and mainland Europe! I've enjoyed being stuck behind your language barrier and having good times for the past 4 months.

Ça Plane Pour Moi

Last night I drank kvas and had borscht and pelmeni for dinner. Hey, I'm back in Russia! Or rather, I found a Russian restaurant down the street from our Paris hostel and convinced Jenny we should go. Sour cream and dill, it's been three months and I've missed you!


We had a grand time in Strasbourg and Anne and Jonathan were awesome hosts. We got two days of being shown around wacky Strasbourg with tour guide Anne, and then one day left to our own devices whereupon we decided to go CRAZY and go back to Germany. We went to Triberg in the black forest, saw a waterfall, ate black forest cake which I didn't think I'd like but which was really, really good and then suddenly found ourselves back in France again. Bam! Goodbye Germany, for the 3rd time.

Strasbourg was indeed a wacky town. Each of the tram stops had its own music, one of which I swear was one of the sound effects from Mass Effect. There was also a giant statue of a giraffe in a suit, a whole square full of army tanks and a park with monkeys in it. It's madness! But good madness. We tried traditional Alsatian flams, from "Flams", and Anne also introduced us to the best kind of cheese. All up, a good time!

My Strasbourg photos are all up: here

We're now in Paris for a week, during which time we plan on doing heaps of stuff! This is the first city I can say I've properly returned to. At the same time it's familiar, but not like I remember it, except for some parts which are exactly the same. A strange feeling!

So far we've heard "La Vie En Rose" twice in the one day that we've been here. I plan on keeping count! However, I'm worried that if I hear "Non Je Ne Regrette Rien" I'm going to suddenly wake up on an aeroplane heading to Beijing and realise all of my Europe trip so far has been just a dream....

1664 Forever

Today we went on a tour of the Kronenbourg breweries in Strasbourg.

Was the best part of this:
a) the fact that the tour was in French and I was able to follow along for most of it?
b) the fact that afterwards we got to try a lot of beers for 4.50 euros?
or
c) the cardboard stand-up I discovered in a corner display case.

Correct answer:



This may in fact be one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

Translation of the caption: "I love my wife. She buys Kronenbourg in six-packs."

It's George Lazenby, so does that mean his beer-delivering wife is Diana Rigg?
I just can't get over the astounding awesomeness of this ad. Hooray for the 60s, hooray for Kronenbourg!

Back in the Confœderatio Helvetica

Alright! We didn't have any internet in Geneva (unless we sat in the right place on the window sill) and the upload speed was very slow in Heidelberg - but now we've come to Strasbourg where Anne has kindly let us use her internet and now I've uploaded photos a-plenty! "Best friends ever".

So I returned to Switzerland and Germany and both were great reunions. We headed to Geneva, where we excitedly went to do a free tour of CERN. They took us to see some of the ATLAS facilities - unfortunately we didn't get to go underground to see any of the experimental equipment but we did get to look through a window at physicists in their natural environment. Everyone looked very busy, either because they were putting on a good show for the visitors or because CERN scientists really are just very awesome and dedicated to their work. CERN was very space-age, as evidenced by their use of 3D TVs for educational videos, 60s pod-chairs and tabletop touchscreen computers like in Bond movies. I was definitely suitably impressed!

After our grand plan to head to the Palais de Nations was thwarted due to heading there on a Sunday, we went on a day trip to Lausanne which was brilliant! I think I liked it more than Geneva, really cool views of the lake and the mountains.
In Lausanne I had my new contender for favourite icecream on my trip - maple and walnut icecream. It was just like having icecream with maple syrup on it, one of my favourite treats from home.
I've now concluded that my top five icecreams are as follows:
1. Mövenpick Maple and Walnut icecream
2. Rice icecream
3. Batman/Catwoman icecream
4. Ben and Jerry's peanut butter cookie dough icecream
5. Ginger and cinnamon icecream

Sometimes I have really good icecream and then I make lists like this. But now the weather's taken a turn for the cold so it's looking like it's no longer icecream weather. Ah well, it's been good while it's lasted! Some other good things I've eaten over the past few days include:
- great Chinese from a restaurant called "Hungky" which also did 'phoenix feet' and had an entire section of it's menu dedicated to 'marmite dishes'.
- fondue, which I was waiting til after meeting up with Jenny to eat in Switzerland. Between us we consumed a lot of tasty cheese.
- $15 pho, which is cheap by Switzerland prices. Crazy Switzerland!
- German ravioli (which really did have sausage in it this time)
- more currywurst (eaten whilst watching a great countdown of 'best 90s videos')
- cornflake chocolate

And tonight we enjoyed a welcome return to baguettes, cheese and wine and homemade quiche. Cheers to Anne for tasty French food!

I am jumping backwards here but in Germany we went to Heidelberg for two nights, a university town (with the oldest university in Germay) with a cool castle. We were staying, pretty literally, in a pub/restaurant and drank some really good beer there. Hooray for Germany!

So here are all the photos of what I've been doing for the past few weeks:
France: here
Switzerland and Germany: here

I'm looking forward to checking out Strasbourg and then we have a whole week in Paris before flying out to Dublin on the 27th. Time's going fast but it's going good!

Skumps!

Today I went to Rennes-le-Château on a quest for the holy grail and I totally found it:


It was so easy, it was just lying on the path around the village! Maybe everyone has just been overcomplicating things with their conspiracy theories?

I also found out that, blocky 3D graphics aside, Gabriel Knight 3 took a lot of liberties with its depiction of Rennes-le-Château. None of this spot-on Munich business of the second game, turns out Gabriel Knight 3 was all "let's put in a hotel! Let's put in a giant fountain!"
That said, the things they did recreate were spot on and very, very cool (the church, Tour Magdela).




Whilst some things were indeed lost in blocky translation:




There was even a lone cat wandering around the village, which I would have used to make my cat-hair moustache but I was all out of masking tape. I bought a t-shirt with one of the texts from Le Serpent Rouge on it as the best approximation to a Gabriel Knight t-shirt I could find. It smells like an arcane bookstore!

This wasn't the only fortuitous discovery I made in an arcane bookstore:


It was a pretty great pilgrimage and, Gabriel Knight holy grail conspiracy theories aside, the views were awesome! Aude is my new favourite part of France.

Tonight I've convinced Jenny we should watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to top off our grail day (and investigate the accuracy of Venice). I wish I had a Euro for every time I said the phrase "cat hair moustache" to Jenny today. I am the best travelling companion ever.

In other news, Toulouse was short but good. I have many more photos of Toulouse and Marseille but they can wait til another day. Now we are in Carcassonne and are sleeping in a castle. Seriously, in a castle!

Being older, being Italian

Hello! Since I've last written I'm now 24 and I've been to Venice. Both excellent things!

The rest of Rome went well! We'd heard that the Vatican museum was free on the last Sunday of the month - which was conveniently when we were in town - hence we excitedly headed over there. We'd read that we should "arrive early to avoid queues" and made it over there about quarter of an hour before the museum's opening time which we thought was pretty good. Surprise! The queue was already around the block, along three angled walls around Vatican City and into the courtyard. It was a rainy morning, straight after the change from daylight savings, and some of these people must have been queueing for a long, long time!
We hopped onto the end of the queue and figured we'd see how it went in half an hour.... then another half an hour.... then we hit that point where we'd been queing for long enough we figured we may as well stick it out. In the end we ended up queing for just under three hours. No reward is worth this!



Actually, it turned out it was - the Vatican Museum was crazily impressive. We couldn't really stop to look at anything too long as it felt like we were constantly being pushed along by a crowd of people, but every room we went into was brilliant. Those Popes ended up with some amazingly good stuff!
This experience pretty much summed up my main impression of Rome by the end of it: crowded and crazy (Marzipan ravioli!).

After Rome we went to Venice which was, surprisingly, less crowded and, even more surprisingly, exactly like it always looks in movies. Ah, Venice!
Being able to celebrate my birthday with Jenny and Ben and Alicia was grand. They surprised me at breakfast with the most Italian of birthday cakes, a chocolatey version of that Italian Christmas cake with Pope candles on it. So good!

Jenny got me a Doctor Who Travelling Companion book, the ultimate combination of Doctor Who and travel which is going to bring me so much fun on the train. Ben and Alicia got me an Italian talking watch which reads the time in Italian and can also make a rooster noise and play music. Be prepared, my watch is definitely coming on Buss for plenty of Italian fun!
To top off my exciting morning of cake and present-opening, my Mum had sent me a package of treats from home: some of my favourite Australian goods to stave off homesickness. Weetbix, Freddo + Caramello, Dilmah tea, ginger nuts and 2 minute noodles. I'm going to be feasting Australia-style!

I spent my birthday wandering around Venice with not too much idea of my bearings, eating more cake, eating icecream, having a pigeon on my head, eating dinner by a canal and going for beers. It was a grand old day!

We spent the rest of our time there seeing some old art (at the Doge's Palace) and some modern art (in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection), generally wandering around town, having good wine with Ben and Alicia and taking water taxis (the poor man's gondola). Ah, Venice!



I have a whole bunch of Italy photos, including a whole bunch of Venice canal photos, now up here!

We took a night train out of Venice and after an early morning change in Dijon and an unexpected change in Lyon (which was one of the towns I went to on French trip - the first European city I've returned to!) are now in Marseille. It's sunny as its south of France reputation would suggest and it smells mysteriously like Vietnam (both Jenny and I concur on this point but we've been completely unable to pin the smell down). Since here we've eaten some great bread and some great Moroccan food and I've been gradually recalling my French, enough to have full conversations in shops even if it's still a bit sketchy. We also finally found a cinema showing The Social Network in English, a quest of ours since Greece, and I really enjoyed it! Another good discovery about France: the trailer quota is amazing (even if all the ones we got were dubbed).
Tomorrow we're going to Toulouse and then to Carcassonne, both of which I'm very excited about. Hooray for France! Liberté, égalité, Orangina.

I'm not 100% sure but I think someone in my hostel could be trying to work out the theme song to The Office on guitar!

Tricks and Treats

In Santorini I found myself with two books to exchange and quite happily changed them for what I believed were the first and second books in the Foundation trilogy. I was excited to read them after having studied the trilogy in the science-fiction history unit. It wasn't until after almost finishing the first and being keen for more that I discovered Second Foundation is the third book in the trilogy. Come on, what kind of sneaky trick was that? Or for a better question, who leaves the first and third books from a trilogy in a hostel book exchange?

Today another string of strange events happened!
First, I needed a haircut and hence braved an Italian barber. Haircuts already make me nervous, so the many unknown quantities of not knowing the barber or speaking much Italian made me even more nervous than usual. But it turned out I didn't need to worry! With my minimal Italian and the barber's minimal English I actually got a pretty good haircut. Hooray! Now I am well Roman.

Next, Jenny and I met up with Anne in Rome. What is this madness? Turns out Anne and her friend Mark were holidaying in Rome at the same time as us! I don't know what was stranger, unexpectedly meeting up with them here or realising that we'll see them again in a couple of weeks. European madness!

Thirdly, for lunch we went to a restaurant with no English translations on the menu. Luckily Mark spoke pretty good Italian! I was keen for some ravioli and from the menu Mark gathered that the ravioli option was, perhaps, 'with sausage sauce'. Sounded good.
The ravioli we got came in a sort of tasty bolognaise sauce. Maybe the sausage was inside? Nope! Inside was marzipan. Or at least, something that tasted very much like marzipan!
And this was how I ended up having marzipan ravioli with bolognaise sauce for lunch. Hands down winner of the craziest thing I've eaten on my trip so far.

All up Rome has been going well! We weren't able to get tickets to Burke and Hare at the film festival but we did head out of town to see Pompeii yesterday. Pompeii was very, very cool. Like Delos, much bigger than I expected and like Knossos, much greener than I expected. It's cool how much it still feels like a town, rather than a cluster of ruins (which was what I expected). A mega day getting out to Naples and back, but a good day!
It was also cool heading to another place that I studied a lot in history and it reminded me that at one point in time I knew the difference between the four styles of Pompeiian artwork. Apparently my brain thought this would never come in handy and promptly forgot it. That was a foolish move, brain!

Between the four styles of Pompeii and Foundation I feel like I'm getting a lot of value out of my history degree at the moment!

After a lot of messing around I've finally gotten the rest of my Greece photos uploaded: now up from the bottom of here
If you look at the photos from the main page some are in a confusing order, but they're all as they should be from that link!

Tomorrow I'm going to be having a spooky Halloween at Vatican City and then it's Venice round the corner! Yesss.

Θεσσαλονίκη - Χανιά

Hello! It's been a while since I've written anything as I was trying to save up all my Greece stories and photos for when we finished travelling around Greece. As it turns out that's actually a lot to cover! But here are the places in Greece I've been to and what I thought of them:

THESSALONIKI
Thessaloniki I didn't get much time to see as I was just there for a night in between Sofia and Athens. As a result, the guy at the desk of my hotel suggested that the best way for me to see the city in my few afternoon hours would be to take the city's tour bus. I waited for the bus for an hour, learnt about "Greek time", enjoyed some Mediterranean Herb flavoured chips and realised that you feel pretty old seeing a city through the window of the bus (at least when that thought crosses your mind of, "hey, I'm kind-of seeing the city but I don't have to walk around!"). All up, I enjoyed walking along the waterfront to get to the bus the best!



ATHENS
Athens took a long time to get to due to trains running on "Greek time" and when I got there it wasn't what I expected. I'd heard a lot of stories from fellow travellers about how Athens was dodgy and dirty: but what I saw was clean, white, sunny (til Jenny got there!) and awesome. I ended up really loving Athens, tying with Heraklion as my favourite place in Greece I visited! On the day before Jenny got in I climbed Lycabettus Hill, the tallest hill in Athens, where I could see for miles and miles, and then walked around the National Gardens which were also really cool. As mentioned, Jenny and I then did a lot of sightseeing in the rain which dampened our clothes but not our spirits! We didn't end up making it to the National Museum that day due to unexpected metro delays (ie. an entire section of the track being missing), but we did have some brilliant kebabs, possibly the best kebab I've ever had! According to the bag they came in, the place we chose had been around since the 20s, which was a fortuitous "next kebab place we see we're getting one". A good choice!

In Athens I also took the opportunity to do ridiculous things like this:


(reference point)

MYKONOS
Mykonos was also not what I was expecting! I hear that Mykonos is some kind of "party island", but when we were there we didn't see any of this famous "party". Instead our pension was in a quiet, beachy area and when we headed to the main town it was also not too crowded. This was a good thing! It meant my first impression of the Greek islands was a pretty chilled out and peaceful one. We'd mainly headed to Mykonos as a means of getting to Delos, which we did indeed get too and this was very, very cool. I couldn't get over the fact that a) they've preserved the ruins of almost an entire town and b) that they've managed to keep the island free for the archaeologists to work on it. I was expecting a small site by the port, not realising that an entire town really means a lot of ruins! We rambled around it for a good couple of hours and it was good fun.



SANTORINI
After two nights in Mykonos we had two nights in Santorini. Santorini I will remember for what seemed like a particularly crazy day! We'd planned on: heading to Fira, the main town, which was close to our pension and then heading to Oia to see the sunset, something which is apparently good to do. After wandering around Fira for a bit I had a great idea - to walk to Oia! Looking at the map, I enthusiastically suggested to Jenny this would be "at the most" a 40 minute walk and would save us a bus fare. Woops! Turns out it takes 2 hours. On the walk there we picked up a mysterious dog companion which walked with us for probably over an hour and practically led us to Oia. It was walking ahead of us most of the time and kept looking back to make sure we were still following. Thanks, Dog! We made it to Oia, checked out the nice houses, and then found our "good spot" for watching the sunset. Luckily we headed there early as it turned out this was a lot of people's "good spot" for watching the sunset!

So on one side you've got this peaceful view:


And on the other side this:


After watching the sunset we had a great plan to catch the bus back to Fira, go for dinner and head back home. Surprise! Even though this was peak tourist time because everyone had gone to watch the sunset, there wasn't a bus for an hour. We sat in a cafe near the bus station with not enough jackets, tried to nurse espressos for as long as possible to fight off the cold and then realised that the TV was wackily showing a countdown of "Top 5 breast grabs". Some were from movies, some were from real life. They should expand that and make it a 20 to 1!
By the time the bus finally came a good number of tourists had accumulated who wanted to catch it. At first I was concerned that we wouldn't all fit on the bus. No worries! After they'd filled up all the seats they stuffed us into the aisles, until the bus was completely packed with squashed in tourists. The bus then proceeded to make its speedy way back to Fira around precarious Greek road bends. It was genuinely a very crazy, and very scary experience. Legs felt a little bit wobbly when I stepped off that bus and felt thankful that I'd survived. The wine was extra good when we finally made it to a taverna for dinner.
My evening then concluded its craziness by being invited up to the bedroom of our pension owners - they had concluded I was a technical person and wanted me to fix something on the internet for them. I ended up composing an e-mail to hostelworld, being patted on the back lots by George whilst the wife was hanging around in the bed nearby. All up, a strange day.

HERAKLION
After Santorini we headed to Crete with no idea of where to stay in Heraklion - a surprisingly big town that has surprisingly no internet presence. We were very relieved to find out a place we'd read about in Lonely Planet had cheap rooms and turned out to be pretty good! It had a very jungly rooftop bar. Heraklion was kind-of like a mini-Athens and turned out to be one of my favourite places we went to in Greece for that reason. Whilst there we headed to Knossos, where I didn't see any minotaurs but did enjoy making fun of Arthur Evans and seeing the ruins. After Delos I was expecting a bigger site, forgetting that a 'palace' (loose term) compared to a town would be much smaller. Still great, anyway!

CHANIA
Chania was our second stop on Crete and was also good. We took our time wandering around here as we'd planned to head to the Samaria Gorge but it was already closed for the winter, so we had heaps of time to see the town.
Here is a sad story from Chania! We found a t-shirt shop which sold a lot of cool internet-style shirts, where I found a shirt that said DOS and had a picture of a record on it. Oh man, best fake Exit to DOS shirt ever! But they only had it in XL! Ahh, sad times!

I ate lots of tasty Greek food and downed Mythos beer, retsina and ouzo, though I've got to say that the moussaka and pastitsio I had were not as good as Mum's, and the Greek beans I had were not as good as Dad's. Tasty food but after a few tavernas I do miss home cooking! Also, there was a fly in my pastitsio. I picked it out and tried to pretend I didn't see it because that was one of the better taverna meals I'd had to that date! Jenny and I frequently chose places based on Greek Salad Index, ie. the price of their Greek Salad on the 'extortionate to surprisingly reasonable' scale. The best things I had were veal giouvetsi, and another awesome veal dish from a slightly Turkish-influenced place that was a tomato, raisin and pine nut stew with tons of Greek yoghurt on the side. Tasty stuff! We also had a surprisingly good run of getting free shots of spirits and desserts from our last few tavernas. Hooray!

I've been working on uploading my Greek photos - I've got a lot so there's still a few to come! But for now you can see them here (and I'll add more to the same album hopefully soon)
For anyone who's looking at Jenny's photos as well as mine - surprise! We have heaps of similar photos. You have been warned!

Travelling with Jenny has been going good so far, although she did ask me:
"Can you play any musical instruments?"
A friend indeed!

We've now succesfully made it to Rome where it turns out our arrival has coincided with the Rome International Film Festival! So here are some famous people who will also be in town whilst we're here: Martin Scorsese, Shah Rukh Khan. I should invite him to Venice so we can celebrate our birthdays together!
We're definitely hoping to make it to at least one film in the film festival, ideally the Burke and Hare screening with introduction by John Landis, though it's quite possible tickets have already sold out. Hopefully we can get into something! I will break out my fancy "jumper" again.

You know what's crazy? All of a sudden it's less than a week til my birthday. How did that happen? But in awesome news, Ben and Alicia from Vodkatrain are going to be in Venice at the same time and me and Jenny, so all of a sudden my birthday's going off! I hope there are one or more of the following in Venice for the big day: catacombs, vampires, speedboats.

We have 5 nights in Rome before then, which is the longest I've spent in one place for a long time, possibly since Munich. Lots of time to try and learn to, as they say, be Italian!

Atlantis

This was what the weather was like in Athens yesterday, before Jenny came:



And this has been the weather today:




GEE THANKS JENNY.

Just kidding! We're having a ball - we may have gotten soaked walking around the Acropolis but it was still cool. Currently having a pit stop at the hostel before attempting to use our soggy Acropolis tickets for further sightseeing - then lastly, the National Museum, where it won't matter if it's raining.
Getting drenched and updating blogs, "classic travelling"!

Balkan Salute

Bad times to discover that your Eurail pass isn't valid for Serbia or Bulgaria: when the ticket inspector is checking your tickets for the night train from Serbia to Bulgaria!

Actually, it didn't work out too bad. I was able to buy my ticket off the conductor and pay in Euros (I'd just succesfully gotten rid of the last of my Serbian dinars). I mostly just felt guilty embarassment for misreading my Eurail pass and trying to argue my case with the conductor, when what he was trying to explain in clipped English was actually completely logical and correct (even though my pass says "Serbia and Bulgaria" on it, they're actually in blue which it turns out means "NOT Serbia or Bulgaria").

I have great respect for this ticket conductor for actually understanding my Eurail pass, unlike a large amount of the conductors I've had who take it off you, stare at it, turn it around and then shrug and give it back to you - sometimes scribbling something onto it first (which originally caused me a bit of concern because I don't know if you're meant to write on a Eurail pass, but my new conclusion is conductors know best!).

My unfortunate turn of luck at having to pay for my ticket was balanced out by the fact that I then got a whole cabin to myself! It also felt brilliantly old fashioned - 70s wood panelling, a sink and mirror, a coat and hat rack (now that I have a travelling hat any hat-based facilities are now a welcome bonus) and only 3 bunks. Luxury!

I'm now onto my last few nights before meeting up with Jenny in Athens. Exciting! It's pretty crazy how fast the time's gone and I'm genuinely surprised that the solo leg of my trip's almost over. I didn't go crazy, nor did I write a novel, but I think I landed at a good point somewhere in between.

It was a rainy day yesterday in Sofia but I still managed to see a bit of the town - a nice place! A lot of shops and some crazy drivers. I really enjoyed Belgrade as well. At first I was a bit intimidated by the scowling locals and stray dogs, seen through the haze of a cold, but on my next day there I went to their sunny central park/Kalemegdan Fortress where there were lots of old men playing chess and had some really good Serbian food for dinner (three course meal and a beer for less than $10). I was succesfully won over! Also, in both of these countries I've had a chance to practice my cyrillic reading again - the fact that I still remember it from Russia makes me feel like an alphabet master! Next challenge: Greek.

Today I made it to Greece and I'm in Thessaloniki for one night before the train to Athens tomorrow. Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to see too much of the town but I walked along the waterfront which was sunny and smelt great. Now I have a stomach full of delicious food and I've shelled out for a private room for myself, so all up things are good!

I'd succesfully managed to not lose any stuff until Belgrade, not counting an awesome Tardis badge I had for my backpack which went very early on, somewhere on the Trans-Siberian. Considering the number of things I managed to bump my backpack into I think this was always doomed! But tragically Belgrade saw the loss of my Yellow Submarine thongs. I scoured the hostel for them with no luck and it was pretty small so I don't think I just misplaced them. Strongly suspect that someone might have mistakenly or otherwise packed them up with their stuff. Luckily there was another pair of thongs going spare at the hostel so I've taken them with me instead. You win some, you lose some?
I've also had to face the loss of my iPod headphones, which cut out on the side with the volume control. I've bought myself some new, pretty basic headphones here in Bulgaria, but I'm sad that I've lost the ability to control volume without taking my iPod out of my pocket.

I've uploaded my photos from Hungary: here
And photos from Serbia and Bulgaria: here

Time for a count-up - here are some numerical statistics of my trip to date!

Number of countries visited: 19
Number of currencies used: 11
Number of books read: 6
Number of trains caught: 46 (not counting metros)
Number of different beers tried: 60
Number of pastries eaten: uncountable
Number of Ikea TROMSÖ bunk beds I've slept in: uncountable
Number of times I've heard "We No Speak Americano" or "Alejandro": uncountable

Tesla's Top Hat

So here's a trifecta of strange travelling luck I've had:
- getting into Moscow around the time of the bushfires
- getting into Hungary a day after the industrial spill
- getting into Belgrade a day after riots against the police

News is following me around, or I guess more correctly, I'm following news around. Luckily everything seems to have quietened down in Belgrade now that I'm here, though that said I'm spending a large amount of my time here at my hostel anyway. After a few late nights in Budapest I've had a relapse of my cold (which I thought was getting better) so it's lots of rest for me to make sure I'm fit and well for Greece in a few days time!

Luckily it's been another good hostel here so it's good for hanging around. In Eastern Europe they love apartment hostels! The Serbians who run it are mega friendly. This morning I had sausage and cheese muffins for breakfast. As in, homecooked sausage and cheese muffins hot out of the tray. So good!
Tonight I'm catching the night train to Bulgaria. Funnily enough the last time I caught a night train I was also sick. Coincidence?

The rest of Budapest was really good fun. Another one of my favourites! Yoeri and I checked out the Soviet sculpture park, which was unexpectedly better than the Moscow sculpture park and then parted ways. I also ate wild boar! Or at least, something that was called "wild boar soup" on the menu which may or may not have contained actual boar.

On my last night there I went out for drinks with some fun characters from my hostel and we went to some arty Budapest bars which had themed rooms, for example one where you sat in bathtubs and one where furniture was stuck to the roof. Here two particularly cool things happened:
1) When I was saying goodbye to everyone and responded to the usual "add us on facebook!" with the usual "I don't have a facebook!" I was met with a round of applause!

2) Stu, a guy from Manchester with an awesome Manchester accent (eg. "Loondoon doongeoon") asked:
"What's that island you've got just off Perth, again? Craggy Island?"

Uploading is taking a while on the internet here, so Budapest pics will be coming later!

Aha! As I'm writing this the Serbian radio I'm listening to is playing the winning German song from the Eurovision. At last I'm really in Europe!

Budvar to Budapest

It's my second night in Budapest and things are going good! I couldn't remember what the hostel I'd booked here was like and hence was pleasantly surprised to discover I'd booked another apartment-hostel, this time in a spacious loft! It's wicked! Earlier tonight there was a lot of cranked up 90s music. I approve.

Here are three more good things about Budapest:
1) When I say my usual form of goodbye in shops, a humble English "see ya", I'm actually also saying goodbye in Hungarian.
2) I found Canada Dry ginger ale in a supermarkets here! I've been trying to find this ever since I went to Canada 10+ years ago. Not too sure why they have it in Hungary but not in any of the other European countries I've been to (that I saw)! It was just as good as I remember.
3) One of the classic films of our time was filmed here. By "classic film" I mean I Spy.

I also had possibly the best coffee I've ever had today. The milk was milky with the right amount of foam, it was in a massive mug that was definitely larger than standard coffee size and it cost about $2. So good!

Here are some stories about what I've been up to over the past few days, involving drinking a lot of beer:

In Prague I went on a "beer tour", where we went to 4 pubs to try different types of Czech beer and learn some beer history. Most of the beers we tried were brewed at the pubs themselves and tasted awesome! Also the fourth pub we went to was Soviet propaganda themed, which was really cool. There was just me and two couples so when we had to vote "best beer drinker" of the night I got picked mostly, I think, for being the odd one out. Either way, hooray! It meant I won a voucher to do a tour with the same company in either Paris, Dublin or London (or other towns that I'm not headed to) - worth about 10-15 euro, so score! Jenny, I will tell you all about these tours in case you're interested in doing one half price!



The next day I went out to see the bone church at Kutná Hora, which was indeed very boney. I really liked the town because it smelt unnaturally strongly like honey. Surely there must have been a hidden honey factory somewhere around there?

On my first night in Bratislava a friend of the people running my hostel came in to do a Slovakian food cookup! We had cabbage pasta which was really good for just cabbage, pasta, pepper, salt and sugar. I then hung out for beers with a guy from Belgium, Yoeri, with whom I share three solid interests of britpop, black and white movies and beer, and we joined forces to see the town the next day.
Bratislava was a cool city and I think I liked it a lot more than Prague! Smaller, friendlier, stranger mix of older and Soviet-era buildings. To fully experience Slovakian ways we then went to the ice hockey! Those ice hockey players have some crazy skills, I'm still not sure how they know when they're getting subbed on and off and how they do it so quickly. Slovan Bratislava won and the crowd was very excited about this! Also, whenever there were pauses in the game they played loud, short clips of songs, with no discernible connections between them. The best choice was Disco 2000, the strangest choice was YMCA!

After the hockey match we fell in with some more Australians and more Belgians and ended up having some international beer drinking competitions, as a result of which I consumed more beer than I thought I could physically fit into my body. It was good fun, but shamefully we lost overall to the Belgians. Belgians can drink beer very fast!

The next day Yoeri and I were both headed to Budapest, so we joined forces again but unfortunately he couldn't get a place at my hostel for further team antics. But we went to a place that did good, cheap, traditional Hungarian food for dinner where I had "Hungarian crispy duck". It was two massive slabs of crispy-skinned duck, possibly constituting an entire duck between them, with sweet cabbage, mashed potato and orange. Turns out hacking your way through a mega duck feast is a truly great dinner after a night of a lot of beer drinking!

Concluding my stories, today I went for a big walk around town and enjoyed it for the previous stated reasons and also because it's another really cool city! Cool, but massive - I walked for 6 hours and didn't see everything I wanted to but hopefully I can fit some more stuff in around a trip to the Soviet monument park tomorrow!

I've put up Czech Republic and Slovakia photos right here!

Hope things are good with everyone back home! Many cheerful European regards to anyone and everyone reading this!

I liked the Austrian way better

On my last night in Vienna I decided to go out for schnitzel (again) and went to a restaurant that specialised in it and had several different kinds on the menu. I ordered something called "hamburger schnitzel", which I assumed just meant schnitzel served with chips from what I could understand of the menu.
In fact, it turned out to be a huge slab of schnitzel wedged in between.... two more huge slabs of schnitzel! Hamburger schnitzel! Turned out I'd made an excellent choice.
Some Austrian guys I was sharing the table with laughed at me for eating it all. It was great. I've concluded that I pretty much have a limitless stomach when it comes to schnitzel!

After that I completed my missions of going on the Riesenrad, albeit without cellist, and going to see The Third Man which was doubly good now that I've seen some of the town.
In between these I had one more final night plan which was to go to a coffee shop and get strudel. I had to just pick one close to the cinema and ended up in a fancy place which the menu told me had been around since 1861. The waiter brought me coffee but promptly forgot my strudel. I hope they haven't been doing that since 1861. Danke schön! (that's my attempt at Austrian sarcasm)

Vienna seemed to be full of guys in wide-brimmed hats and big coats, who all looked like they belonged in an old-fashioned spy movie. All up, I liked Vienna a lot!

I'm now in Prague where I haven't done too much except see a bit of town and go to the opera. I saw Rusalka, which I considered was the best choice being Czech! I didn't know anything else about it but it turns out it's basically just The Little Mermaid as an opera. My favourite aria was "Under the Sea". Haha, humour.
During intermission I drank champagne and an American with a bow tie and very square arm movements told me how much he misses the Reagan days. He made me think of a real-life Jack Donaghy!

This morning I booked up the rest of my accomodation until I meet up with Jenny in just under two weeks! I'm now all locked in for Eastern Europe, with my next stop being Bratislava in two days time. I am excited.

I've been watching a lot of Big Bang Theory, namely the second half of season 3 which I hadn't gotten up to watching yet. So good, but it's possible this is making me even more introverted than normal! Or maybe it's just that there are a lot of Australians staying at my hostel in Prague who aren't really the kind of people I would normally hang out with. That said, I'm intending to be sociable tonight as I'm going on some kind of Beer Tour, which seems to be more down my alley than the numerous European pub crawls that are run everywhere, particularly in Prague. I would much rather be plied with good Czech beer than plied with shots!

I've also uploaded my Vienna photos, which you can see starting from here!



Me, a big palace and a Star Wars shirt

Oh, Vienna fail

Today I donned my smartest outfit* and went to the Hotel Sacher to eat Sacher-Torte in their fancy cafe, whereupon I fancily ate some cake and then promptly elbowed a waitress in the butt (accidentally).

She was well professional about it, as she was serving the table behind me at the time and didn't break pace in talking to them at all - but it was a solid nudge and just at the right time for it to be plausible to be intentional (she'd just taken my money for the bill, and I did it whilst putting my wallet back in my pocket).

Vienna: you're doing it wrong!

But in good news, my apartment had a cancellation for my third night in Vienna so now I get to stay here instead of moving hostels! Worth losing my 3.50 euro deposit on the other place for? Definitely.

Also, I didn't end up re-buying the shirt that got damaged on its way to me (I took that as a sign) but I did get a Chunk Star Wars shirt, something I've been wanting for a while!

Time for me to attempt being fancy: take two. Booking my tickets for the opera in Prague!

*meaning a jumper

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.