Krakow (Poland)

After Budapest, I trained to Poland and after a fun train to Vienna (I met a cool American who let me watch TV with him and plug in my ipod to his computer too), and then onto Krakow I arrived at the great Greg and Toms hostel. Good place, everyone is so friendly. Unfortunately, I left my fav jacket on the train, so was gutted about that. But apart from that, had a good time the first night I arrived as the guys at the hostel took me out for beers, dancing, shisha, vodka and even a bit of fighting. haha. They were cool fun.

   

I didn't do much in Poland, except meet cool people the first 2 days, and then they all split and I was left trying to party with annoying americans. It was the first of many disappointing partying with American experiences which has convinced me, that in general, they are much less fun that english, aussies or kiwis. Meh.

I also visited Aushwitz in Krakow, which was amazing, horrifying and sad all at the same time. Definitely one of the highlights of my trip though, I learnt soo much about what the Nazis were like and it was pretty scary. Highly recommended.

After Krakow.. I went to Prague

Budapest

ok, what was I up to? Ahh Budapest!

I LOOOVED Budapest. And that was just the vibe. I mean I did hardly any touristing there, because coming out of the train station I tripped on a pot hole and wrenched my ankle REALLY bad. Nice, so it swelled up to 4 times the normal size and I could only wear jandals (flip flops) for a week. Fun times.

Apart from that, Budapest was awesome. The people are super nice, I stayed in an apartment of a guy I met in NYC in August. Yay an apartment to myself!

There are very odd, but cool things to see around Budapest. Their main cathedral has a shrine to a saints right hand. Yes you too can pay 1 of the local currency to see the light and the hand that is thousands of years old! right. They also have GIANT statues and monuments:

    

and a park out of town where they put all the communist statues when they got rid of the russians. Funny, pack up all the communist heroes and exile them out of town. Unfortunately I didn't get to see this, OR go to the hot baths, due to the fact I could only hobble very slowly :(

But I DID get to meet the very cool Dora (though couchsurfing) and although she couldn't host me, we met up for a Hungarian baking lesson, and over hot wine and sangria made a yummy cake! She was super nice, and her best friend came over too and they were soo cool, speaking in English the whole night to make me feel welcome. Our cake:

Cake!:

On the last day there, I went up Buda Castle to see the view:

  

I also went for beer my last night there with a heap of CS people and all and all was very sad to leave! But, I had booked a hostel in Poland, so I had to leave. Highlights of Budapest: Buda Castle, Drinks with CS people, the Hero Square and Dora's cooking lessons! If I could go again, I'd do: The turkish baths, and also go to see the Communist statue park.

Vienna

After Switzerland, I took a very long train (13 hours) To Vienna.

- Vienna is beautiful.All big clean buildings, the place seems like it could still be a giant palace to the Emperor. Crazy, I think if you took out all the shop fronts, the buildings would have been the same 100 years ago. It was pretty amazing. Although, as a guy I met there said, it's kinda like living in a museum, and all the Viennese are scarily similar. There's no real diversity. Nice place though.

Here, I was lucky enough to meet up with my cousin Bex who is currently working in London, but was on a work trip to Vienna for 2 days. So we met up and had some GIANT schnitzel with my host in Vienna, Michael.

My Fav place in Vienna was the Schunbrunn (sp?) Palace. The grounds were AMAZING, and you could totally pretend you too were royalty:

This is a SIDE garden, hence the emptiness

And the main back garden (and parks):

it takes about 20 mins just to walk from the palace to the foot of the hill I was standing on. And then there is park off both sides too. Pretty cool.

Apart from that, In Vienna I did some palaces, wandered the streets and went to the strangest thing on my trip, a vegetable orchestra. Yes. Their instruments were vegetables. It was the weirdest thing ever. The video looked ok.. :

but the concert was even weirder. In fact it was so bad I got the giggles halfway though and couldn't stop laughing for about 5mins. The fact that everyone there had paid to listen to that crap made me laugh soooo hard. Oh well, luckily it was part of a gallery opening in Vienna, so there was lots of cool interactive modern art to see too, plus it was in an old Nazi bunker of which there are a few around Vienna (6 i think, surroiunding the city) which are left over from WWII, but apparently really difficult to destroy so they are using them for aqauriums and art galleries instead.


My Vienna trip ended up watching the Ireland- France game with some couchsurfers and then we ended up playing some soccer in the middle of the night in one of the HUGE random statue/park/memorial things they have just lying around in Vienna.

Switzerland

- After Nice,I trained to Lausanne where I slept on the couch of a guy I know from Uni, Simon, because I was so sick of heat, english tourists, 17 year olds, trying to find somewhere to stay last minute, hostels etc. Basically the enormity of moving every few days, trying to tourist while organising the next leg of the trip hit me. So I escaped to a friends.

The first 2 days there I just slept, updated this blog, watched tv and slept some more. It was good. In Lausanne I also went to see the Museum of 'Arts Bruts'. Which I guess means Brutal Arts? Anyway, it was art created by people with disturbed mental conditions, most of whom are/were in pysciatric hospitals at the time of the creation of the works of art. Although some were at home, or in a special art school for mentally challenged people. It was interesting, bu some of the stories were very sad. And some of it was just odd.

On my last day there Simon and I went to Geneva and were really touristy. We went to the UN and did the tour, and then went to CERN and went to the museum there. Unfortunately the particle accelerator at CERN is underground, so I didn't get to see it. :(

So, pictures (click to enlarge): (from top to bottom )
Sightseeing in Switzerland: Olympic museum, UN, CERN, Lake Lausanne, Swiss Mountains

   

  

  

Nice!

Saturday the 8th September. We trained to Marseille, and met a CS guy, Guillaume. We had some Ricard and then headed to the Black seeds concert. The crowd was awesome! Soo many kiwis. And soo many people who had been to the game that day. Including some All Blacks!

Pics from the Black Seeds:

All in all, a great party. You know it's a good party when they start playing slice of heaven, and there's guys in unitards dancing to it!

After the party/concert, we drove to Nice with Guillaume. The next day we checked into a hostel, where we stayed the next 2 nights. In a giant room (10 beds). Things I learnt in Nice.. 10 bed hostel rooms suck, but you can meet cool people in hostels. You can also get stuck in room with drunken teenagers who don't care if you are trying to sleep at 5am when they get home. Meh, you win some you lose some.

Nice is pretty, but just a beachy town really. Lots of places to party, it's hot, and there's a beach.

 

While in Nice, we bussed over to Monaco. While there we saw (from L to R), gorgeous views of the sea, many boats, the casino at Monte Carlo, The Monaco Palace and the Church where Princess Grace and Prince Rainier are buried.

    

   

All in all, Monaco is very beautiful and soo clean! Oh, and it has a much nicer beach than Nice. There's no sand, but the pebbles are so small and smooth it's like getting a foot massage as you walk! Totally worth the 3euro to get from Nice. We also toured the palace while we were there, which is pretty, but kinda small. Still interesting though.

After this, needing a break from hostels etc, I trained to Lausanne to see a guy I know from uni and just sleep for a few days!

Toulouse

After Barcelona, we headed to Toulouse, where a woman I knew from July in Toronto lives. We needed a break after the strange guy from Barcelona, so it was great to arrive somewhere where there was someone to pick us up!

The first 2 days we were in Toulouse, all we did was lie by the pool. There was a gorgeous pool, it's 50m by 150m! Gorgeous and blue, it looked like this:

There were no people in it, because of it being september and all. (everyone is back at school). The bit near the side is a cool waterfall!



Toulouse is the home of world cup rugby in France (or so they say) ... so we saw lots of Rugby related things and on the Friday before leaving, we ended up in a student flat with 9 french guys (all local rugby players) watching the France - Argentina rugby game! Understandably, they weren't that happy with the result, but the rest of the night was fun too. Parties lol.

The next day we trained to Marseille for the NZ rugby game, and .. The black seeds concert!

Barcelona

After a week in Valencia (starting with the two festivls below), we moved to Barcelona. We were lucky enough to get a last minute place to stay with a guy from couchsurfing.com . I've had pretty good luck with couchsurfers until now, but his guy was odd. Not creepy odd, just strange odd. He made it clear his flatmates didn't want us to be there, and didn't try to overcome this by telling us what we could and couldn't do, or even introduce us to them! Very odd. He also never wanted to go out with us ever, and then asked why we didn't go out partying. So yeah, we din't want to stay long.

But, Luckily the girl I was traveling with, Monique, knew a guy in Barcelona, Mike, who made up for one persons inhospitability, by showing us around town. The first day we went to Sagrada Familia, which is this church that is still being built. It was started in the 1880's and is expected to finish in the 2030's. The outside facades are completed, but only 4 of the 12 towers are done. It is very cool, I especially liked the fact that the the two sides are completely different, one looks like this:

The passion facade:

The nativity facade:

And yeah, so it was pretty cool. The architect was Gaudi, who also designed a cool park which we went to on our second day in Barcelona. The walk to the top of the park gave a very cool view of Barcelona. It also had some very nice mosiac stuff and a way cool terrace up the top where you can imagine a nice orchestra serenading people! Here's the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Guell it has better photos than I will ever have. And details etc.

The next day.. we trained to Toulouse.

Europe part 1 - Valencia

I left Canada August 26th, then headed to london for the day, then Spain! I arrived in Valencia on August 27th, and stayed about 6 days.

My first 2 days in Valencia can be summed up in the attached 2 pictures.

The first is the wine festival we went to in Requena the night before Tomatina. Basically, they had bands, and a wine truck. You bring your own bottle or cup, and they give you free wine, then you parade through the streets of town. And then the locals fill up buckets of water and throw them out the window at you. Because it's hot and that's funny. Oh, and it starts at midnight. Most random thing ever. But soo much fun.

The second one is Tomatina. Actually, I didn't like Tomatina so much. This may be due to the fact I had 2 hours sleep and no food after the wine festival. It may be because we decided to follow this crazy American we knew into the densest crowd I have ever been in, instead of following my instinct and going down a side street. Whatever. The combination of crowd, no food, sun, and heat, meant I spent 99% of the 2 hours there trying to breathe in the crush. It was pretty awful just in the crowd, THEN, they drive truck full of tomatoes into them. There's moments where I was sure the pressure of bodies was going to make me break a rib, and a few times where I almost fainted. But finally, the water canon fired, and the tomatina was 'officially over' and people started leaving. THEN, we could breathe, and THEN we went to throw tomatoes. The picture is taken after that. I look a little pale still though.