Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!!

I'm having a surreal kinda day, realising that back home it's already 2008! And warm. Sip having my first cold christmas - it didn't even snow-  but my first cold New Year's is making me crazy. I miss my beach parties and sitting on couches in the sun all afternoon on New Year's eve drinking beer. Ugh, weird.

I looked at getting a flight home earlier yesterday, cos I'm sick of the cold and want some beaches! unfortunately AirNZ has no flights in my fare class, so I guess it's not meant to be! Staying in Vancouver it is. Maybe I'll get more work and be able to afford a bond for a flat when I get home. Whatever, I am going to Seattle tomorrow, then Whistler on the weekend, and maybe Vernon the weekend after.  So I'll travel around, have a look, and make myself not so homesick.

I think the homesickness is also to do with the fact I miss people I have met this year, esp when they are all posting parties and things they are going to tonight (and last night), Makes me wanna be in London, or NYC, or Toronto tonight!

Oh well, off to a CS party, I'm sure it'll be fun too, if not London or New York.

Happy 2008 everyone!! Come visit me soon :)

Pre Christmas update

Soo. I have been in Vancouver for a couple of weeks now, and it's going well. I was a bit sad the first few days I was here, because after Europe, and London where I was last, it's a bit small. And quiet. And cold. haha.

But, I have friends here who I have been hanging out with. I saw Fi and Micah last week and caught up with them for the first time in ages. It's amazing that it's been 4 years since I lived with Fi, and they've been married for about 2 or 3 years now I guess! I also caught up with Simon and managed to convince him to come to the CS meeting with me here in Vancouver last week. He's coming again this week. If I get him to sign up, that'll be 4 of my friends I have converted, first Tim in China way back when, then Hayley and Nick in Edinburgh, and now Simon in Vancouver! haha, it's a total cult.

I have been working too, today was my 3rd day of work in the last 2 weeks. Pretty good I thought! My temp lady is pretty awesome, always ringing me up with stuff. Although today she rang about an assignment that lasts until Feb and I had to tell her I am leaving before then, so we'll see if she gives up on me now. Oh well, I managed to get 6 days work out of her, which is better than nothing!

So yeah, Vancouver is growing on me. It's smaller than London, but probably a step on the way to Welly. At least it has mountains, and my PACIFIC ocean (I made Si take me down on sunday to touch it), and a lot more independent cafes and restaurants than Toronto. I quite like it here, but yeah, sometimes I just wish I was home and in Summer. I need sun!

Mum is here tomorrow, and I'm excited. Bring on Christmas!

The UK

I was in the UK all of November. I arrived after 2 months on the continent glad to be back somewhere where everything makes sense, beer is more expensive than coke, you can buy hot chips in the pubs, and people speak English! lol, not that I didn't love Europe, but a bit of a rest was great.

After a week in London recovering, catching up with family, doing my washing etc, I then flew to Belfast where I caught up with Sheree and Marty and saw a bit of the Irish contryside as well as rested a bit more. I even took a tour of the murals from the Troubles, which although the tour guide talked about it being way past them, was really only less than 15 years ago. Belfast seems nice, but it was freezing and not so much of a tourist town i think!

After that I went to Edinburgh. I had a great time in Edinburgh, catching up with Hayley and Nicky, doing two tours, one a bus tour and one a walking tour of the old town, and also going to a scottish dance called a Ceilidh (this rhymes with Hayley.. work that one out!) where we flung each other around, and having a mexican night with couchsurfers where we watched Flight of the Conchords on dvd (their season one of the tv series was just released). Altogether I had a great time and I wish I could have stayed there longer, Edinburgh is a great city!

Last week I went to Manchester where I fell ill with a annoying cold. So I caught up with Penny (who used to work at VUW when I was there) at night, and then slept all day with my head cold. Ugh. I still have a cough a week later! In Manchester we went Ice Skating, to the Christmas markets and saw lots of pretty lights (a lit up christmas tree and huge santa claus) and it felt all cold and wintery and like christmas in the movies. I bet all you people in NZ are laughing now because I heard it's extra warm there right now. Oh well, winter for christmas is a bit different I guess and I have to do it once!

So manchester was fun, even if I did only see it at night. Lastly I it Coventry for a weekend to see family and then went back to London for my final 10 days.

In London, I caught up with family, caught up with friends, partied a lot, went to the Tate Modern, We will rock you (the show - which was AWESOME, GO if you can), shopped a bit and took photos of Hyde park in Autumn. Mmm leaves. This is such a novelty to this Wellingtonian that I HAD to kick them hehe. One day I even went to Stonehenge, which btw, is tiny and miles out. The best part was the bus ride really, and the Americans complaining about smelling cows. Umm, it's the country? It made me laugh.

London was awesome as always and I met some cool people. From the dinner I had the 2nd night I was back where I spent the whole night talking to a guy called Brendan who got ditched by his gf, to the last night where it was Bex's flattie's birthday and we had a yummy homecooked dinner followed by the thickest cake ever, it was all good. Totally makes me wish I had my career sorted so I could be working there instead of trying to start again back home! Oh well, one day.

Next - to Vancouver on Dec5, and am staying with the lovely Rayna for a bit. Some of my family is nearby, so I will meet up with them for christmas and then I am coming back to NZ on Jan 22!

Paris

Last stop on my trip through Continental Europe was Paris! City of love.. or something. Trust me, I saw soo many couples I could believe it, but I had fun by myself anyway.

My first day was the best, I took the metro to the Place de la Concorde and coming up from the subway station, I saw the oblisk at the Place de la Concorde, and the Eiffel tower along with the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs de l'Elysees.

 

I wandered down the avenue to the Arc de Triomphe, ate Crepe and got a bit lost when looking for food for lunch. Lesson - don't wander off the main drag! Anyway, I eventually went up the Arc de Triomphe and squizzed at the view. Pretty cool.

 

That evening I went to the Louvre which is free for under 26 year olds on friday nights. Yay! The Louvre was very cool, but sooo HUGE. I spent 3.5 hours walking around until my legs almost dropped off! I saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo like a good little tourist, but apart from the shock factor about how tiny it is and how much you can't see it, the Mona Lisa is unexciting. I much preferred all the sculptures.

Venus de Milo:

Mona Lisa (life size.. lol)

The Louvre is pretty at night though.

  

Sat I went to the Sorbonne and the university area. I went to a museum of medieval things, and spent the afternoon wandering around by Notre Dame (but not in, the line was HUGE) and around the Islands of the Seine.

Notre Dame:

Sunday my host took me up Montmatre (as featured in Amelie) and then down to the Moulin Rouge area, across to the Madeline and the Opera and then back through a giant park to the Louvre again!

We ended up sitting on the point of one of the Islands in the Seine (Ile de la Citie?) and hanging with our legs over the edge watching the light go down and all the lights of the city come up. Very cool.

Monday it was raining :(. Nonetheless I walked up the Eiffel tower and saw the limited view. I couldn't see ANYTHING from the top, except for the faint outline of the ground looking straight down. Lame. But, the Eiffel tower was cool, and the walk was fun. Pity about the rain.

         

The last thing I did in Paris was find the statue of Liberty. I lost my photos of the full size one in New York, so now I have photos of the smaller version in Paris.

Tuesday I hopped on the Eurostar to London and the English speaking world again. After 2 months I was sooo excited to go back! Byebye Euro and trains and motioning instead of talking, hello Pound and family!

Amsterdam

After Bruges I headed up to Amsterdam. Yes I know going down to Belgium, back up to Amsterdam and then planning on going down to Paris was the wrong way of doing things, but it worked out perfectly with Sybil's birthday!

So yeah Amsterdam. For starters my hostel was awesome. It had a bar on the ground floor, so there was rarely a need to leave the place. Breakfast was downstairs, so was the kitchen and the bar. As a result, most of the rooms were extremly quiet as everyone was hanging out together.

Secondly, soo many americans. Just wanting to hang out and get stoned. Which is fine I guess, each to their own, but I found it odd a whole day in a foreign country and city could consist of going to a coffee shop. They DO have dope in the states right? I mean, I know, wow it's legal here, but still. I didn't see heaps of Americans standing at street corners hanging out drinking beer just because they could. Although, I have to say, I could actually imagine them doing that if there were enough! Anyway, Americans are funny species. There seems to be a lot of them in Amsterdam.

In Amsterdam I did all the touristy things, went on a tour, saw the red light district, saw coffee shops, went to the Van Gogh museum, the Anne Frank House and partied quite a bit. The second night I was there I couldn't sleep cos my room was right above the bar and it was kinda loud, so I asked to be changed for the last night. The girl at the front desk was nice enough to give me 2 free drink tickets for any inconvenience caused. Nice.

Photos from the tour:

Monument to the 'unknown prostitute'

The Amsterdam 3 X's 

A coffeeshop

Leaning houses of Amsterdam

So, my last night I partied with some cool Aussies, courtesy mostly of the happy hour, free drink tickets and the cute bartender. It was fun.

Bruges!

After Copenhagen, I got up way too early in the morning to catch the train and ferry down to Germany and then I was hoping to go across to Belgium. Unfortunately the ferry was nowhere near as beautiful the second time. My train was delayed at Hamburg indefinitely due to German train strikes (strike 2, damn supposedly efficient German trains!) So I ended up going through Cologne which has a pretty Cathedral right outside the train station.

I finally arrived in Bruges about 3 hours later than I was supposed to. So poor Sybil had to drive to the train station about a million times everytime my 4 trains were delayed. Fun. But yay, after 18 hours on the train (and stations) I finally made it to Bruges!

It was Sybil's birthday so she took friday off and we cycled around town. Bruges is a very pretty little town, which has cool little canals and over bridges and a huge town square where you can sit and people watch for hours. Which we did one of the days I was there!

Some pics:

People on a boat tour:

Canals:

They have YUMMY waffles. And lemon Sorbet. And Sybil and Clara thought I was a pig for wanting both. But I figure if you can fit them in one hand it's ok...

The Birthday girl:

So yeah, I arrived late Thursday night, we had a tour and a party on Friday night, a tour again with Clara a party guest on Saturday, and a family party on Sunday. Lots of birthday party fun. And yummy Belgium food. Waffles and Spinach. and Nutella. I still haven't worked out what it is with Europeans and nutella. Odd.

Copenhagen

My Trip into Copenhagen started with the coolest train ride ever. We went across to Hamburg and then up out of Germany into Denmark. The ride from Germany into Denmark is soo pretty, you go through little pieces of land with sea on both sides, and then you go on a ferry! The train goes onto the ferry, you all get out and then at the other side you get back on the train and it continues.

On the ferry, I caught the coolest sunset, looking back at the little slice of Germany we were leaving..

Copenhagen is pretty. It reminded me of Vienna in that it has a lot of palaces, the difference here is it seems more real, because they actually still have a royal family!

I spent a couple of days wandering around copenhagen, which was cold and very expensive, but so lovely. They even have free bikes you can use. fun. Some pics from Copenhagen...

From the palace gardens, a tree in a cart. Apparently a traditional thing:

The royal house the tree was part of:

The teenage guards they seemed to have everywhere:

The little mermaid, which I cycled to on a free bike and then spent my 20Kr (about NZ$5!) on the nicest small softserve icecream ever. (also the most expensive)

The Royal Palace:

A windwill on the side of the ancient fortified old palace bit

On the other end of the scale - Statues of trash in the town square:#

And, a rally for the homeless of Copenhagen, where they tried to give me a free pair of hobo gloves. Unlike homeless in the rest of Europe, the Danish actually seemed to care about theirs. Maybe because it was Oktober, and already damn cold!(or because most people are pretty rich?)

On my last night in Copenhagen I was lucky enough to go to the Royal Danish Ballet. I had to queue for over 2 hours for tickets, but I got pretty good ones in the dress circle. If you are under 30, they are 60% off. Score!

The opera house is out of town a bit, so you can take a long bus to get there, or a ferry! I took the ferry to the very cool venue.

Pics from the ballet:
opera house inside

the Ferry:

Opera house outside

Theatre at half time from my seats:

Pretty close to the stage eh?

Berlin

After Oktoberfest, I went up through Germany stopping overnight at Graham's in Darnstadt, and then Christina's in Hagen, then made my way to Berlin!

Berlin has a giant train station (the largest in Europe I think), where ironically, on the day of the France England rugby game, they were displaying giant banners of Dan Carter in his undies:

(brilliant, you come halfway around the world and it's still DC in the the jockies)

In Berlin I stayed with the lovely Gesa, and mostly lay around reading books a lot! But apart from that, I went on a cool bike tour, and saw Berlin...

Our Tour Guide and the memorial to Jews killed in the Holocaust

Me standing in old East and West Berlin at the same time (the cobblestone represents where the Berlin wall used to be)

And I also went to a museum and saw the gates of Babel from the ancient city. On my last day there, Gesa and I had currywurst, which is basic bratwurst with curry powder on and then a whole heap of tomato sauce, which totally mask the curry flavour. (quite disappointing I thought - I was expecting more curry!)

Then we walked up a huge hill and looked at the city at night. Very cool.

Overall I liked Berlin, soo much history with the war, and the Berlin wall and even before that, huge palaces from the Empires.. very cool, and a nice place, but the lack of English and the FREEZING cold made it less fun. Cool big city though.

Munich

After leaving Prague I went to Munich to meet up with my friend Graham from university for Oktoberfest. We were staying with a guy he met last year at the festival, and were joined by another Kiwi living in Germany, Rian.

Friday we went out to a Bavarian beer hall and had giant beers with heavy food. This was to become a theme for the weekend!

Sat Rian and Graham got up at about 8am to go down to Oktoberfest. I refused and joined them at 9:30am. They somehow decided to miss all the open tents and tried to get into one that was closed. Luckily for THEM, I chatted up some nice English blokes and got us a place outside.

Unfortunately, after the English guys left, our day went downhill. They were replaced with antisocial Americans (dumb americans - evidence #2) and then we got to watch the All Blacks lose. dumb.

Day 2 of our Oktoberfest started slowly with Bavarian sausages and wheat beer for breakfast (in which I get told off for eating the sausage the wrong way by our typically german host lol) and then we went to the Munich "English Gardens". Here they have a cool mini wave part of the river where people surf:

and we had our 2nd beer for the day:

and then headed back to Oktoberfest, where our cool host Andreas had saved us seats in the best tent, the Hacker tent (I think, my spelling is shite)

Here, EVERYONE was dressed up and I felt supremely underdressed. Oh well. There was lots of standing on benches, dancing, singing and huge beers. Our tent was so popular that they closed the doors at 6pm. At one stage during the night I even saw our waitress scoot over the table because the aisles were full! Because it was the last night of Oktoberfest 2007, at the end of the night some guy (probably the owner of the tent) said a speech which we translated as "Thanks for drinking so much and making me rich again, please don't break too much in the last hour" - but this may be wrong as I don't speak German - and then everyone sang a final song and had sparklers. It was lots of fun. Here are the pics!

Me and Andreas our host:

Hacker Tent: