Friday, March 4, 2011
Berlin, Amsterdam & London
Frankfurt/Berlin, Germany
We stayed only the one night in Frankfurt, as all reports are that there isn’t a huge amount to do or see. I would concur, although, the area we stayed in (red light district) was somewhat amusing, and there was a small farmers festival on selling interesting food and displaying a variety of over excited barnyard animals.
We again managed to take advantage of the ride sharing program and we scored a lift from Frankfurt to Berlin. We pulled into Berlin in the afternoon and made our way to the hostel. It was a bit out of town, but in the heartland of East Berlin. We loved it. The hostel was cheap and had everything we could ask for. We had planned to stay in Berlin for 3 days, we extended our stay again and again and again and eventually stayed 8 days.
Berlin was cheap and that was such a nice change from Switzerland so we were able to live comfortably and stay under budget. We spent our days wandering the city, visiting all the tourist hot spots. We did the free walking tour and were mesmerised by the modern history of the city. It was so bizarre to think that right up until 1989 the Berlin Wall was still up.
The primary reason that we enjoyed Berlin so much was due to the alternative culture. We did the alternative walking tour which looked at street art and all things ‘alternative’.
One of the days we headed out to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The camp became the blue print for all the other camps that were built. All though it was a work camp rather than a death camp, there were still 30,000 deaths, and Sachsenhausen was where they experimented with methods of mass killing. It was an incredibly humbling experience.
Berlin was both Al and I’s favourite city in Europe and we can’t wait to head back there again. We hopped on yet another overnight bus and headed for Amsterdam.
Amsterdam, Holland
The ridiculous overnight bus dropped us off in Amsterdam at 4:00am on a Sunday morning. What on earth we were supposed to do at that time, I have no idea. So we headed to our hostel, where they reluctantly let us in and allowed us to hang out in the smoking room. We weren’t allowed to sleep though, so we sat miserably waiting for 12:00pm (check-in time) to arrive. It got to about 6:30 when we decided we were sick of inhaling second hand weed smoke and we went for a walk. It was bitterly cold, and pitch black, the streets were filled with rubbish and the occasional late night party animal. We made our way through the streets and finally found a cafe to defrost in. One of the few things that we wanted to do while in Amsterdam, was to go to Anne Frank’s house and we decided to head there early to beat the rush. We toured the house which was very interesting and I decided that one day I’ll have to read the diaries. As we left the line to get in had extended round the corner to the end of the block – lucky we did beat the rush, otherwise we’d probably still be there.
We made it back to the hostel, checked in and slept for the afternoon. In the evening we again wandered the streets, had dinner and had a quiet night. The following day we hired bikes and rode about, we made it to the sex museum, perused the red light district and tried to find quality ‘coffee shops’. In the evening we went out for dinner, again hit the red light district and found a coffee shop to test out. Our visit was brief and entertaining, and the 10min walk home took 2 and half hours.
The following day we relaxed, did some sightseeing and shopping. We said farewell to mainland Europe and hopped on an awful overnight bus and headed to London.
London, England
The bus was dreadful. Why we kept opting for overnight buses, I don’t know. The bus was smooth until we got to a pit stop, where the doors were flung open, and most people got off. There was a serious breeze blowing and at 1:00am it was probably about 4 degrees. I couldn’t wait for the doors to close and for the bus to move again. We arrived at the border, everyone got off the bus, went through customs and hopped back on the bus. It was a fairly smooth process and we were running ahead of schedule. It was quite bizarre, but we travelled across the channel, on the bus, in a train. The bus was driven on to the train, and we were taken across to England. As we were pulling onto the train, the bus driver was bragging about how early we would be, and how good a run we’d had. All of a sudden, BANG, and the whole bus shook. Our bus driver had smashed into the kerb. All was ok, we got onto the train, arrived in England, drove away, and then pulled into the first service station. The wheel was ruined. So we all had to get off the bus at about 4:00am and wait 2 hours at a service station in freezing weather. Not happy. We arrived in London 3 hours late, and again having had no sleep.
We made our way to Tom, Phoebe and Tim’s place and crashed. The following 10 days blend together in my mind, but we did lots of; lazing, catching up, drinking beer, eating pizza (one of 3 foods Tom eats), watching football, shopping and drinking beer.
I did make it to an English Premier League game, and not just any. I got to see Newcastle take on West Ham at Upton Park. It was great to watch the magpies play. However we sat in the middle of the West Ham fans, and I was told not to cheer for Newcastle if I wanted to get out alive. It was quite difficult, especially when Newcastle ended up winning.
Alison had a great time going to a few shows in the West End. She got to see Lion King one afternoon, and one evening she went to see Chicago with Phoebe. I’m not big on musicals so I gave it a miss, but by all reports they were both great shows.
We loved hanging out with Tom, Phoebe, Tim and John, and having a place of our own – even if it was on their couch. Lucky for us they are all home now (except John), and there not living in the sad cloudy land. We rushed to the airport, and we were running horribly horribly late. Made it to the check-in desk and were handed 2 business class tickets. We relaxed, made our way to the gate. Got onboard our plane and into our beautiful seats/booths. What a way to fly. The food was amazing, as was the wine. Loads of movies to watch, and the seat transformed into a flat bed. I didn’t want to get off.
It was sad leaving London as we knew our Europe travel had now truly finished, and we were nearing the end of the line.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Octoberfest - Munich, Austria; Innsbruck & Switzerland
Munich, Germany - Octoberfest
We awoke early and Bren, Alison and I farewelled Mim and Brian and headed to the airport, boarded a plane and headed to Germany. We landed in Munich and made our way to our lovely hotel. Bren was able to score a room at the Munich Novotel at a discounted rate as part of his staff travel benefits. So amongst the high flying businessmen and wealthy holiday makers, we checked into the Novotel with our backpacks. We spent the afternoon meandering through Munich checking out the city, looking for lederhosen to buy/rent and looking for a suitable spot to buy pork knuckle. Lederhosen were much to dear to buy, and we couldn’t find a rental company, so instead we bought hats (almost as good, surely). We got our pork knuckle and our Bavarian steins and headed to a beer hall in central Munich. The place was huge, several hundred people were drinking beer the way only Germans can. We met up with Helen, Tamara and Diana and drank the night away.
The next morning we made our way to the festival. Octoberfest was like a theme park for grownups. There were many rides, carnival games and food stalls selling the very best of Bavarian cuisine; surrounding tents the size of football fields filled with drunken folk from across the globe. I was in heaven. We moved from tent to tent trying to find space to sit. Most tents filled up fairly quickly, so at lunch time we were struggling to find seats. But we eventually secured a spot that was our home for the afternoon. The girls, Alison, Bren and I drank stein after stein, and made new friends throughout the day. We seemed to be the minority in the tent, as most were locals, and funnily enough, the 4 pretty girls attracted their fair share of attention. At one stage we had a huge group of Italians surrounding our table, a number of Americans, English and of course Germans. Tables usually hold 10, our group was 6, but I think we had at least 25 people (mainly guys) for most of the day. We continued to drink, we ate roast chickens, snorted minty snuff and listened to Bavarian folk bands until the ugly lights came on and they kicked everyone out.
The following day everyone was a little rough, and it took us a bit longer to get organised. We headed to the festival in the afternoon and tested out some funky rides, and inspected various tents trying to find a suitable spot. We gave up after the 8th consecutive tent was full and went and sat with the girls and a couple of fellas they had befriended the previous day. The day unfolded much the same way as the day before. After an afternoon of sitting outside drinking we migrated inside and squished into an otherwise full table. We met some new people, learnt some German drinking songs, danced and sang until again the “man” kicked us out. We missed the last train home so we ate McDonalds and caught a cab home.
The following morning was Alison’s birthday. I was feeling a bit sickly – and I had been ill for a number of days, if not weeks. The drinking, poor diet, lack of exercise and sleep for the past few months was catching up with me, so I wasn’t much company to Al on her birthday. Bren and the girls went out for a birthday lunch and a few drinks, while I lay in bed like a sack of potatoes. I hadn’t moved when they returned 3 hours later. We had promised Alison a special treat for her birthday, and so in the afternoon we watched ‘Sex and the City 2’ in the hotel room. It was awful. In the evening I was feeling mildly better and we went out for Japanese food.
The following morning we got up, packed our bags, had lunch and headed to the train station. We sadly bid farewell to Bren as he headed north to Frankfurt to fly home, and we headed south to Innsbruck, Austria.
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Innsbruck, Austria
We arrived in Innsbruck in the afternoon and travelled to our hotel where we stayed all night still trying to recover from the previous days of madness.
The following day we met with Diana, Helen and Tam and we ventured up to the top of the Nordkette(??). The snow capped mountain was gorgeous, and the view was amazing. The snow provided entertainment for everyone as we were able to make snow men and throw snow balls. As we weren’t really wearing appropriate cold weather gear/footwear we stayed only a short while before returning to sea level. We bid farewell to the girls, and toured about Innsbruck, a truly beautiful city. Al and I caught the bus to our hotel which was 20min out of town. It was dark when we arrived, and we decided to simply eat at the hotel.
In the morning we awoke to the sound of the church bells ringing only metres from our window. I opened the blinds to reveal a stunning view from our room. The small town of Patsch encircled by bright green fields, leading to the bases’ of the looming snow capped and intimidating Austrian Alps.
We wandered the small town, and although it was blue skies and sunny, it was bitterly cold. So we lazed about, read books, watched TV, caught up on bits and pieces and before we knew it was a again night time.
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Lucerne/Interlaken, Switzerland
We awoke and travelled to the train station and boarded a train to Lucerne, Switzerland. Lucerne was a really picturesque town, and it really felt like a town rather than a city. For 2 days we toured the sights and tried our best to not spend too much money. It was some time during our time in Switzerland – amongst the cold and rain, and ludicrously overpriced goods and services, that we made the decision that we would soon need to end our time in Europe as we simply could no longer afford to stay in places like Switzerland. So we decided that we would start making our way towards to London, and then move onto South East Asia to enjoy some sun shine and cheap living. So whilst we did our best to tour and admire Switzerland, through the rain, my mind couldn’t help but wander to warmer parts of the world.
We left Lucerne and headed to Interlaken. Interlaken had a really cool vibe. It is supposedly the adventure capital of Europe, and seemed to be a popular stop off for backpackers and thrill seekers alike. We would have loved to partake in all but a few of the activities on offer; skydiving, bungy jumping, rafting, canyoning, parasailing, the list goes on. Unfortunately for us, everything was more than a little overpriced. Everything was 2 or 3 times more expensive than back home – we decided we weren’t that desperate to part with our money. So again we wandered the town and tried our best to spend as little as possible. It was time to leave Switzerland. This presented us with our next hurdle. For the life of us we couldn’t figure out how to get out of Switzerland and into Germany cheaply. A train from Interlaken to Frankfurt was around €220, flying was not much different. Buses didn’t exist, and we looked at every possibility. Finally we discovered a ridesharing program that matches up travellers with drivers, and we were able to nab a lift from Bern (Switzerland’s capital only an hour from Interlaken by train) to Frankfurt for only €15. So we were chauffeur driven to our hotel door by a cool German fella named Markus.
Malta
Unfortunately this is where Nick and I said farewell to everyone but lucky for us we were on our way to Malta to meet mum, dad and Brendan. Although it was a huge 2 day journey with no sleep and an 11 hour stop-over in Barcelona; where we went back to our favourite places to eat and re-bought some lost jewellery.
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After 5 buses, 3 flights, numerous train rides and 2 cabs we made it to Malta and got to see Mum, Dad and Bren for the first time in 9 months. We had 10 days to catch up and it flew by. We had a three bedroom apartment so it was nice to finally unpack our bags and spread out.
Our time in Malta was action packed and there wasn’t a minute wasted. We took a day trip out to the blue lagoon and paddled about, through caves of beautifully crystal clear water and “sandy bottoms” (Nick’s joke). We climbed aboard the ancient buses and made our way into the capital Valetta where we visited the war museum and went exploring through the old town. We also did a day trip to one of the other islands Gozo which was equally beautiful. On this island is the famous blue grotto (which has been featured in some James Bond type movies) and we took a little boat ride through the grottos. Absolutely picture perfect.
We spent a day or two lazing around on the beach and swimming in the Mediterranean sea, numerous afternoons enjoying the sunset with a bottle or two of chisk (the local beer that dad loved). A couple of the nights Nick, Bren and I headed in to Paceville for a night out on the town only to be confronted by 14 year olds with awful haircuts and tight and skimpy clothes trying their best to make it inside clubs without the bouncer noticing. We had a great laugh, a great couple of night and woke up with headaches in the mornings.
Mum, having lived in Malta, had family still living there, some she hadn’t seen since she was 8. So we did the rounds and made sure to meet them all and exchange stories about when mum was growing up. The majority of conversations were spoken in Maltese so Nick and Dad sat there drinking beers not knowing what was going on half the time. Mum wanted to visit where she used to live so we ventured out to Malsa on one of the days and saw her street and house that was still standing (just). Unfortunately the area was more than a little run down after all these years which was a little heartbreaking for her to see.
We had some great meals and mum even cooked some of my favourites. We lived on pastizzis and couldn’t get enough of them – 25cents each and 3 times the size of the ones at home.
Because we were so close we did a very long day trip to Sicily which was amazing and something mum and dad really wanted to do. We started out at 4 in morning to catch the ferry over there and didn’t return till after 12 that night. We jumped on a bus and stopped at some beautiful Sicilian towns and villages. We also drove to the top of the devastating volcano Mt Etna.
Turkey
After convincing Tim to pop into Turkey on his way to Egypt; Sarah, Tim and I made our way to Istanbul and landed two days earlier than everyone else, including Nick. Those two days were filled with walking around the sultanahmet (old city), Bazaar shopping, indulging in the Turkish cuisine and flavoured tea. The girls; Michelle, Katie, Tam, Diana and Monique arrived a few hours before Nick and a great deal of time was spent on the roof top bar of our hostel drinking beers and smoking shisha’s. This is where we met Henry and Piotr joined our gang.
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As a big group we explored Istanbul together and visited some of Turkey’s most famous sites ie, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofia, Istanbul’s contemporary Art Museum and the underground Basilica Cistern. We ended up in Taksim one night and experienced Istanbul’s club scene which was cool.
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From Istanbul we ventured South and caught a flight to Cappadocia. Cappadocia is such an amazingly bizarre and beautiful region due to the volcanic layers and tufa erosion that has taken place over the centuries resulting in a landscape that portrays various unusual shapes and figures formed from rock. The locals call them “fairy chimneys” due to their tuberous house like shape but to us they somewhat resembled male genitalia. Centuries ago Christians found shelter in the fairy chimneys and carved houses out from the rock. Today these caves still exist and it’s quite amazing to see that hotels etc now occupy these dwellings.
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We heard the best way to explore the fairy chimney region was to hire quad bikes to get around the rough terrain and dirt tracks. Of course Nick and Tim went a little crazy and by the end of the four hours the girls looked like they had been swimming in a pool of dirt and dust. Check out the photos no words can really describe how surreal this place actually is.
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Once again we indulged in the amazing Turkish cuisine and treated ourselves to a night of food, loads of beverages and traditional skirt dances and belly dances.
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From Cappadocia we boarded an unending overnight bus to Olympus where we stayed in tree houses close to the beach. This was our chance to relax in Turkey and finally get to the sea. The tree houses felt like they were situated in the middle of nowhere, but there was plenty to keep us busy. We did have the most epic day when we hired a boat and a driver for the day and he took us to some beautiful secluded spots, uncharted territory, natural beauties and mountains. We had a very cheeky day filled with booze and excitement. Let’s just say it would have been the best day of Nick and Tim’s life. Most of the photos from this day probably won’t be posted.
