Pussycat Pussycat Where Are You?

Blogger, you have served me well...

2011-02-22T00:52:00.000-08:00

I liked the functionality of Blogger, and to be honest I still do. I can mess with things more than with wordpress it seems... although I haven't really given wordpress much of a chance yet. I don't know how to put this thing on my new domain though, so for now I am experimenting with Wordpress a co-holder of my blog.

I exported everything over, but I am not getting rid of this quite yet.

I think this site has served me well, and it shows up on the top five listings for searches for my name every time. Sooooooooooo for now my blog is doubled, which means no need for people to go relying on the wordpress site yet at all.

you can however,check out what I am in the process of making!!

http://www.leannefairweather.ca

exciting eh?

I want this to be good for my massage practice, but also serve as a mini portfolio and link space for things I think are cool. A gallery of my favourites in case you don't want to sift through 7000 flickr photos. A showcase of my hula hoops to help people get ideas for taping or showing tricks. A space for creative stuff, hopefully with pattern links etc. A link page for friends, networking, and activism, and perhaps a blog portion linked out or something. Who knows.

If you have any feedback, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT! Be as brutal as you like.

hooooooopnesss

2011-02-14T14:57:00.001-08:00

2011-02-06T11:11:00.001-08:00

View my profile
Create your own travel map or travel blog
Great vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

Hula Hoop Sale!

2011-01-10T10:28:00.000-08:00

Okay so the time has come to sell some of my hoops.

These are all for sale for 25 euro each, except I can part with the double small ones for 40. I have booked sports equipment for my flight home, so whatever I don't sell I will take with me to Canada so then they will be gone forever. If you are more interested in bartering, I am open to that as well :D

This means it's not better to wait and see if I will just give them to you, best to claim them asap or they are getting packed on a plane!

I have one more set of doubles that are not at my house right now, so once I am able to take pictures of them I will add them to the post!

you can call me @ 015778764953 or comment here if you would like to inquire about weight or diameter etc. Happy hooping!

xoxo
Leanne

Lots to Update...

2010-12-26T08:04:00.000-08:00

In case you are wondering, the current plan is to become a shut-in when I return to Canada to write up all this stuff that's happened to me. I'd also love to fix up the past entries as well, so it makes a lovely readable story for everyone to leaf through easily!

I have been taking pictures to help remember.

I have a crap keyboard here right now, so typing a long time can be quite tedious. It will be much better when I get a nice biiiig screen and such to look at ergonomically (hopefully) with either my German keyboard or a new Canadian one.

I realize this site needs major work, and I will also be attempting to make a site for my work. Ideally I would like something that combines my blog, a photo-collection or something of stuff I've created (plus links to craft/art type stuff), my massage work, a link page to things I've modeled in if I can't post the photos myself, and things I've taken photos of too. Something to organize all the stuff I can do so that if someone wants to do an art installation/ needs a massage/ wants to buy something etc, they know exactly how I could help.

I'd might try and take a course in web design while I am back in school in Canada, so I have more options for things I can do while on the road :) I am already married to my computer, so I might as well learn how to use it properly.

SOOOOOOOOOO if nothing much happens here in the next month, don't worry there will be things happening when I get home (Feb 3rd! WTF WTF WTF)

I have to do two million things next month involving my business (ie taxes, de-registering my business license and residence, closing a bank account entirely in German, dealing with insurance, canceling other insurance, selling things I cannot pack, etc etc etc.)

I will be very busy. And sleepy.

On the plus side, I found 50mg of 5HTP here in the uk so I will at least be happy and sleeping well. I couldn't find anything under 200mg in Germany and they were pricey too!

My birthday is also in a week or so.

Electronic gift cards for online shopping are very welcome :D

Okay I am off for now!!

Love you all

xoxo
Leanne

Flickr stuffs

2010-12-15T11:51:00.000-08:00

mmmmm ok so I was supposed to renew my Flickr subscription, but I haven't really gotten around to it. Without pictures, I have not been feeling like blogging. This has caused another non-blogging spell. I also have been to tired to edit photos.

If anyone wants to give me the gift of Flickr (god knows they ask me about doing that for other people all the time) then my username is Lyrafox. Feel free to be generous. I will be away from Canada for Christmas for the first time ever, so this is a nice way to give a virtual gift to a friend far away.

:D

xoxo
Leanne

Return to Greece!

2010-11-11T06:03:00.000-08:00

The flight was extremely early, so I was asleep for the plane and most of the taxi there. Upon leaving the plane I was feeling much better though! The weather was still nice and sunny, and it wasn't much colder at all! Things had improved weather wise!!

Jon was tired, but I wanted to take the metro into town not a taxi. The metro was more than the bus, so it was a compromise in a way. The metro into the city took about 40 minutes, then it was time to get Jon's photos off his camera. I was eager to meet my host and the absolute last place I wanted to be was another hotel, but I stayed in the lobby putting photos on my sc card while Jon freshened up in his room.

My hosts were going to be working at a bar in the center of the city, so I was going to leave my backpack in the bar and go walk around the city. The bar was really easy to find; I left the hotel lobby with Jon and passed this:

One of my hosts was working at the bar, and turns out Dimitris, my previous host, was also working there! We sat down for a coffee, and I put my pack down. Jon was able to get a hold of Josh, and he was on his way when Alexia showed up as well! It was great to be back around lots of people! Alexia had to take off though, but they left just as Josh showed up so we sat outside in the sun and caught up with Josh's adventures in Athens!

Josh had brought along this British guy from the Hostel he was staying at, and we all sat outside. The combination of these three yielded tequila though, and then they started buying tequila for my host Chris and Dimitris! They seemed happy, but then we needed food. I was not partaking in the tequila, I was drinking water. Josh was also hungry, so we all went on a food hunt... Here is the main shopping street in Athens:

There are little old churches dotting the squares where they built new stuff around them!

Looking down side streets you could see the Acropolis. This was like a whole new city in the sunshine compared to the fog and rain!

We continued walking:

We reached Monasteriki - where we were heading for! There is a "flea market" which is not a flea market at all... it's stores and restaurants but whatever.

We found one but it was a little expensive for Josh and I, so we went and got street food while Jon and the British guy stayed there and ordered. We wolfed our food down and came up for the cheap beer.

Josh took pictures of us on this balcony, so I am waiting on pictures from him I guess. He had a nice camera!

After food and hanging out listening to the nice traditional music they were playing on the rooftop restaurant, we went walking again. Josh took us towards where people were selling homemade stuff on the side of the street

I was still distracted by the Acropolis:

This church was along the way as well:

The view was really nice along this walk

I was back in my element, looking at dilapidated houses and nice scenery!

There was a rooftop bar at Josh's hostel, where you could see a huge part of Athens and a nice view of the Acropolis. There was happy hour there too with beer for 1 euro, so that was an extra plus. We walked there to check it out and I saw this weird shopping cart. I have no idea why, but it was chained to the fence. Someone wanted this thing to stay there. I don't know what to say...

The view from the Hostel was actually really nice! The weather was great too, so it was extra nice to be outside :)

The lighting was getting good for photos:

This one is kinda blurry sorry

I liked how these looked:

As it got darker, the lights began to turn on! It looked so nice!

I ended up talking to a bunch of people at the bar there, and met some nice travelers. I was supposed to meet my host at their bar at 9pm, so I had to leave to make it there in time. I ended up taking a posse with me though, since Jon and Josh came with plus some other people from the hostel! I arrived and Chris was there and off work. We stuck around for one small beer and then took off towards the Metro! It was Jon and Josh's last night out so they were going to stay there and drink it up, so I said my goodbyes and went back to my host's house.

Some people were still up! The house was quite pleasant and warm, so I sat on the couch and had one last beer talking to my new hosts (there were three girls and one of the bf's was over) for a while. They were really nice! They fed me I believe before everyone got tired and hit the hay.

Cyprus, Greek Side, Take Four:

2010-11-10T04:28:00.000-08:00

So this was the last day for fun in the sun, so FOX came out for his photoshoot around the pool! After eating, I convinced Jon to go see some of the city after baking in the sun a bit. It was the last day, and I hadn't really been out of the hotel really. I don't usually travel like that at all, so I felt compelled to do some exploring and see what it's really like there!!

After I enjoyed the pool again though, of course :)

FOX stole some of Jon's drink:

I tried to get a shot of me and FOX, but it was tough. We lay there and enjoyed the sun!

FOX went to the beach as well!!

After some relaxing we went into the city. There was a running race happening, so some of the roads were closed. It was also Sunday, so most shops were shut as well! Some parts of the town looked like a ghost town:

Some parts had signs of life:

Other parts had a lot of character, which I liked. I was happy to be wandering again!

They had a very nice old mosque, and the lighting was good so everything was lit up in a pretty yellow way for my pictures :)

I found some stupid cheesy postcards there, which I was tempted to buy but they were covered in dust and I didn't want to take them out of their plastic. They were gloriously cheesy though:

There were cats all over the city too!! There were just hanging out. Most looked well fed, many were friendly. I think they were treated quite well here, which is always a good sign to me. How a city treats it's animals says a lot I think. Plus it's so warm all year round it makes needing a shelter unnecessary for these kitties, so they are happy and frolicking around on the rocks. Try to see how many you can spot chilling out here:

There was a pier on the water where people were fishing. The sun was starting to go down, so I stayed to take some photos!

It was still going to be a little light for a while, so we continued walking around. There was a wedding at some church so there were cars driving around honking horns and being crazy. It was extra confusing since it was also on the left side of the road. I was still getting used to that!

The city was small but pleasant enough. I could never live there but it was nice to visit:

Here is the church from the side:

The next morning we were going to have to take a plane back to Athens so we had to try and fall asleep early. I had a hard time for some reason, and fell asleep at 2am after packing all my stuff, but I could sleep on the plane so it was okay!!

Cyprus, Greek Side, Take Three:

2010-11-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

I woke up pretty rough from the wine, but it was moving day. Jon wanted to check out another part of the island, so we were going to a different, bigger town called Limmasol. This was still on the Greek side, just west of the airport town instead of east. Jon was also not feeling so hot during breakfast, so he talked me into taking a cab there instead of buses. 30 degree weather on a bus hung over was not sounding so appealing, so it was easy to convince me.

We arrived at another hotel, but this one was way nicer! The decor, and the atmosphere, everything was even more pleasant than the last place. For starters, there was wifi for free, plus they didn't charge a deposit for towels, and they were a lot friendlier. The room was just being cleaned, so we went for a walk to explore the place:

This place was also on the ocean:

There was a beautiful outdoor restaurant with coyfish and it's own pond thing!

The fish were so big!

There were several pools to swim in, but we found the no-children pool so we hung out there a while. This is the children allowed pool:

There were a million umbrella things lined up a little too well along the ocean:

There were a lot of plants in the hotel too, so it felt really tropical. It was tough to get a proper shot though since I was shooting into the sun and there was too much contrast:

Walking around the pool I saw there were little windows so you could see underwater! I thought it was an interesting idea:

Back at the adults-only pool. This was the nicest one I think:

Here at the no-child pool there was a hammock, and a bar. We talked to some old British Navy guy with awful teeth that was hanging out at the bar until we thought the room might be ready!

We went back and it was. Someone brought up our bags, and he was entertained by all the patches on my backpack. I guess they don't get many backpackers at the four seasons in Cyprus haha. I had to take a picture of the bathroom here since it was so nice!

I was surprised how much more pleasant this place was compared to the last one! The last hotel felt fancy already, but this blew it out of the water. It was more relaxing for sure :) I changed into my bathing suit and Jon and I hunted out a good place to fry. Here is Jon as we walked towards the beach:

It was a nice beach, but I wasn't feeling it there. I think it had to do with the children:

Jon tested the water out with his obligatory tequila

It was apparently quite warm, so after taking this photo I went in up to my thighs to test it out:

and here I am:

I was taking a break from alcohol now that I was really relaxed and no longer feeling hung over. I don't like to feel overly dehydrated when I am sunbathing, so I was happy to be sober. I picked out a spot by the main pool and found some chairs. I mostly read and listened to a German lesson while Jon went to the bar so he could drink and smoke. I was cooking away:

Eventually he came back and wanted to go to the no-children pool. I had barely noticed the kids since they were busy playing in the pool while I was with the parents that wanted them to leave them alone. I didn't really care where I was though so I went to the other pool to continue my fry/pool/fry.

This pool was a lot less busy, so it was easy to find some chairs. They gave us little samples of stuff, and some free water which was nice! This is what a lot of the people looked like:

Here's where I sat my ass:

Eventually there was not enough sun to sit in, and I was starting to get really hungry. It was still kinda early for dinner, but it was normal for Canadian time I guess (like 5 something... that's very early for me now) so we went to get food. We splurged on desert though, look at this thing!!!

There was a friendly kitty that came up for love after desert! There were tons of kitties at this hotel, so I was happy petting loads of animals :)

After all this, I checked the internet for the first time in ages. It took a little while to get the wifi going, but it eventually it worked! It was nice to have the web again, mostly so I could find a host in Athens for when I got back.

The next day started with breakfast, where there was maple syrup!! I was so happy!
It's so hard to find in Europe and when you do it's outrageously expensive. Here it was at a buffet so I slathered some waffles Canadian style. It was awesome.

The no-children pool seemed to be Jon's favourite, so I cooked myself there for a while. I was doing the swim/cook/swim/cook routine again, and this time people came around and handed us free water and different little samples of drinks etc. It was great!

I was enjoying the bubbles in the pool, although I seemed to be the only one that was swimming in. The pool wasn't heated, so it was quite a bit cooler than outside. I thought that was nice, I don't know why more people weren't going in!!

I tried to do the same stuff I was doing in the Hungarian baths with the Aussie, which was a lot of fun. Trying to balance on your stomach under bubbles is challenging but entertaining:

Jon's underwater camera was put to more use here, since Jon didn't really swim much and was more inclined to stand in the pool to cool off than splash around:

I tried to sit on the bottom:

Doing cartwheels underwater (or at least looking like I was):

More bubbles!

I don't look like I was enjoying the waterfall, but I was making the face since some was in my nose that's all!

After the pool it was time for the beach since the umbrellas were blocking the sun too much! Here there was more of a wind so I almost fell asleep since it was cooler. There was the cutest kitty there!! It was so small!!

I had to pick it up! It actually let me, so I walked around a bit with it listening to the purrrrrrrrrrrrr

At seven thirty we had dinner at a Greek place in the hotel. It was my first time at a fancy restaurant as an adult, and it was interesting. The food was all different, and I felt a little weird but it was alright. To be totally honest, I can now say I would be a million times more happy going to some shitty place in Berlin for 1/10 of the price and not have to feel so self conscious. It was pretty food, constant service, and overall pleasant, but it was not so..... open? I can't find the right word. I have to admit that I like my communal, 2 euro, vegan brunches in cozy squatted apartment buildings more. I am actually relieved that I felt this way too! Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed myself.

After dinner was more internet and coffee!

This was great! I was able to sit outside and enjoy live music while I checked emails and drank my cappuccino. I had some energy afterward, so I went to have another session with my LED hoop! Again I have SOOOOOOO many pictures from this so it's best to just browse yourself... I'll put a few up here only!!!

I made a little video, but I have to put music with it, so I have to do some editing before posting it!! I will though!!

Cyprus, Greek Side, Take Two:

2010-11-04T22:31:00.000-07:00

Well I woke up and had some breakfast, but it was tricky after the wine. I wasn't feeling too bad though - I was still able to function! I thought it would be a good day for FOX to have a bath! I woke up and all my clothes had fallen off the balcony railing from wind. Luckily they blew inwards onto the balcony. I was pretty sure everything was there. Now that the clothes were cleanish, it was time to get FOX clean:

He looked so different all wet!

I took fox outside to dry him off in the 30 degree heat :) While I was waiting for Jon to get ready I had made some sunglasses and shorts for him so he fit in poolside. He was stylin!

I spent a fair bit of my day like this:

Sorry this is blurry, I don't know why. This is what I was looking at! There were multiple pools with the ocean at the end, plus some waterfall type things and a swim up bar. I would swim when I overheated then lay down and read some more:

After the reading and swimming, we got curious about what the other beach looked like. We hopped over and checked it out. The colour of the water was unbelievable!

There was the beach, then shallow water leading up to a little island thing. If the tide was down, there would be a path in the sand to walk to the island. Otherwise, it will be shallow water, like you can stand everywhere. The water was so warm, it felt like I was in the tropics. Jon said that it reminded him of the Caribbean.

You can see where the water is shallow all the way to the beach. I am standing on the island thing here!

Jon had an underwater camera, so all the pictures of this particular beach are from his camera, since he could swim with it. I was splashing around like a kid, and he got some photos of me underwater which I thought were pretty cool :

It was fantastic to be swimming around in October! Eventually it was time to lay down again, so we returned to find FOX in deep contemplation about his bath. I guess he had made friends with the dirt so it was a bit odd for him to be clean.

I returned to my bake/swim/bake/swim routine while Jon went back to his drink/smoke/drink/smoke routine. There was a swim up bar, so when I swam I joined him at the bar for a bit but didn't drink anything. I wanted only water so I wouldn't get dehydrated or swell:

Here is FOX and me, happy in our lounge chair relaxing!

That evening we had dinner outdoors (it was warm enough to eat outside). Jon was happy since there were still smoking sections in the outdoor restaurant. After the food, being in the sun caught up with me and I think I went to bed. The days kind of melded together here, so I am not sure if I went swimming again or not...

The next day we decided to go see the "town" after breakfast. There was a bus, but it wasn't that far away so I convinced Jon to walk there instead. The cars drive on the left side so that was messing with me crossing the street! I checked a bunch of tourist stores on the way (there was no shortage of them)for my backpack patch, but none had them. It didn't really seem like a backpacker type of area... only hotels from what I could see - not even hostels!

The town was more like a street with some restaurants. Most of them were overpriced. We walked down until we hit a Mexican restaurant and Jon wanted to see if they had good tequila. They had something he knew which was better than what he had been finding, so he had some. I went outside and pretended to ride the bull statue (recalling when I did this in Istanbul)

The inside of this restaurant looked so silly, it was ridiculous. We walked back and I chose the least expensive place (pasta for 5 euro) so we had a beer and lunch. It was actually a lot of pasta for the price! After that we went walking back, but decided to go along the beach instead of the boring restaurant street. It was much nicer. I even saw an epic sand castle!

It had been kinda cloudy all day (although still insanely warm) so it was making the water look cool:

By the time I got back it was starting to get a bit darker. It wasn't quite time for dinner since we had just eaten, so we went hunting for ping pong. It was occupied. I was sad, so we went and got a beer from the store to help prepare for ping pong (it's more fun when beer is involved). The staff were nice enough to let us drink the beer near the bar outside, where we watched a wedding procession take photos. I thought about Jessica and her wedding in Cuba. When we went back to play, it was closed! After wandering the hotel, we went to a piano lounge for a couple glasses of wine. That turned into a few glasses, then I was hungry. We made it just in time for the dinner there though! I was pretty tipsy after combining the beer and wine, so somehow I ended up swimming around at 1am in the ocean. I found some kid's buckets for sandcastles and attempted to start making sand castles. Turns out I'm still pretty good! I fell asleep watching Law and Order (which I am downloading more of right now).

Cyprus, Greek Side, Take One:

2010-10-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

I woke up in time to get a few shots of the apartment I was staying in. Alexia's is so nice!

The view was also very pretty! Seemed a bit of a shame to be leaving now that the weather was improving here...

... but I did. I arrived at Jon and Josh's hotel right on time since there was no more bus strike :p They told me that they were actually unable to book flights for today since Jon's credit card was having problems. They were looking at just going to the airport and trying standby. The tickets had raised in price and Josh was freaking about that. He was saying that actually he would try to change the date of his flight to Amsterdam and just stay in a hostel there until he had to go home to Vancouver. I didn't want him to stay behind!

We all had to go to the airport regardless though, so off we went. Jon bought last minute tickets for the both of us (he convinced me by saying I only should have to pay him what the price was from last night) and Josh tried to talk to people about changing his flight. I tried to convince him that he should come too, but he said it was just too expensive. He had to wait till 2pm to talk to someone about changing the flight time, and Jon and my flight was at one so we had to run!

I have never been so late for a flight. We got on the place around 12:45 or something, it was soooo close. Next thing I knew I was in Cyprus! I didn't even know it was it's own country until they stamped me out in Greece.

Jon travels a LOT differently than I. I wanted to look for bus schedules, he wanted to look for taxi's. He said we can stay in a hotel the first night his treat, then we can go online and look for something more affordable (my idea). So we hopped in the taxi and ended up in Agia Napa at some place called Adam's Beach Hotel. I hadn't been in a hotel since last year with my parents. It was nice, but they wanted to charge for laundry so I started putting shampoo in the bathtub and washing my clothes...

This is the view from the room!

So I put the laundry up on the balcony to dry since it was so warm. It was 30 degrees at least! I was so happy with the weather :D

The hotel had a bunch of pools, but also it's own beach cove thing. It was quite pretty, and it was still warm enough to go check out the water:

For some reason my toe started itching like nuts. It wasn't bleeding or anything, so I don't know why. Maybe it was the pina colada... I made a face:

Jon posed too

I was able to go into the water at night it was so hot! I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that it was mid-late October and I was swimming in the ocean! The water was clean looking too, which was a plus.

Jon tried to get one of me with the full moon in the background, although it is blurry. You get the idea though...

After that I went to take the LED hula out for a spin. TONS of photos were taken, so it's impossible to post them all on here.... I'll just post four and if you like these types then you should click on one and it will take you to the album where you can look at all the photos. I should be organizing them into a hula hoop/night shot album as well to see the past ones too :)

I was pretty stoked about using the hoop, but I got hungry so we went to eat something. I was pretty pleased with my day of warmth and swimming and hooping, and I think you can tell:

After this we had some wine, but after wine and traveling I got sleepy and fell asleep on the corner of the bed. I was way to the side so I didn't give my buddy the wrong impression. That is of course after I rolled around on the stuffed animals (he won those while bored with Josh on their cruise) hahahahaha:

Then it was Law and Order then sleeeeep.

One Rainy Day in Athens.

2010-10-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

I woke up to sunshine, which was very welcome! It was supposed to rain all day, even thunderstorm, but it was nice so far :)

I got ready slowly, while talking to Josh. He and Jon were already in Athens, so that was cool. They were going to take off and see some sights, then take a ferry to Mykonos the next morning. I was to text them whenever I went into the city.

I had no phone to do that, so I'd have to get a phone number first. I went out the door and made my way to the bus stop. I still had that one Euro to take the bus in. When I got to the bus stop however, I was told by a nice woman that the buses were on strike today until 5pm, so there was no bus!

I was pretty far away from the metro. Even for my standards. I didn't feel like sitting around the house until 5pm though, so I had little else to do but start following the bus stops mapless into the city.

It had started to rain. Turns out living on a hill in Athens when it's raining means that the streets are insanely flooded and there is no way to cross the street except to jump across in water up to your ankles (I am not exaggerating!). I was soaked in no time. I had left my umbrella in the cab the night before, so I was borrowing Alexia's!

I walked and walked and walked. I stopped into a phone store, but they wanted my passport to get a SIM card, so I couldn't get a phone. That worried me, since I had no way of getting a hold of Jon and Josh now. They had a Canadian phone so I couldn't harass people to let me send a text or call local.

I continued to walk. The phone people thought I was nuts to try and walk to the metro. It was another 5k there or something. I did it though, and made it into the city center!

I walked around trying to remember the name of the hotel they were staying at. I took a photo of this church while I was acquiring a map and such:

I wasn't going to remember so I figured best to just explore and go to some sights myself! The most obvious one is the Acropolis. I wandered some streets in the old town making my way towards the mountain. I walked near some charming white houses on the way up:

The view from the top was spectacular, but it looks rather dreary in the picture. The rain was making it dark and misty. There was a Chinese tour group there, but not many other people. It was kind of cool to run around in the rain:

The clouds actually made for a cool intense look for the Pantheon I thought!

here is another angle:

I tried a couple shots doing the "hold the camera out" thing... I think it worked!

Now here I was walking back down, and you see the pink umbrella? I went over to her and started talking to her:

I asked her if I could borrow her phone if I gave her 50 cent for an international text. Turns out she had no phone to use, so that sucked. We did keep chatting though, and since she was also traveling alone, we decided to walk around together.

Turns out the girl was from Argentina! She was working in Rome, so she learned Italian and worked in an ice cream shop :)

We walked to a rocky thing and it had some nice views as well:

Too bad the weather disrupted the picture:

I tried to edit the photo to make it clearer:

Next we walked to the ancient Agora. There was a museum there with these lion heads on the roof. They were spouting out water off the roof - even thousands of years old this still worked! It was so amazing to see; I was even a little happy it was raining!

It was hard to get a shot of it though:

Sofie, the Argentinian girl, was super impressed with all the old statues. I was as well of course! She would look at all the names though, and exclaim how old they were and took more photos than me:

We continued to wander. Being around her was forcing me to appreciate where I was more, which was good. Normally the weather would be coercing me to gun through the place taking photos and walking super fast. I slowed down, enjoyed, and absorbed:

There was a mini pantheon thing here!

Here I am! I could get a photo in!

So after the Agora it was time to check the internet to see if there was any news from my friends from Vancouver. There was a free internet spot in a store in the center of town, so we walked there to check it out. We found these computers in a little nook! We finally got it to work, and it turns out that my friends were at the hard rock cafe very close to our computer nook. I ran out but they weren't there! I checked their hotel next since I had looked up where it was, but they were not there either...

I had no idea what to do next. I went back to the computer nook but the girl was gone and the computers were in use. I stood around and tried to use my phone again. Somehow the Hungarian number sent a message (it hadn't the last 4 times I tried to use it) and I got a response saying they were in the lobby! I went to meet them and we went for food and beer.

I hadn't eaten all day, so one beer got to me while I ate my sandwich. They were going to Mykonos by ferry at 730am, so I had to get back to see if I could even get there in time... The timing would be perfect for Theresa and Lucien's arrival, but would I make it?

I went back to the house and got online. Law and Order was on TV, so I watched that and Sex and the City with Alexia and Dimitris while I talked to Jon online figuring out what to do.

The dog was being so cute with it's favourite pillow:

So the weather was looking iffy for our potential locations. There was, however, a flight to a different island named Cyprus for almost the same price as a ferry! It was only ten euros different, but the weather was ten degrees warmer. It also left at 1pm, so nobody had to wake up early. I was told to meet them at the hotel at 10am to go to the airport. I went to bed with a new island to go to tomorrow.

Nikola Tesla, Belgrade Nightlife, and 30 hours of Traveling...

2010-10-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

After sleeping in, I typed away and decided to try to get into the Nikola Tesla museum again. Hopefully there would be no crowds of children. It wasn't the best weather, so I took my umbrella and went down to the city center with Indre.

As I was walking, I noticed a large group of children walking towards the museum again.... I walked faster in hopes that I would make it in time and they were really going somewhere else. I arrived in the museum right as they were supposed to give a tour, but once again the damn children were first. Luckily it wasn't the last tour this time, so I was able to come back in an hour or two and take one later. I decided that this was okay since I had brought my laptop to putter in a cafe.

I found one with wifi right down the street. It had nice atmosphere, and the waiters were very dressed up in suits. They poured my afternoon beer very daintily and I enjoyed some Greek salad, bread, and beer while I updated this very blog for almost two hours or something. These things take time!

I went for the 4 o clock tour, and I was surprised how fast it went! The guy just walked around to a couple demonstrations and turned on switches so we could see what his different inventions did. The models were actually cool, and you could see lightning! I learned more about his life than I had already known, so I was happy despite the smallness of the museum and the quickness of the tour. They claim to have his cremated ashes after his body was exhumed, and I looked at his apparent ashes and urn. I have no idea if it was real though.

The museum didn't take up as much time as expected, so I made it to the train station a little earlier than expected! I was happy to find an international travel desk open, but there was a line. I ended up waiting in line for over 20 minutes I think. I wanted to know about train prices, and once I found out I couldn't even buy it because I didn't have my passport on me!

At least I knew though. I came back after stopping by the mall to look for Indre. The mall was massive! Hogar was home and we chilled and got ready for the party. I changed my mind and thought about going to Nis in the day tomorrow, then taking a train late at night? I wasn't sure. I went to get some food and beer and then people started showing up! Soon enough the house was full of people and music and good times. I attempted at Foosball, which ended up being tons of fun! The party continued but then it was time to check out some other Belgrade nightlife. At some point apparently I took a photo of his wall:

The first place we went to wanted cover charge even so late, so we went to another one that was full and smokey and lively. It was a good taste of Belgrade, and a fitting way to spend my last night. By the time Filip Indre and I were leaving, the buses were running again so we made it back okay. Hogar had been cleaning and my bed was already back down in the living room which was awesome! I was able to drink as much water as possible and go to sleep.

We all woke up very late though. I had a headache but no stomach issues, so I assumed it was from the smoke in the bar more than the alcohol since I had lots of water before bed. I ate some food, and decided to not go to Nis on the way, but just rest and watch Law and Order then take the night train after all.

Indre was going to go to a movie festival with international movies, and I wasn't sure if she would be back in time, so I packed my stuff quickly and hopped out the door with her. It was still raining, so we hid under an umbrella and ate before watching a quiet movie about migrant workers in China. I wanted to stay for more, but it was time to go to the train station!

I managed to buy a ticket in time, then went to a store to get food for the ride. I found the train no problem, but when I got on I decided I wouldn't eat on it really. It was very old, and a little smelly, and dirty. I found what I thought was an empty spot and laid down my scarf to lie on and tried to sleep. There was one other person in my compartment after all, some old guy that I guessed didn't speak English and he just sat there then lay down on the opposite chairs and went to sleep as well. Further on an old lady with a headscarf and everything came and slept while he sat there and eventually left.

Before I knew it, it was morning. It went by surprisingly fast. The Serbian border people came and the old lady left. They didn't even stamp me on exit! They just looked at my passport, bored, and gave it back. Next was the Macedonian border which thankfully stamped me in so it didn't look like I stayed in Serbia too long. I woke up a couple hours later and I was amazed at what I saw!

It was so beautiful! It totally made the oldness and slight smell okay. Now that it was daylight, the train actually didn't look aaaas shabby:

The train stopped at a random station and everyone was told to get off. I wasn't sure what was going on until someone explained that there was flooding on the tracks near the border, so we had to go by bus the rest of the way to Thessaloniki.

While everyone was getting off, I noticed a guy lugging around a serious backpack. He looked to be a fellow dirty traveler, so I walked up to him and started talking. He was Aussie, and was going to Thessaloniki from Skopje where he had worked for a few months. He was going to start school in Munich! We sat together on the bus and enjoyed the lovely border crossing delays, and a flooded squat toilet thing at said border. Finally, we arrived in Thessaloniki.

I was 15 minutes late for the train I wanted. It would have taken 4 hours, but the next one was in an hour and a half and would take 6! I would arrive in Athens at 10:46pm. I was not impressed. The Aussie was catching a flight to Munich, so he had to go to the airport. I waited around and took a MUCH NICER TRAIN. I was feeling like I was back in Europe.

I arrived in the night, but it was easy to find the metro. I had instructions written on how to get to Alexia's house, so I found the subsequent bus stop easily too. It was raining, so I stood there figuring out the bus schedule with my umbrella and pack. One out of three buses were still running, and the very last one for that was coming in 20 minutes.

I was almost there! After over 24 hours straight of traveling!

The bus was starting to annoy me after it was over 10 minutes late. I had been standing there over half an hour, and it was past midnight on a Sunday. I didn't want Alexia to have to stay awake waiting much longer! People at the bus stop had been very helpful though. One girl assured me I was going the right way, and looked up the schedule to make sure. A second girl was waiting there ages as well, and asked me where I was going. Turns out we were impatiently waiting for the same nonexistent bus, and getting out at almost the same place!

At this point I had literally one euro to my name. I hadn't had a chance to take out Euros, and I had run out of Dinars in Serbia too. I had found a 2 Euro coin, and used one of it to buy a ticket for the metro. She was going to take a cab and offered to take me with her. I told her I had no money at all, but she said she was going the same way anyway so it didn't matter.

We chatted in the cab, and it turns out the girl had some family in Whales as well, so she had an accent when she spoke English. She was really nice, and together with the cabbie we found the address where I was staying. I was soooo grateful since it was pouring and I was very tired at this point. I was looking forward to a shower and a bed, and of course to see me friends!

They were happy to see I'd made it okay! I also had no functional phone while waiting at the bus, so I had no way to reassure them I was alright. Dimitris made me a snack, then Alexia, Dimitris and I talked a while before I hopped in the shower. There was a nice guy from Taiwan staying with them as well that had gone to bed earlier too. I was SO HAPPY to be clean, and in a bed instead of on a train!

Novi Sad!

2010-10-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

While enjoying beers on a terrace the previous night, Dominic and I had made a plan to go to Novi Sad the next day. I had checked train times when home the night before and agreed on the ten o clock train... that meant getting up with the rest of the house so it working out well.

I woke up at 8:30 AGAIN! I was even okay! I don't know how I am doing this. I think the warmth of the daytime vs. nighttime is making my body happy with being awake during the day instead of night. I really don't know though. Either way, I made it out the door in time and arrived at the train station exactly when I said I would be there (9:45am). We bought tickets and hopped on the train with time to spare. The train miraculously left on time, and we were off! Dominic had a lot less sleep than me, but told me about his schedule back in Vienna and how much he worked... so it made this seem like nothing.

Dom is in the service industry back in Vienna, working at 5 star hotels in the mountains doing bar work and other service stuff. He works the dreaded split shift often (I remember those) and has worked 40 hours consecutively (wtf). At the verrry young age of 20, he might become a fine-dining bar manager already. Basically he works his ass off so getting 4 hours sleep is okay. It was interesting talking on the train :)

We got out of the train station and found our way towards the city center by guessing. There is a big street right in front of the train station so we just started going down that assuming it would take us where we need to go. We found a market, and some cute side streets with hidden gems like this ex-coffee place:

The apartments we could see from the train were more brightly coloured than the bland grey in Belgrade, but there were still communist looking buildings. Not sure if this looks communist really, but certainly grey:

We randomly ended up finding the center! There was a big pedestrian street right in the middle, with a cute trolley cafe in the beginning:

As you can see, the buildings were painted different pastel colours on this entire street. A big church came into view which really helped with our mapless navigation:

Here is the main street, which was very nice! I was expecting a cute city center, but this was even nicer than what I was expecting. After the rough and smooth of Belgrade this was a totally different Serbia:

Still found some street art! I am thinking of putting together an album of just graffiti art I've photographed after I am home:

Dom and I were just taking random streets around that looked cool. Alleys, streets, hidden things and obvious things. He didn't like to walk with maps and after looking at one on display somewhere I decided it was too small to get lost in anyhow, so we just wandered. It was great! I love this style of aimless traveling. We found a street full of cafe's with silly things like pots hanging and this one with big fake lamps outside (which I am pretending to turn on in case you were wondering):

There were some lovely buildings hanging out everywhere. Don't forget to check out the random people that get in the pictures haha:

This is quite possibly the most intriguing painting on a building I have ever seen. I have no idea what it means, what it's for, what it is, or why it's there. WTF. It reminds me of a frog, but I don't know. Someone please tell me because I really like it! I should have asked someone!!!

I wanted to go through the park (I always go through city parks if I can) but Dom was not seeming too interested. We went through anyway mwahaha. I explained my opinion that if you see lots of people using the parks then I feel like a city is more alive and engaged. If nobody are in the parks, then they are probably just going to work, going home, and sitting in front of the TV or the like. Not alive. So I go through the parks.

With no guidance, we found the bridge to take us to the fortress. Dom hadn't heard of EXIT festival before, so I told him about it and that it's in this fortress thing:

The other side of the bridge looked like stepping back in time. It was shabby, old, peeling, and awesome! Dom described it as an open air museum:

You can see the roofs caving in on themselves a little

Since I was with another person I was able to get a photo! Woo!

This is the first time I've seen a graffiti drawing of the city it's in! I thought it was a cool and original idea. Someone should paint a street art version of Vancouver somewhere in Vancouver. It's very clever :)

We walked down this street towards the big yellow bridge building and saw this funny sign. Translation error I assume?

We found the way up some stairs to the fortress. On the way up there was a view point with a single bench sitting facing the city. The view was spectacular! You could see all the roofs of the old part we had just walked through:

It was cloudy so the sky didn't turn out so well, but oh well:

Here is the bench. I sat on this and looked around for a while. It was really peaceful:

On the top of the hill, you could walk next to the clock tower:

I enjoyed these glasses:

We walked around the entire place. I could see all the old walls and stone, and there were broken down guns and cannons from wars strewn about:

The view from the other side was also quite nice. You could see the river and what I assume is a park. I was trying to imagine a big festival taking place around me with sunshine and chaos. It was still very nice without the insanity too of course. We practically had the place to ourselves!

After the fortress it was time to eat. I was starving, but we had passed some place that looked pretty cool when we were walking around. It had bookshelf wallpaper. We walked by the tourist center by accident and went in to get a little map (my idea - I like maps!) and ask about lunch in case there was somewhere better unknown to me.

The bookshelf place still seemed best, so we went on a little hunt. It actually took a while to find, but surprisingly it was my orientation that led us back. I must be getting better at this since I had this weird feeling about the general direction and it was right. Could I be developing a sense of direction!?!?!!?!?!?!

So we ate. Ate and ate and ate. We had a big lunch, desert, and two pops and the bill was still less than 12 euros for both of us! I ate like a king and it was still less than a normal meal in Vancouver. It wasn't even fast food - the place looked swanky and nice:

Here is Dom, the super-waiter:

Here I am:

I waddled out of that place. I had this huge chocolate/vanilla ice cream crepe for desert and that was eaten out of yummyness not hunger haha. We had already walked the entire city (the tourist store guy confirmed this) so we wandered a bit then sat our asses right back down somewhere different for after lunch/dinner coffee.

Eventually it was time for a FOX photoshoot on the way to the train station! Here he is hiding, can you spot the FOX?

Dom approached these girls to get a photo with FOX. It seems FOX is a very good way to meet girls! They liked him. Dominic now wants to get a traveling buddy hehe:

FOX posed near this church too:

We went in a second hand store on the way, since Dom admitted that he had never bought second hand clothing before. I was shocked! He was newer to couchsurfing, and had stayed a hostel once but before that was always nice hotels. He felt that now he was going to be a traveler, he should buy second hand clothing to fit the role lol. He was blown away about prices being so cheap in there, it was funny to see. I don't know how much he thought second hand clothing costed, maybe he never thought about it.

Meanwhile, FOX was enjoying some time out and about! I zipped him into my jacket for a while, until it started unzipping on it's own and I deemed it unsafe. Then I held him.

We made it to the train station and the ticket was even cheaper on the way back!

The train, however, was late. It was more ghetto, which explained the discount, but the seats were more squishy. I was getting tired and fell asleep on the train for a few minutes while I listened to my German lesson thing. Most of the time I was learning though :)

We arrived in Belgrade and it was raining there. Ugh. It wasn't raining hard though, so that was okay. It was a shorter walk to the bus stops where Dom and I parted ways. A dog with a collar had followed us half the way, and now followed me across the street. I was wondering where he belonged since there are so many strays in Belgrade and he was not. I heard barking.

Eight fucking strays came running through the park. Many of them were really big dogs too. The smaller collared one barked back but there were four against one while the others stood back and barked. It was a fur frenzy with biting, barking, and growling. I thought for a minute that smaller dog was about to get torn apart literally. They were biting it all over and it was running in circles biting back and growling. It seemed to be holding it's own though, since all of them would back off occasionally while it bared teeth at them.

Once it would turn though they would attack again. It was a busy street beside them too, with a fence in between the two directions except at the designated crossing. I waited until the dog was backed off and growling again then I ran and yelled at the strays. They backed away more, but then they started barking at me. That's when I realized maybe eight big dogs might be able to take me out too. I didn't want to leave the other dog though. I started slowly walking away monitoring the situation, and I saw the collared one run across the street without getting hit until the fence. It stood there and the strays didn't dare cross the street. I figured he knew the way back from there so he was okay. I got on the bus and went to the house.

Nobody was back yet though, since Hogar wasn't supposed to be back for another hour or two. I talked to his neighbor who let me try to use his phone, then I headed to a cafe down the street to hang out at for an hour or so. They had a magazine in English and the bartender was cute so I was fine. I was writing my postcards when I got a text from Hogar saying he was home. I took off and watched Law and Order till 3am. Indre came in later so I knew I could sleep in the next day too!

Zemun and a Cafe Crawl

2010-10-15T04:07:00.000-07:00

Today was Zemun day, so I started walking up towards the city. It was a beautiful walk along the river. There were cafes and green space the whole way up! The boat parking seemed a little haphazard but at least they were facing the same way...

Saw some nice artwork on the way...

I really liked this one on the sidewalk!

I made it into the city and it was completely different to Belgrade! It was like a village, with lots of one story buildings and a market etc.

I don't remember the cars being so prominent... kind of annoying for photos but if you ignore the cars you can kind of picture what it felt like to be there

This building looked run down but in an interesting and good way:

I'm sad that my photos don't really capture what it's like to be there. It's actually a really nice place and it feels quite small and clean. The pictures make it look busy but it felt peaceful... I don't know why!

I assume this guy died or something...

This building was on the main road. That one was actually pretty busy with cars. There were few traffic lights so you just look at cars and cross the street. Eye contact is key so you know you aren't going to get run over.

I started walking up the hill towards a viewpoint where I could apparently see Belgrade from, and walking up the hill I would get glimpses of the river and such. It was really charming up here!

Here it's flat.. maybe I hadn't started walking up yet haha. Well either way I was slowly heading up towards the hill so it's all in the same direction. I had already walked through the park and most of the lower part of the city, so I was on my way up.

I have decided that run down buildings look really interesting. I think Berlin has solidified that opinion into my head now hehe. This is a different type of run down here though...

When I started walking up this charming street I couldn't help but think about how my mom would really like this street here. It was clean, quiet, and comfortable. People would be spraying their stones and such. Plus there was a bed and breakfast.

I made it to the top of the hill! I knew there was a cemetery there that I wanted to walk through, but there were people in it with flowers so I figured I should wait until after the service to wander around. Instead I went to this big thing:

To the right of it was a restaurant, and to the left was a little viewpoint. There were three teenage guys there already talking and listening to music, so I kept to myself at first taking photos of the pretty view. I sat on some brick and enjoyed the sunshine and peace.

FOX came out for a photoshoot!

He also sat on the bricks:

I watched a kitty sun itself from a window:

Eventually I wanted a picture with me in it. I walked up to the boys and asked them to take my picture. They were quite helpful!

I talked to them a little while since they put on dubstep and all. Turns out one of the teenagers had been to Berlin before (he had a tongue ring in his ear so I think he was even trying to stretch it - I haven't seen ANY stretched ears here!) so that was cool. Some guy was talking to them, then they had to go to school. I felt kind of old then. Ah well. I started walking to the cemetery and walked through it on my way down the hill.

I passed this sign and couldn't help but wonder if they knew how funny it was.....

I thought this was an adorable way to adorn a fence:

While I was walking around this area I had been occasionally listening to my ipod. I was listening on the way back to the city center of this area when my German lesson only came out of one ear. Now before I had left for this trip my original Ipod earphones had started getting quite fuzzy out of one ear, but only with bass. I think the dubstep had actually blown the speaker in there, so I took this incredibly cheap and shitty backup pair with me on this trip. Now this pair seemed kaput.

I tried investigating the cord and found somewhere I thought was broken. Since I had no knife (damn you easyjet) I used my nails to rip off the rubber. It was actually really easy. The hard part was getting it off the thick bottom part, and that's when I ripped the plug part clean off. Now they were completely broken.

I still wanted to learn German though, so I walked down to the market I had seen before and found some new ugly white ones for 3 euro. Easy. I was hungry, so I then went to get some food. I was also thirsty, but I had spotted some nice cafe's along a pedestrian street so I headed there to see if I could eat my fast food there if I bought a coffee. I could. It was wonderful:

It was getting later, so I decided to walk to a bus stop before the museum closed. I got there in time, but it turned out there were a bunch of kids outside and they got the last tour. They told me to come back the next day. I was miffed!

I sat down and took a look at my map. I decided to walk along new streets towards the center and text this Austrian guy that had messaged me from CS to meet up for coffee. I encountered this messed up building:

I pet a friendly kitty on the way:

FOX got his famous place photo!

I found some postcards and my patch on the main street, then I saw that the guy had replied to meet somewhere!

I tried to go to the right McDonalds but it turns out I was wrong. I waited and waited, but to no avail. Eventually we figured out we both waited in separate places so he came to mine while I charged my phone. Dominic arrived with his host, and the three of us went to this lovely cafe for a couple beers. It was still warm enough to sit outside near a fake fire, and the place was packed! I liked the atmosphere quite a bit :) After this cafe, we met up with another girl from Belgrade at a cepap place. Then the original girl went home and the three of us went to a different cafe. I was full of food and beer already so I had nothing while the Austrian guy had desert and the girl had a juice. This one also had a nice atmosphere and was pretty full. I am really impressed by how alive Belgrade is at night. I had heard about the "nightlife" before and I know the clubs can get insane, but even the chill places are full and interesting. People are just active at night and I love it!

There was talk of maaaybe going to some live music, but it was farther away from where I was staying and I wasn't sure how to get back from there in the middle of the night. Instead I decided to take a bus back before they stopped at 11:30pm. I managed fine and even stopped at a grocery store on the way to the house so I could have cereal the next morning!!

Belgrade Power Walk

2010-10-13T02:39:00.000-07:00

Alright, so prepare to be amazed:

I was able to wake up today at 8:30am today!!! I wasn't super dead either. I don't know what is going on at all. I don't know what to think! I was able to get out the door quite early with Indre, Nebojsa's roommate from Lithuania. She showed me to the bus stop to get into the city, and walked down the main street with me until her Uni. It felt weird to be awake in the early morning, but it made for sufficient lighting for photos:

of course, I ended up taking pictures of graffiti (can't help myself):

I walked towards the Fortress first. I was told it was really pleasant by a few people by then so I went straight for it :) I saw some big guns:

a tower and and such:

More guns:

I wasn't sure what these were, so I took a photo. Fake windows? Fountains? What do you think?

I liked the look of this

and here it is but looking the other way hehe

I walked down to a pillar which I read was well known here. I was thinking that it had a phallus on a phallus like thing. I am oh so mature:

I really liked the watermelon seat, but I think it was too wet to sit on it. I just took a photo instead. I was pretty walking around this area :)

As you can see, these people are risking their lives! I went over there too though, and it turns out it's not a big drop over the other side, so it didn't really feel life threatening at all. I think it's meant for drunk people at night since there are clubs around. And for liability of course.

This looked very fortressy to me:

but then it looked way more so when I looked from the other side:

I walked down to this Church and went inside. It was small and simple, but it didn't allow photos so there are none of it. This second one reminded me of the monastery I saw in Macedonia, but it was also Orthodox:

The inside of that church was totally all mosiac. I've never seen that before. It was actually really cool looking, especially the shiny ones :) I didn't know if I could take photos or not though, so I didn't. I sat down outside the church and looked at a book Hogar had given me on "how to conquer Serbia". I read up on history and sights a bit, then decided on going down into the city center again. I reached Republic square again after being slightly lost...

You see, the maps show the names of streets in latin for tourists, but the streets are all labeled in Cyrillic. Soooo you can't read anything still.

I eventually found the "bohemian quarter", which is really a bohemian street. It was cobbled and full of cafes where the artist and poets of Belgrade used to hang out in older times. It was pleasant enough:

There are a lot of buildings here with character for sure:

These buildings are painted to make them less boring I guess...

This reminded me of Sarajevo!

This was across the street... Here I bought some ice cream for 80 cents. It was 40 a scoop! So cheap :)

I should mention that one thing I was seeing an awful lot of was Police in these areas. I wasn't sure why there were so many but I knew that on Sunday, the day that I was supposed to take the train in, there was a "gay pride parade" in the city center with about 800 people and 5000 police protecting it. Some people started getting physical and a ton of police were injured, cars burned, buildings maimed etc.

I suppose it's a good thing I did end up going drinking that night and missing my subsequent train. Would have been odd getting out to chaos and fire. Well anyway, I was seeing a lot of them around and I didn't know why.

I made it back to this main square:

I was on my way south towards a big famous church. I think it's supposed to be the biggest eastern Orthodox church in Europe or something. I passed this ugly building but I thought it was still interesting so I took a photo:

So it was quite a walk but I made it:

turns out the thing is under construction! I went inside, but the inside is mostly grey cement with the odd embellishment finished. Everyone was kissing things and making cross movements with their fingers so it was feeling a little culty. I seemed to be the only one not kissing photos and making cross motions though so I left.

I was approached by these three young guys wanting people to buy little kid's books for a euro to help children in need in Belgrade. I thought it was odd, but not a bad thing. I decided to give them some Hungarian money I could no longer get rid of easily (I faked not having dinars yet) so they actually got 3-4 euros worth if they could find somewhere to change it, and I got rid of Hungarian money. We both win. I had a strange children's book about God in Cyrillic though.

I came back along a different street and passed by this playground. I thought I could do an effect like make the yellow the only colour, but I don't know how to do that with Photoscape, so hopefully it is already doing that unedited:

I came to a park, with another church. This one also had the same thing, so I was brief inside but I liked the outside!

I walked by a little demonstration. It was mostly just that sign and the two pictures. I had no idea what it said or what it was about, so I took a photo. Turns out it's some small political party about Russia. Again, lots of police there.

By now I had walked an awful lot. I was thinking of walking home after eating, but I realized it was still early since I had started so early! I thought "okay, I can check out a couple more things then, so I started to turn away and saw this:

I walked up the hill and ran into what I *think* is an former Princesses residence? It was either this building or another close by. Either way this one was nice:

This pornographic graffiti reminded me of Madame Cleo, the old rub n' tug in Vancouver that used to be painted all provocatively. I don't know what this building was used for, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a massage parlour.

This seemed to be the land of graffiti! I had been told there was an area where people were allowed to spray, so I wondered if this was it...

I bought some food and started to go over the bridge to eat in the park. When I looked back, that area had one more thing for me to take a picture of:

Belgrade has a lot of bars and restaurants and clubs on their two rivers, here are some:

I sat and ate my food on the riverside, and was happy to feel warm enough to do so :) I had texted Indre and knew that she was now home, so I could make my way through the park towards the apartment after eating. There is a park along the river all the way up to Hogar's house so I was listening to my German recording and walking through the park. I encountered this pillar:

Now I don't know why I took a picture of this thing and not the nice green riverside park! I will have to snap one today... The park was long so I began to wonder if I was going the right way. Eventually I passed this abandoned hotel and I knew I was in the right place. I got home and rested my feet and started typing this up :) Hogar came back and had to work a bit, so I continued typing typing typing until around 10. Hogar had Portuguese classes and Indre had invited me out with her friend to see someone play a fusion of electronic and guitar/drums.

We left but stopped for food along the way (I was starving again). I finally had something really filling! We waited for her friend at Republic Square and were hit on by two Greek tourists until the friend showed up and they started speaking Lithuanian. The boys couldn't understand anything so they left hehe :) We found the bar with the help of some nice people, and sat down for a beer.

Hogar showed up not long afterward, and the four of us chilled until Indre's friend took off. Then the three of us made up new names for cocktails/shots for a while, and enjoyed the chill out music. It got packed for a random Tuesday night! The guy that was helping us find the place had said Tuesday was the best night to be there, and he seemed to be correct. Eventually it was time to leave though, so we came back and watched some clips from Monty Python (we had been talking about it before and Indre had never seen it) before going to sleep at around 4.

Now I woke up at 11am so I broke the early morning spell, but I don't feel like it would be hard to get back to doing that. Strange!

Today I think I will walk to a new part of town, and if the weather is crap then I'll go to the Nicola Tesla museum.

Budapest to Belgrade

2010-10-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Train attempt number 2: Success!

I woke up at nine surprisingly very refreshed and awake. I ate beans on toast and took some leftover Chinese before heading out the door. I made it to the train station 15 minutes before the train left, and found it no problem.

I found a spot and parked it for the next 8 hours. FOX was excited to be back where he was freed from! FOX was bought at a Hungarian train station, so he got to come back and marvel at his freedom :)

There was a rotating amount of people coming and going from the compartment. First a couple of women, then another couple after they left, then one woman, then one guy after she left.... They were getting on and off at the most obscure locations imaginable. Some of the stops had things that looked like bus stop things and that was it. Maybe a road with a tractor or something. It was local. This is what a typical stop might look like:

The guy that came in stayed for quite a while though, and turned out to be Serb/British. He grew up in London but didn't want to live in England so now he was trying for Serbia. We talked for ages, until he was replaced by some young Serbian guy from Novi Sad. He was super nice, and was surprised when I said I was from Canada.

He was kind enough to call my host when we were 15 minutes away from the station, so Nebojsa could come pick me up. He waited with me until he got there and then Nebojsa dropped him off down the street. We got something to eat then hung out in the kitchen for a while.

And now you are updated. Here I am sitting in the living room after a couple hours of typing. My host was out playing badminton. Just got back.

Wow, feels weird to be up to date-ish. Maybe I should start catching up on my previous trip haha!

Budapest Festivities

2010-10-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

I woke up healthy the next day since I had no alcohol the night before! I was still sleepy, and took my time getting out of bed. It was so big and comfy, so I wrote for a little while before getting up properly (as you can see I am trying to stay updated this time!). I eventually decided to get up and get some stuff done. I had decided on going to Serbia the next day in hopes it would be warmer, so I wanted to get the usual stuff: postcards, patch for the bag, and see if I find anything else. I found some postcards etc on the main tourist street (it's always easy) and started wandering down towards a street that had interesting stores from my memory. I browsed a few stores but nothing stuck out as a must-buy. In my wandering I ended up in this area I had never seen before, full of disintegrating buildings and boys on bikes whistling to their friends in abandoned lots etc. Looked like gypsy land.

I randomly took a picture of this one on the way out, it's nowhere near as decrepit as the others, but oh well! I don't like taking my camera out in places like that with lots of ppl around, seems disrespectful somehow...

Jon got a hold of me post-postcard purchasing, and we were both feeling like a beverage and sunshine and possible card writing. We were agreeing to meet at the market again when I ran into this temporary local market thing. It had local food, wine, cheese, and goods. It also had a stage with children singing in Hungarian dressed up old style:

This experience was well timed - I had just decided I was ready to go, and now I go to this local thing that really made me feel like I was a part of the city. It was a good random find. Jon and I met up here instead and walked around the stalls eating cheap food and cheap hot chocolate in the sun.

I saw a fox that looks like a relative of one back home!! What is he/she doing in Hungary?!?!

Well we finished at that place and found a bench by the water to write postcards. There was one pen between us so I wrote while Jon power napped with FOX.

FOX got impatient after I finished writing though and decided to put the pen in Jon's ear. It didn't do much though as you can see hehe

I was wondering what had happened to my old roommate Jonas, who was supposed to show up in Budapest today. As I was wondering, I got a call from him. Jonas and Beata would be at a square at 8pm, so I let others know and went to stop by the train station first to buy my ticket to Serbia. It was close to the square so I had time.

The ticket was super easy to buy, and from a very friendly lady. Believe it or not, the 8 hour train journey only cost 15 Euro! It was valid for a month, so I didn't haveeee to leave on Sunday too.

We went for food quickly then off to meet up with Adam and his friend. We went to a cute little cellar bar and met with Jonas and Beata there. From there we finished one beer and went to a Balkan dance band! I bounced about for a while; the music was really really good :)

It was a good transition for my upcoming trip south. Everyone was there, and it was an excellent time all around :) Even FOX got some love!

FOX also got in on the beer drinking...

I consumed too much beer at this point though... I remember talking to some Hungarian guy about Vancouver sitting on the side of the road, then had to go back in and get all my stuff to take off. Everyone was taking off, so I walked Lisa (she had showed up later) to a bus stop on my way to where I was staying. It was good to be guided to somewhere I recognized so I could walk home confidently. I was not doing well for catching that train though....

... predictably, I missed it for Sunday. I woke up rough, and with a headache. Benny was fine with me staying an extra night, so I slept some more and eventually got up to at least move to the couch. This is when I had a moment of panic. I was picking up my clothes and noticed that my wallet pocket was empty on my belt!! I never take it out though! I looked through everything and it was nowhere.

Crap.

I have never done this in my entire life! Not to my memory anyhow. Definitely never ever ever while traveling. It has it's pocket and that is where it stays safely double snapped in. How did I even do that?!?!!

Well it looked like my hung over ass was going for a walk. I put on my smelly clothes and walked back to the bar. My stomach was not happy about this, nor my head but I had to go. I found the place surprisingly easily. I walked in and one of the girls seemed to know me right away. I said wallet and she went straight for the cupboard. She said it was on the floor under some chairs hard to see. I looked inside and to my disbelief...

Every single thing was still in there! All my money, ID, cards, everything. I was relieved! I left a 500HUF bill for the girl that found it (in retrospect it should have been way more, that's not even 2 euro but I wasn't thinking fast through my headache!) and walked back.

I was hoping the walk would cure my shitty feeling, but it was doing nothing for it. I went straight back to veg on the couch. Benny was very kind and made pasta. It took me over an hour to slowly eat, but once that was down I was doing much better. We went out for take-out Chinese and water then watched a show on how to improve your memory. I felt normal after the food, and packed up for the next attempt at catching the train.

I made it an early night...

More Budapest Adventures

2010-10-10T15:01:00.000-07:00

I managed to wake up before noon again - I was so proud! It was nice to have gone out and still woke up with most of the day. I chatted with Adam about this toxic sludge that had burst from a reservoir. There was talk that it was going to reach the Danube as you can read here

Pretty serious stuff.

On the upside, it was a beautiful day out, and I decided to go grab a coffee somewhere near the sunshine and chill out before starting another walk. I wanted to see Parliament today.

When I started walking down Raday street (full of cafes) I had a very pleasant surprise..

My camera had dried out! The zoom was working smoothly again, and the opening and closing thing was working properly too! My camera was in better shape than it had been in since I spilt beer on it in Vancouver!!! Amazing!

I was so pleased! Now I could see the shiny tiles on this building in the picture, which was very blurry yesterday:

There were no cafe's in the sun on that street, so I continued my search...

I found a coffee shop and sat down with my latte and wrote. There were a lot of random things going through my head, plus I've had intense dreams ever since arriving so I was feeling muddled. The writing helped. Jon called and we met up at the coffee shop then headed in the general direction of Parliament. I was snapping away:

These building I wanted to take a picture of the day before and now I did:

This is near a supermarket I had been to buying bread and nutella:

I guess they were making this new building look old, or this old building look new...

Then there was some old and new beside each other, which was cool.

This building was deemed ugly on the bottom part, so I cut it off. Jon and I laughed at how if this building was in Melbourne or Vancouver people would think it's the most amazing building ever, but since it's in Europe it was only "alright from the waist up I guess".

There was a big dinosaur made of sticks which was pretty interesting:

We walked by this big church:

The statues looked nice against the sky;

It turned out to be free to enter, so we popped in to have a look. I was surprised at how much gold was inside!

It was pretty impressive, so FOX took a picture in front of it!!

There are a lot of little alleys and such in the city center. We walked through some of those, then ended up in this big square type thing... There were fancy buildings everywhere and sunshine.

Jon tried to pronounce this in Russian and some old guy seemed happy he was doing so:

This building was the only one they had apparently not cleaned. It gives it a totally different look eh?

We actually made it to Parliament! It looked nicer from the water, plus I couldn't get all of the building in one shot, so this doesn't really do it justice.

there was a tour starting in 5 minutes which was perfect, but it was very expensive. More expensive than I was expecting. You had to go to a guard, walk to a door and buy your tickets one at a time. We asked how much it was and opted for walking around the outside of the building instead. It was such a nice day too it was good to be outdoors. We started wandering again:

We ended up at the water, looking at the view. I decided to go towards the lion bridge and get a proper non-blurry lion photo

Here is the view from the bridge!

While we were up there it was decided that it was food time. Neither of us knew where the cafes were on the Buda side, so we went back to the Pest side and started a hunt for outdoor seating. We found this, which I had seen yesterday and also wanted a photo of. We went in a few hippie stores but I didn't buy anything.

There were a few places near these painted thingys, so we sat down and had a late lunch/early dinner in the sun with a glass of wine each. It was relaxing.

Speaking of relaxing, I had been wearing my bathing suit under my clothes since I planned on going to the baths later. I was thinking to do this after dinner now. Jon was going to meet up with Lisa, but that didn't work out so he decided to come with me for bathing.

I wanted to pick up a book first at a hostel named Mandala hostel since I had seen on Bookcrossing.com that there were a couple books hidden there that looked interesting. We went to Jon's hostel first to pick up swimming trunks. We passed this funny small car on the way. I love Europe for that:

This was a huge place all painted in bright colourful stripes with a huge amount of rooms and a bar etc. The guys working were nice, and showed us where this other hostel was. It was right down the street and easy to find. This place was the opposite of the loud bright nutty hostel. This place was very peaceful. It was like a converted apartment space so it was cozy and reminded me of the Cinema a little bit. The guy that ran the place was awesome, you know when you meet calm grounded young people they must be doing something right. I was really surprised how strongly I could feel the calmness in that place - it was cool.

Now that I think about it, Budapest seems to have some sort of strong energy thing going on. I am getting really intense dreams every single night, I was freaked in the caves more than normal, and now this place I could feel the space too. Weird.

We left the hostel and made our way to the metro to go up to the big baths. The metro line was supposed to be one of the oldest undergrounds in Europe, and it looked it. It wasn't dirty, it just had wood paneling and stuff on the platform.

"Opera" was the station we entered at, so here is what I assume is the Opera house

I found the building across the street to be interesting as well:

We got out at Hero's Square which was actually quite big!

This was supposed to include the pillar but it's really hard to aim. I'm just happy all of our heads are in the shot:

It was just getting dark as we made it to the baths. They were open until ten so it was no big hurry:

Now here it was very very nice. I put my camera in a locker so there are no photos of the inside, but if you want to see photos of the place you can look on google here

There was seemingly endless entertainment there. There were bubbles, a whirlpool, more bubbles, waterfalls, etc in a big outdoor pool. We ended up splashing around in there for aaaaages. Eventually we went looking for a sauna and found three saunas and tons of thermal sulfur pools. There were different temperatures and different levels of sulfur in all of them. I was not expecting it to be so huge. We tried the hot sauna that smelled of chamomile, then baths (with showers before/after sauna of course), then sauna, then baths... you get the idea. Eventually the place closed so we were there for almost 4 hours! I was such a prune.

I felt almost drugged when I left. It was past ten so Octogon was one of the few places left that had food places open. I ordered a huge burrito full of beans, rice, veggies, beef, and such. I couldn't even finish it but I felt healthy. I had called Adam and found out that the toxic sludge had reached the Danube, so I was asked to bring a bunch of water bottles home too. I stopped by a grocery store and hopped on the tram home! Jon's hostel was a couple stops earlier than mine, so we said goodbye there before sleeping a tonnnn.

That bath really had me relaxed since I fell asleep before 3 I think. I still woke up at 11 though. I was refreshed and feeling good. Adam was going to the countryside to visit friends so I went out to meet Lisa and Jon for vegan breakfast. We met up at the market and walked to a Hari Krishna place. I wasn't super happy with my soups but their food looked decent. I was still full though.

Jon had to go meet up with his new host, and I had all my stuff with me because I was switching hosts myself, so Lisa and I took my hoop to a nice park on an island and I hooped and hung out for the afternoon. On the way back we bought snacks and beer (she had a smoothie) and sat by the church drinking our beverages. We then went over a bridge and I was finally able to get some good night shots!

this is the bridge I was on:

We found a nice spot near this hotel to chill for a little while until I was due back to meet Benny to go into the house.

I walked across town in 20 minutes or something and succeeded at arriving on time!

I was happy with myself. I settled in for about an hour and caught up with Benny before I was out the door again. There was an event at the university where they light up a whole side of an old soviet style building and every window is a pixel. They put up designs every year to music, but this year was the first they were going to do in colour! Benny had to sleep and study for an interview so he gave me keys and his old tram pass and I went to meet up with Lisa at the Uni to watch the show.

It was freezing and late, but it was worth it I think...

They started with clips from 2007, then 2009, then 2010 in colour. It looked a lot better than the other years, really impressive how much things improved in only one year. They talked a lot in between clips though, so eventually Lisa and I were so cold that we left for the end. A lot of others were leaving at the same time anyway, so it must have been close to over.

I have some videos of them, but they need to be uploaded and that takes forever. I'll do it later.

After the dot matrix we went out to this free club called Instant. It was two floors and a cellar, really big and busy. The music was sometimes good sometimes not good, so we danced for a while until Lisa grew tired and I was wanting different music. We actually took off at a decent time, totally sober and I was feeling quite proud of myself :)

There was a giant owl with breasts hanging from the bar, so I took a photo:

I walked back home and Lisa hopped on transit to get to her home, and I called it a night.

Budapest Timez

2010-10-09T04:37:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I am traveling yet again...

Yesterday I went to the airport in Berlin to hop on a plane to Budapest, Hungary. I made it an hour early with two sandwiches, water, and an LED hula hoop - I felt prepared :)

I fell asleep before the safety speech was being made. I don't know why, but moving objects make me narcoleptic. One of the stewards on the plane had to wake me up to tell me to take out my earphones (which weren't even playing anything, just in) with a safety jacket around his neck. I was confused though, so I just pushed the button on my seat to show it was up and gave him this "what? The seat is up?!" look.

I slept again, even for takeoff. When it was time to come back down, I looked out the mirror and saw sun, cloud, then cloud, then darkkkk cloud. Then rain. It was awful weather, but oh well.

I had an umbrella and directions on how to get to shelter, so I found the bus stop and started talking to this lovely Hungarian woman that was going home from working at the airport. She told me it was cheaper to buy tickets at a kiosk (I was asking how much it would be so I don't get ripped off) so she actually took me to one, and talked to them so I got cheaper tickets :)

It was a half hour bus so I talked to her most of the time. She was training to become an immigration inspector. She hadn't spoken English in a year, but did really well.

I got a very teethy smile sometimes which made me think maybe she didn't get every single thing I said, but was still being very polite... She directed me to the metro and went her way.
It was here that I discovered that the metro doesn't really have signs saying which stop you are at. In Berlin and Vancouver, you have some sort of label. I couldn't see any... they would announce in fuzzy Hungarian which stop was next, but I didn't understand a word of it. Looking at the names listed and knowing what they sounded like in Hungarian on a barely audible speaker was impossible. I got out randomly to check where the hell I was. It was only two stops away, so that was lucky.

I somehow found the place right away - perfect considering the rain. I got to see Adam's sweet flat and chat over coffee before taking off to a cs meeting down the street. I had dinner and beer, and met some people.

It was a good night! We walked back and gossiped. I had an inflatable air mattress on the floor, so I watched a show or two while Adam passed out upstairs (he had to work at 6am).

I woke up before 12!!!!!!

that hasn't happened in aaaaaaaaaaaaages!!

I woke up without coffee or anything, just got up and ate some museli. Adam gave me a map, and told me where to find a phone guy.

I took some pictures from his balcony thing:

I used some cleaning solution on my camera lens finally, since it was having problems focusing before. It also doesn't open or close too easily. I took a test shot of Adam in the flat to see if it would work..

It seemed to! I sprayed some into the zoom thing too after so that it would move smoothly again. This was a mistake, as you will later see.

Either way, I started walking around afterward. I bought a Hungarian SIM, and a charger since I had stupidly left mine behind somehow.

Now, I was noticing that my camera was opening and closing and zooming quite smoothly... but...

seems out of focus doesn't it?!

I tried to make that one less cloudy with Photoscape, but it still looks off, eh? I was noticing too. It just increased from there. I was wandering about in the direction of a main shopping street and the Castle and found this really nice pedestrian street on the way:

I tried using sepia and such to try and make them less cloudy...

When I looked at the camera, I noticed there was some sort of beading condensation on it, but it wasn't on the outside.. it was inside the glass thing. Great. So I have to let that dry before my photos are no longer cloudy. I assume that when I sprayed the screen cleaner into the zoom thing it went inside and now it has to dry. At least it will be clean when it is. In the meantime, however, I had a very blurry camera that increased in it's blurriness as the day progressed as you will see!

I walked by a big covered market so I went in to check it out. It was apparently famous, so I walked about looking at all the food and souvenirs. I knew it was famous since I heard German and American English more than Hungarian in there.

I decided to walk along the water and saw some cool houses:

and a bridge:

I started walking along the water towards the famous chain bridge, enjoying the sunshine. My camera was behaving a little to take this shot of some boats on the river:

Here is a statue built by nazi's across the river (on the buda side of the city):

i had to pump the crap out of the contrast to see this picture;

The street was beside a lot of traffic while I walked along the water, so I decided to duck in and walk down the main shopping street for a bit. There are loads of pedestrianized streets in the city center! My camera had started getting really cloudy though so some of these ohotos will be a little doctored to see what is going on.

Here is the next bridge, the white one (don't know the name of it). Apparently they moved the church to the right of it a few metres over to build this bridge there! They put wheels under it I was told.

I continued walking down this main street and found big square with a statue.

The main street seemed to be all tourist stores. I don't know how all of them survive when they sell all the same stuff and they are all right beside one another. Strange.

I had looked in a couple stores since I wanted to find a belt for my green pants back home, but nothing was really standing out. I also had seen many backpack patches, but they were all huge and I am running out of space!

I walked to the bridge and tried to take photos of the lions..

I was not encouraged by the amount of steam in the camera, so I walked across the bridge without taking photos. I admired the view and made my way towards Castle Hill!

At the bottom of the hill there was a funicular that took you up, or you could walk. I was contemplating these choices when I was approached by a girl to take her photo for her. I did, then we talked a bit. She was from China, and only here for the day. She was on a big Europe tour, so she didn't have time to walk up the hill, only to take the funicular. I looked at the price and decided "ouch", I would walk. Time for a challenge. I almost died running for the S-bahn on the way to the airport, so I am realizing how badly I need to get in shape.

The walk was surprisingly easy and short. I was on the platform to watch the funicular before it started moving I think! I wasn't at the top yet, but still...

I got to the top of the hill, and looked around the grounds. The National Gallery was inside one of the bigger buildings, and there was this big gate nearby too:

I walked around and enjoyed the fantastic views of the city from the top. Unfortunately, it was really hard to take photos so some of them are useless. I was able to doctor this one of Parliament to look like an old postcard though!

I tried one with myself in it:

I didn't go in the Gallery since it was so nice out (wanted to stay outside) so I walked around and found this massive statue/fountain. There were a lot of Chinese people taking their picture in front of it

There were people everywhere setting some sort of festival thing up. There was a stage, music equipment being stored and guarded, people building tons of wooden sheds to sell stuff in, and temporary construction in general all over the place. On the other side of the hill, you could see the Buda side of the city. This is mostly rolling hills and houses. If only you could see past the Castle wall in this shot...

I went out from the construction and into the quaint little city part. There were old buildings and cobble streets. I looked at a map and found where the labyrinth was since I was recommended to go in there. I didn't know it was underground, so I hesitated before going in. It was early enough that it would still be light after going in, so I went for it.

This was really interesting. I figured with my camera already quite blurry, taking very low light pictures in the labyrinths below the Castle would not work at all. I didn't even try to take a picture here. It was huge, and kinda creepy. It was creepy in a good way though. There were a bunch of different chambers with themes. There were recreations of European cave drawings, and statues, and a real four-sided wine fountain covered in vines (it was very old though so not recommended to drink from it). At the end there were modern things and it was all to make a point of non-consumerism. It was advertised as sponsor-free, and had fake archaeological finds with imprints of things like shoes, phones, microwaves, and laptops all claiming to be 4 million years old and from another civilization. Also there was pop art covered in plastic so people would find our artifacts in the future in that ancient cave. It was cool.

I ended up in there about an hour, so after this I wandered down to the next viewing area. I passed a sign advertising what I assume to be a weed drink?

Here is another old postcard style photo:

There was a big church up on this hill area too, but there was a line and I've seen the inside of sooooo many churches now. I decided to stay outside.

Now there was a whole section you could walk around that looked like it was out of a fairy tale. There were cafe's and violin playing and loads of German people and North American people. Everyone was snapping away at the view of the city, so I attempted to take a shot too and I think it turned out pretty neat.

Looks fairy tale like. By this time I was getting hungry and my phone had died. I was deciding between going back to the house to eat leftovers or going out to a cafe to eat and charge the phone. I opted for the cheaper option, leftovers. I was quite a hike down the hill (I took a long way somehow) and went along the water to go over the white bridge instead. From here I proceeded to take the wrong way home and ended up having another mini tour of the city haha. I didn't stray too far though and found my way back in time to eat, charge my phone, and relax with Adam on our computers before going to the CS meeting.

The meeting was in Buda, so we took the tram over the bridge. It was so pretty at night! The meeting was nice enough. I had the usual post-pub-kebab and walked over the bridge and all the way to my house with an Aussie I had seen at the previous meeting as well. I fell asleep after a Law and Order episode.

Catchup: Geneva

2010-09-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

I woke up the next day ready for the train! It was my first time taking a TGV so I was curious how nice it was going to be. The train station was very easy to find, so we made it on time no problem. It was a little early for me to be awake, but I didn't mind.

The train itself was quite slick looking, as you can see:

Unfortunately Erin forgot her wrist bands for motion sickness buried in her backpack. Things turned out alright though, since the train was so smooth and there were things to do. I had my knitting, so I tried to work on FOX's sweater so he wouldn't get cold in Switzerland:

Out the window things were looking scenic:

Erin was writing stuff:

Here we are on our first international train journey! Woo!

It was tricky to take photos at such a high speed...

As the train slowed down though I was able to get a couple in... Before we knew it we were in Geneva!

It was kinda cloudy so you couldn't really see the mountains behind the city.. but it was still pretty.

Here's Erin looking over at the city... See it's still quite nice!

A lot of the buildings looked like this:

The old part of the city was charming, with thin windy streets and cobblestones. It was a lot of uphill however. We were going to have to have our packs for the whole day, so the uphill climbing was extra tough. Erin was still sick too so we were taking it slow up the hills, looking at all the little alleys. I was slow because I am out of shape. There was a cool bookstore full of super old books that Erin found.

One thing that stood out about Switzerland was the amount of flags everywhere. They were lining streets, bridges, everything! You could tell Geneva has money, too. No litter, no dog crap, just a lot of flags and people in suits. I felt a little out of place.

We weren't sure if we were supposed to go in here at first, but it seemed fine... one lady saw us from inside and didn't give us hassle while we took shots, so I assume it was allowed.

At this point it was time to give our backs a rest. We found an old cannon and leaned our backpacks on it. My back was really happy about this, so we took our time looking at the map and information about the city Erin had cleverly photocopied prior to coming out here:

We decided to climb one more hill so we sucked it up and went for it. It was a church, and I think the view was worth it in the end :) It wasn't the tallest thing, but it was nice up there. I went to use the toilet in the museum next door, then Erin did after me and they refused her for some reason! That was super dumb!

Inside the church was also pleasant:

We came out and Erin had to use a very disturbing toilet. Considering the surroundings, I was surprised the toilet was so shitty (haha bad joke I know)! I mean most stuff looked like this:

I guess everything can't be spotless. Apparently there were needles in there though which is pretty appalling in even the worst of bathrooms. We got the hell outta there and begun the descent towards the water thing. You know, the famous fountain thingy. Well, if you don't you'll see it in around 2.5 seconds.

this thing:

Here is a lovely Hotel!

The streets were very posh, but it was hard to find a supermarket.

We eventually found a supermarket after asking some people. We bought snacks so we could begin our next mission: hitchhiking to Lausanne.

I consider hitching to be a very liberating travel experience, nevermind the fact that it's free. We were, however, pressed for time so we couldn't be bumming around on the side of the road for days while my sister only has six weeks to spend in Europe. Instead, one short journey here was perfect for our mammoth schedule. First, it's in one of the safest countries in the world, and is only 30 km away. There are only two roads to go there so it's very unlikely we would get lost. The spot recommended on Hitchwiki was within the city and a 20 minute walk from the train station. It was foolproof: If we found no ride we could easily walk back and take the train. No chance of getting stuck!

First we had to get those snacks. Can't be hungry doing these things. We bought cereal to make our sign out of the cardboard (and to eat of course). I had some coloured pens from Berlin, so we were set to go! We had acquired a big map from a tourist office upon arrival, although he looked at us weird when I said we were using it to hitchhike. He said nobody does that here (which is total crap I have a few friends in Switzerland that do it there) and we would have to wait a long time. I was not discouraged though, since we weren't really going to get "stuck", just "delayed" if he was right. We started walking along the water towards the park and ended up walking by these things which were actually pretty cool:

We arrived at our lovely cow-painted radar point (which is really smart if you think about it! that will slow them down eh!) and made our sign. Erin turned out to be a perfect hitching buddy since she started dancing up a storm while I held the sign. Within 20 minutes we had a direct lift to Lausanne :D

This saved us a lot of money in the end since our Swiss Passes were not valid until the next day. The train was at least 20 bucks, and for 30km that's really steep. The guy that drove us was really nice too - even pulled over for us to take photos once we reached Lausanne! Erin's French came in super handy. The driver told us about some music festivals he helps set up in Switzerland, and general stuff. We had to go through some traffic, then after that we were in Lausanne!

Catchup: Paris Day 4 Part 1

2010-09-16T08:10:00.000-07:00

Okay so we managed to wake up and try some french pastries the next day! We were in love with the pain du chocolat for breakfast. We sat outside a patisserie and ate our food in the sunshine. It was fantastic! We watched a mob of birds attack some leftovers and it got pretty intense:

here I am eating...

A lot of people were walking by taking photos of the bird feeding insanity. It got old though.

We continued our walk after this down a main street and started checking out some museums. We had walked by this at night:

I think we had worked it so that some museums were going to be free on this day, except special exhibitions of course. We made it to this one (I forget the name) but there was this MASSIVE line up outside so we weren't sure if we could get in... There was this thing about Yves Saint Laurent that was creating the line. Embarrassingly, my sister and I couldn't remember exactly what he was famous for!

We were across the street taking photos on this other huge fancy building, but hey this one was worth pictures as well! There were huge columns all over the place:

We went up to the door to see if we could just go in the normal part of the museum minus the expensive Yves thing. We were allowed to go in for free/cheap I think but through a side entrance. Not this one:

The building itself was quite pretty, plus you could look up and see bits of the exhibition! It was a little confusing to walk around at first, especially with parts that were closed off - like this one:

Erin and I both really liked this painting:

more stairs. Like I said, the building itself was quite impressive:

The courtyard:

Erin and I also really liked this picture for some reason. We stood there for ages just looking at it. We went into the gift shop afterward to look at books that would tell us who Yves Saint Laurent was... turns out he was a fashion designer!

Good to know. Well, we looked at everything kinda quickly and went to leave...

Erin was still feeling sick but she still managed to smile for me!

We went on this bridge here, and it looked like the sort of thing that would be famous, so we took pictures beside it!

We walked to Napoleon's tomb, but they wanted a ridiculous sum to get into the place and we didn't really care about looking at the thing... we were more interested in Victor Hugo's tomb which was in a different place.

The building was quite massive though so we still managed to walk around and make the journey over worthwhile...

here is the outside of the tomb thing. Yes we were cheeky and took a picture of the outside after we balked at going in:

We ended up on some street with messed up houses - one of the first ones so far! I was pleased to see it, if only for balance.

After the one messed up street, we ended up on a nice one:

It was on the way to the Pantheon. This is where Victor Hugo was buried, among others. We walked up this hill to get there, so by the top we stopped to take photos and such!

Thanks to Erin's French skills, we managed to get both of us in as students! There was the Foucalt pendulum in the center:

I tried to get a longer exposure.. you can kinda see the ball moving, but it does look mostly like a ghost.

The ceiling was super intricate:

Everything was intensely large:

There was an underground crypt, so I attempted the low light shots of famous tombs:

The man himself!!

There were information walls up around the place to explain who some of the people were in case you didn't know already... We found a picture of the city as well and decided to become... SISTERzILLA!

I was pleasantly surprised to find Marie and Piere Curie here... took me back to high school science classes and my chemistry teacher, Mr. Disney, talking about these guys. It felt very odd to see their graves so many years later. People can totally have presence after they're dead.

We came back upstairs and looked around a final time at the building itself:

Now we had been to most of the things we had wanted to see. It was our last day in Paris, so we went walking through the Latin district (my memory is faded but I think that's what it was. I remember what it looked like perfectly well but not what it was called!). We had another crepe, and decided to get one french beer at least while we were in France. I only knew of one, but all the other beer listed at these bars I knew.. and they were not French!

I know they are more into the wine, but really... one beer? Oh well... we walked around a few times looking for something somewhat reasonable in price. It was hard since this was a touristy area, and they were advertising the beer at 9 euro for the normal price!!!!! Luckily it was happy hour, so we were talked into going into a Mardi Gras themed bar so a half price beer. They were playing an animated movie - I think it was Kung Fu Panda actually - which distracted us for a while... They FOX wanted a drink, so we gave him the last bit:

There were some cool places in this area, I liked it. There were also Doner shops which reminded me of home (Berlin). Since we had to get up early the next day and I don't have any pictures, I assume we didn't do a ton of stuff this night.... maybe if we did Erin can mention this to me because my memory is most likely worse than hers!

Catchup: Paris Day 3 part 2

2010-09-10T07:43:00.000-07:00

Okay so we had a nice rest before going out to the Eiffel! We asked the hotel people and they said we were going at a good time and they said yep, so we were encouraged but still slightly worried that there would be a huge line. We got there and it was misting a bit, so the top floor was closed for a while. It was apparently going to open again in half and hour though, so we decided to wait and take some night photos until we could buy top floor tickets...

We had to move really far back and put the camera on a weird angle and hoped for the best! It took a lot of shots to get one with most of the tower in... it was also not the driest weather too so I had to be careful not to get the camera too wet! This next one was facing the other way:

The tower would start to sparkle!

Eventually we were in line getting tickets to go up to the top. There were loads and loads of tourists, some very annoying. It felt weird being around English speakers, and not in a good way. I was very happy to be with Erin so she could at least order our tickets in French. We made it up to the tower after three line ups and tickets etc...

It was so pretty!

FOX was with us!

Poor Erin was so sick but still came out. Trooper.

Here's the arc:

a giant wheel...

looking up:

It was a fair walk back, so on the way I think we bought fast food. We passed by the arc on the way to the hotel, so I managed to get a night shot!

I went to bed satisfied :)

Catchup: Paris Day 3 Part 1

2010-09-09T07:11:00.000-07:00

We slept in this morning since we had been walking around so much the previous day! We were happy with how much ground we covered so we were able to saunter a little more... FOX was not wanting to be in the pocket today, so he slept in my camera bag! So cute!!

We walked around the market right by our hotel - it was gorgeous although smelled like fish. The cheapo grocery store was open so we got another 40 cent drink or something....

We were walking around casually, and I decided to shop a little. We were making our way slowly towards a train station to print the tickets for Geneva ( I wanted to make sure it would work with my credit card). We passed a bread store with bread made in the shape of Eiffe towers! They were like 8 euro or something stupid like that though so we just stood outside and took pictures of it:

Next we found this lovely church. There are a lot of them around. We were trying to wander to random places that we hadn't seen yet, so this was one of them. Along the way I bought a sweater, and then another sweater! I wanted to buy more, but I was not letting myself :)

We came across this shopping area on the way to the opera, and saw sooo many people with expensive name brand bags just walking around. It blew my mind, considering I wasn't about to pay more than 20 euro for something, and these people were dropping 400 easy on a shirt or something. One person I could conceive, but there were tons of people walking around with these bags and I wondered how it was all possible.

We eventually found the Opera! It was very pretty!

We didn't go inside it, but admired the outside. I was looking around for shoes while walking down this cute street after, and we bought some crepes. They were super hot but super good. We made our way through this strange area...

then this is what the streets looked like that we were walking around:

We somehow walked all the way to this tower! We were on our way towards Victor Hugo's house.

This part got confusing, we weren't sure if we had found the place or what but the area still looked nice so we walked further. Our feet were kinda tired but we pushed onwards and checked the place out.

We found it! It was closed, but we were happy enough to be outside it. At this point my camera died. I thought I might be able to turn it on for a couple extras so I was very very selective! It didn't work though...
I had remembered my extra battery, but lo and behold I had forgotten to charge the thing so I had two dead batteries. Ugh.

these photos are from Erin's camera! I really like this shot:

Here I am taking my last photo!

The amount of walking was starting to increase again, so when we ended up at this area:

We decided to take the metro back to the hotel and have a little rest before going up the Eiffel Tower. This way I could also charge my batteries!

So I will take a break here since there are quite a few pictures around the Eiffel at night.... We were taking a break around this time anyway so it seems to fit :)

Sorry this is so bloody behind. Truth be told, I have been slacking lately since I have been thinking about going through this blog when I am home again and making it better somehow. It would be nice to be able to pour over my experiences and make the writing more interesting etc. I see it like a future project though which makes is difficult to update sometimes, especially since I am so far behind.

It's possible that I might start going horribly out of order to write about new stuff while it's fresh, then fixing up the dates later. It likely will make things a mess, but whatever I don't think it will be completely awful!

Think of it like a jigsaw.

Catchup: Paris Day 2 Part 2

2010-08-24T05:19:00.000-07:00

Ok so I left off when we had walked to Luxembourg Gardens:

We were both fairly tired and in want of coffee that wasn't 5 euros.

FOX could drink though!

A couchsurfer was going to meet us to show us the secrets of finding cheaper but yummy coffee, so we goofed around the park a bit

this reminded me of home

We went to a nice fair trade coffee place, and even though it was fair trade it was less money than the tourist joints! It was goood. We rested our legs and enjoyed some latte's and chatted to Zerouk about Paris.

After the coffee he walked us towards the Louvre. We wanted to go in while it was cheaper (after 6pm until 10pm I believe) so we started walking towards the famous museum. We passed some other interesting places:

on the bridge!

looking backwards:

I might be wrong, but I thiiiiink this is the island thing we walked around during our Rick Steve's historical walk hehehe

And we made it!

There is Erin and Zerouk in front of the famous triangle thing

So we made it in! There was less of a line up than expected for some reason, so we were very lucky to get in quite speedily! Once we got in the photos continued...

I think Erin was trying to look up his skirt... pervert hehe..

I took a lot of photos of things, so I will try not to put ALL of them on here... you can look at my Paris folder on Flickr after all if you want to see everything...

mummified cats!!

there were a lot of huge things there

I couldn't help myself. Blame North American culture and it's messed up attitudes towards nudity and sex.

Erin being less perverted

I liked the roof

In case you didn't think the Louvre was big

I was berated after taking this shot because I had put my water bottle on the floor. The security guard didn't know whose it was and started freaking out asking who the water belonged to! She seemed mad. It wasn't a bomb lady...

We made it to the Mona Lisa! There were signs all over pointing how to get to it. When we got there, there was a piece of glass in front of it, so you couldn't get super close. You could still take photos behind the glass though, and it still turned out ok. I have a clearer pic of the painting but here it is with the family shots:

When we left (at closing) we noticed it was now dark out! Time for night shots.

We thought Erin lost her camera for a while here, but thankfully we found it. That was like a mini-heart-attack! We also found a very swanky toilet, which was entertaining to find as well! We finally walked out of the place onto the bridge to find a party going on... There were people with beer and music, it was like Berlin kind of haha. You can hopefully see the silhouettes in the background here if you squint?

The Eiffel Tower was all lit up:

I was having fun with my mini tripod thing I think!

The little island thing was too!

We ended up walking up to find a metro station that would take us back. At least I think that's where we were going. We had been walking all day, so we were tired. There were a few more sights on the way back, like this one,

..but I was exhausted and not really holding my camera too steady so we just hoofed it to a station (took ages) and went home. Our feet were so tired we put some hot water in the bath and soaked them for a while! It was a good day though!! Very very packed!!

I slept very well as you may imagine!

Catchup: Paris Day 2, Part 1

2010-08-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

We woke up and ate from our Berlin groceries before making an excellent discovery!

We found a cheap supermarket right by our hotel. It was like a discount place, and everything was wayyyyy cheaper than anything we'd seen the day before. It was probably the best find we could have made. We stocked up on snacks and nutella and bread and headed out to get to the start of our "historical walk".

We started around the the Hotel de Ville (I think that's how you spell it)

There was a beautiful carousel there in front!

There was also a free exhibition there, so we hopped in quickly to have a look. It was photography, so very interesting. It felt like Paris, and yes I know that is a cheesy thing to say but that's what it was like. Older photos, and atmospheric ones that made me get into the mood for walking around. Here is where it was:

So we started a bit late, but that was okay. I was feeling French hehehe

Paris is a fantastic place to take photos!!

Now the real start of the tour was the Notre Dame.

I liked the lights quite a bit...

Fox started listening to one of the sermon things. It was free for us to go in, but I have no idea what the guy was saying!

I was getting weird looks from people sometimes because FOX was in my front pocket like this:

there were some nice candles:

Look at this door! It's bloody massive!!

Walking around the side was also quite nice :)

although I think the back was actually the most interesting photo-wise:

The walk took us to a lovely little island thing..

Erin was amused by the signs for boat traffic!

There were many skinny roads and nice little stores all around this area:

Another massive door:

We found this candy store here, and bought some of the best lollipops I've had in ages. They were sooooo good!

Some houses were starting to tilt...

others not at all

We found a Canadian themed bar! It had awesome door handles!!!

They had doughnuts woooo

We made it alllll they way to this monument. which is A LOT of walking!

We thought about going into here, but the lineup was massive and it cost a lot of money

Erin was the leader of this walk, since I can get lost in my own backyard. You can see she was serious with her papers and map and history about the places we were going :p Tour Guide Erin! It was excellent!

I was goofing around with FOX for quite a while, and got some hilarious looks from old people hahahahahaha

We came across a nice courtyard and decided to have a break! We were walking a lot and eating nutella. It was time for a little rest!

This was under construction, but still looked okay. I guess

Very elaborate and massive organ!

So after this we went walking to Luxembourg gardens, but there are loads more photos to come so I will cut this off here. It seems we did half of Paris in one day!!

Catchup: Paris Day One

2010-08-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

So before I begin to document this adventure, I want to warn you that this is going to be a lot less detailed than my sister's account. I was not writing while on the road (for once), and now it's been a few months so I am going to be relying on the photos quite a bit! I usually remember a lot while looking at photos, and there are more here than normal so maybe it will turn out alright... but I want to warn you there may be more photos than words. I have around 300 photos of Paris alone, so you can imagine how many pictures there are going to be. I won't post ALL of them this time since there are soooo many... but there will be quite a few.

AHEM. Ok so I got out of the train and found the meeting spot my sister and I had agreed on. I was early, so I started to knit. I was making a sweater for FOX! People would randomly say things to me in French about the knitting, but I coudn't really respond that well. Erin's plane was delayed so she was late to arrive. I didn't mind though since I had more sweater done that way. I was in no rush.

Our parents had booked us a hotel for our stay in Paris (oh la la!) and it was right near the arc du Triumphe. We got out of the underground and boom! There we were!

Those were actually taken after we left the hotel, but whatever. We got to the place and checked in.. put our stuff away and decided that we had enough energy to walk around the city a bit. I was surprised since we were both sleep deprived (Erin much more so), but off we went!

We found this little church while we were wandering - totally by accident. It was free to go in!

So we kept wandering down the street, no idea where we were going to end up... and we walked right over to the Eiffel Tower. We were doing pretty good considering we didn't even mean to do that!

found a building covered in greenery... that's Erin at the bottom!

It was quite a walk, but we made it to a platform that was good for viewing the tower. It had this building here:

I tried to squish the Eiffel, but it didn't budge

So I squished Erin instead :p

Then I licked it...

The houses were all so fancy and clean. I had heard about Paris being a dirty city but I suppose that's just outside the center...

Trying to find affordable coffee was proving to be a challenge. I had brought groceries from Berlin on the train ( I knew it would be much more expensive in Paris) but it was definitely time to eat. I was hard to find anything affordable though, so I believe we went to a marketplace near the hotel and had some sort of overpriced food and chocolate cake. We ate it in our lovely hotel:

Erin was beyond tired so wasn't eating a ton, but still managed to get some food down. We made it an early night to get in some major sightseeing the next day. We were going to go on a Rick Steve's "historical walk". Erin had printed out all this stuff from the internet so we'd try it out the next day!

Catchup: Moving Day

2010-08-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

So the next day was moving day...

I was definitely suffering from the night before, and was in no state to be lifting things. I had to anyway though, because we had a truck rented and everything... so off we went.

Moving took a decent amount of time since we were sharing the truck with another couple that was moving into the room next door to the one we were leaving. I was lucky and could rest for most of that, but then we had to move all our stuff up three or four flights of stairs. Not fun.

I was exhausted by the end of it. We had to decided where everything was going, and how we would arrange things. It took a while! We had some bookshelves and things on the balcony, and stuff piled on the bed. The wardrobe was tilted looking cause of the floor, and that freaked me out at first. It was still a massive improvement to where we were before though!

The next days I was preparing for my trip with Erin as well as getting unpacked and settled. My train was on the 5th of May overnight, so I had massage treatments right before. On the day before I left, I went and got my bangs trimmed by Tau, and went to watch some LOST with Floh at Benny's before catching the Ubahn to the train station. I was on the road again:

FOX was traveling with me overnight :) we relaxed in the train until morning when I was to meet up with my sister!

Catchup: The First of May

2010-07-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

The first of May is a festival/protest day here. I was told that during the day is a festival, and during the night they start rioting and burn cars etc. Sounded intriguing. I had packed everything up already so Floh and I went down to the festival part during the day! I was interested in music and dancing, but wanted to get out before riots. I've never seen a car get burnt up, but I didn't want to get burnt up myself. Either way, we headed down and walked towards the party.

This was taken on the way there - Berlin sure is pretty :)

We got there and there were indeed people dancing. A lot of people were just standing though...

cool tree thing

german punk singing in a wheelchair

dancing, or the department of silly walks?

leftists + anarchists = 1st May

spongebob!!

"you gentrify we occupy"

interesting car

well there was a lot of beer floating around, and after some beers and dancing it started to get dark. By this point I'd had enough beers that instead of going home I decided to stay to see if things got rioty. Police were very dressed up for the occasion. If it's one thing lefties and righties both don't like it's police.

It was strange, the police would walk around then randomly run together for no reason at all. Occasionally one or two would run at some random person just standing there then someone would start yelling.

This video is very dark but you can hear random people screaming

There were a LOT of people around, and between the closed off streets (where music was being performed) and the U-bahn there were a line of police and trucks to try and stop people from bringing their glass beer bottles out.

Someone made some fire, but it was put out

Eventually there were so many people they closed the U-bahn. They pushed people out of the underground pretty forcefully, then raided upstairs to close that and kick us out of the fenced street level area. I have a video of this happening but Flickr is being a bastard and is not letting me upload it at the moment. I've tried several times but it just won't load for now. Ugh.

In this next video you can hear everyone chanting at the police. This was from when we were still in the street level fenced part. At this point the cops were like a herd of animals. All they did was walk/run/lunge together in circles while people chanted that they were swine. Nothing was really happening other than the odd bottle blowing up. You can hear Florian talking about their use of words:

Now I have another video also not being uploaded for some reason, and you can hear a bottle thing blowing up close by. Also a good one. Grrrrr. Well I have a couple blurry photos for the end of the story...

I saw a couple people cut up from the bottles exploding, one on the hand and one on the face. One went off surprisingly close to us at one point, but not close enough to hit us at all. The noise was the biggest surprise.

Once we were on the street again, we realized that nothing more was going to happen. This was it. Everyone we were talking to were doing the same thing as us - watching people and waiting to see if something more was going to happen. We felt kind of foolish so we took the metro home.

Catchup: Wansee and Peacock Island

2010-07-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

The next day was so nice I wanted to continue being outdoors exploring. Erin and I had decided on which ticket to buy for our trip, so I went down to the nearest train station. I stepped out of the door and noticed how much nicer the street looked with leaves on the trees!

I bought our tickets, which was very exciting! I bought them at Zoologischer Garten, so once they were purchased (only 3 left! I took the last pair!) I thought "hey why not see Bellevue, where the President lives". It was supposed to be in Tiergarten, but it took a little while to find.

These are in the middle of the park

I ended up at the S-bahn again, where I then spontaneously decided to go to Wansee. I had heard that it was nice. I took the train down and looked around. I wasn't aware that I was supposed to get out at the station before Wansee to get to the Wansee beach... so there are no beach shots...

It was still alright, but not a lot to do. I had walked a little far, and I wanted to take a bus to somewhere new. I was thinking of going to a place near Potsdam, but the bus went right by me because I stepped back when it approached. Whoops! I walked back but saw another bus, but it was different.

This bus was old. I read the direction and it said "Peacock Island" in German. I had also read about this online, so I hopped on! It took me into the forest, and then I could walk onto a little ferry. They gave out maps of the island and some history (which I forget sorry!) so off I went!

There was a kitty at the ferry!

The island was aptly named

There were a few buildings on it

but a lot more nature than buildings

Upside of SLR: more versatility. Downside of SLR: Way less Zoom. Had to get right up to it.

I went over to this building and there was some sort of gathering. Everyone was dressed fancy, and there was catering. I managed to walk straight into the building :)

I was admiring the pirate boat on my way back!

Unfortunately the bus going back was not coming for almost two hours!! That was way too long to wait. I was starving, so I just started walking. It was a nice forest, but it was a long-ass road. I had a paper and pen so I wrote the name of the S-bahn station in hopes that all the rich people would be driving by with space in the car for me. Time for some in-city hitchhiking!

Or so I thought. I walked and walked, and didn't see a single car go by!! I got to a bus station FINALLY and took it to zoo! By the time I finally got home, I was dying for food! I had put a twix bar in the fridge before I left and I had forgot it... so I was really hoping nobody had ate it.

After eating said twix bar I had to help pack up my stuff since we were moving on Sunday!

Catchup: Museums and Köpenik

2010-07-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

The next day I decided it was time to go in some free museums. Every Thursday a lot of places are free entrance, so I thought it would be cool to check out some art. My first stop was a contemporary art museum (it was closest to my house and easiest to get to) so I went there...

this one had sound

this was near the restaurant... not so contemporary!

After the museum, I felt like checking out another place people had recommended. This area is called Köpenik. It used to be a separate town, like Tegel and Neuköln, but also was swallowed up into Berlin. I went across the city to check it out!

I got here just in time! I was happy to get in since it was a palace!

this was really nice!

I thought Dad would be impressed by this door...

ceiling

kinda scary

more ceiling

another impressive door

so you can see the foreground better

wooden table!

very fancy ceiling!

this is made from porcelain. I was impressed.

the dining area. The security guy in this picture actually came up to me after this picture and asked if he was in it, then started chatting with me.

fireplace

this is frightening as well..

hahahaha

They were actually closing the Palace at this time, so I left and walked in the grounds which were still open.

here is a little center area. Pretty charming.

This is the inside of that building, don't know what it was!

I got a little lost, and ended up at the water..

stupid sign kinda ruined it

After this I was tired and hungry. I walked a lot, and had to make my way back home eventually. I really can't remember what I did or how I got back at the moment, so I will think on it and leave it like this for now.

Catchup: Back in Berlin

2010-07-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

Ok so upon arrival we got busy. It was warm and beautiful out! My initial massage I was coming back for canceled due to the volcano...

But I had a couple massages, and pilates the next day. I ordered a mat on Ebay which is here now so I can practice!

One of our guests from Switzerland came back which was awesome, so he gave me tons of info on the country; Where to go, how to get around, etc. It was perfect timing too as I was literally perusing the net when he showed up! Fox also found a sleeping bag thanks to Floh...

Rene was having another BBQ in the garden on the weekend so we went to that in the meantime!

I had been to the dumpster, so my boots were finally able to be hosed off. No more icing covered boots!

nice lighting

Rene in his stylish BBQ apron hehe

I taught people how to roast marshmallows! Many had never tried, only seen it in movies

playing with hats

It was a good night!

On Monday one of our friends were having a farewell party! He was leaving back to Canada! It was sad since Clayton was cool and lived down the street :(

Here's Tau and Daan chillin

Clayton!

Manuel

One of the days I went for Korean food with my friend Michel down the street, so now I know where to get Korean around here. Can't remember which day that was.

We went to visit Jonas again at some point to think about taking his extra room down the street. We had some wine, assessed the flat, and measured things. The room is the same size as Floh's but with a balcony and more rectangular than square. After some deliberation about the shower being in the kitchen and the lack of a living room, we decided it was still better than living in the End of the World. So we said yes!

Floh was really organized and found people to live in our flat super super fast! His room was taken the first day we had people looking at it. The second room was taken by a couple with a little dog. They made Fish soup on a gaming evening, and Floh ate some which is amazing since he hates seafood.

During this time I was planning a LOT for my upcoming trip with Erin as well!!!!

I was going a bit nuts being on the computer looking up prices etc, so I also started taking breaks looking around at new parts of Berlin in the warmth once things were a little more organized :)

Therefore the day after Clayton's party I went up to an area named Tegel since it was such a nice day.

Tegel is near an airport but on a lake, and has this quaint feel to it. Pedestrian streets lined with cafe's and ice cream - definitely a summer place

little did I know, Tegel is home to Berlin's oldest tree!! They even named it! If you can't read it, it's 900.

I gave it some tree love...

Here I am in a different tree :)

After I ate some Subway up in Tegel, I met up with Otto in Neukölln.

kitty!!!

I thought this looked like a sphincter hehe

This is an abandoned airport in the city!

We ended up walking enough for it to get dark. We heard music in a park and decided to check it out...

There was a fair going on! Otto had heard it being built but it was done :) It was packed, and cheap. So cheap in fact, we decided to go on the biggest ride there!

this is the ride we went on!! So much fun!

We met up with a couple others at a bar out there afterward, then it was time for me to head home!
Berlin was proving to be a lot of fun!

Catchup: Gothemberg Day 2

2010-05-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

Well, we slept in too late to hitch out, so that settled things for us. Our host tried to book the bus tickets online, but something was looking odd so we ended up going to the station after printing the tickets at his Uni.

Sure enough, they were there but our names were not on the list, so they gave us new tickets (only 5 left!) so our host got a deal I think :) We now had two extra days in this city instead of going to Floh's hometown! Floh was bummed understandably, but we tried to make the best of things by meeting up with one of his friends that was in town.

We met up with her and a few of her friends in a cafe. They were about to leave to go walking, so we came with them :) We went to the big park nearby, and saw a bunch of animals! They had seals there:

Black swans

Of course since we were in Sweden we saw MOOSE!!!! This is taken from really far away though, I couldn't get it to come closer...

baby goats

non baby..

pony

So this picture is crap, but I liked the colours of the building. Ah well. We went to the supermarket, then came over and made dinner at Malin's beautiful flat! Daniel and one of his friends came over after, and then we all walked back to the student housing.

Malin had invited us to stay in the guest room for our last evening here, so we packed up our stuff and said goodbye to our host Daniel....

......and went to Malin's to drop our stuff off. We went shopping a bit, went in a museum

had a coffee after walking around a bit

I took this for my friend, but it's still entertaining because of the beefy Swedish guy

Soon we were tired and we had to get up at 3am so we went back to the flat and made some food, Malin and I played with camera lenses:

then we went to sleep as early as possible.

Getting up was so incredibly difficult. I was feeling almost sick walking down the street to the bus. We waited with a bunch of people there and soon we were able to sleep again once the bus was moving. It stopped in Copenhagen and we were outside waiting again for a bus from 7:30am to 8:30 am, then we were on the ferry at some point after that so there wasn't much opportunity to sleep after 7:30. I think I may have left my beloved mittens on the ferry or the bus in our daze :( I am still broken hearted!

The clouds were doing interesting things while we were on the bus, so I took some photos:

I don't know if it had to do with the volcanic ash or whatever, but they looked cool to me.

We came home to a house that looked awful, and Floh got really mad. I kind of expected there to be a huge mess and beer bottles still sitting there from the party etc, but he thought they would do something and freaked. It was time to find somewhere new to live.

Catchup: Gothemberg

2010-05-04T06:19:00.000-07:00

We found our host's house in the middle of the night. We came in and went straight to sleep, so the next day we talked a little then went out exploring.

There were so many nice stores there we ended up going shopping. Floh is sporting a Chewie backpack here

I am completely blind without my sunglasses sitting on a penguin rock

They had crushed glass in this unusable cement part near a stairway, so I tried to see if the glittering would work on camera... I thought it was a nice way to make a boring thing colourful

That church was okay, but it was hard to impress me after that one in Copenhagen with the organ

I went in and peed in this boat, so I got to look through a porthole!

strange building

opera

Fox developing his Traveler's skill

its odd this area looked so much nicer in person than it's looking on camera...

we met up with our host Daniel in this area of town, and we walked to his University and got a tour. It was unbelievable! They had everything from a swimming pool to a gym etc. It was super swanky. Next we dropped by a supermarket and we made some food. Our flight to Floh's hometown was cancelled due to the volcano, so we had to research ways to get out of Sweden! I was in no mood to hitchhike after last time, so we were frantically looking up buses and trains and rideshares all evening. All of Europe was in chaos, so there were people stranded all over the place also looking for ways to get back. The only thing affordable was looking like a Monday bus at 3am to Berlin. It was 50 euro for a 12 hour trip.

This was a tough call, so we slept on it.

Catchup: Copenhagen day 3

2010-05-04T05:54:00.000-07:00

So today was the day we were finally going to see Christiania. We walked to the city center, and noticed something new every time!

got a close up of that cool tower finally

nice looking patio. I love that here they have blankets folded on the chairs everywhere, so you sit outside with a blanket around you to help keep warm! Such a smart idea!

This church also had a very cool tower thing

we actually went up the tower!

long way down

I went to the very top of course

Floh then did as well

squinting even with the glasses. ugh

Saw this only on the way down for some reason. I think there were too many people going up at the same time as us to stop and look.

By the time we came down, the church part was open and I saw the most amazing organ ever! EVER!

The fact that it was wood made it even more impressive.

that's the tower we went up

next was Christiania! We were not allowed to take photos there, especially not around "pusher st" so I didn't even put my camera close to my had in case someone tried to take it away. We talked to some old guys at a picnic table while Floh ate a burger and they said it was fine to take photos around the water, just nowhere where there might be dealers. I wanted to be safe so I don't have many pictures.
It was cool looking at all the murals, art, people, random people selling hash on the side of the street in a kiosk. The place was so vibrant and so pleasant, it was a real shame I wasn't taking photos. Ah well. We walked around all the self-built houses on the water which were also cool. It was a peaceful walk since there were no cars allowed there.

we met up with a Polish girl from CS there, so we had a drink (I didn't cause of my bladder) and walked around some more. We ended up going towards our house and having a beer nearby! It was expensive, so it literally was one beer haha.

Floh and I had a nice row on the way to the house, and I tried to eat an enormous burger. The next morning we were leaving to try and hitchhike to Gothemberg, so we got up early and said bye to our wonderful host!

We were hungry and I still had to get a patch and postcard, but on the way down we passed a Greenpeace thing about banning GMO potatoes (which I wholeheartedly agree on doing!) and they gave us free organic potato soup in recycled paper cups and wooden spoons in exchange for our signatures. It's amazing - in Denmark if enough people sign a petition the issue must be taken to discussion in government! Pretty cool!

So with that lightening spirits, we got postcards from the post office, wrote one each and then went to get stamps. Then the next awesome thing happened - they thought we already had the postcards so they only charged us for stamps! Yay free postcards! So this was turning out good! We almost got caught hopping on the metro, but didn't, made it to our hitchhike spot and got picked up by a truck pretty fast.

So we were in Malmo, Sweden. Things were going well, so we sat down and ate our lunch on the grass near the road.

Now here it got interesting. No one would even look at us. 90% of people were TALKING ON THEIR CELL PHONES! I have never seen anything like that before in my life! We were thinking maybe the cars are going too fast to stop for us, so we tried moving down the road to a petrol station. From the looks of the very few people there it reminded me of Langley people and that made me very discouraged. No one was going to pick us up here anytime soon.

We tried a few locations, but after 4 hours we were worried it would get dark and we would have no where to stay even in Malmo and no bus or anything to get us there. So we started walking. It was a grueling walk into the city after standing around for ages on the side of the road. I was in a very foul mood, and disappointed at humanity. We made it into the city though and I was pleasantly surprised!

Malmo was gorgeous!

Floh's face was burnt from the sun! I was wearing a hat

There was this square full of nice lighting and outdoor restaurants. There were heaters absolutely everywhere so that sitting outside felt like sitting inside! It was so cozy and so pretty I didn't want to leave the place haha. The places in the square were too expensive, and we had seen a good deal on a dinner at a still-nice place, so we splurged and had a steak dinner outside just outside the square. It was amazing to have real food again after eating super cheap in Copenhagen (sometimes I would only have digestive biscuits for the whole afternoon). There was a bus going to Gothemberg for pretty cheap that night, so after dinner we walked up to the bus station and went to buy a ticket.

Unfortunately, they were SOLD OUT! It was a 10 o clock bus that would get us into town in the middle of the night, but there was that volcano and I guess people were booking buses left and right. The people said if enough people don't show up then we can buy tickets, but we have to wait, and there were two people on standby ahead of us. Oh man.

The volcano evened things out though, since so many people didn't even make it to the bus there was enough room for all of us. We got on with a big sigh and we were off to Gothemberg!

Copenhagen Day 2!

2010-05-04T05:04:00.000-07:00

ok so the second day we started by getting some free bikes:

I like how people paint on their houses!

We went into this church thing

it was pretty fancy

We then went to a palace thing, I am squinting in this one

We had our bikes taken which sucked (although we never should have strayed so far away from them) so we were back to walking...

We went looking for the little mermaid statue, but we found this genetically modified one!

weird statues

very busty mermaid...

matching sailboats

The little mermaid had been taken to Shanghai for the 2010 Expo!! Floh was not too pleased and made a face

we walked back to this church thing

I look all sulky here too but again it's the brightness

yay 1/4000 shutter speed! A nice thing to play with in the brightness!

reflections

opera

I liked the trippy post beside Floh

har har har silly hats!

we went inside this one, which you will see

this one was closed

inside

back in the city

Jewish Museum

crazy library!

view from the deck

old reference things!

we weren't allowed in here unless we were studying so these were taken through the window

modern part

I felt like I was getting bladder irritation, so we got some liquid and headed back to the house to chill with our host! The next day I wanted to see Christiania :)

Copenhagen

2010-05-04T04:34:00.000-07:00

We were up early for the bus, so there was nice lighting for photos while we waited:

Fox was our travel companion on this trip, although Bimbo's T-shirt was also with us

Fox on the ferry to Denmark!

We arrived in Copenhagen!! Found our host, put our stuff down, and went walking. The tourist office was on the way to the house, so we already had maps and info so we were on our way!

Canadian Embassy!

As you can see we walked a looooot on our first day! Most of it was wandering, but it's a beautiful city! We came back and ate, beer is very expensive there so we weren't interested in going out on our first night...

Catchup: Parties in Berlin

2010-05-04T03:45:00.000-07:00

The day after Potsdam was the start of a triple birthday weekend. Floh's, Alex's, and Vicky's birthdays all fell around each other so it was one big party at the End of the World. The Friday night was Open Mic night #2! I was not performing this time since I had been busy and didn't want to repeat performances, so I became a spectator. There was a violinist, a tango dancer (they ended up performing together with him dancing with her WITH the violin at the same time!) German bagpipes (poor neighbors), poetry, etc. Pascal had bought Floh a little gift, and ended up getting me a little phone dangle-thing - it was a fox!

it was so nice of him! It was his last night here so we were sad to see him go. The party lasted a while, but it was not too insane so that was good. I stayed up surprisingly late!

The next day was the birthday party with no theme. It was just going to be a big house party. They had a dj area set up, all the middle floor cleared, a chill room, a chatting room, and the dance floor. I took a few picturessss

Floh looking homeless haha

Andrej looking not homeless

Floh guessing what his gift was...

Alex and Andrej tried to make a bust in Hackfleisch

It looked more scary than anything...

we put him in the oven

BUT the neighbors couldn't handle the thought of another night without sleep (especially after the bagpipes) so they called the cops on us.

everyone was kicked out of the house, so the party moved to the adjacent lake. It was too cold there for me, so I lasted like ten minutes and walked home to go to bed.

I woke up the next day to see the chaos. It was my week to clean the kitchen, and Floh and I were leaving early Monday morning so we had to get all the cleaning done that day. We ate breakfast with the Dutch people that hitched all the way from Netherlands to come to the party, then started cleaning. I spent at least 5 hours in that kitchen, but in the end it looked like how I wanted.

We had a lot of beer bottles left over:

The rest of the day had to be spent packing! Copenhagen tomorrow!!!

Even more catchup: Potsdam

2010-05-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

So Pascal and I took the S-bahn down to Postdam to have a walk through the park grounds. There were all sorts of beautiful tings there! I took over 100 pictures, and Pascal took some of me that I'll try to put in here, but this will be a big post to load just to warn you! I'm not putting allllllll of my pics on here, so you can view them all here

we went to the station together to be filmed by Otto our friend for a potential ad..

we were trying to imitate the statue, which you will see after:

hidden place:

I loved this tree!!

very pleased Pascal liked taking photos as much as I :)

I convinced Pascal to do this for me...

this place was already so pretty, I can only imagine what it's like when the leaves are all in bloom on the trees...

thought this was an odd bird:

don't worry the statue liked it

this is normally much greener looking, I will have to come back in later summer and look:

the schloss!

in a gate thing

okay, so the photos with black outlines are mine, the others are Pascals downloaded from Facebook. We had a walk around the city after as well, and there are yes even more photos from that... as if there couldn't be any more...

dutch quarter

so those are the photos from Potsdam! We took the train back to the city and met up with Floh for dinner. We had Indian, so I was veryyyy happy :) on the way back we played with Pascal's tripod a little, and managed to take some night shots:

this was not on purpose. The bus went in front of my shot and stayed there!

now that seriously was the last of them :p

alright, I will try to keep them coming since I will be taking a lot more very soon and I have a lot to catch up on!!!

The Saga Continues

2010-04-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

So I left off where I had stopped writing in my dayplanner. I have become horrible at writing things down again arg! Time for research I suppose! I can't remember much from Easter Monday, but I had a massage on Tuesday and then I went to someone's house to use their sewing machine. It was quite nice talking to the couple, and I got a lot done. I ended up sewing for hours though, so I didn't get home until 11 or something. I had pilates the next day, so I went to that and had a walk in the sun afterwards. It was so nice out, and I had brought my camera.

there were bears out! I took loads of photos since they are so cute!

I thought this looked odd with the house shape

I went back quite pleased, plus I was going to Potsdam the next day with Pascal, so I was looking forward to that!