UK
Monday, 7 July 2008
Well, we're finally in England! After cruising through France, Belgium and the Netherlands we finally arrived in Bristol nearly a week ago! Bristol and Bath were pretty sweet and I've got a great comic book to prove it, and it was great catching up with Jen and meeting Jon there. We're currently staying with Anthony and Jo in Tunbridge Wells, but tomorrow we're heading up to Oxford. Then we tour around north-west England for a bit before heading back to London then onto Melbourne! Wow, we're heading home in just over a week. Well, better get back to it.....
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Nice!
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Vive la France! Well, that was Ireland, Italy and Monaco, but its time for the French Riviera which, as the name implies, is nice! Unfortunately they have the worst keyboards in existance, so this might be short.
After a short stop over in Dublin (its a long story), we hit Rome. Got a bit of culture shock when we went to the restaurant down the street from our hotel - some old guy started playing an accordian, awkers kept coming upto us ioffering flowers, watches, wallets. I was half expecting some geezer to show up with "DVD player for your nice lady friend", but it didnt happen.
Florence was also great - we did a tuscan cooking course, made a 4 course meal. The 2 chefs started a big argument in italian, that i didnt understand, but since they kept pointing at my crepe, I think it went something like this (add your own bad italian accent):
"this is a perfect crepe! why cant you-a cook-a like-a this?"
"i donna know! the Australian, he cooksa witha the skill! from-a the heart! with-a the passion!"
"you fool! with his skill and our recipes, he could rule the world!"
well, I think thats what they were saying....
San Gimignano was fantastic, and Venice was great for a short stop over, before we had to hit France late last night.......
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Dubrovnik
Monday, 2 June 2008
Wow, we are back in Dubrovnik and loving it. The weather is tops, we're going swimming, and they're playing AC/DC. Croatia is great. The sailing trip is over, and we're both pretty happy with that - it was exhausting. Swimming every day and drinking every night. Hang on - that's what we're still doing! Well, its more relaxing now anyway. We've got an appartment here til tomorrow when we bus back up to Split, and onto Zadar. Here is a picture of my beautiful girlfriend:
And here is a view from our apartment window last night:
You can see a bit of a bridge in the right hand side of the picture - it is just like the Batman Bridge near Launceston! We had a great time on the boat, and the other guys were great. 
The food was great: they kept feeding us and feeding us. We also got alot of fresh fruit. Still, Harms couldn't get enough bananas. Our boat was called 'Maestral'.  We had sails, but we didn't get them up very often. There wasn't a whole lot of wind around anyway. I went to go windsurfing on Bol, but there was no wind, so me and a bunch of the others got towed behind a powerboat on some donuts. The best way to get in the water was to jump - it didn't feel so cold that way. 
Problem was that the deck and the rail got pretty slippery when wet, so you had to be careful. After a while I started diving in, off the bottom step and working higher. When I got to the top step, my dive turned into a giant belly smacker. It hurt alot and I could hear the cheers of sympathy before I reached the surface. I stopped diving after that. Luckily it was our last day.
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Bol
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Well, we're near the end of our cruise (2 days to go), and I'm stuffed. We arrived at an island called Bol just now, and should be going for a swim this afternoon, but I feel like some sleep now. We were at Hvar last night, and Harms and I had cocktails on a beach with Palm trees - and it was nice! The bar was pretty schmicko - the floor was a fish tank that had lots of fish and a shark in it, and the toilet had (individual) real towels to dry your hands with (after you'd washed them, obviously). Real towels! Now that's fancy.
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Dubrovnik
Monday, 26 May 2008
Hi Everyone, We are currently in Dubrovnik, on day 3 of a 7 day sailing cruise around the Adriatic. Its very hot and the sea is great to swim in! We just came accross an internet cafe (where I am now) with all the occupants locked inside, so with me on the outside and with them on the inside we managed to get the door open after about 10 minutes of jiggling around with the locks and yelling at each other through the door. Well, I had fun anyway. We get back to Split on Friday night, the only other place I know we are going is Hvar Island - I reckon that should be good too! The food is awesome and the people are not bad either. Well, time to head off - catch you later!
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Public Transport Ettiquette
Thursday, 22 May 2008
I hate it and heres why: everytime some old people get on the bus/tram/train, other people always give up their seats to the nice really old, infirm people before I can. This leaves me with just-more-than-middle-age types, who could probably use a seat more than me, but are equally likely to be offended that I think they are old enough to need a seat. Its a quandary, and if theres anything I hate more than a salmon milkshake, its a quandary. What to do? I dont know, and Im not likely to find out soon either. Oh yeah, were in Croatia at the moment and I cant find the apostrophe key.
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Vienna
Monday, 19 May 2008
Well, now we are in Vienna and its only a matter of time til I get one of those weiner schnitzels everyones been telling me about. In fact, I could probably go one right now. Pilsen was tops, I really liked it there, but I just couldn't get the hang of Czeck: the only word I remember is pivo. But in Austria, they speak German! Woo-hoo! Well after a big night out last night with a bunch of Canadians, I'm ready for some food and a nanna-nap. Then we can really check out Vienna, which should be fun. I think there is alot of stuff to do, not sure about the ballet and the opera though, I'll see what happens.
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Prague
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Prague is cool and cheap. Harms managed to wrangle an awesome deal on a really nice apartment, so we're here for a week. So I rewarded her by dragging her out to a nightclub on 80s night. It wasn't just 80s: some 70s, some 90s, and some recent stuff that belongs in the 80s, and what can I say: it was bad 80s! I know what you're thinking? bad 80s? Never! And that was what I was thinking too until I got there. OK, there was some decent music, but the rest was terrible! Didn't seem to stop the locals though, they loved it. So, when we finally ventured out onto the dance floor I found out that all the blokes, and most of the chicks, were taller than me! And I'm pretty tall! And another thing: they all take their drinks and cigarettes onto the dance floor. So if you're out dancing in Prague, remember 2 things:
- Don't wear flammable clothing.
- Squeeze your jeans out at the end of the night for an exciting cocktail of gin, vodka, an assortment of beers, and everybody's favourite: sweat.
Well, there beers here are cheap, and so is the food, if you know where to look (I think I do now).
We've also done some other stuff, but we've been taking the last couple of days pretty slowly. We went peddle/paddle boating on the Vltava River yesterday. It was good until we ran into some dude in a row boat. OK, so maybe I'm not the ships captain I think I am, but really you had to be there.
Harms is waiting for me drinking some coffee, and its time for tea. So I'd better run. Adios!
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Berlin
Monday, 5 May 2008
Well, we are now in Berlin and I've come to the following conclusions about travelling in general:
- everyone has poor spelling and punctuation when they are on holiday. I'm normally very pedantic about good english, but have realised that there are 3 semi-legitimate reasons:
- they are slack cos they are on holiday
- the keyboard layouts are always weird
- lots of computers have a massive lag between when you tpe the key and when it shows up on screen.
- everyone speaks more languages than I do. Even Harms, cos I have a limited
choice of words to choose from vocabulary.
- Foreign language webpages (booking trains/hotels) sometimes have an english language button which translates 2/3 of the site and I suspect doubles the listed prices (I've just spent the last 2 hours fruitlessly looking for a convenient way to book train tickets to get to Prague-Vienna-Split).
That's about it really. Except that is is very easy to enjoy yourself, and everything is an adventure!
So, when you think 'Berlin', what do you think of? For a place so rich in history and culture, where should the first stop be? For us the choice was easy: Legoland. I think it was mostly for kids, but I made a great racecar that did a massive jump and then smashed when it landed. Still, I reckon I beat harms. I gave her some advice on lego mechanics and best practise design, but I don't think she was listening to me. Here is my car:
and here is Harmony's!
mine is more of a bike really. it went really well until is smashed.
Harms found a chocolate bar over here called Wunderbar. Here is Harms with her Wunderbar:
She looks pretty happy, doesn't she? This was on one of the 5 trains we took to Berlin. After legoland, we went to Brandenburg gate. I liked it so much I took a photo:
And here are the Brandenburg Racers: a bunch of people who happened to be crossing the road on their bikes when I took another photo (I told you I liked it):
Ready....Set....Go!
Well, we're off to DB (German Railways), to look for a ticket to Prague in the next couple of days. Wish me luck!
Oh yeah! Since my blogging agent has not yet setup comments using this software, if you want to leave comments, you can just email me! OK. Time to go now. Bye now.
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Rhine
Friday, 2 May 2008
Well, in our continuing adventures, Harms and I have been up to alot over the last couple of weeks. We've been staying with Harmony's friends Susan and Klaus for a week or so, which has been great. They are really nice and told us all about Germany. And took us to castles, and bushwalks and bike rides and cooked us great food, everything! They live in a small town about an hour north of Frankfurt. We've also been hanging out with their niece Anna too, who is pretty wicked-cool and she is also from Oz.
I helped out some of their neighbors as well. 2 guys, Helmut and Attila, drove me up to a paddock with sheep in it and said we had to herd the sheep through the town. Being an aussie, I thought this should be second nature (even though I live in the big city. well, Hobart). I'm still not sure whose sheep they were.
"Do you have a dog", I asked.
"No, you are the dog!" Helmut laughed, and Attila joined in. I said "woof" quietly to myself and got out of the car.
The first sheep came out of the paddock, and I took a couple of steps back to give him some room. It started walking towards me. I think it wanted a barney! So I said "Ra!" and clapped my hands - that sent the little bastard running.
With my new found confidence in being able to scare sheep, we were off. I really didn't have to do much, but at 1 point I lost track of Attila and was alone in a small town in Germany with a flock of sheep. Which is when a German woman opened a window and stuck her head through and asked me some questions in German.
"Uh, I don't sprechen ze Deutsch lady!", was my panicked response. This was a small town where everyone knows everyone and no-one knew me. I didn't want to be mistaken for an Australian sheep rustler who was trying to take a flock of sheep back to Australia.
"Whose sheep are these?" came the question in perfect English. Crap! I had no idea! Verse of 'Waltzing Matilda' started floating though my head.
"I'm just helping Attila!" I yelled, and started chasing the sheep in the other direction. Which was good foresight by me, cos it all worked out in the end. Here is a picture I took:
Klaus also took me to his office: it is an energy efficient office using solar power. It was very cool. There was a German university group doing a tour and I tagged along. Most of the talking was in German, but there were a few questions in English (yes!) and he also gave me the low down before the university group arrived.
We also checked out a couple of castles and a dam that was destroyed by the dam busters (v famous - I've heard of it all but I haven't seen the movie). Here is a cannon in the castle:
Boom! And here is a picture of the dam:
Boom again! They've rebuilt it, by the way, in case you didn't notice. They actually rebuilt it the same year it got bombed (1943 I think), using mostly slave labour....
Well, to cut a long story short, we are currently in Cologne (Köln). We spent the day yesterday on a boat coming down the Rhine. It was super-spectacular. There were heaps of castles, I can't remember all the names. This one, though, is called 'Mouse Castle'. Don't know why, really:
And this one is in the middle of the River!
So now we are in Cologne. We went ot the Lindt Chocolate Meseum today which was pretty cool, and there is a massive gothic cathedral here too. You can see it from our window!
Well, its been lovly and everything, but I've hardly eaten anything today and there is a place around the corner that sells Bratwurst by the metre. Gotta go!
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Frühlingsfest!
Friday, 25 April 2008
Well, we didn`t make it to Oktoberfest, but Frülingsfest waspretty cool. Its spring festival and its a smaller version of Oktoberfest. Here is a picture: 
I woke up with a massive hangover, which is weird cos I only had 4 beers. I also had a giant pretzel and led a conga line around the hall for a while. Harms was also there: 
They had a band that was playing some Elvis, Beatles, 50s classics, and some German folk song that seemed to be about cowboys (everyone but us was doing all the actions - something about riding a horse, throwing a lassoo, I forget the rest....) The band was great: they all came out and did soething special.The guitarists jumped around and span and all sorts of crazy stuff, they keyboardist held his massive keyboard over his head and played while flames jetted out the top, the drummer knocked back a stein in 3 seconds.....I think they'd left the stage by the time I took a photo.
Anyway, we've moved on since then.....I tell you about it later....
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Loving Munich
Monday, 21 April 2008
Wow, Munich is great! It is lots of fun and very cool and easy to get around. Harms and I got in Saturday morning at around 5:30 am after no sleep the night before. The German immigration officer asked if I spoke German. "Nein", I replied. He didn't laugh. Then we caught a train into the city. I vaguely remember showing a German lady how to use the ticket machine, then a 1/2 hour trip to the centre of town. We wandered around the expensive side of town for a while in the rain looking for a hotel that wasn't too much, with no success. Then we looked for a place to have breakfast where we could sit down: the only place around was McDonalds so we did that, and it wasn't so good. We finally decided to move onto the next part of down, by train. We wandered around the empty train station for a while trying to find a ticket office (the machines didn't change 20 euro notes) I thought maybe we could just try and use the tickets we already had, and get to the next station. Then we ran into a couple of security officers.
I've had trouble with these types before, in Melbourne, and saw some pretty serious looking dudes in uniform running through the trains in Sydney late at night, but these guys were great. We talked with them for about 1/4 hour about where we'd been, where we were going etc. One showed us the cheapest/easiest tickets to get around Munich for the next 3 days while the other bought us hot chocolate. This was terrific, and they were so nice! So they showed us on our way, and told us there was a Tourist Information place at the next stop that should be opening soon.
Well, we found the Tourist Information place, and they have a free room finding service. We found a place for about 1/2 the cost of the other places we walked into, and took the tram there. Once we got there, we found out we couldn't get into our room til 4:00pm. That was about 6 hours away, and as I mentioned, we hadn't slept all night. What to do?
Deutches Museum! This was awesome! It had so much stuff in it, like the U1 - first German submarine from 1906, 2 boats (one sail [30m long!], one coal powered) dating to the 19th and early 20th centuries, a chemistry room that came straight out of a 1960s spy movie, some planes (prop, jet, solar, peddle-power), helicopters, gliders (full size - some replicas, most real I think....).
I also had lunch here - schweinnschnitzel. If you can't figure out that is, then German isn't the language for you. I was thinking of the bratwurst, but this one came with chips, and I wanted to share them with Harms. Also, I like the name: schweinnschnitzel. Would you like some schweinnschnitzel?
What else? I can't really remember, and after 3-4 hours I was starting to crash.
We got back at the hotel at about 5:30. I had a shower and decided to get an hour or 2 sleep before tea. I woke up 14 hours later.
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Gallipoli
Saturday, 19 April 2008
Well, we finally made it to Gallipoli and it was brilliant. Very very emotional and moving, the stories are amazing, and it is the highlight of our trip so far. We went to Anzac Cove, Lone Pine, and the Australian and Turkish memorial sites. I think every Australian should try and make it here. I won't put too much up here, but here is a picture of Harms at Anzac Cove:
The day before I went back over to Asia for the day and left Harms in Europe to chill out (she was tired from the overnight bus ride), where I checked out the Military Museum (in a castle). On the ferry over, I ran into a heap of school kids from Izmir who swamped me with questions about where I was from, what was my name, what did I do, how old was I, what was I doing etc etc. I didn't know what to do, so I asked the same questions back, and did an Angus Young impersonation for some reason.Then their teacher came over, pushing his way through the kids to get to me: I think he was going to pull them off me and be my saviour, but when he made it through, he shook my hand and asked me the same questions! and then he told me he was their music teacher, which left me pretty stranded cos I know stuff all about music. Anyway, I got the teacher to take my picture with the kids, cos they were pretty cool, even though I couldn't pronounce their names....
A similar thing happened at the New Zealand memorial site at Gallipoli.
So when I got to the military museum, I walked around, and it was pretty impressive. There was a ship display - a replica of the Nusrat - the Turkish/Ottoman minelayer that layed mines in the Dardanelles prior to the ANZAC landings.
When I got on board, one of the guys came up to me and asked "tickled?". This sounded like a strange thing to be asking someone, but it is a different culture, even though I've been here for a month and no one has asked me that before. I wasn't sure if he was asking me if I'd already been tickled, or if I wanted to be tickled - he seemed pretty nice, but I'd only just me the guy. So I said "no thank-you", and kept my back to the wall, to which his response was to yell something in Turkish to someone who was apparently downstairs. "This could get interesting" I thought, as I considered doing a runner, but the guard at the gate with the machine gun gave me second thoughts. "Play it cool, and you might get away with a feather under the armpits" said my brain. The second guy came up, approaching me slowly, making no sudden moves. He looked at me very seriously and said "have you got a ticket?".
"a-ha! Ticket, yes, of course I do. now where is it?", I said, mostly to myself and I couldn't hide the relief from my voice. There it is, in my hand - I just have to pass it too him. So I handed the guard a very sweaty ticket, he said thank you, tore it slightly and handed it back.
Thats me - keeping cool under pressure, I would like to see any of you do that. After this ordeal, I found out that the second guard was actually an archaeologist studying the early Hittites, which sounded pretty cool - I think they may have been around when the Greeks raided Troy.
Troy also was pretty cool. Less intense that Gallipoli, obviously, but interesting. Again, I won't put much else here, you can read it when I write my memoirs. Oh, OK. Here is a pıcture of me in the horse...
Lookout Greeks! I mean Trojans! Its very roomy in there, better than that overnight bus from Selcuk anyway. Probably doesn't go as fast though, and I doubt it is the original.
So now we are back in Istanbul. We leave tonight at 3:10AM for Munich. Harms just had a Hamami (Turkish bath) which sounds painful but satisfying, you can probably read it on her blog. She has a blog too, by the way. The URL is: http://harms-upupandaway.blogspot.com.
Anyway - time to go. Until next time....
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Now in Selcuk
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Well, now we are in Selcuk - haven't been able to update the blog for a while cos we've been moving pretty quick - Fethiye-Pamakkule-Selcuk. I went paragliding the other day, it was tops! saw the beaches of Uludiniz from 2400m. I took the camera but the damn thing wouldn't work up there! Before that we went sailing out of Fethiye....eagerly over breakfast I applied my sunscreen and slipped on me togs ready for a great day out on the water.....then it rained. I squeezed 1 swim in......luckily about 4-5 other people followed me in otherwise I would've looked like a goose - a cold wet goose, but it was fun anyway. That's the summary, here are the details...
Here is a picture of Harmony and her friend Tom:
He's from Athens, Georgia (USA) and he is bloody funny.....We were hangin out with him and his mate Mark for a couple of Days in Olympos.
Something fell off the back of our boat in Fethiye....
Didn't seem to wake this old guy though.... Oh, there we go: looks like it was me...
So then we trucked up the mountain in this jeep:
and came down in one of these....
That's not me and I didn't take any photos in the air cos the damn camera stopped working for half an hour....But it was super-tops-wicked-cool if you ask me.
Next day: Pamakkule. That rhymes actually, if you get the pronounciation right, which I did. Here is a picture of that:
That's the weird white pools, not the goofball standing in them, you idiot!
Now we are in Selcuk - say it with me: Sell Chook, that's right! I don't have any pictures of Selcuk, but here is one of a Lion Statue at Mileos (I think that's how it is spelt), in Ionia:
Look, you can ride him! (doesn't go very fast though).
Here is another picture of me at Piere, some ruins of a amphitheatre.I'm sitting in the king seat! And I'm giving the thumbs up! That's ancient Turkish for "g'day - make mine a Fosters":
which you can get over here...
Anyway, that's some of the stuff I've been up to over the last couple of days. I will be in touch...Have fun!
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Still in Olympos....
Saturday, 5 April 2008
...but I've got a cold! Crap! So I've just flaked out for the last couple of days. Weathers alternating between rain and sun, but its not too cold (Goreme was bloody freezing - so cold it hurt). Still, I've gone for a couple of swims, but the water isn't warm yet! Still, good to get out for a swim, 'cept the beach doesn't have sand, just rocks (ouch!)
Last night we trucked up to this spot that has natural gas (methane I think...) coming out of the ground, and its so hot its on fire! There were about 30 fires around this area, and they've been burning for 1000s of years...wooo
So that was fun, heading up there. There was me and Harms, and another aussie couple and another aussie fella and a bunch of yankee hippies who had a meditation ceremony....
Here's a picture of me crashing out!
'Wow, that looks like fun', that's what you're thinking, right? 'This guy knows how to have a good time'. Well.....I do, and these little things are great to sleep in, I'd build one at home, 'cept they'd be blody freezing in Tas, so I won't. Also, I don't know how to build things.
We're thinking of going on a boat cruise, but I've checked the weather and its meant to be cold and wet, and the waters not warm either: we will probably wait til we get to greece or croatia when its warmer...
They've got alot of western music here, which is good for a change, but I think its only a couple of CDs.......and we're here for a week! INXS, REM, Crowded House, I'm sensing a 90s theme...
Tomorrow I reckon I'll climb one of the mountains around here. We went up a little hill yesterday. That made Harms pretty happy. There were ruins up there and a tree! Tree wasn't that great really...
Food here's tops! There's fish tonight, so that'll be really good. I like fish.
I'd better go, Michael Hutchence is calling. Take it easy everyone.....
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