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