Alone in Brussels

They say the early bird gets the worm but all I got was a flight. This was another tiring day as it involved a ton of walking on 4 hours sleep. The Grand Place seemed like the obvious first stop which was honestly a bit meh. Sure it was good architecture and all that but it's all just starting to mould in to the one memory now. Next stop was lunch to form some kind of a game plan, at which point I decided the the Maneken Pis should be next. The statue is quite hilarious. It's a little kid taking leak (and it's a fountain). It's also smaller than you'd expect (that's what she said), but still definitely worth seeing.

I then followed the map to La Chappelle, Place du Grand Sablon and the Palais Royal. Opposite the palance is the Brussels Park which I walked through to Federal Parliament. Soon enough I was back in the city centre where I had my first Belgian waffle and oh my goodness it was that good. It's self service as well...or at least I think it was...none of the others seemed to be but the guy didn't stop me.

By Emma's recommendation I caught the metro to the Cantillon Brwery. It's a very grassroots, family owned brwery who brew gueuze and fruit beers or something. It tasted really good...but not like beer at all. I then came back and had a nap before going and cooking tea. It had been so long since I had actually been full

April 14 - The day I went to another country for the day: The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

But first we made a stop in a small town called Dinant. We shelled out an extra €7 to go up to this fortress and have a tour. It was a bit odd because the tour was given in both French and English. The guide didn't speak English too well but that's ok, until I can speak French fluently I can't complain. On the tour we saw... well I don't know, it wasn't that interesting. There were some old guns then this room that was on a 20 degree slant. So trippy. Apparently Adolphe Sax the inventor of the saxophone was from Dinant, and they claim it for all it is worth!

We got back on the bus and in another hour we arrived in Luxembourg City. The country itself only has about 400,000 people you can imagine the city will also be small... it was tiny. Katherine and Sandra (the girls I met) walked around for a bit while the older people had a 'cheap' meal. I bought some headphones as a souvenir as mine were breaking and our guide gave us a small tour. After that we had an hour of free time and after 20 minutes...we were done. Our guide found us sitting down and showed us a park/valley where I took some nice macro photos and then it was time to go home.

Luxembourg is really not worth going to except to tick off another country from 'the list'. However, it did make a good day trip and I made some new friends. The girls are both from California and are on exchange in Sussex. At night I invited them out for a drink and kind of accidentally took them to a football bar. I was drawn there with €1 drinks and luckily there was a DJ upstairs. I would have felt heaps bad just sitting there with the football on.

April 15

So, plan for the day: hire a bike and ride the suggested walking routes on my map. A very good plan if the machine accepted my card. So instead I caught the metro to the beginning of the European section tour. In hindsight it may have been difficult riding through an unfamiliar city full of cars but I'm sure I could have made it work.

It began underneath a glass skyscraper in a very poor section of the city. I walked through some markets and soon enough was in "the heart of Europe:" a roundabout, around which all the important EU buildings are. I walked through Parc du Cinquantenaire to another Arc du Triomphe lookalike and on to the European Union Parliament, which is a very impressive building. I tell you what too, it's so refreshing to see some modern looking buildings. The last three months has just been historical building after historical building, not that that's a bad thing though.

Next stop was the comic book museum...wait no, not yet, it's closed for lunch for another 20 minutes. Once in there I learnt that entry was €6, a bit steep I thought. After messaging Emma to see if it's worth it, and she said no I decided to do a Peter Durbin and sneak in for free. The lady at the desk was too busy collecting money from other suckers to notice one poor tourist sneaking past. About an hour in there more than wrapped it up and it was definitely not worth €6!

I then caught the train over to Brupark to see the Atomium, a model of an atom enlarged to 58 billion times its size. Unfortunately the security was much tighter here and I couldn't sneak in to anything. Of course by this stage I was stuffed and came back to the hostel and chilled out for a bit. Walked up the road for a quick feed and back to write this entry. During this time a Californian guy called Josh Choi came and introduced himself to me. He's traveling on his own is also stranded by the volcano.

April 16

The single most stressful and frustrating day of this trip. By now the only thing on the news and on Facebook is talk of the Icelandic volcano eruption yesterday that has sent a cloud of volcanic ash above the UK. I got a message from Scott the night before saying his flight had been cancelled and won't make the football match we had tickets to. At this stage my flight was still scheduled so I went off to Bruges hopeful that I could still get to the game and at least scalp their tickets or something.

Bruges is very picturesque. Every street is cobblestone and is lined with medieval houses. It's kind of one of those places that is famous and very touristy, but there's nothing to actually do there. I thought it was a bit boring but I think that's just because I on my own. I had a really map with the things to do on it. It took me to a museum or 2... one was pretty meh, but it only cost €1 so was a good time filler.

I got back around 5 and this is where it gets interesting. checked my flight status: cancelled. Crap, what do I do now? I was due to fly out in the morning. I'm madly asking anyone on Facebook what they about Eurotrains. I learnt that Eurostar had jacked up the price to £223, they're not silly.

I decided to walk up to the train station with Josh and see what I could learn there. Yeah...Eurostar trains to London sold out until the 18th. I then checked coaches, no dice. We got a kebab and walked through the red light district. After a stressful night I needed some fun. So Josh and I headed to Celtica bar and got lost. I maintain that if he just let me lead it would have been fine but I digress. We got there, got a cheap drink and sat down with these 2 guys who literally spoke as much English as I did French. It was awesome because I got to use all the basic French you use when meeting people. They were hilarious and almost sold Josh some pot. He wanted hash though...whatever. We moved to an ared called Delirium, it was very, very cool. It's this area of 6 bars, each specialising in a different drink and each were packed. We went to a beer one (with a selection of 20 odd), then a cocktail one, then absinthe bar. We also met this really hot Italian girl who Josh was shamelessly hitting on. She got our Facebooks but we'll never see her again.

I really wanted to get out of Brussels because there's nothing more to do there so I jumped on to trusy Hostelworld and booked a hostel in Amsterdam. In amongst all the chaos I also ran out of credit on my UK phone. When I tried to top up I realised I had no money in my UK bank account and Vodaphone only accept UK cards. So it was all happening.

German Adventure

8 April

"The Führer would be very disappointed" - Evan

Our first day in Munich began with the new Munich free walking tour, this tour was probably my favourite one I've done. For such a young country it has a lot history. It started in Marienplatz where we watched the Glockenspiel, a 15 minute "show" of figurines moving around the clock. The best part about it was listening to our guides slag it and telling us to watch the tourists hold their cameras waiting for something exciting as it's just bells for the first 6 minutes or so. We didn't even stay for the finale. Also In this square was the new and old city halls. Ironically, the old city hall was actually rebuilt more recently than the new city hall. Michael then took us to Frauhenkirche and told us the story if the devils footprint, however it ended anticlimactically as the footprint was just that of the architect.

The funniest thing I learnt on the tour was that during Oktoberfest, the Australian embassy moves from Berlin and rents out a small part of the British embassy in Munich for the 2 weeks. This is because in Germany the law says you need to carry ID with you all the time and so many Australians lose theirs (maybe due to slight inebriation) and you would need it to get to the embassy in Berlin. Aussie Aussie Aussie!

After the free tour the four of us walked to the English beer garden which was absolutely gorgeous. It's this massive park and in the centre is for some reason a Chinese tower and a beer garden. It was such a nice a warm day and I felt just like a local with my beer and white sausage. On the way back we stopped and had a lay in the park with he hundreds of others.
That night we embarked on the new Europe Beer Challenge. It was the first new europe pub crawl that I have actually thought was worth it. The Edinburgh one was pretty good, we got a fair amount of drinks included in that one. But this one was actually a tour as well. We went to four bars, one of which was the only beer and Oktoberfest museum in the world. Michael recommended good beers for us to try and told us a bit about it.
The tour started at the Munich main train station near our hostel, and our first beer was a roadie. It was so good catching the train and walking through the street with a beer in hand...legally. The next bar we had a wheat beer which was vey different but quite nice - I think it was a Paulaner. I've since decided wheat beer is the best. Then it was the museum, another one, then a quick walk through the hofbrauhaus before our last bar: the Euro Youth hotel bar. At the end of the night we were all awarded Beer Challange survivors membership cards, and Chris won the Beer Challenge or something by speaking in the most convincing Irish accent - since Michael was Irish. I met this novocastrian girl as well on the tour, the first one I'd met while being overseas, or at least the first I've really spoken to. She was from Eleebana so of course she knew all the landmarks round Belmont and that. She even knows where the Squids Ink was which I think was the most exciting thing.

9 April
Today was the day ventured into the Bavarian countryside and found a small dwelling commonly referred to as Neuschwanstein Castle. It is the castle that the Disney castle is modeled off in the Bavarian alps. The best bit about it for me was the fact there are these 2 castles on top of these hills out in the mountains. The insides of them, while impressive, was similar to all the other castles I've seen. Like Versailles. It's all very ridiculously intricately decorated and over the top. If it were me I totally would decorate it less because I reckon it would be really annoying to have every wall in my house so busy. You'd never sleep because there would be so much action happening on every wall and floor!

So inside the castle, for whatever reason, they don't allow photography. Not just flash photography but all photography. But there's an easy way around this...you just wait til the guide has left the room before taking your snaps. Easy. Or so you would think. I was just going about my business happily taking photos, I let my guard down and put the flash on because I couldn't get the shot. Some knob in our group (not an employee) pipes up and goes "oi, no photos" then gave me some speech about it ruins things or some crap. I totally disregarded it but at the same time made sure he had also left the room until I took some more. Right at the end he catches me taking one and yells out "OI!" but it was too late, I'd taken it and didn't care. What a douche.

That night we stayed at Regina's who is a friend of Yazmin's. Funny story - yes, another Yazmin gem. So Yazmin was traveling with Emily, they were meant to keep traveling and end up in France or something because they got mad cheap flights from there. But Yazmin got sick and wanted to hang around or go back to Leeds or something. Either way they split up in Munich and Emily decided to join us to Berlin, she found her own way there and we had a ridiculously early flight to catch. Instead of staying at the airport Regina (Yazmin's friend) invited us 3 to stay at her place...but Regina wasn't there with us. So effectively we stayed at a friend of a friends place, who didn't stay with us. She let 3 people stay at her place whom she had met the day before.

April 10 - what is it with Europeans and gigantic arse pillows
So Chris and I got up ridiculously early at Regina's, we set the alarm for 3:45 in the AM, which I think wasn't even early enough, that or we had the train timetable wrong because one didn't come in time so we caught a €50 taxi to the airport, because you know...that's just the kind of money we have to splash around. On the plane I fell asleep before takeoff. We met up with Stephen again at the hostel and met his friend Kevin and a whole bunch of other people in the hostel. This hostel is very different from all the others I've stayed at. It's very small and has a very personal feel. It's privately run by Arthur and is has a random theme of Hawaiian.

After settling in and a couple of coffees we set off to the Brandenburg gate, going via the Jewish new synagogue. From the gate we took the new Berlin 'Third Reich' tour, which was absolutely incredible. It was all about Germany during Hitler's reign from 1933-1945. It took us past us past the Reichstag (German Parliament) and plenty of WWII memories, including the Jewish Holocaust memorial which is a large square with thousands of stone blocks protruding the ground. It's purposefully ambiguous to leave it open to interpretation.

The tour then went past the site of the Führer's bunker where Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide. It's now just an insignificant car park. Also on the tour was the Luftwaffe HQ, the only Nazi building not to be bombed in the bombing of Berlin and ended at a section of the Berlin wall.

After the tour ended we hit up Checkpoint Charlie, the checkpoint controlled by the US. This was probably the best tour I did in Berlin...maybe. It was so fascinating learning about Berlin and Hitler during the Nazi regime, so much so I spent a few hours that night reading Wikipedia articles on this and other related articles.

April 11

Today was the day for the free tour. Unfortunately it covered many of the same things as the Third Reich tour, but it did go into different details. It went to the Holocaust memorial, the carpark, Checkpoint Charlie, Book Burning memorial, Luftwaffe HQ and more. It culminated on the steps of the Berliner Dome with an epic tale about the day the wall came down.

We then met back up with Emily, Stephen and Kevin who were at museums and went into the Dome, which was of course incredible. We took a bit of a detoured walk back via the Rathaus (town hall) and the TV tower at Alexanderplatz. That night we chilled out in the room again and went to a wine bar where you only pay as much as you feel necessary. We hung out with a guy from the hostel called Arlan. He was a very interesting character who makes his own sidetrance "music" and believes UFO's are people the future trying to help us.

April 12

Our last day in Berlin began at the East Side Gallery: the longest section of the wall still preserved (1.3km) which has been painted. I took so many photos of them as they were all pretty amazing. This led into our third New Berlin Tour, the Red Berlin tour. This took us through what it was like living in Communist East Germany (DPR) between 1945 and 1989. We had this incredible guide from Bulgaria who escaped to the States 30 years ago. He told us stories of paranoia and of the Stasi spying on people and CIA spying on the Stasi. Chris and I went to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, which I think has been bombed and not been rebuilt. Next to it was a Jewish synagogue. It's built as a square and inside the light shines through all these blue tiles. I loved it because it was something new and different.

By this time we were stuffed and headed back. Found a random Vietnamese restaurant with some people from the hostel and tried to have an early night but as usual failed miserably.

So that wraps up Germany off to Brussels now all on my lonesome. Chris is heading to Stockholm and Emily stayed on in Berlin because she's loving it. She ended up staying there for about 12 days because of our good friend the Icelandic volcano.

First Leg - French Alps

So....I’m a bit behind maybe. We pick up the first day of mid semester break...

March 20 - The trip kicked off in Liverpool, but this was just because that's where our flight to Grenoble was from. It was, in my opinion, not real interesting. This may have been because I was with 3 other massive Beatles fans and all we did was see the Beatles stuff around town: Penney Lane, John Lennon's house, Strawberry Field. Joining me on this leg was my ever trusty sidekick and partner in crime Chris, Katie and Yazmin.

March 21 - We woke up in Grenoble, it's this small town about an hour and a half from the ski slopes. We looked around the town in the morning but by this stage I was just so keen to hit the slopes. We settled in to the hotel at Les Deux Alpes and at about 6 we decided we had stuffed around long enough today and was time to go collect our skis...hopefully they don't close. The place we were looking for was called sports 2000, and it was near our hotel, or so we thought. We went in and he said it was the other end of town near stop no 1 or something, we weren't sure. So we walked up the street and found another Sports 2000, not it either. Turned out we needed the one up the hill a loooong way from where we were staying and needed to catch the free shuttle up. We eventually found it at 6:30 and had all our stuff by 7 ready to catch the shuttle back to our door, or so we thought. We waited 25 minutes for a bus that comes every 20 minutes when we met a bunch of German guys who said we can ski back from just over there. At this, Chris' and my eyes just lit up.

We had our boots on in 2 minutes and convinced the girls that we would give them pointers on technique on the way down. Having had a little experience on a snowboard and waterskis, Katie nailed it, Yazmin on the other hand, seeing as though this was her first time on skis, I think she died a little inside. Meanwhile, Chris and I having the time of our lives. I was so pumped to actually be skiing, I didn't care that it was pretty dark, it had been 2 years since the last time and I knew this was going to be a good week.

March 22 - Chris and I got up early as we intended to be on the first gondola ride. We failed, but I think no 3 wasn't too bad. Our hotel is on the far south of the village which meant we needed to go up and cut across the "front valley" to get over to the good skiing. However this proved more difficult that it first seemed. On my first run in over 2 years I managed to find some very deep, icy powder, impossible to turn in. I think I stacked it about 4 times, none of which were good. We eventually found our way down and went up to ‘Toura’, the hub or ‘mid station’ over the back of the mountain. From there we found some pretty damn awesome runs, by the end of the day though visibility became very poor. Near the top I could barely see 5 metres in front of me.

At the end of the day we went to make our way down but were stopped and were made to catch the gondola down as a small avalanche had blocked the path. When we got back at about 6 we caught up with Katie and Yazmin about their day. We had convinced Yazmin – who had never skied before – to have a lesson, but since she slept in til 10:30 she had missed all the group ones and had to fork out €70 for a private. At night Chris and I added to the pasta of last night and improved it significantly. A few games of Dutch Blitz later and it was bed time.

March 23 – Tuesday started at a similar hour except this time Katie bought a Ski-Sympra pass and joined Chris and I on Pied Moutet, the hill on the other side of the village. Katie is a deadset trooper. By her second day skiing she was parallel turning, the snow plough had long been left in the dust and was keeping up really well.

We went back to the hotel for lunch then Chris and I headed back up to Glacier 3200m. (Sidebar: the Les Deux Alpes village is at 1650m, Pic de la Grave is at 3669m. The temp at the bottom was at least 2 degrees and top was -4...on a sunny day in March.

That afternoon Chris’ binding decided not to tighten properly and he caught the gondola down (again) while I had an hour of skiing to myself which I loved. I discovered the boarder cross and terrain parks which was so much bigger than the ones at Perisher. Then I followed ‘Le Diable’ gondola down to the hotel and rediscovered the icy slush from Monday. At night we went for a walk to find one of the many, many creperies. They were amazing.

March 24 – Wednesday really was where I hit my...slide. My confidence on skis was through the roof. On Monday I followed Chris down every run but today he could barely keep up. But I didn’t mind, it gave me a chance to rest while I waited. We found some truly brilliant runs, my favourite was from the top of Puy-Sailie T-bar, down Dome to the bottom of Le Signal 2. It was so wide, had great snow coverage and was the perfect incline to keep a decent speed while still incorporating good turns. Absolutely amazing.

So I skied down to the ski hire place and the girls met us there with our shoes. On the way back we stopped and bought for dinner tartiflette (just like very creamy, very cheesy potato bake), Raclette (French deli meats with boiled potatoes with melted cheese) and something suacisson (sausages with onion and potatoes in a red wine sauce). All were delicious. Afterward we played more blitz which I won, packed and went to bed.

From the time I landed in France I started to realise every French stereotype is true. From the men wearing turtle necks to their love of food, particularly bread. And for good reason. There was this boulangerie (bakery) just near the hotel and I think I went there every day. I felt very awesome using my limited French to buy something, then walked around eating a baguette.

I think my favourite part of the French experience though was my feeble attempt to speak the language. The course I took last year when I thought I might move to Paris before Leeds was even on the cards helped quite a bit. I had mum post over the notes I got from it and studied up on the way over. Even though most people over there speak (at least) some English it was still a huge novelty to speak differently and have them understand me and reply in French.

The French Alpes was an amazing experience. I would love to come back but I know the rules. Anyway, next stop London. Can’t wait to meet up with Emma today and Amber and Mitch on Saturday. Chris is meeting up with his parents there but I’m sure all five of our paths will cross, but until the next entry...au revoir!

A Change of scenery: Leeds

Dear diary,

This will be my last entry for quite some time as very soon I will be jetting off to awesome all over Europe. I feel like I haven't been anywhere in about 2 weeks. This is largely because I haven't. Despite this, this last week or so in Leeds has been very eventful. Wednesday the 10th Yazmin, Katie, Sarah and Emily had Mitch, Chris and I over and we made our own pizza's. Mitch even made our dough, however this failed pretty hard. It was a good effort but let's be honest, it needed to rise some more or at least be left in the oven a bit longer, neither of which we did. Still tasted awesome though and would definitely do it again. We had a million toppings to put on and was good to hang out with the girls as I hadn’t really had much of a chance to up until this point.

Thursday the 11^th. Man what a day. I have no idea what happened during daylight....actually pretty sure I missed a lecture for some reason. Something to do with a confusing timetable, but at night Julia and I set off for Manchester to see Karnivool. For those that didn’t know Karnivool are one of my favourite bands at the moment and are from (Perth) Australia, which made it even better that I could see them over here. They played for about 100 people in this tiny venue called the Roadhouse but that didn’t matter, we as the crowd loved them and cheered them and in return they played an awesome show for us. This wasn’t all though, since it was such a small show, they came out afterwards and said hi and hung out with us fans. I felt like such a fanboy but I didn’t care. I got all the autographs and a few photos, but more importantly got to speak to them. They are great guys and it was so good to be able to talk them about touring and stuff like that. Below is a photo of me with lead singer Ian Kenny.

As you can imagine I slept in pretty late on Friday considering I got home about 3am. I also misread my timetable and thought my class was at 1 when in fact it was at 12, which meant i missed it...again. Friday night we all went to Anastasia’ place for drinks and then go in to Fruity – the night club event that is on every Friday night at the Union. I was still pretty tired and still recovering from a cold so I decided I would just go to Ana’s and go home. Well, Emma had different ideas didn’t she? She pretty much coerced me into agreeing to come, against my better judgement. The only downside was that we didn’t pre purchase our tickets. So Josh and I waited in the massive line for about 15 mins and it didn’t move. We left. So at the end of the night I didn’t get an good night’s sleep, nor did i get to Fruity, both things I wanted to do.

Saturday night Amber and I decided it was time we found a new pub. We always go to the Eldon and we needed to explore the city a bit more. Everyone came to my place first and about 9 we headed out and went to The Hyde Park. Not the direction we first planned to as we wanted to go to Headingley, but since that’s the opposite direction to where everyone lived and no one was that keen for a real late night we found one a bit closer. We had actually been there before but was still a good change of scenery.

Sunday Chris, Anastasia, Julia and I went hiking in the Yorkshire Dales. Chris found this place called Bolton Abbey. It was a 13 kilometre hike and the destination was a place at the top of a hill called Simon’s Seat, pretty much a big load of rocks overlooking the countryside. It was really quite beautiful. The trail starts near the ruins of an old church, or at least half of it is in ruins, the other half had been restored and they actually have services inside. The path took us past a small waterfall where we stopped and took some photos. I got my photographer on and busted out the tripod and got some pretty sweet flowing water shots, not to mention it helped with the group shot. Right near the waterfall, on the path leading to it we saw so many frogs, and all I will say is we could definitely tell it was mating season. It was actually quite funny, the path was on the side of a little hill and they would jump together and tumble down the side of the hill. We trudged on and eventually came to the top of the mountain and the view was incredible. You could see a cute little village over the side with lots of farms, and the stone walls that form the perimeter of the yards made for a very picturesque view. We ate lunch at the top and cracked champagne to celebrate our success...I imagine that’s what Sir Edmund Hilary did all those years ago. The walk down was much easier, however not as much as you would think, walking down steep inclines gives your legs a really good workout. We caught the bus, then the train back to Leeds and since we hadn’t walked far enough i walked the half an hour trip back home.

Tuesday night was a night of genius. We had really wanted to play Risk for quite some time now, but we didn’t have a board, nor did we feel like paying for one as we are all poor students. What we did have though, was a massive map of England. Mitch went to the effort of drawing outlines around all the counties (territories), and then made continents out of those. Greater London and Isle of Man were their own continents. Playing this game was myself, Julia, Team Ana/Amber, Kayt, Chris, Mitch and Derrick. We played with M&M’s for armies, regular ones worth 1, peanut ones worth 5. With 7 people and a huge arse map, the game did go on for a very long time. Chris will argue that he won, but I say Risk was the real winner in the end.

March 17 – St Patrick’s Day. For me, St Patrick’s Day was quite dull. However, St Patrick’s Night was one to be remembered. After uni I walked down to Primark – student’s heaven – and purchased myself a white t-shirt and some permanent markers. I then proceeded to make my own t-shirt using a four leaf clover stencil I printed out. The night began at Amber’s in Henry Price where we played Kings – an increasingly regular occurrence at our events. It took about 20 minutes for the rest of my costume to be stolen. This picture is only one of my costume in it's completion. My green sunnies were being passed around and Kayt took my green scarf. It was fun though, I don’t mind sharing my awesomeness. The party then moved on the Faversham, or so we wanted. Upon leaving HP we already lost Josh and Mitch’s 2 British friends. We decided not to go in to the Fav because there was a massive line – a memo that Amber and Julia didn’t receive, thus decreasing the size of the group. The rest of us moved on to Old Bar in the Union. At some point at the Old Bar we lost Evan, he just disappeared. He said he doesn’t even know where he went, he just remembers being at the bar and then waking up at St Marks. We got kicked out at 1am for closing and by this stage all that was left were Myself, Mitch, Chris, Yazmin, Emily, Katie and Kayt. We took the party back to the girls’ place, lost Chris on the way, chatted for a bit there then went home about 2:30: a great night was had by all.

It’s now Thursday night, nothing exciting happened today and nothing is exciting is expected to happen tomorrow. My Micro lecture is cancelled so I will probably spend the day getting ready for Spring break, leaving on Saturday. A month of travelling.

Ramblings of a Traveller

I apologize for this entry in advance. It is all over the shop and follows no sensible order whatsoever.

To most of us here, Leeds is increasingly becoming more of a base than a home. Essentially what this means is the more we travel abroad, the less we do thing in Leeds.

The last few weeks have just flewn by and it seems like I am always on the go. My last few weeks have looked something like this: leave for somewhere on the friday afternoon, return monday. Monday nights: recover from the weekend's adventures.

Tuesday nights: generally at the Eldon, though we've been getting a bit over this recently. Three weeks ago Chris had a pot-luck dinner at his in St Marks, and since we are all students with limited wallets and cooking abilities we all brought a pasta..they all tasted awesome though. Two weeks ago (23 Feb) Ana organised a beer pong tournament at her place in Henry Price which then led to the Eldon.

Wednesday's are my day off so every time one rolls around I say that I'm going to get a lot of work done. This sometimes happens, but the word 'lots' would be used by few. The last few I'd say have been filled with lots of research. Now I'm sure that sounds productive, and it is, but not in a studious sense. Most of it is finding the cheapest flights and hostels around Europe - mainly for spring break - then discussing and booking them. Seriously, if I spent as much time on my schoolwork as I did looking at what I want to do around Europe I would be getting a HD in every subject. Sadly this is not a reality, but happily, it is :). And as of last night all my flights for spring break have been booked. I start off in the French Alps (Chris, Yazmin, Katie) - London (Emma) - Paris (Evan) - Vienna via Bratislava (Evan, Chris, Emma, Anastasia, Kayt) - Munich (same crew) - Berlin (Chris and maybe Stephen from Edinburgh) - Brussels (just me). Very excited.

Last wednesday we had a game of football in the park, there were 2 basketball courts and 2 other groups had taken a half of each of the courts so we played a game across the corner of one, was interesting but it worked. Then we played against another group of 5 and got our arses kicked, had a massive amount of fun though, I just loved getting out and having a kickaround.

When we got here Mitch and I wanted to find a church to go to regularly. There was this church about a 5 minute walk from North Hill but when we went one sunday but we were the only students there and the message for that week just so happened to be a presentation from a local charity that went for about an hour and half. The next week Emma took us to St George's which I absolutely loved. So many students, the message was challenging and everything just seemed to be done well. Met a couple of girls there who invited us to the student tea after the service and to small group on Thursday nights. Unfortunately (but fortunately) I haven't been home on a Sunday night in about 3 weeks but I've been going to the small group and really enjoying it.

Which brings us back to Friday. This Friday just gone we went to Dublin (stay tuned), some went on Thursday night but a few of us went Friday night as we had a class. On Thursday I learnt that my class was cancelled, great.

Tonight (Mar 9) I played a game of futsal, first actual competitive match. It's a comp within the uni and I played for the international team. The winners of this comp go into the inter-uni finals (I think). Again, was so good to have a run around - apart from walking everywhere I do zero exercise - and on top of this we got a win. I lost count but I think it was about 8-5. I netted a hattrick.

Over the past couple of weeks I've noticed that I am using my bedroom sink and fridge more than the kitchen. There's not really that much that I need to keep in the fridge, all my drinks are up here, my lunch stuff is up here, all that is downstairs is anything I need for dinner preparation, most of which is frozen or in the cupboard. I then do all my eating up here.

So congratulations if you got all the way through that.

Praha 26 Feb - 1 March 2010

So for those just joining us, last weekend was Edinburgh. Spent 4 nights back in Leeds before we jetted off to the Czech Republic. Joining me was Chris, Evan, Amber, Anastasia, Jenna and Chris’ friend from Germany, Richard.

Day 1

The excitement began at Leeds airport going through security. Chris got stopped and couldn’t understand why. After a thorough search of his bag he found 2 cans of beer that he forgot to take out the night before.

Once in Prague, getting to the hostel proved quite a mission but we did it and were pleasantly surprised to see how nice it was. We had a room to ourselves which was great. We settled in and went to a restaurant in Wenceslas Square called the Beer Factory. In the middle of our table was our own beer tap. It was really expensive but the food was so good and quite a unique experience.

Day 2

We woke up relatively early and meandered into the city, looked around Old Town Square before our free tour began. The tour took us to the Church of our Lady Before Tyn, the Astronomical Clock, Wenceslas Square, the Jewish Quarter (Josefov) and finished near the Charles Bridge. Now something I am noticing in my time here is people from the Middle Ages really loved their clocks, they are everwhere. But no clock will ever compare to the Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square. It tells – among many things - old Bohemian Time, Roman (normal) time, what sign of the zodiac it is currently and whether it is day or night. They thought it was so good that they burned out his eyes and tongue so he couldn’t make a clock for any other city.

After the free tour we took a much less free tour of Prague Castle. Apparently the tour meeting point was a bit too obvious for us, so Amber and I walked past the group of people hanging around the tour guides and just assumed that wasn’t it, so we walked another 10 mins past looking for it. We saw the changing of the guards...They march really slow. The tour covered St George’s Basilica, Powder Tower, Strahov Monastery/Brewery, and climaxed at St Vitus’ Cathedral which was absolutely gorgeous. However it has buildings built really close around it and was impossible to fit it all in one photo.

By the end of the day we were exhausted (a common theme I am noticing) and everyone insisted we go on the New Europe bar crawl. We seemed to stay at places a long time which meant we only went to 2 places before we called it a night...I was ok with this decision.

Day 3

The tour we went on yesterday walked us through the Jewish Quarter but we didn’t go in anywhere and it seemed really interesting so we headed back there this morning. It is really significant in Prague because from 1938 to 1945 (yes, a year before WWII) the Nazi’s occupied it and many Jews were killed and exiled. We visited the Jewish Museum which had all the names of the Jews killed and paintings children painted to express themselves during the Nazi regime. Outside there was the Jewish Cemetery where for about the 300 years from 1478 Jews had to be buried on top of one another due to lack of space, up to 12 layers deep. As a result it is now several metres above street level.

After the Jewish stuff we walked across the Charles Bridge which you can just tell is now set up for tourists. It was packed and along the sides of it there were vendors with stalls selling little souveniry things...I bought one. Just over the bridge was the John Lennon wall (right), I have no idea why it was there and until we got there I didn’t even know it existed. After lunch we left Ana and Amber, and Evan, Richard and I walked up Nerudova Street (a very picturesque street. Some of the houses have pictures above the doors instead of house numbers as they weren’t invented until 1770. ) and went back to the Castle to see inside the Cathedral as we didn’t get to the day before. Unfortunately because it was Sunday it was closed. On the way back we stopped at the Rudolfinium on the Old Town side of the River to where the line for the Louvre in Paris was filmed - They'll have us believe anything won't they. So of course we took our own robot fight photos and looked very silly in the process...worth it.

Went back to the hostel for a nap and headed out for a late dinner. We found an Aussie pub showing the Canada – US ice hockey gold medal match. We also met Norm, the owner of the bar who is Australian who moved to Prague when he a Czech woman in Sydney.

Day 4

Getting home took a long time. Our plane got in to Birmingham at about 3:30 and our connecting train to Leeds didn’t leave until 8. We got a train in to the city, had lunch at the big shopping centre there and played some cards in a pub.

Then I went home.

Life goes on

Another blog for my own benefit which you are welcome to read...

I'll pick up just after returning from Copenhagen... yeah yeah I know, this needs more Chronology but after my next post hopefully I will have sorted it out a bit better.

So Wednesday the 10th of Feb I had the day off uni and decided it would be a good day to visit Chantelle who had just recently moved to York - about half an hours train ride from Leeds. First thing we did was visit the train museum. Then Mitch joined us and we visited (and climbed) York Minster, which is an absolutely amazing cathedral, and climbed up to the top for a great view of York. Then we walked down the Shambles, found one of Chantelle's friends playing a red piano in the street, and visited Chantelles home and work: The Black Swan - the oldest pub in York. It was so cute and had the best character to it. After this a trip to the York Museum was in store, the highlight of which involved Mitch climbing into one exhibit to pretend to eat some toast, and Chantelle into another to put on a hat.

Thursday night we we invited to a masquerade ball down at the casino near Clarence Dock. None of us (guys) really had another "ball-y" to wear but we impovised pretty well. Jeans and a tie is a good look right? The ball itself was not the most awesome thing, but I/we did have fun at the tables since I'd never really been to a casino before. I put down 5 pound on black and doubled up straight away. After that I didn't need to pay any more money and came out even.

Friday night was an interesting experience, and a really fun night. Our Malaysian flatmates threw a Chinese New Year party and had a bunch of their friends over. They cooked some damn awesome food and there was so much of it. Best part of the night was probably learning a new way to cheers. Essentially it involved yelling out what you're cheersing to and then yelling really loud.

So it is now Saturday, and Evan, Kayt, Chris, Emma and I took a day trip to Newcastle - the fourth city I will have been in since Monday. Newcastle was ok, but our Newcastle is better. Interesting enough, however, they do have a breakwall and a lighthouse on the beach as well. We walked out this (I reckon about a km) breakwall and on the way back had waves crashing over us, it was a bit funny. There wasn't a whole lot to see but we made fun from it.

Sunday was Valentines Day!! Which means I went to see Lostprophets. Not much to say about this except that it was awesome and they played all my favourites...except for the song that got me into them in the first place.

Skipping ahead to next Wed the 17th was the Canadian Otley run. An Otley run is a bar crawl that is very popular in Leeds and they are always themed. For this one we decked ourselves our in as much red and white as we could find.Evan is dressed as Alex Trebek (who for some reason at this stage of the night has a Hitler moustache) and Emma is dressed as Chris....who is Canadian. I'm just there being awesome.

And this seems to be about it for now. All the highlights of life around Leeds. A few days later we went to Edinburgh which is already written, came home from that, recouped and had a pretty easy week in preparation for Prague.

The Americans in our group have started to notice the words that us Australians use that they don't. The most popular ones have been "heaps" "keen" "arvo/servo" "bugger" and "dag". Most of which - when spoken by Evan - are hilariously used out of context. Eg "Man that is arvo".

So by now I am pretty well up to date, hopefully everything from here on in will be in some kind of chronological order which will prompt me to update a bit more regularly.