‘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!

Farming and Hippies: Gothenburg

Arriving off of the train from Copenhagen, the sun was shining in Gothenburg and the afternoon was hot. I waited for Martin to collect me from the train station. Soon he turned up with his girlfriend Lisa, they were to be my fourth CouchSurfing hosts.

I was visiting Gothenburg City, but this time I wasn’t staying in the city – Martin lived on a farm about half an hour out of the city.  We boarded the closest train. I had no Swedish money and couldn’t afford the ticket but not to worry Matrtin told me, foreigners never get in trouble for not having a ticket because there is nowhere for the authorities to send the fine. And anyway, we might not even get checked.

We got checked.

I played my part like a historic shakespearian actor, denying Martin and Lisa as people I knew, acting confused as to where I was going (I really didn’t know the stop name), and generally just causing such a fuss that the woman  - who most probably though I was some idiot from New Zealand –  gave up and told me that “next time” I would need a ticket. Okay! After the train ride, we took a short bus trip which carried us out of suburbia and into the wilderness, forests and farmland of Sweden. From the bus, it was ten minutes of walking, in some of the most beautiful landscape that I had seen so far in my travels, and we had arrived at what Martin called “The Commune”. I was about to live the hippy dream!

Gothenburg Commune

First things first, I needed to check out the nature of the farm and it’s surroundings; I decided to check out the farm’s lake. Now this was beautiful. Martin had originally said that we could go swimming there, and as beautiful as it was, it looked freezing! I doubted I’d be taking a dip. I spent about an hour or so walking around before returning to the house, nay, commune. There I met another of the members, Thomas. This guy was crazy, he had a computer-science masters, worked for Volvo as an electrical engineer, and spent the rest of his time being a vegan, reading an assortment of books on psychedelics, and listening to crazy 60s and 70s music.

The Farm Lake

The next thing I knew, I was part of an intricate sheep hurding operation to retrieve a small number of wayward sheep to had managed to remove a part of their paddocks fence and wander off into the dense forest. Running back and forth with a crook in hand, we slowly managed to get all the sheep back home, Thomas fixed the fence and we headed back inside.

Sheepy!

That night we just chilled out, listened to crazy music, talked crazy talk and slept a crazy sleep.

The following day I decided that I would leave the farm for a life in the city. Just one day of life in the city. I headed into Gothenburg city, found the tourist information centre, gained a map, planned my walking, and set off into the jungle. Lisa had given me a list of place to visit, mainly interesting shopping streets. I first visted an area of the city called Haga, this is the oldest district of Gothenburg and was complete with colourful buildings, cobbled streets, and interesting shops.

Retro Shop

The next place I checked out was not on my list. I had seen it from Haga, a large round tower up on the top of a hill which I figured would be a pretty cool view over the city. It turned out to be one of the oldest defense forts for the city which had, in the last one hundred years, been turned into the city’s military museum.

The Fort

The view was not too bad either!

View from fort

After leaving the fort, I checked out yet another European church. Yes they are all old, but in all honesty, they are all merging into one – except for the epic cathedrals of course. So I soon moved on, making my way to what Lisa had written on the list as “Big Park”. And it certainly was a big park. I am thinking that in New Zealand we would barely even call it a park, it was more like a forest with paths, and bang smack in the middle of it was a free zoo. Although it wasn’t really a zoo, more like a farm with viewing spots. I did, though, encounter this big guy:

Moosery!

He was snuffling at me in all his hungered glory. The zoo also contained sheep, goats, ducks, ponies, and peacocks. I walked around this park for quite a while, making the most of the beautiful sunny day which may have been one of my last and then headed back to the train station to meet up with Martin and head back to the farm.

The next few days I spent hanging around the farm:

• Eating awesome vegan food and organic stype apple cake
• Exploring the forest with it’s many varieties of mushrooms
• Walking around the local rural roads in search of the unknown
• Listening to crazy music

One evening we watched Wall.E which I thouroughly enjoyed. Another night we watched a documentary called Koyaanisqatsi. This film was an absolutely amazing look at nature versus the built environment with an exceptional soundtrack soundtrack by acclaimed composer Phillip Glass.

The other intersting thing about Martin was his interest in conspiracy theories, particullarly those of a certain man called David Icke. This guy is crazy, and you, my friends, will be watching one of his lectures with me upon my return. His content is so crazy that I can not believe that anyone actually goes along with what he is saying.  Check out his website!

So yes, for a few days I just hung around the farm. On the final day, just before I had to leave, Martin pulls out a  big bag of wild Swedish mushrooms which Lisa’s father has picked from the forest and proceed to make me a very tasty open-top mushroom sandwhich for breakfast. Yum!

Mushroom Breakfast

And after that, it was off to the train, and onward to Oslo!

Českỳ Krumlov

The afternoon after we left Vienna, we crossed the boarder into the Czech Repbulic. We were on route to Českỳ Krumlov, a town of similarity to Bruges but of course in a more Eastern European vain.

Upon crossing the boarder, the landscape changed drastically. The language on all the signs changed from German to Czech and the only buildings to be seen were large numbers of small casinos hiding behind a patina facade. Not only could you see a casino everywhere you looked, but almost every 500m you could find yourself a brothel or prostitute hanging around on the side of the road. Whether they were looking to be picked up, or just for a ride to the next town we didn’t find out.

Soon we had arrived at our campsite in Českỳ Krumlov, and after being yelled at in Czech by some woman trying to tell us where we could and couldn’t park, we finally managed to arrange accommodation for the night and set up out tents.

Once all was arranged, we took our first walk, through the streets with more casinos, over a bridge resembling the one from Beetlejuice, past some derelict and abandonded buildings, and into the heart of the old town – a place with variable altitude, littered with cobblestones, hosting a river and overlooked by a castle. This small town had almost everything a small town should. It even had a multitude of tourists – in fact, they seemed to be the only people there!

Beetlejuice Bridge

Českỳ Krumlov from the castle tower

Again we were only here for one night (which really was enough), so we decided to make the most of it. We spent the afternoon wandering around the town, exploring all nooks and crannys but leaving the castle for the following day. Dinner was had and it was time to check out some bars. By far the one which stood out was called the Horor Bar. This was housed underground with stone floor, and a rounded stone wall/ceiling. It came inclusive with skeletons and other props to add to the horror theme. Willy also decided it would be a good place to try out the local absinthe. And by God, this absinthe was like nothing I’ve ever had before. I’m pretty sure we were drinking pure alcohol infused with wormwood. But it was cool as it came complete with the absinthe spoon and caramelised sugar – it just killed you to drink it. The look on Willy’s face upon tongue contact was hilarious.

Horor Bar

That night we slept next to a tent housing the loudest snoarer I’ve ever experienced.

In the morning we packed up, and as Ollie and Xanthe pissed around, Willy and I walked into town to check out the castle. To be honest, it’s not much of a castle, but it does have a pretty cool old tower which you are able to climb.

Českỳ Krumlov Castle

It also has a bear moat. Yes, that is correct – and the bears are still in there. I guess they would have thrown prisoners down into it back in the day.

Bear Moat

But I think, by far the best part of Českỳ Krumlov for me, was the dungeon sculpture gallery in the castle. This was a three level network of underground passageways and dungeons set under the castle which housed some interesting sculpture. I did take a lot of photos in there, but it was so dark that most of them came out blurry. ‘Tis rather annoying.

That afternoon it was time to leave again, the schedule was becomming a little to fast! But we were off to that magical city, Prague.

Frank-N-Furter

From Brussels I headed to Frankfurt. This was my first taste of Germany, and to be honest, there isn’t really much there. I spent 4 nights in Frankfurt with not a whole lot to do.

I arrived in Frankfurt via a 6.5 hour bus at about 11pm at night and I then had to make my way to the place I would be staying, my second couch surfing experience, a girl called Stephi. She lived about 2km from the main station where I left the bus but with a heavy bag it wasn’t really ideal to walk this, especially this time at night. With a little bit of trouble and some help from some people who didn’t speak english, I managed to secure myself a tram ticket on the correct line and made it to Stephi’s apartment around 11:30pm. Once I had arrived, I realised that I didn’t know her last name, so I just decided to press all the buttons at the door and see what would happen. Luckily the door buzzed open and I heard my name called from up the stairs, I had arrived.

Stephi took me up to my little attic room and I promptly fell asleep, it had been a long day.

The next morning I decided to explore Frankfurt. I didn’t really find much to do, but it was indeed an interesting experience. The socio-economic mix of buildings was incredibley varied. You can find brand new skyscrapers next to smaller shops next to abandoned apartment buildings. And scattered throughout all these different places were numerous sex shops. There was no zone for them, they were everywhere, in suburbs, in town – crazy! The Germans love their sex it seems.

New Building + The Euro!

Crappy Old Building

That night I just hung out with Stephi while she introduced me to the world of the tea afficianado. We talked about all sorts of crazy things and drank numerous different types of tea which she produced from a large box stacked with flavour upon flavour. We even watched an episode of NCIS in German dub. In Germany all the shows are dubbed from English and the same voice actors are even used for the poppular actors. So Eddie Murphy has his German equivilent, as does Tom Cruise.

The following day I made the 2km hike into town to see if I could find anything interesting. I didn’t have a map so I didn’t want to stray too far, butI managed to find what remains of the older parts of Frankfurt (I guess a lot of it was bombed during WW2). I found the town hall and an open square which they called Roma. I also found an entire street full of museums which I couldn’t afford to view. There must have been at least 20 museums on this street ranging from ceramics to film to architecture. The one place which I did manage to visit was the Gallery of Modern Art which was a very cool architecturally designed building with an awesome exhibition of the works of Burnard Buffet. The walk back saw me find a number of smaller art galleries which all seemed to be closed. Nevermind, I would check them out the next day. That night again I hung out with Stephi, we drank a pot of caramel tea, and I headed off to bed prety early again.

Owl by Burnard Buffet

Roma

It was my last full day in Frankfurt and again, not a whole lot of notable events happened. I went to check out all the small galleries, but they were all closed again with the exception of one which was pretty marginal anyway. I did manage to find a cool group of buskers who played an assortment of Hang drums which was very cool. I would have bought their CD but it was a bit over my budget. I did manage to have a good chat to the drummer though and he just reinforced what I knew about the availability of the instrument, damn! That evening I took Stephi and her flatmate out to dinner at a place called Mr. Pizza as a thank you for letting me stay, and afterward headed into town to try and meet up with Willy who was now in Frankfurt. Unfortunately he was staying in a hotel about 7km out of the city centre and I had just missed the train. It was too late anyway, by the time I had walked back to Stephi’s it was 11:30. Tomorrow was another day of travelling so sleep time it was!

The Art of Fusion Buskers

A Few Days in Brussels

Three days I spent in Brussels. It is both the capital of Belgium, and also the capital of Europe, well, the European Union anyway. The people here speak French rather than Dutch as they do in Bruges so it is a little easier for me to read signs and such, but I still can’t speak to people!

As well as being my first proper city that I have visited on the continent, it is also the first time that I have spend couchsurfing. For those of you who don’t know, couchsurfing is about networking with people all around the world and staying with them instead of staying in a hostel when you are travelling (www.couchsurfing.com). Being my first time I was a little aprehensive, but Alex, the guy who I stayed with, was absolutely awesome. He was extra hospitable, and it turned out that we had a very similar music taste, so we spent a lot of time listening to and talking about music. He also loved the Belgian beers as much as I do!

Unfortunately Alex had to work during the week days so was unable to show me around, but that was ok. I was able to navigate Brussels fairly easily. It is small enough to travel around to most of the interesting sites without having to use public transport, which is good, because that is fairly complex.

In Brussels they have bus, metro and trams. This may sound good, but it is not linked very well. For example, to get from Alex’s place to the central bus station, which is probably about 3km as the crow flies, and on the same side of town as him, we had to take a bus, two trains, and a tram! Ridiculous. Luckily they are all run by the some company so you can buy a day pass and use all of them as many times as you like within the city.

The first night Alex and I just hung out at his place. He cooked a pizza with soggy dough which was pretty funny, him apologising profusely. The next morning I began my wandering. The first site which I stumbled across was the Palace.

Royal Palace in Brussels

From outside, this building is definitely grand, although no more grand than other buildings I have seen. After 10:30 in the morning, you are able to go inside. Now it is very unfortunate that you are not able to take photos inside this building as I’m not sure I can fully explain it in words. The first thing which I noticed was the scale of the interior, it was much much bigger than it appeared from the outside. And the marble, almost the entire interiour was marble. Arches, columns, floors, ceilings, and when there was not marble, there was gold, and plenty of it. Gold adorned everything! The curtains were red velvet, the walls were covered in paintings of former in kings, princes, princesses and queens. Frescos could be seen all over the ceilings, and even one of the ceilings was covered in actaual scarab beetle wings – an amazing thing to see. All I can say more about this building is “wow”. It is more than impressive.

From the palace I moved one to one place that I did know about and had planned to see, the Museum of Musical Instruments. This houses the largest collection of musical instruments in the world. This was very cool, you could walk around displays of hundreds of instruments from all over the world and listen to music from that particular instrument through headphones you were given. The music automatically played when you stood in front of the display. I was particularly hoping that I would find what I now know is called a Hanghang as I thought it was a very old instrument, but it was not there as you can probably deduce from the previous post about Bruges. Of everything in the museum, I think that the pianos were definitely the top display for me. Never have I seen so many shapes and sizes, nor such beautiful decoration. Check this out.

Fancy Piano!

Just wandering around Brussels, a few things I noticed were the large amound of beggars in the streets. Different streets seems to have different types, some for young men, some for women wearing burquas, older men, and those playing the accordian. Well, maybe not the accordian, but as a fan of the accordian I am happy to say that every single busker or busking group which I encountered had some form of accordian player, how fantastic! For some odd reason there are also a lot of hat shops, I have no idea why. Oh, and I found a bunch of record shops that sold so much old stuff you wouldn’t know where to begin. It was excellent.

Old Man Busking with Accordian

Later on in the day on I managed to find someething I didn’t know existed. This was the main square in Brussels, and the more touristific spot in the city. All it was was tourist groups, waffle and chocolate shops, and not much else. Oh, and also some terrifically old buildings, one of which was the town hall. I was unable to get a decent shot of the square as they were setting up for some free summer event and there was scafholding everywhere, but take a look at Flickr for some pictures of some of the buildings found there, the architecture is amazing!

Brussels Town Hall

My last tourist stop for the day was probably Brussels most popular icon, the Maniequine Pis. Luckily I had not known about this little fountain before I came to Brussels, or I would most probably be incredibly disappointed like most of the tourists there. It is the statue that Brussels is most known for, and in a town of amazing sculptures, it stands little over two feet high! People are loving it ‘though.

Stories as to why this exists involve one about two enemies at war, and a little boy runs up and pisses on one of the armies, it is a huge joke the the war is called off. Another tells of a small boy who put out a fire by taking a pee on it. Apparantly there are a huge number more of these stories, none of which anyone believes is true.

Manneken Pis

Not long after I had finished viewing this amazing statue, Alex turned up. We then took a walk through the city towards the outskirts to meet up with one of his friends, Eliza, who was a French language teacher. We sat around at her apartment talking for a while, then headed out to bar for dinner where I had a fantastic lasagne. Yum! And also some more interesting Belgian beer! Out next stop was very interesting. Eliza took both Alex and I, for he had never been there before, to a bar which serves over 300 Belgian beers. The menu was a massive folder with beers separated both by type and alphabetically. At a place like this, the beer really is treated like wine. The waiter approached and the conversation went something like this:

Him: “What kind of beer would you like; blond, brown, ale, trapist, white, dark…?”
Me: “Ummm, I think I’ll try a white.”
Him: “Do you prefer a strong or light beer?”
Me: “I’ll try a strong one please.”
Him: “Fruity or Acidic.”
Me: “Acidic.”
Him: “Then you must try the Blanche Du Hainaut , it is an organic beer made close to here, it ois very good.”

Blanche Du Hainaut Beer

And he can do this for every type of beer he has. He knows them all intimately and can help you choose any type of beer you may desire. Oh how I pine for such an establishment in Auckland. After this, Alex and I headed home to bed as we were both extremely tired.

The following day I began with a walk to an arch. Now this is no regular arch. For a city which everyone knows by a statue of a pissing child and something called the Atomium (I will get to this), this arch is vastly overlooked. Move over Arc de Triumphe, you have to check out the sheer scale of this arch which was built to commerate 50 years of indepence.

Arch Celebrating 50 Years Indepencence

My next plan was to try to check out some contemporary Belgian art, so I firstly headed towards a well known train station and graffiti spot, and this is what I found:

Art From Under a Rail Bridge

Graffiti Inside Train Station

The second picture is actaully the inside of the train station and is a truely amazing sight to behold. My next stop was a small art shop and gallery called A.L.I.C.E. which for some reason stands for Artists Living In Constant Elevation. Very strange. Anyway, this was a shop full of zines and interesting art books and, oh my god, Lomo cameras. If I wasn’t travelling for the next 5 months, I totally would have bought one. How excellent.

That night it rained pretty bad, so Alex and I just hung around in his apartment, listening to music, chatting, and drinking an array of interesting belgian beers, pictures of which you can find in my Flickr galleries.

My last day in Brussels was a Saturday and Alex did not have to work. While I was sleeping, he went to the bakery and bought som croisantes and panne au chocolae which was very nice of him. He then took me to see the Brussel’s famous Atomium, a massive glass and metal sculpture built for the 1958 World Fair. It is based on a Iron atom and the 9 balls represent the 9 parts of Belgium. I decided not to go up because it was pretty expensive, and anyway, there was just a good view at our next stop.

Atomium

After the Atomium, Alex and I headed towards a crazy church I had wanted to see (which I had seen in the distance the day before) but this turned out to be not as exciting as I thought it would. It was also a very commercial church, as you had to pay admission if you wanted to go to certain places in it. I’m not sure that is very right at all. Jesus would not approve. Finally we walked down to the Brussels Court. This was amazing, and too bad it was the weekend because I definately would have wanted to go inside. This building has the 3rd largest floor area of any structure in the world and was apparantly built to show the power of the justice system in Belgium. Absolutly epic building.

Brussels Court

And so that was that. My trip to Brussels had come to an end. Alex and I headed back to his apartment where I packed my things and then headed to the bus station. After thanking Alex and staying good bye, it was onward to Frankfurt!