‘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!

Forests, Fun; Finland!

The ferry pulled up to the Helsinki Tallink terminal at 10am on Sunday in the pouring rain. For about 10 minutes I wandered around outside in the rain, looking for my next host, Sampsa, and soon found him before I was soaked. Twenty-five minutes later we arrived at his apartment where I had my own room, a first in a long time.

It was a wet Sunday afternoon, but we decided that we should probably do something as Sampsa had to work 6am-5pm everyday and would not really have that much time for me so we headed out to the local forest. Sampsa had a plan for us to do a ten kilometer round hike through the forest so we left the road and headed into the wilderness. This place was beautiful, even in the autumn with the baring trees.

Lead the way, Sampsa

We walked through the mud and passed the first of many lakes which we would see. What caught my attention, though, were these crazy-huge lumps at the base of many of the trees. Sampsa enlightened me, they were anthills, huge ones at that. He explained that they were always built on the south side of a tree so when you were hiking, all you had to do was look for one of these and you would always know where south is.

Anthill

We ventured further and further into the forest but soon it started to rain. We figure, though, that we would keep going because it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately but the time we got about a third of the way through, the rain was getting thick and heavy, so we turned back. I fell down a bank and soiled myself, but it only took about half the time to return to the car.

That night, Annika, Sapmsa’s girlfriend, made a delicious fish soup. Later, I found a message on my Couchsurfing account from a girl who I had requested a host with in Helsinki but who could not take me in. Instead, she suggested that we meet up and that she show me around the town.

And so the following day I met up with Meri at the Kaampi shopping centre in the Helsinki CBD. We decided that we would go and check out a local art gallery but unfortunately she had forgotten that all museums and gallerys were closed on Mondays. Lost for ideas, we walked around a bit and decided to check out the Tumio Church.

Toumio Church

Afterwards, Meri wanted to show me some of the more intersting shops in the design district of Helsinki, and we took a tour of some interesting clothing shops, I bought an illustrated story book in an independent book store and we fouraged through a second-hand market. We also had lunch at a Thai restaurant, which was very nice, and checked out what appeared to be the only open art gallery (of which I can’t remember the name), which was showing an Icelandic photography exhibition of images contrasting nature with people who have intellectual handicaps.

I had told Meri that at some stage during my stay I wanted to vist the Helsinki island fort of Soumenlinna, and she suggested that we go that afternoon as it was supposed to rain over the next few days. So we hopped onto the ferry and headed over the sea to Soumenlinna, the fort which has protected Helsinki through numerous battles.

On the way to Soumenlinna

When we got there, the wind was blowing but we still explored our way around the fading buildings in which a few thousand people still live.

Soumenlinna Clock Tower

Soon the sun started to set and we decided to head to the seaside to see the sunset, which was rather subdued as the storm clouds were closing in fast. The wind was strong and blowing a freezing gale but we spent a short time there and ran back just in time to get the ferry back to the mainland.

Fort Walls

Meri and I and the Sea

Back at the mainland, we went out separate ways but not after arranging to meet again the following day so we could actaully visit some art galleries.

At 2:30pm the next day I met Meri at the Atenium gallery. They were showing an exhibition which displayed the works of five friends of Finnish author Mika Waltari, author of a famous Finnish book called The Egyptian. The paintings had nothing to do with the book and some were more interesting than others, but there was an actual mummy in a glass case which was pretty cool! There were also galleries of posters for the book and film, another of Japanese post-WWII photography and lastly one showing Japanese landscapes and scenescapes from over 200 years ago (watercolour).

After this we left and went to find lunch. We walked through What is known as Plague Park, a historic burial place of plague victims which has been converted into a park but continues to be littered with graves.

Plague Park

We went to the supermarket to look for a cheap lunch, and ended up with the Finnish specialty of Carelian pies, mashed vegetables in a crusty open pie. Actually very similar to the meat version eaten by the Lebonese (which I can’t remember the name of, sorry Sarah’s grandmother!). After this, we headed to the Helsinki modern art gallery, Kiasma, only to find that it had closed at 5pm (yes, a pretty late lunch) was closed. Meri had suggested earlier that I come over for dinner, so after a little bit of shopping we headed back to her place on the train.

That night Meri cooked a very nice salmon (yeah, I know), and we drank a New Zealand wine which she was adement to try. We talked about al sorts of things, listened to music, and at some stage, Meri the art student decided to sketch me. I don’t think it was too bad for a 5 minute job either!

Meri's Sketch of Me

The following day the weather was nice again, and Annika suggested that we go to Porvoo. Unfortunately it was too late because Meri still wanted me to see Kiasma and I had to be in town at 5:30pm. Instead Annika and I went for a wander around the forest and lake which was so close to her apartment.

Forest and Lake

We walked for about an hour through the forest which proved to be  some sort of squirrel breeding ground, they were everywhere! I’m going to miss these little guys when I get back to New Zealand.

Tree Squirrel

I made it into town with about five minutes to spare, but had forgotten where the gallery was, and after asking about three or four different people, I finally found it, only ten minutes late. Ridiculous seeing as I had been there only the day before. And now came the third time that I was to miss out on Kiasma. Meri had jsut recieved some bad news about a family member and didn’t really feel like visiting the gallery as the building is a very intense place to be in. We decided instead to do something spontaneous and walked down to the metro where she asked me “east or west?”. I figured at home, west is best, so we went west and ended up at a disused cable factory, Kaapeli, which now housed twelve galleries and a number of small theaters and other places.

Kaapeli

At Kaapeli we found only one gallery open. This was showing the works of what made itself out to be a prestigious art group called the Finnish Artist Group. Unfortunately for anyone who wants to be proud of artistic expression in Finland, this art was terrible. Both Meri and I spent the time in the gallery laughing at how unoriginal and prententious it was. Soon it was time to leave as Meri had TaeKwanDoe that night, so we took on last photo and headed back to the centre on the subway.

Meri, Me and Streetart

The following day it was time to leave Helsinki. My ferrry was at 10:30am and was headed across the gulf, the course set for Tallinn, Estonia. Goodbye Scandinavia!

I ♥ Berlin

From Prague we drove to Berlin. Initially I hadn’t planned to visit the city, but I’m now very glad that I did. What an amazing place!

We arrived in Berlin in the afternoon, found our hostel (Ollie and Xanthe even agreed to join Willy and I there) and got settled in.  After a short while, Willy and I took a walk around our Eastern Berlin suburb and ended up at what is now known as the East Side Gallery. Rather than being an actual art gallery, this is the longest remaining section of the Berlin Wall which has been turned into an area decorated by local artists in memory of Berlin’s past.

East Side Gallery

The following day we decided to check out one of the free walking tours which was on offer. This one was run by a company called New Europe and it was really pretty good. Our guide Maria took us around numerous sites within the city over approximately 3 and a half hours, all the while being incredibly enthusiastic and knowledgable even though she was actually from Sweden! A few of the sites we saw were Hitler’s Bunker, the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby off of the  balcony, various Jewish and Catholic churches, Museum Island, the Jewish Memorial, the book burning square, Berlin Wall + heaps more. It was incredibly informative and amazingly interesting. Berlin is a city with so much history it is unbelievable!

Jewish Memorial

Brandenburg Gates

That night we decided it would be a good idea to go on the pub crawl run by the tour company. It took us to a number of bars in the central Berlin region (three of which I remember) and was pretty fun. There was heaps of free drinks and plenty of people to party with!

The next day I was feeling marginal to say the least. But that wasn’t going to stop us going on the Berlin ‘Alternative Tour.’ The idea of this was to take people around the sites of Berlin which you wouldn’t usually see as a tourist. It was not as informative as the regular tour but we went to some interesting places. Of particular importance to this tour was art. We saw so much street art and began to hear some of the stories behind it.

Little Lucy

Little Lucy (above right), for example, is a character seen sprayed up all over town. It is a story which follows the antics of a little girl named Lucy who is given a cat as a present but soon finds out that the cat does not work as a ‘toy’ should. The above picture is just one of many Little Lucy pieces around town. Around this corner from this Lucy was a very cool steam-punk style mechanical bat-like monster which hissed and flapped it’s wings after a euro was inserted into it. Very cool.

Mechanical Bat-Monster

The tour also took us to a pretty cool rooftop beach bar, a faux waterfall, an apartment building on which all the support pillars are painted with famous faces – called the 50 Faces Gallery – , a shop which sold camping equipment, absinthe, and bongs, and a really cool place – the name of which i forget, which has been an artist squat for a number of years. The entire building was covered in graffiti both inside and out, and you could go inside and talk to the artists and stuff, it was an amazing place but sadly I hear it has been commissioned for demolition. I also managed to buy a pretty cool jacket from a 2nd hand shop which sold its clothes by weight!

Inside the artist squat

On the way back from this tour, we happened to bump into a Hamburg-Berlin road rally, containing some awesome cars.

Kadett C, Hamburg-Berlin rally

That night we decided to go into town and see what was going on.  What was going on was the prostitution scene. In Germany, street prostitution is legal so long as the girl is registered and paying tax, etc. Willy and I were accosted by these women who looked like high profile pornstars on at least 3 occassions, all of them wanting to know if we were keen for pleasure. One even offered for us to take two girls back and swap half way through! Europe is crazy! And I thought NZ was quite liberal… it dosen’t seem so after seeing things like this.

The next day was shopping day. Willy bought shoes, I bought a t-shirt (but not ’till later in the day). We really just chilled out and checked out the local scene. We also thought about going up the TV tower but the line was ridiculously long. The next day it was time to leave on a train: 6 hours to Amsterdam!

A Few Bits of Art

Just a quick update on the local art front. At some stage over the last few days I decided to finish off the Tate Modern street art walk around London’s southern burrows. International artists have congregated upon the city for this exhibition, here are a few pieces which I saw and liked.

Tate Modern Street Art

Tate Modern Street Art

During my walk, I also found myself walking down a strange back-alley which housed an independent contemporary art gallery called Union. The curator was more than happy for me to take photos of the excellent array of works. Here are a few:

Excellent Marble Sculpture of a Fertile Woman

Jigsaw Puzzle!

Red Landscape

Awesome!