‘Tis the Season

It was Christmas time, usually a time for family and friends. As I wasn’t at home, I made did with what was available to me – one friend and some surrogate parents.

In London I met up with Cat (from home and who has been living in the UK) and her friend Jess who was over for a short two month European trip. So anyway, we met up in London at the Pickwick Hall hostel, a private room for three with ensuite which was great.

The first evening we were in London, we went for a walk down Oxford Street and ended up in Hyde Park where a large German Christmas festival was being held. It was full of lights, rides, people and litres upon litres of mulled wine.

Hyde Park Christmas Festival

The days leading up to Christmas were spent sleeping and wandering around London. It was very cool to walk around a city which is so dressed up for Christmas. Everywhere you turned there were decorations and lights, stalls selling Christmas products and store windows arranged for the festive season.

Snowman!

On Christmas Eve I also had the opportunity to catch up with my friend Meri from Finland. She was in Oxford visiting her friend Lou for Christmas and New Years so I headed up to Oxford for the day. We met at the Oxford Castle which was a great idea as there was an amazing outdoor photography exhibition on called Earth From The Air which was showing beautiful airel photography by aclaimed photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It’s an amazing look the earth from above and how it’s changing day by day. For lunch we had a great Greek meal and then went to meet Lou. Soon we were headed back to London in the car and Meri and I parted ways (again) but promised to meet up once more before she headed home.

That evening  Cat, Jess and I went to meet up with the parents of Cat’s boyfriend, Ant (another friend from home) who were to be my surrogate parents for Christmas day. We headed to a bar, had a few drinks, then headed to the only open restaurant which happened to be an Indian place – pretty nice! But soon we had to get back to bed, early night on Christmas Eve!!

The next morning we woke latish and as promised, I cooked the girls pancakes, bacon and eggs for breakfast. Accompanying that was fresh fruit,  juice and champagne, and it was all pretty great. But soon it was time to head out for the main meal of the day, Christmas Dinner. We met Ant’s parents at a hotel which they had booked the meal at. We started with presents, I can’t believe that they had even bought Jess and I presents (albiet edible ones)!

The afternoon was filled with champagne, turkey, deserts, wine, Christmas crackers, balloons flying around the room, and a hugely expensive bill which was fully paid by Ant’s parents, an amazing show of generosity. And then bloated, we headed back to the hostel to watch Love Acutally which is apparantly a popular film for Christmas.

The following days in London were rather relaxed. On Boxing Day I headed out into the shopping hoards and bought a few things. The following day I had a quiet one, but later on met up with Meri once again before both of us had to leave London. We also managed to see the changing of the guard outside Buckingham Palace on the morning before we were set to leave. It was an interesting affair but really not as exciting as everyone makes it out to be!

Changing of the Guard

Part Two

That night we boarded an extremely uncomfortable bus and headed north, destination Edinburgh. After nine and a half hours of half sleep, half candy consumption we arrived faar too early in the morning, and since our rooms weren’t ready at the hostel, we had to hang out in the common room for a few hours.

It was an unexpectedly beautiful day so after  a nap we decided to go for a wander. Edinburgh’s Royal Mile runs for around a mile between the Scottish Parliment and the Edinburgh Castle. So, with this in mind, our first stop was the castle.

Edinburgh Castle

We couldn’t actually go inside as it was incredibly expensive, but we gave it a good walk around. That night, someone decided it would be a good idea to go drinking, so that’s what we did. The hostel was full of long term Australians who only wanted to drink, so we joined them (Cat had also lived there at some stage earlier in the year). Drinking games started and soon everyone moved to what, to me, was a terrible bar – but the others seemed to like it. Backpacker bars just aren’t really my thing.

The following day I spent most of it sleeping. And while Cat and Jess slept even longer, I decided to take a walk up Arther’s Seat, a rather large hill. So after a walk down the Royal Mile towards the Scottish Parliment I began my way up.

Arthurs Seat Silhouette

As I rounded the corner, I found a very cool rock face which would have been excellent for some rock climbing had I had my shoes with me. Just beyond that was another hill which I had decided was worth a climb.

Rocks!

The weather was amazing and this place was amazing, so I kept going. My mission was to make it to the highest hill around and the climb was suprisingly steep. It might have been possible that I took a hard path, but really, that’s all part of the fun. From the top the view was exellent.

View from Arthurs Seat

Soon the sun went down so it was time to head back to the hostel for an easy night, best be resting up for New Years Eve tomorrow!

The day was new years eve and I spent most of it sleeping. I wanted to be ready for the evening. In the afternoon we took a trip to the local supermarket which was more packed with people than any other supermarket I’ve ever seen.  We were mostly there to pick up alcohol so I grabbed some wine, a Hoegaarden and one of the new Kronenburg Blanc beers (absolutely amazing). The evening was started (as it usually does in this hostel) with drinking games which caused me to finish my entire bottle of wine far too fast. But it was fun, and everyone was enjoying themselves and soon it was time to head out.

Each year in Edinburgh the council holds a massive street party with live bands and DJs and around 100,000 people partying it up. So after all this drinking, we headed out into it. Almost at once I lost Cat and Jess but luckily I was hanging out with a Canadian called Zach. And this was about the last I remember. Much to my embarrasment, all the alcohol hit me at once and most of the night is lost in my muddly brain but apparantly I did participate in the count down. This is the first new years that this has ever happened and I blame it on the fact that I wasn’t with my good friends :P

Fortuntely, the next day I awoke and was feeling fine! I had wanted to do the walking tour of Edinburgh that day and Cat and Jess agreed but by the time we got there it was totally full. This was crazy, we didn’t expect there to be so many people willing to go out and tour around the city on New Years Day, so Jess and I enlisted Cat to tour us around the city which she lived in a few months ago.

It appeared that Cat has forgotten most of the city but took us to two of the more interesting places. First was the Edinburgh Graveyard. This place is full of old grave stones covered in skulls and crossbones and skeletons and such.

Gravey!

The second place which I remember was Caton Hill. This is probably the second largest hill in Edinburgh (other than Arthur’s Seat). On the top of it they have a monument which waas supposed to be a replica of the Athenian Acropolis but for some reason they ran out of oney while building it and it never got completed.

Caton Hill

That night, Cat and Jess went on the New Years Day pub crawl. I decided not to beacuse the following day I had to catch a flight back to Luton to get ready for my next adventure, Morocco!

French Finale

My final train ride in France went without error. After leaving Alpe d’Huez at 7:30am, I arrived in Paris at around 1pm.

I was again CouchSurfing, but as it was a Friday my hosts had to work so we had arranged to meet at the Hoche metro station at 6:30. This gave me five and a half hours to kill and after wandering lost around the complex Gare du Lyon for about half an hour, I finally found the luggage check which turned out to be incredibly expensive. Welcome to Paris.

I checked my bags, checked the tourist information centre, then checked my new map. After ripping the map in half by mistake, I grabbed another which showed the routes which the tour busses take. I figured that I’d leave the main sites ’till the next day and so set off to find the French National Library. This, I gathered, is supposed to be a modern architectural centrepiece, and it was very cool. Four seperate buildings in L shapes donned the corners of the structure (in the middle was great public space and a large cluster of treess), the passage between them underground.

French National Library

After the library, I ventured back over the river via a bridge which I guess was specifically added when the library was built. On the otherside, opposite the library, was some kind of sports centre – a crazy geometric building covered in grass, skylights, and bright blue metal framing.

Sports Centre

This also appeared to be a popular youth hangout as it was crawling with teenagers who I thought should have been in school. I passed these kids and began to walk back towards the train station. I was walking along thhe river, under a bridge, when I spotted a very nice homeless set-up complete with tents, tables, chars, appliances (I’m not sure how they got power for them) and even a christmas tree!

Homeless setup

When I got back to the station I still had a lot of time until I had to head west on the metro so I began to walk towards Bastille, a very large and famous round-about.

Bastille

Now I had to make the decision. What to see. I decided on making a brief appearance at Notre Dame but trying not see too much of it. And after walking down a street which I thought was the right one for a while, getting lost, and then getting reorientated, I spotted the small island on which the cathedral was located.

Notre Dame

I then crossed on to the island, but kinda tried not to see too much of Notre Dame itself – I wanted to keep it until I had more time – so just passed by and went on my way. About an hour later I was back at the train station and ready to take the metro to Hoche.

This was crazy, it was rush hour and here I was trying to take the busiest metro in the world with two bags full of junk! I even had to change lines. But it was OK, I made it to Hoche faster than I thought (with enough time to take a little walk around) and soon met my CouchSurfing hosts, Clair and Francis (who was actually from a French owned island off the south-east coast of Madagascar called Reunion). We walked back to their place, had dinner, talked about all sorts of things and had a pretty good evening. Both Clair and Francis were amazingly hospitable and were offering me things left, right, and centre. It turned out that I was the first person that they had hosted!

From this point of my time in Paris, I must be honest, I was a bit lazy! I think I was just tired from all the partying I did in the alps. But I made sure I saw all the big sites. the next morning I got my self out of bed and headed back to Notre Dame to get a proper look. And after all the cathedrals that I had seen in this trip, I have to say I was a little disappointed. This one gets talked up by everyone, but in some ways it dosen’t even compare to many of the others I’ve seen, especially the Italian ones. Here is a picture of it anway:

Notre Dame

From here I headed towards the famous gallery, the Louvre. Again I was lazy, I decided not to go inside. Partly because of time (two days to see the whole thing!) and partly because of money. It’s becoming rather skint and I can’t afford 9 Euros to go to an art gallery, as much as I would have liked to. The buildings and the glass pyramid were especially impressive though! I hadn’t realised that it was so big.

The Louvre

From the Louvre I headed through the massive gardens which extend in front of it. At the other end of them was a small christmas fair with a pretty large ferris wheel. It was here that I caught my first glimpse of the famous Eiffel Tower, and it was then that I though “yeah, I’m really in Paris”.

It was beginning to get dark so I decided to head back. I was supposed to text Clair when I returned to the apartment block so that she could let me in. I was late and my phone had decided to run out of money and not let me top up the credit. So I headed to the apartment and snuck inside with another resident. I got up to level 7 and realised that it was the wrong building! So back down I went and over to the other building. There was no one to let me in so I just skulked around the entrance until a group of people opened it, not thinking twice about who I could be or what I was doing there. I then headed up to the right level 7 and Francis let me in. That night we were going to go out but in the end decided against it as Francis was sick, Clair was getting sick, none of their friends could make it and I was tired.

The following day Clair and Francis had said they would take me out to Versailles so around lunchtime (after a good sleep in) we got in the car and drove out there. The main attraction in Versailles is the palace which has been home to many a French king and queen.

Palace at Versailles

Inside the palace’s grounds and also inside the palace itself were a number of sculptural works from American artist Jeff Koons. The first one which I saw made for a pretty cool photo with the palace refelected in it.

Royal Reflection

The inside of the palace was pretty cool, but to be honest, for the price that you pay it was definitely not as good as the palace in Brussels which was free. There were many dark rooms with large numbers of paintings of past residents, historical beds and furniture, and a terrible audio guide which really didn’t tell you anything you couldn’t read on the signs. The highlight of this palace was the gardens which I hear are very popular and much more beautiful in the summer.

Gardens at Versailles

That evening was another quiet one. Apart from a trip to a street which houses a huge amount of electronics stores to get some things for Clair, we spent most of the night trying to get the French television system to allow us to watch a French film with English subtitles. This  did not end up working, so we began to watch 300 but soon all of us were pretty sleepy and we ended up turning it off and headed off to bed.

The next day was a Monday and Francis and Clair had to go off to work. It was time again for me to see some sights, so mid-morning I set off to make sure I didn’t miss the sights that Paris is known for. My first stop was the Arch de Triomphe, set in the middle of a huge round-about and extremely expensive to visit the inside of. I took a few photos  and then started to make my way towards the Eiffel Tower.

Arch de Triomphe

The Eiffel Tower is big. It was even bigger than I thought it was and it was very cool to finally see it in all it’s glory.

Eiffel Tower

I then headed down towards it. The metal framework is amazing and it made for some pretty cool silhouette photos.

Eiffel silhouette

After a little bit of decision making (time was running short), I decided to ascend the tower. The line took about 25 mintues which was a pretty good amount of time considering people queue for hours in the summer. I chose on of the legs which only offers the stairs and just under 400 stairs later I had made it to the first level. Over 200 stair more I was at the second level. The view was pretty cool from here although the day was rather overcast. This low cloud prevented me from spending further money and taking the lift all the way to the top (which was in fact in the clouds).

View from the Eiffel Tower

By the time I got back down it had started to rain so I got on the metro and began to head back to Hoche. That evening was an interesting dinner. I had told Francis that I had neve eated escargot before, so in no time he had whipped up an appertiser and I was eating some sort of pesto roasted snails – not bad at all really but I found it a bit hard to stomach them, something most probably psychological. After this we had hotdogs with salad and “French” dijon mustard which actaully almost killed me. I put way too much on thinking it was like American mustard and it felt like I was drinking vodka infused with chili peppers – I was crying and sniffing annd Francis thought it was funny!

The next morning I was off again. An early train to the airport and a flight for just over an hour saw me land in London. It was Christmas time!

Berning Down the House!

From Zurich I made my way to Bern. I had intially planned to take the Luzern-Interluken route but since I had already done this the day before, it was just a one hour trip. I arrived in Bern at about midday to find my next host, Regula wandering around the station looking for me just as I was doing for her. Lucky for me that we found each other at that time, as my train was late and she was about to leave.

In an old house near the train staion which usually had a bar, cafe, womens area, theatre and holds frequent parties, a once a month flea market was being held. Here you could by almost everything you could think of from scooters and bikes to console games, candlesticks and tea. I had to hold myself back as I saw so much stuff that I would have liked to buy but unfortunately can’t carry around with me. We spent a few hours looking around the markets and then decided to head back to her place.

Crazy bicycle for sale

Regula lived in a very old house which was situated inside an industrial area in a town about half an hour out of Bern called Oberburg. This industrial area has a building right next to the house which begins some sort of extreme hammering each morning at seven o’clock which shakes the entire house, continuing until five in the evening. Asides from Regula living there, there was also Nicole and Dino, a suitably hippy couple, another girl whoes name I never found out, and one more guy and another couple who were away at the time. For me this was great as I was given my own room which included its own fireplace to keep me toasty warm in the freezing nights. That night Regula, Nicole, Dino and I just hung out, ate some amazing food cooked by Nicole (who should be a chef), and listened to music. I spent half the evening dashing up and down the stairs to keep my little fire going.

The old house

The next day I was to meet up with a girl called Flurina who has contacted me the previous night on CouchSurfing, asking if I’d like to be shown around Bern. So at around midday, I met her in the Bern station and we set out on our mission. The first place to visit was the house where I had been at the flea market the previous day. I had wanted to get a betting picture of  it.

Flea market location

Next we wandered down to one of Bern’s many bridges. Following this we made our way to the highest tower in Bern at the XXXXXXX church. It was many more stairs that I had predicted and after we fought our way up with a number of stops, we found the the view was totally worth it. Unfortunately over half of the tower was closed to it was next to impossible to get a decent view from the other side.

View from tower

After we headed back down, Flurina suggested that next on the agenda should be “bears and fountains”, so we went for a walk towards the Bern bears. For some reason or another, there is a pit in the middle of the city which for numerous years has held a number of bears. It’s a horrible concrete pit and many people oppose it. The bears look so sad in there, just sitting around waiting for food and most probably wishing that the winter would become cold enough to hibernate.

Bern's Bear

Next were the fountains. Not as amazing as many of the other fountains which I have seen on this trip, but pretty cool as a number of them (which run up the middle of the main pedestrian streets) are statues of folktales. The one which is the best and I think every one agrees with is this one of a man eating small (bad mannered) children – a tale parents would often tell to their kids to keep them in line!

Child eater!

A walk down the riverside followed lunch, and when we were about ten minutes down stream (which was 6.66 degrees by the way!) I spotted the zoo on the otherside of the river which Flurina seemed to think was free. So back we headed and over a bridge which we had passed. Then we just walked in! Past some ponies and mules, fluffy rabbits and then… RACOOONS! My god I just keep having child-like exciting moments! So mischevious looking and so cute at the same time.

Racooooooon :)

Onward we walked up the hill to find a pond full of pink flamingos. I find these birds hilarious, especially the way the walk around in the water. They would move around to find the sun in flocks, flapping their wings to gain all the sun they could get.

Flamingos

Our trip to the zoo was our last activity for the day, and as the sun was setting we headed back to the train station where I thanked Flurina for showing me around and then set off back to Oberburg for another evening of music and hanging out.

The following day Nicole had no work and so decided to come with me on a trip to Gruyères to visit the H.R. Giger museum. This is the guy who invented the alien from the film Alien. It was lucky that she came along as it involved 3 trains and a bus, plus numerous amounts of German and French speaking. On arrival we had about an hour to spare so we decided to have a look around Gruyères, a very quaint little medival town set on the edge of the Swiss Alps.

Gruyères

At 1pm the museum opened. This place was crazy, the mind of this man insane. There were so many amazing pictures of creatures that I could never dream of. Very dark and for some reason, also very erotic. They had this little “adults only” section which seemed pretty pointless as almost all of his work had some weird alien sexuality to it. Unfortunately you were not alowed to take photos inside, but this was on the outside:

Babies in a gun

And there was even a bar which he designed, indeed also crazy:

Giger bar

And soon it was time to make the long trek back to Oberburg. We were not back for long when Regula came in from work, covered in snow! “It’s snowing!” she called, and looking out the window, it definitely was. So after another beautiful dinner made by Nicole, she, Dino and I headed outside into the already 4-5″ snow to play around. Snow fights were not an option of choice, and I was amazed to find that you actaully can roll snow into huge balls, resulting in by far the best snowman I have ever built.

Snowman!

This went on for a few hours and by then we were all tired and soaked and ready to sleep, but not after more music and hanging out, though!

I had initially planned to leave the following day, but it took me a while to find a place to stay so I spent one more day in Bern. This day I used for doing nothing. I headed into Bern to get a train ticket and then just spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and watching the snow out the window. A quiet evening and my time in Bern was over, again going so fast!

The next morning I was off to Cannes!

A Citidel and a Dead Guy: Moscow

I arrived in Moscow at Leningradskiy Station at around 10am. Once there I was supposed to amuse myself for the day, then find my host, Krishna’s, place. I had pretty good directions: get on the Metro, take the circle line until the correct station, turn right and walk till I hit an Italian restaurant.

I found the metro, but for some reason I could not for the life of me figure out how to get inside it. I walked around the building numerous times but all I encountered was markets, beggars, and about 300 dubious looking people hanging around the station, smoking, the ground a sea of their spit. Soon I found a map and decided that I would take the red line to where I needed to go and walked to the next metro station. I had decided that to fill in my time I would go and check out the Kremlin as I had a few hours to spare.

After finally getting a metro ticket (I walked away from the counter, forgetting it at first), I jumped on the train, decyphered the Cyrillic name for the closest station on the line to the Kremlin, counted the number of stops and headed on into the central city.

The Kremlin is closed on Thursdays.

I had no idea what to do. I had not seen one tourist office and my Lonely Planet map was pretty bad, but it did have the NZ embassy, so I thought I’d drop in there to see if they could give me some information. After a fourty minute walk (I’m carrying my pack here too) down the wrong street, I didn’t find the embassy, so I walked back. Right, it was only a few hours ’till Krishna said he was going to be home, so I decided to find his place and hang out and read a book.

This was the easiest thing so far, although the guy I asked for help at first tried to tell me that I needed to be back at the original station I had started at! I found Krishna’s apartment, rang the door bell, no one was home. So I sat down to wait. Pretty soon it started to get cold, and by cold I mean it was probably below 0 degrees. People kept coming and going but no sign of Krishna. I kept ringing the door bell just in case there was another entrance to the building. When he was 20 minutes late, I rang again and was answered by his flatmate, Katija. Finally! She let me in, it was an amazing feeling to be out of the cold. We sat down, had some tea and talked. Krishna didn’t make it home ’till 11pm! I’m very glad that Katija was there! That night Ben, the Australian guy I met in Estonia, came around for a chat. It was good to see him again and we made plans to meet up the following day.

Katija also had a very cute kitten!

Katijas Cat

In the morning Ben called to say that he wasn’t feeling so good; an allergic reaction to the chili in the meal which Krishna had cooked. He needed the day to rest but I decided to visit the Kremlin anyway and would meet him later on. I began to walk from Krishna’s into town, it’s about a 40 minute walk to the Kremlin, and passes by the majestic Cathedral of Our Saviour.

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Soon enough I made it to the walls of the Kremlin which borders Alexander Gardens and the entrance inside the citidel.

The Kremlin's Wall

After waiting in what Russians appear to call a queue, which is basically a mass of people pushing to be the first to the counter, I managed to get a studen ticket to get inside. Students pay one sixth the price of regular people. So in I went.

Entrance to the Kremlin

Cathedral Square

My ticket enabled me to wander around the grounds and check out the Cathedral Square in which four white and gold cathedrals stood proudly in the winter sun.

Inside, though, was where the amazement began to set in. Every cathedral was adorned from floor to ceiling with icons painted both directly on the plaster, and on wood facades. Colourful faces and gold halos were beaming from every direction. Lining the bottom of the walls were tombs of important Russian figures throughout history. Unfortunately you were not alowed to take pictures inside any of these places, otherwise I would have taken hundreds, it was astonishing.

The rest of the buildings inside the Kremlin were very St. Petersburgian. They were really the only buildings which I saw in Moscow that seemed to have been built in the same style as the Hermitage or Catherine the Great’s palace.

I still had a bit of time left before I had to meet Ben, so I went for a wander around, over the bridge which crosses the Moscow River to get a better look at the Kremlin.

The Kremlin

The above was the view from to the north. To the south was the sunsetting on the clearest night behind the Cathedral of Our Saviour.

Sunset behind cathderal

Soon it was time to meet Ben. We got some food then headed out to an “expat friendly bar” that I “had to see.” It was true it was crazy inside this place, it was like every kind of bar you can think of in one; club, sports bar, live music venue, cafe, sisha bar, and then later in the night was what Ben had wanted me to see. At aproximately 11pm, about 25 prostitutes just strolled on in. Apparantly they pay and exuberant entrance fee to get in and just act like regular patrons. They dance with you and then pop the question about having fun for payment. Crazy.

We visited a few more clubs and soon the night came to an end. When I got back to Krishna’s I was expecting to meet his other CouchSurfer who was supposed to be turning up that night. He wasn’t there. Ah well, bed time!

In the morning I got up bright and early as I really wanted to see this dead guy. You know, my father, your father, the father of communism: Mr. Lenin. I also realised that I hadn’t visited Red Square which would have been ridiculous. So in to the Kremlin I walked again and got in line for Lenin’s Mausoleum. I passed through the airport-like security checks, and started the slow walk to the building, pased the graves of many important Russian political figures. Soon I was at the mausoleum. This place is surrounded by numerous guards which ridiculous weapons, who loudly pronounce “sssssssh!!” every 3-4 seconds. In I walked, down into the tomb site, a temperature controlled pit of black marble. Next thing I knew I was staring at a very dead man, so dead in fact that he looked like he was never alive, but only a wax figurine. I began to speculate that maybe he still is alive and that this body is indeed wax. I hear they are thinking of closing the venue to the public, though, so maybe no matter the temperature control, he’s beginning to suffer the fate of human breath.

Lenins Mausoleum

Back into the sunlight I emerged and at the other end of red square, facing back towards the State History Museum. No tanks parading through today.

Red Square

My next stop was St. Basil’s Cathedral which is located on the west end of Red square, opposite the State History Museum.

St. Basils Cathderal

This cathedral was like a candy house. If Hansel and Grettle’s witch had been more wealthy, this is what she would have had. I ventured inside. You were also not alowed to take photos in here either, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone, and everyone was doing it, so I followed the crowd. Here you can also get an idea as to what it looked like inside the Kremlin cathedrals.

Inside St. Basils Cathedral

After St. Basil’s I had one last stop in Red Square and that was GUM, the high profile shopping mall with high profile prices, situated in a high profile building. Beautiful architecture, and full of crap that stupid people buy.

I headed back to Krishna’s once more and not long after I returned, the CouchSurfer who was supposed to come last night showed up. It turned out that the previous night he had gotten lost, had no phone number to call and ended up sleeping on the steets of Moscow! Now that is crazy! Apart from the fact that it was below 0 degrees at night, who knows what might have happened. But with a name like Phoenix Mourning-Star, I guess nothing is crazy for you. He was from Colorado and told me that he did his entire college life of five years living out of a car.

Anyway, shortly I was supposed to meet Ben again to go and check out what he had called an “airplane graveyard”, so I asked Phoenix if he wanted to come along too. And also another dude called Ben who had helped Phoenix find Krishna’s apartment. We met Ben (the Australian) and a whole bunch of Moscow based CouchSurfers and headed off on the Metro to an disused aerodrome from the Cold War turned insustrial area. The planes and helicopters were in sight but were surrounded by a large fence. Not to worry, at the price of 50 rubles each, we paid off the guard and he let us in to pretty much do anything we wanted.

There were huge helicopters, missiles, jet planes with afterburners, everything adorned with the sicle and hammer and beautiful handpainted red stars. If the cockpits were smashed, you could even get inside.

But my favourite part was the fact that they planes were parked wing to wing. So at one stage near the end (and I have a video of this), I started from one end, and began to run. Along the left wing (becareful of the flaps!!), over the fuselage, along the right wing, then jump! Onto the next plane’s left wing and so on over the top of around 15 planes in a row. I can only say it was a very interesting experience, running around on the top of warplanes.

Warplane Graveyard

That evening Ben, Phoenix and I met up with some of Ben’s friends including a Cuban guy from Miami who looked like Zorro except with an uneven moustache. This guy had one of the biggest egos I’ve ever met, but he also knew where to go out, so out we went. We only actaully managed to make three stops, the first being a pie shop. There I met Eric, a Nigerian guy who ran a promotion company in Moscow and brought in hiphop acts like Chingy and Jaz-Z and Timberland, he was currently bringing over Chingy at the time. These people didn’t understand how hilarious Chingy is, but anyway.

Our next stop was a student party, held in a student club where we all pretended to be students. The music was terrible, and they kept playing this annoying “king of my castle” song over and over again, which was only topped by a remix of the Pirates of the Carribean theme music which no one else seemed to find absolutely ridiculous. I was told that to get a beer you pay 15 rubles, to get a girl you speak English.

Our next stop was, according to Zorro, the best club in Moscow and a “real club”. It was called London, and had this weird theme of umbrellas and Ducati motorcycles going on. The drinks were horrendously expensive and they were playing the same terrible music as the student party. I think Russia has it’s own dance music where they basically remix anything that they can get their hands on. We stayed there until about 4:30am, and then Ben and I decided it was about time to leave, I was staying at his place and had to get up at 8am to leave for the airport, which I managed to do okay! At 10am when I left Ben’s apartment, it was -2 degrees, when I landed in Athens at 5:30, it was 18 degrees. Aaaaaaahhhh.

Tromsø: Above the Arctic Circle

I landed in Tromsø at around 9 o’clock at night. Ula (the girl I was staying with) had given me pretty good instructions as to how to get to her place, so I decided not to follow them and got off at the wrong bus stop. This seems to be becomming a common theme of this trip. So, after wondering where in the world I was supposed to go, wandering around looking lost, I found my self in a psychiatric hospital – asking for directions. I was only 100m away!

I soon found my way up to the 5th floor of the Tromsø University student house where Ula lived. She was a Polish masters student of English Literature. I would spend two nights with her, and then I was to spend the following two nights in the room of her neighbour, Phil, who was a biology masters student, spending his time in a greenhouse germinating seeds taken from Svalbard. That night I also met a couple more students plus Phil’s friend Doris from Vienna. We all stayed up pretty late and Doris and I decided that the next day we would climb the local mountain which during the correct season is usually accessed by cable car.

The next morning I awoke and went out onto the deck. This was the view.

View from Ula's Deck

The weather was not so nice, but it wasn’t raining, so Doris and I set out for the mountain.
As we got close to the harbour, the mountain became visable. It dosen’t look so big, but I gaurantee you that it is definitely steep.

Climbable?

We crossed the massive bridge which links Tromsø to the mainland,

Bridge and Harbour

Passed the modern-style church,

Triangle Church

And headed up into the forest. The path was pretty crazy, it spent about and hour going along the bottom of the mountain and we figured that at this rate it was going to take forever to get to the top, zig-zagging across the mountain. After passing a good number of streams, we finally got to a more intesnse part which, more or less, went directly up.

Mountain Stream

It took about another hour of ascention to reach a point where we decided to go no further. It was freezing, windy and starting to rain. But the view was amazing.

View From Mountain

Me and the View

Soon it was starting to get dark so we began to make out decent. On the way down the sunset, though cloudy, was very amazing. Here is my favourite picture of it:

Mountain Sunset

That night Ula made a very nice Polish-style tomato soup and her and I and Doris and Phil all ate together and talked into the night. The following day Doris was going back to Oslo (where she studies German literature), so we made morning plans and then we all headed off to bed.

The next morning I awoke to this:

Morning View

The weather was amazing! Doris and I went walking again and had to stop and take pictures of the Tromsø Island lake on the way to town.

Central Lake

We got to town and decided that we wanted to walk to the very south end of the island. So we set off, passing some pretty cool street art,

Street Art

and Mack’s brewery, the world’s northern most beer brewery.

Macks Brewery

We never made it to the south tip of the island. We walked for so long but in the end it seemed as though Doris might miss her flight if we kept going. So we left the town goodbye and headed back to the student accommodation. Doris left for Oslo and I moved into Phil’s place. I then pitched the idea of tramping out into the darkness to Phil to try and see if the northern lights were going to show. He agreed, and after a nice dinner of vegetables and rice we bussed back into town, over the bridge, and walked up on of the cross-country skiing trails into the valley and beyond town’s visable light. We walked for hours and hours and the northen lights decided they were not going to show. I was not too happy about this, but cheered up after we did some interesting photography.

Phil and I

We had missed the last bus back but it was getting late and cold so we decided to make out way back home. When we reached the point where we could see the lights of Tromsø, we decided to take a few photos, the first looking like this:

Subtle Lights

We had to double take at the picture because there was definitely some green in there. The sky was almost blank but the photo showed up green. So we waited for a while. And sure enough, the northern lights appeared to us, albiet very subtly. I would have loved it to be amazing and bright and full of different colours, but I guess that it was a bit too early in the season. We watched the subtle green colours dance across the sky for around 20 minutes before they disappeared and then headed off home. We had been (mildly) victorious.

Subtle Lights

It was a long walk back with no bus to catch, but Phil and I got on so well that we never had nothing to say to each other, and we were home before we knew it. It was also very fun to throw rocks onto a frozen lake and listen to them bounce off emmitting a laser-gun like sound.

The following day I slept in. It was well deserved after all the time I have spent getting up early and walking around cities, etc. What happened that day was not a lot. But in the night Phil and I decided that we would do another night hike. So once again it was up the mountain for me. We got layered up in warm clothing, brandished head-lamps, and then set off along the forest trail. It seemed very different at night and we went much slower than I has previously gone with Doris. But soon we had made it as far as we thought we should go – this time we were not going to miss the last bus.

The view was very cool, and it was amazing how much orange from the city was reflected off of the clouds.

Orange City

The next morning it was time for me to head off, I had a lot of travelling ahead of me: A flight to Bodø, a night train to Trondheim, a day train to Oslo, one night in oslo, then a plane to Stockholm at 8am the next day, followed by a train to Borlänge where I was to stay with my childhood au pair, Marie.