An Italian List

I’m am around three or more places behind now, and I reckon that it’ll take far too long to catch up if I write a 1500 word essay for each one, so I’m swapping back to the list format to deal with all these Italian towns that I’ve visited over the past two weeks.

The morning after I arrived in Rome, I got up earlier than ever to go and meet Sarah at the airport. She’d come over from NZ to visit me and travel around Italy, have some fun and see the sights. We checked out Rome, Venice and Florence with a few trips on the side – so here we go!

Rome

• Rome is a very walkable city. We  just began to wander and ended up in many interesting places. On the first day, this is all we did. Just walked around and tried to organise ourselves for the coming fornight, figuring what we wanted to see and where we wanted to go. This popped out of nowhere though
  

  One Colosseum please!

• On that first day, we also saw glimpses of the Roman Forum and Palatino (which unfortunately we never made it into). Along with many, many, many churches, there was the Arch of Constintine.
  

  Arch of Constintine

• One amusing thing which we saw was the Running of the Nigerians. In all of the cities which we visited (and also in Athens) you can find shady Africans trying to procure you fake Gucci and Prada bags, sungasses and various other things you don’t really want. This is obviously not legal, as you can see them on the constant look out. Popular tourist spots are a haven for these guys, and there must have been no less than 50 or 60 of them at the Colosseum. They stand around, harrassing you as you pass: “Hello, hello, hello, cheap bag, hello, hello, half price, hello”, etc. Then one spots the police, and it’s the oddest situation I’ve ever seen. Sixty men carrying white sheetss and big blue plastic bags full of merchandise are sprinting through the crowds of tourists, swarming for a place to hide. Very crazy to see, I recommend it if you are in Rome.
• We ate way, way, way too much pizza. I don’t think I could handle one for at least a few months now. Pasta is a bit easier to stomach, but I’m almost over Italian food. A proper breakfast would be nice too.
• We did go inside the Colosseum:
  

  Inside the Colosseum

• Outside there were guys dressed up as ancient Romans trying to get you to pose with them for photos all the while trying to stay out of photos from the public. Must be a very stressful job.
• Ruins are all over and everywhere with in the city. Amazing!
• We took a tour through varioous crypts and catacombs of Rome. This was very interesting. The first place we went to, the Capucian Crypt, was 5 or 6 rooms decorated with the bones of thousands of human bodies. There were chandalliers made of bones, patterns all over the walls, hourglasses with wings made of pelvis bones, the full skeleton with a scithe representing death, and horrifying of all was the numberous mummified bodies of monks set around in positions, one who still had a beard on his face. Also in the tour was the Catacombs of Domitella; 11 miles of underground burial passageways which delve 100ft below the surface. Most graves had been removed, but some were still intact.
• We walked the poo gauntlett. A beautiful riverside walk under huge trees, chriping with the sound of birds. Beautiful until we realised there was poo dropping all around us!
• From Rome we took a day trip to the ruins of Pompeii. This was amazing! I was amazed at how large and intact they are. There was hardly anyone there and you could just walk around, getting lost inside houses and temples. This place is so big you need a map to figure out just where you are.
  

  Pompeii

• On the Wednesday we went to the Vatican and happened to see my good old friend, The Pope.
  

  Mr Pope

• While we were there, we also spent a huge amount of time walking around and getting lost in the Vatican Museums which hold an exceptional amount of paintings, sculptures, and other amazing works including my favourite, and entire gallery of ancient maps, some even made out of tapastries. Also part of this is everyone’s favourite Sistine Chapel which holds the ceiling fresco God creates Adam by Michelangelo. To be honest, after walking  around all this art and through numerous decorated churches and chapels, I found this famous work to be rather underwhelming and no way near as large as I had pictured.
• In Rome, the food was really not that great at most of the places we visited. The Italian style pizza is very bland in most regards, and I felt that the lasagnes that I had in The Netherlands and Germany were much better than the ones which I had in Italy. I wanted it cooked in a little pot damnit!
• We also saw such sites as the Spanish Steps which were covered in people, and Trivi Foutain which was pretty impressive. People throw money over their shoulders once to ensure a return to Rome and twice for a wish. Sarah got hit by flying money from above!

Trivi Fountain by night

Venice

• Venice is made up of 400 little islands separated by canals and connected by bridges. It’s located in the north of the Italy. What a maze this place is! At pretty much all times you can’t look straight down a street for more than 100m without it turning a corner. Most of the streets are about 2 meters wide and you just keep going around in circles or off on wild tangents of incorrect direction. If there was a place to get lost, that is what we did in Venice. Just look at a map to see what I mean.
• The canals were everywhere and awesome. It was impressive to see a city which has it’s main transport by water and absolutely no cars. Even the police , fire and ambulance come by water!
  

  Just one canal

• We saw some of the Nigerian bag dealers get chased by under cover police and caught.
• Our very own gondola adventure though the canal was schedualed and on afternoon we were paddled around the city by a man who seemed very disinterested in being a gondola driver. It was cool to see the city from the perspective of the canals, though. It gives a good insight into how the residents actually live.
  

  Gondola ride

• We went on a “ghost walk”-type tour which took us around the back alleys and what are supposed to be the scarier parts of the city where horrible crimes have been committed and ghosts like headless lovers are often seen. It was also a good way to find sights that we hadn’t found earlier, like this cool snail staircase:
  

  Snail House

• On our final day we checked out the 11th International Architecture exhibition which was amazing. Heaps of very interesting ideas were shown by at least 30 countries. One of the coolest displays was the Belgian one, which just consisted of a house with white walls, a few chairs, and confetti EVERYWHERE! It was very cool!
  

  Confetti

• On the day we were leaving, it began to snow and the water began to rise and smell. I hear that they have just had the highest floods in something like 22 years.

Florence

• We visited the Duomo church and it’s baptistry.
  

  Duomo

• We climed the 467 stairs inside the dome of the Duomo church, and came out to an amazing view over the city.
  

  View over Florence

• We spent time each day browsing the endless markets of Italian made clothing and accessories, only to buy nearly nothing.
• We took a day trip to Pisa to check out the leaning tower. It was a beautiful day and the tower was leaning just as much as it should, 4° I’m told.
  

  Leaning tower!

• We visited the Uffizi Gallery which houses Botticelli’s Birth of Venus  and numerous other amazing paintings, all overshadowed by about 5000 images of Christ. We also managed to see Michaelangelo’s statue of David which I thought was the most amazing piece of “important” art which I had seen. Very big and very well made. Truely epic!

And that was a brief summary of Sarah and I’s two weeks in Italy. I’m sorry it began to the more and more brief during the last part, but I am so far behind that I need the time to write the next three posts, let alone getting all the pictures up.

After this, I dropped Sarah off at the airport and headed back to Rome for two nights. Back to CouchSurfing. And then I was off, off to check out Cinque Terre on the recommedation of my good friends Prasna and Frankie.

Scandinavia Initiation: Copenhagen

After a 15 hour overnight train ride, I made it from Amsterdam to Copenhagen. I was sleeping in a little cabin on a very wobbly train. The cabin looked a little like this:

Sleeping Train

On the train I met Bob. Well, I really met him at the information desk at Amsterdam Station. I was there trying to find out which platform my train was going from as I didn’t really believe what I had been told earlier by someone else. He was doing the same thing, except he was clad in leather. Bob was also a Canadian art-director. We got onto the train, talked about all manner of things, but by far the most interesting was the fact that he was travelling around with an 8mm video camera and another oldschool 120 film camera. We’ll come back to Bob.

The other interesting character I met on the train, his name is unknown to me. He arrived in my cabin around midnight during our stop at Cologne and was the first person on this trip who has accurately guessed that I’m from New Zealand and not Australia. We got talking after having to deal with an unruley and obtrusive suitcase belonging to a travelling Jamacian who just sat there in his Timberlands eating piles of junkfood for the entire journey. The talk was definitely interesting, he was a Baroque harpsicord player who travelled once a month from Copenhagen to Cologne for lessons. We talked for around 2 hours, and I think the most intersting thing he told me was how the train system works. The night trains which travel through Germany all stop at Hanover at around 2am. At hanover, depending where the passengers are going (and they are separated by carraiges), the trains start this crazy system of swapping carriages before heading to their final destination. This is why I was initally confused. The sign for my train said Copenhagen, Cologne, Prague, Warsaw and a couple more!

After 15 hours in the wobbely train, we arrived at Copenhagen central in the rain. Although we were in different hostels, Bob and I decided to meet at the station the following day for a wander around. So we parted ways, him walking into town and me taking another train out to the damned airport! Why did I choose the Airport Hostel Copenhagen? Because it was cheap. After a 25 minute walk to the hostel from the airport, a cold shower, and a 25 minute walk back, I had returned to the train going back into the city.

(I can see this becoming far, far, too long. I might have to speed things up a bit!)

I hit the town. I saw the world’s largest carousel.

World's Largest Carousel

Then I witnessed some Mexican buskers, one of which was playing the panpipes while holding their DVD and CDs and constantly glancing over to me (and I suppose everyone else):

Mexican Buskers

Next I walked into the shopping street where I proceeded to lose a small-yet-annoying amount of money to a street gambler. Those of you who know me know that I am not one for the gambling. Don’t ask me why I did it. I only went in for a wee look at what all the fuss was about, then next thing I knew I had my wallet open and a group of Danish men crowding around it, counting how much money I had, and then I had nothing left. That was one lesson learnt the hard way.

I left that scene swiftly and went for a wander around the city. I saw important buildings, pedestrian roads, crazy churches, canals and interesting modern architecture. And statues, oh the statues. Of all the cities I have been in, Copenhagen would be the city of statues. They are absolutely everywhere. I spent a few hours wandering around, but after a restless nights sleep, I became pretty tired pretty fast, but this was ok as I was about to return to my hostel – and a huge party! Just what I needed.

The party went on, the music was terrible, and the bass reverberated throughout the entire house. I finally managed to go to sleep around 3am. This was not all an annoyance ‘though. I met some cool people from Germany, Sweden, Syria, Poland and many more places. But sleeping was a must, the next day was to be a big adventure.

I met up with Bob at the central train station at 12 o’clock and off we set for an extensive wander around the city. Our first stop was the (once) freetown of Christiania. Christiania is an old military base which was taken up by squatters in the late ’70s. For years it was occupied by free-spirits, hippies, yoga afficinados and people of similar ilk. Rules had been set, hash-trade was legal but there was no tolerace of gun, hard drugs or stolen property. This all ended in 2004 when the government raided the freetown, forcing the hash-trade to go underground and change the life in Christiania forever. It is said that within a few years that the community many not even exist, with plans for developments such as a golf course to be undertaken.

Entrance To Christiania

Turkish food was scoffed on the way back into town, and we decided to visit some of the more historical sites of the city. Half of our walk was us looking at the same things that both of us had seen the previous day. We walked down towards the river and found a street full of different coloured buildings:

Colourful!

Further walking saw us finding the statue of the Little Mermaid. We both knew about this statue but neither of us had originally thought we would see it – this happened by mistake as we were headed towards the Freidericksburg Fort, a star shaped inland island complete with bridges, cannons, buildings which was originally self-sustaining. Oh and the first proper windmill which I had seen!

The Little Mermaid

Freidericksburg Fort Windmill

We had been walking for hours and had covered most of the inner city, so after the fort there was only one placce left to visit for the day, the Royal Gardens.  As we were walking there, we spotted one of the coolest bike stores I’ve ever seen. This place made its own bikes, including the frames, and let the buy choose all the options, colours, etc. How grand!

Bike-tastic!

Then it was on to the Royal Gardens, public gardens which are locked at night and house a large number of crazy sculptures. And afterward, for me, almost an hour more walking + a train ride to get back to the hostel.  Luckily for me that night there was no party. Most of the hostel had cleared out and there was only 5 of us left – two german girls, another NZer and I, and a girl from Malta – who just chilled out and watched some well deserved films.

St. Bob and the Dragon

The following day, Ricky, the other NZer, had left. The girl from Malta was moving into an apartment with a Chinese boy, and the German girls  and I decided to have one last look around town before we all left the hostel. They were intent of buy presents for their entire extended family + friends, even though their holiday was only 4 days. So, after much, much, shopping, we decided to check out the Round Tower. I had some documentation but I’ve now lost it so could not tell you what the use of this tower was, but now if you like, you can ascend the never-ending circular ramp all the way to the top and involve yourself in a spectacular view of the city.

View from Round Tower

There was one last stop before we departed for the afternoon, that was the Almond Man. I had seen these around, and they smelt so good that I had to have some – pronto! I’m not exactly sure what these are, but they are Almonds that are coated in some kind of caramelized, crunchy and sweet coating. They tasted amazing, expsecially the hot ones, but after a while you actaully felt very ill. All three of us decided that we weren’t feeling too good after this, unfortunate cconsidering the magnitude of the taste!

Almond Man

“Goodbye,” I said to the German girls, and headed back to the airport to pick up my bags, where I then headed right back on to the train, bound for town. I had slept two nights in the hostel, but I was here for four – the next two were my third CouchSurfing experience. Mee and Mathias were both Business School students (Mathias also produces synth music for advertising, TV and film) who lived together in a pretty massive three bedroom apartment in Freidericksberg. For two more nights I stayed with them. The only full day I was at their place, I actaully only left the house to get something to eat, the rest of the time I spent planning the next stage of my trip and trying to begin to organise how I was getting to the north of Norway.

The following day at 11:32am I was off on another train, leaving overcast Copenhagen for sunny Gothenburg!

Things I Did In Amsterdam

As I’m writing this on a night train to Copenhagen, I’ve decided to change the format for this post. Usually I write things in a pretty linear format: this day, then that happened and it keep adding up. This post will just be a series of points with no time structure, hence the title ‘Things I Did In Amsterdam.’

I spent hours each day walking around the ’straats’ (streets) and ‘grachts’ (canals) until I was too tired to walk any longer. I got lost many a time. They told me the city is shaped like an onion, I prefer to think of it as a rainbow with veins.

Amsterdam Canal

I slept in a dorm with two Swedish girls who were horribly ill, fearing that I might catch what ever they had.

I almost got hit by a bike while using a pedestrian crossing.

Bicycles!

I visited one or two of the famous Amsterdam coffeeshops and then proceeded to wander around the city in marvel at almost everything. I also went onto a balcony and who ever was on the balcony above me was having a laughing fit, which in turn I contracted, me laughing at some guy I couldn’t see and vice versa.

I went on a pub crawl, drank too much then went for felafal with two Canadians. Before our kebabs were ready, the store workers brought us each a bowl of an onion-tomato mix and a bowl of tatziki for putting on said kebab. Being in the state we were, the three of us just started scooping out the onions with the spoon, dipping them in the tatziki and eating them. The sauces were gone before the kebabs arrived, half of it in our stomachs, the other half all over our faces. Following that, we managed to cover the entire table in lettuce. I highly doubt the store owners were impressed.

I went on a walking tour of the city and learnt the history of how Amsterdam was built from just a marsh. How drugs and prostitution become the norm, why all the buildings look like the are leaning over (and they actually are) and a whole lot of other interesting facts about the city.

Leaning Houses

I walked around the Red Light District and checked out the nice ladies in the windows.

I went to the Anne Frank House. The place where Anne Frank and her family hid in an annex behind her fathers office for 2 years during WWII. This was amazing and utterly moving.

I went to the Sex Museum and saw all sorts of artifacts from ancient Greece and Asia, to modern day porn that you wouldn’t tell your friends about.

I taught a small-town Swedish girl to play snap and then I proceeded to lose for an hour. She then taught me how to shuffle cards (by God am I clumsy with cards).

I caught up with Isa, a girl that Matt and I met in Byron Bay when we backpacked around Australia in 2006.

I saw a hidden Catholic church from the days with Catholosism was banned.

Hidden Catholic Church

I shopped in the ‘Nine Streets’ district and bought myself a pretty cool t-shirt after trying on some pixie pants. I also found an excellent market with the craziest used clothes stand ever – it was just a tarpolin with mountains of awesome clothes on it. Crazy! Mama, you’d be in heaven.

I wished all you guys reading this had been there to share this with me. We are definitely all coming to Amsterdam one day, it is so awesome!

Bruges, how romantic…

I left the Gaydon camp ground at around 4:30 in the afternoon on Sunday the 17th of August with a group of Dutch guys who had come over from The Netherlands for the Retro Rides Gathering. We then spent a number of hours driving around the English countryside en route to Dover, looking for a place to camp for the night. This proved harder than originally thought as the first place we tried decided that we didn’t fit the demographic and gave us poor instructions for another campsite ‘down the road’. This down the road was about an hour’s drive.

Soon enough, though, we found the new campsite and set up our tents just as it began to rain. The Dutchmen set up a tarp, cooked a BBQ, and we sat outside but dry, eating dinner, and talking about all sorts of things well into the night.

The next day after packing up and driving for a few more hours we made it to Dover. All I could think of was King Lear’s decent into madness and his blind crawl towards the cliffs at Dover for a pious suicide.

White Cliffs at Dover

The ferry took about two hours, and soon enough I spied France, the country where I have now spent the shortest amount of time in my life – it must have been no more than 20 minutes before we crossed the border to Belgium. We drove on straight as an arrow down monotonous Belgian highway for one more hour before Tomas and Dennis, the two Dutch guys who I was catching a lift with, dropped me at my first (continental) European destination, Bruges (or Brugge, Brugges, Bruge, depending on where you are from and what language you are speaking). This was also my first hostel experience of the trip, Snuffel Hostel.

I had only booked two nights here, so there was no time to waste. I dropped off my bags in the dorm and headed down to the bar for a Hoegaarden Grand Cru. Although that was the end of that, It was to be an early night for me as there was plenty to see the next day.

Just as a side note, the Snufffel showers were ridiculous. To get there, you had to walk out of your dorm, through another door, down a circular staricase, through another door, through the bar, up some stairs, across the dining area, down some stairs, through the kitchen, over a courtyard and up another staircase. If this wasn’t bizaare enough, the showers had no temperature controls and to get the water running you had to hold down a chain, which if you let go… well, the water would stop. Very military-esque.

Bruges itself is considered to be Begium’s romantic capital. It is all medieval buildings, cobbled roads and canals running throughout the expansive, but very walkable city.

A Typical Bruges Street

Bruges Canal

Like other parts of Europe, it is home to some magnificent architecture. Almost every building is historic and well looked after, even the apartments in which people live. From the hostel to the town square was an easy 5 minute walk, and it was this architecture which I first noticed when I entered the square. Absolutely amazing, intricate detailing everywhere.

The first thing which I decided to was check out the town hall. This building was exceptionally old. How old I can’t tell you, but I do remember that it had been expanded century after century. I know that it is older than the 1500s. Maybe you can Wikipedia it! Anyway, Inside the town hall, you are able to climb 315 steep circular stairs to the top of the bell tower, giving views which can not be bettered anywhere in the city. It is red roofs, spires and steeples for mile upon mile. If you are up there at the right time, you also have the opportunity to experience the smaller bells chiming out songs and the large bell being struck on the hour. The musical bells are very cool, as they run like a massive version of an automatic piano, it has a reel with little pins on it lke the piano, except there is nothing little about it. Click here to see it.

The next stop was Basilick van het Heilig Bloed. This is an ancient church, with the most incredible altar I have ever seen. Even as I type this I have seen a few impressive churches, but this takes Jesus’ cake. It was only small, but the fresco painted on the entire back wall was nothing short of amazing. Not only does this church have a particularly good altar, but it also has a small silver vile of Christ’s blood, or so the dedicated believe. At particular times, you are able to walk up onto a little platform, touch the vile, say a prayer and be blessed by a morbidly bored looking priest.

Basilick van het Heilig Bloed

Belgium is well known for a number of things; lace, chocolate, waffles, fries, and beer. There are shops which sell these things everywhere, and I mean maybe one of every five shops does not. Bruges especially is tourist-trap-central for these kind of things. So I decided to steer clear, with the exception of the very belgian fries with mayonaise (which actaully made me feel a tad ill).

Lace Shop

A Typical Belgian Chocolate Shop

After much more wandering around, I decided it would be good to head back to the hostel to see what was going on. There I met an Italian guy, and an American and Australian girl and we decided to have some drinks. If you are ever in Bruge, you must try the Brugge Zot beer, it is locally produced and very very good. After a number of drinks I was pretty tired and decided to head to bed.

The following day I was to leave Bruges but there was still a few things to see. The first being the very famous Madonna and Child. This was housed inside the Church of Our Lady, which also contained some very exceptional art works, altars, and the most amazing pulpit I have ever seen which was about 4 meters high, hand carved, and portraying biblical scenes all held up by the idea of wisdom and knowledge.

Madonna and Child

Outside the Church of Our Lady was a busker named Carl (I think). At first I just heard his music and I was very intreuiged. Upon closer inspection, I had just found the musical instrument which would change my life. The instrument for me. Although I had no idea what it was. It looked like two metal dishes pushed together, each about 60cm in diameter. It was played with the hand like a drum, but depending on where you hit it the tone would be different. It sounded almost like a xylophone but with more body. It was amazing. On further research it turns out the this instrument is called the Hanghang and was invented in Switzerland 8 years ago. The creators are not making them at the moment, and even when they were new they were over £1000, so a second hand one would be even more dear. This is very frustrating.

The last thing I was able to do in Bruges before I had to catch the train was to check out the Hospital Museum. This was an old hospital which had been around for literally 500 plus years which had been turned into a museum dedicated to it’s history and how it haadf changed over the years. It was very interesting to see how religous ideals were such an important part of medicine, the soul being more important to heal than the body.

That afternoon it was goodbye to Bruges for me, and hello to Brussels! Another post will follow soon with my adventures in Brussels.