Saturday 28 September 2013
Adventures from my Eurotrip: Venice
So we've come to the last blog post about Europe. By this point we'd had more adventures and less sleep than I'd previous thought humanly possible in three weeks. We'd slept in bunk beds, train beds, fold-down tray tables and even in the Freud Museum. We'd visited eight cities (if you count Hamelin, which I'm not entirely sure anyone does) and now we were heading to Venice.
Thursday 26 September 2013
Adventures from my Eurotrip: Krakow and a Brief Stint in Vienna
So far during this Eurotrip adventure, my best friends and I have climbed the Eiffel Tower, failed to find space cakes in Amsterdam, watched an all-German rendition of the tale of the Pied Piper, witnessed a police raid, featured on German TV and visited a bone church, to name but a few of our little adventures. This blog post is about what happened after we waved goodbye to Prague and it stars somewhere near Krakow.
Wednesday 25 September 2013
Adventures from my Eurotrip: A Whistle-Stop Tour of Prague
The police raids, children's activity camps and Pied Piper shows of Germany were behind us and now we were heading into what turned out to be my favourite city - Prague.
My preconceptions about Prague were hazy. I didn't have any expectation in my mind about what it would look like and the only thing I had to go on in terms of the culture was my mother's constant assurances that it was crawling with pick pockets. So, needless to say, I was a bit apprehensive when we got off at the train station in the middle of the night. Apprehension quickly turned into sheer terror.
We got off at the wrong station so, instead of getting out in the centre of the city, we ended up in a dark, semi-delapodated station in the middle of nowhere that apparently also doubled as a crack den. We didn't have any Czech coins to get on the metro and there were no taxis in sight. In fact, the only thing there was in sight was a petrol station. Bethan went in to ask for directions or a taxi number and reappeared a few minutes later with an enormous Czech man.
"This guy has a taxi!" She said.
'Oh great,' I thought. 'We are all going to die.'
By some miracle we made it safely to the hostel that night and when we woke up the next morning we were bright, fresh, and ready for more Euro-adventures.
We kicked off the day with a free walking tour, which is a MUST if you ever visit Prague. For such a small city, it has an immense history! For instance, we would never have known to seek out the church that had a decaying human hand strung up in the corner or have learned that the genius who designed the famous astronomical clock threw himself into its mechanisms to spite the king if we hadn't had a tour guide.
True, a day spent walking around the entire city is absolutely exhausting (my shoes were literally falling apart by the end of it), but we got to see all the main sights of Prague and booked ourselves a space on the trip to Kutna Hora the next morning (another must if you're ever in Prague).
As exhausted as we were after a full day of walking and learning, I insisted that we take the tour guide up on the offer of joining the pub crawl that evening. Hayleigh and Bethan protested that they were not, under any circumstances, drinking that night. We had to get up early the next morning to go to Kutna Hora and they were determined not to be hungover for it.
The truth of the matter is, no one can resist unlimited free absinthe shots and before we knew it, it was a louder, stranger, wilder version of that night in Berlin. Hayleigh disappeared into an underground ice bar for two hours with a stag party, Bethan forced some poor Irish men to take off their tops and bench press a keg, we made best friends with a group of Australians, learned none of their names, and proceeded to drink them well and truly under the table. Now there's patriotism for you.
It was at some point during this haze of a night when I met a guy who was very cute and very, very American. In fact, I seem to recall him saying that America was a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Suddenly my thrashing of the Aussies at drinking games didn't seem so patriotic by comparison. That said, has anyone ever met an American who isn't patriotic?
After the best night out any of us had ever had (the Czechs know how to organise a pub crawl), we began the task of haggling with taxi drivers on the side of the road. Trying to find a taxi driver who won't rip you off in Prague is difficult to say the least.
The next morning we had to drag ourselves out of bed to go to Kutna Hora too see the Czech bone chapel. The story goes that in the 13th century, an abbot brought back some soil from the Holy Land and sprinkled it on the cemetery surrounding the Chapel of All Saints. Suddenly, everyone wanted to buried in that cemetery and eventually the older bodies were dug up to make space for the new ones. And what did they do with all those bones? They piled them up in the chapel or used them to make morbid decorations that adorn the chapel. Apparently the chapel contains the bones of 40,000 people!
Naturally, while we marvelled at the remains of the dead, Hayleigh got out her compact and started applying lipstick. I don't know who she was hoping to impress in a chapel full of dead people.
As well as the general tour of the city, the tour of the bone chapel and the tour of all the bars in Prague, we did a tour of the castle district. If you're ever in Prague and can't decide whether to opt for the castle tour or a tour of the city, I'd opt for a tour of the city. As much as I enjoyed the castle, tour, it didn't involve as many quirky stories as the general tour of the city.
At one point though, the tour guide asked if anyone could guess what special ingredient had been used to hold the Charles Bridge together.
"Love?" Bethan guessed with a completely straight face.
"...No." The tour guide responded, clearly not expecting such a bizarre answer. "Eggs."
Prague was by far my favourite stop on our Eurotrip. It's absolutely beautiful with crooked little alleyways and spectacular medieval buildings. It has an amazing history with all manner of bizarre stories. Plus, its' super cheap!
Next stop - Krakow.
My preconceptions about Prague were hazy. I didn't have any expectation in my mind about what it would look like and the only thing I had to go on in terms of the culture was my mother's constant assurances that it was crawling with pick pockets. So, needless to say, I was a bit apprehensive when we got off at the train station in the middle of the night. Apprehension quickly turned into sheer terror.
We got off at the wrong station so, instead of getting out in the centre of the city, we ended up in a dark, semi-delapodated station in the middle of nowhere that apparently also doubled as a crack den. We didn't have any Czech coins to get on the metro and there were no taxis in sight. In fact, the only thing there was in sight was a petrol station. Bethan went in to ask for directions or a taxi number and reappeared a few minutes later with an enormous Czech man.
"This guy has a taxi!" She said.
'Oh great,' I thought. 'We are all going to die.'
By some miracle we made it safely to the hostel that night and when we woke up the next morning we were bright, fresh, and ready for more Euro-adventures.
We kicked off the day with a free walking tour, which is a MUST if you ever visit Prague. For such a small city, it has an immense history! For instance, we would never have known to seek out the church that had a decaying human hand strung up in the corner or have learned that the genius who designed the famous astronomical clock threw himself into its mechanisms to spite the king if we hadn't had a tour guide.
True, a day spent walking around the entire city is absolutely exhausting (my shoes were literally falling apart by the end of it), but we got to see all the main sights of Prague and booked ourselves a space on the trip to Kutna Hora the next morning (another must if you're ever in Prague).
As exhausted as we were after a full day of walking and learning, I insisted that we take the tour guide up on the offer of joining the pub crawl that evening. Hayleigh and Bethan protested that they were not, under any circumstances, drinking that night. We had to get up early the next morning to go to Kutna Hora and they were determined not to be hungover for it.
The truth of the matter is, no one can resist unlimited free absinthe shots and before we knew it, it was a louder, stranger, wilder version of that night in Berlin. Hayleigh disappeared into an underground ice bar for two hours with a stag party, Bethan forced some poor Irish men to take off their tops and bench press a keg, we made best friends with a group of Australians, learned none of their names, and proceeded to drink them well and truly under the table. Now there's patriotism for you.
It was at some point during this haze of a night when I met a guy who was very cute and very, very American. In fact, I seem to recall him saying that America was a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Suddenly my thrashing of the Aussies at drinking games didn't seem so patriotic by comparison. That said, has anyone ever met an American who isn't patriotic?
After the best night out any of us had ever had (the Czechs know how to organise a pub crawl), we began the task of haggling with taxi drivers on the side of the road. Trying to find a taxi driver who won't rip you off in Prague is difficult to say the least.
The next morning we had to drag ourselves out of bed to go to Kutna Hora too see the Czech bone chapel. The story goes that in the 13th century, an abbot brought back some soil from the Holy Land and sprinkled it on the cemetery surrounding the Chapel of All Saints. Suddenly, everyone wanted to buried in that cemetery and eventually the older bodies were dug up to make space for the new ones. And what did they do with all those bones? They piled them up in the chapel or used them to make morbid decorations that adorn the chapel. Apparently the chapel contains the bones of 40,000 people!
Naturally, while we marvelled at the remains of the dead, Hayleigh got out her compact and started applying lipstick. I don't know who she was hoping to impress in a chapel full of dead people.
As well as the general tour of the city, the tour of the bone chapel and the tour of all the bars in Prague, we did a tour of the castle district. If you're ever in Prague and can't decide whether to opt for the castle tour or a tour of the city, I'd opt for a tour of the city. As much as I enjoyed the castle, tour, it didn't involve as many quirky stories as the general tour of the city.
At one point though, the tour guide asked if anyone could guess what special ingredient had been used to hold the Charles Bridge together.
"Love?" Bethan guessed with a completely straight face.
"...No." The tour guide responded, clearly not expecting such a bizarre answer. "Eggs."
Prague was by far my favourite stop on our Eurotrip. It's absolutely beautiful with crooked little alleyways and spectacular medieval buildings. It has an amazing history with all manner of bizarre stories. Plus, its' super cheap!
Next stop - Krakow.
Tuesday 24 September 2013
Adventures from my Eurotrip: Hamelin and Berlin
At the end of my last post, we'd just managed to save our suitcases from the luggage attendant in Amsterdam and were about to board the train to Germany.
It was a simple plan. Take the night train from Amsterdam to Hannover, Hannover to Hamelin, and arrive in Hamelin in time to watch the Pied Piper show. There were few opportunities for us to make a mess of this. But sometimes fate will intervene and even the simplest of travel plans end with a run-in with the police.
It was almost midnight when our first train of the night came to a screeching halt in the middle of nowhere. An announcement over the loud speaker assured us there was no need to panic and that we were just experiencing some technical issues. The next thing we knew the police were boarding the train and arresting the men in the carriage next to ours.
As two of our fellow passengers were led away in handcuffs, we started talking to some guys who were also straining out of the window to see what was going on. And so we spent the night playing Danish card games and listening to renditions of happy birthday in 4 different languages with our new buddies, Martin and Michael.
Our train arrived in Hannover half an hour early at 2am (we were all still in our sleeping bags and pjs and all but fell onto the platform) and the next train to Hamelin wasn't until 6am. I'll sum up those four arduous hours in the train station by saying that Bethan slept in her McDonalds while Hayleigh and I played cards, watched by an ever-growing crowd of drunken Germans. Needless to say, by the time we got to Hamlin at 8am, learned that check in was not until 3pm, and wandered into town to take our seats for the famous Pied Piper show, the lack of sleep had taken its toll in the form of hysteria in Bethan and I, and a general hatred for everything and everyone in Hayleigh.
There are a few things you need to know about Hamelin.
1. It is not what you'd call a tourist destination. In fact, the only thing there is to see or do in Hamelin is watch the Pied Piper show.
2. Practically no one in Hamelin speaks English due to the fact that nobody ever goes there.
3. Absolutely everything is closed on a Sunday.
Nevertheless, the show was very enjoyable for those of us who weren't driven to the depths of despair by sleep deprivation, despite the fact that it was entirely in German and we had no idea what was going on. It wasn't until the show was over that we realised we'd done everything there was to do in Hamelin. So we went back to our hostel (which, in fact, turned out to be a children's activity camp) and got drunk on something that posed as German schnapps, but tasted more like a slow-acting poison.
One of the most monumental occurrences happened while we were in Hamelin. Bethan bought her 1 euro travelling hat. How quickly that hat went from being a gem, the best bargain she'd ever found, and a general great investment, to the bane of her life, purely because whenever we travelled she was forced to wear it and be judged by the locals. That in itself is a great indication of how little there is to do in Hamelin. Our highlight was the day Bethan bought a hat.
From Hamelin we went to Berlin, that wonderful city with its famous nightlife. Unfortunately we didn't make it far past the hostel bar on either of our nights there. Cocktails were strong, chilli vodka was free and Liverpudlians were in abundance. All around us, the non-Brits in the bar were sipping their wine in a civilised manner while we thrashed the English at an intense game of ring of fire. The next day the infamous carrier bag made a return.
By night we stayed in the confines of our hostel, but by day we were fantastic tourists. We leaned all about "that wall everyone keeps going on about" and wandered over to Brandenburg Gate. It was here that fate, with her insistence that our trip should not be in any way normal, intervened again. There we were, innocently trying to work out who this gate was supposed to be keeping out or letting in and why, when a film crew casually rolls up with some guy we've never heard of who is apparently extremely famous. Before we knew it we were extras in whatever bizarre sketch they were filming. We had absolutely no idea what was going on, but we were at the front, cheering louder than anyone.
Germany took from us many, many euros, much of our self respect, a fair bit of Bethan's stomach lining, and more sleep than we can hope to get back in the next 3 months. But what's more important is what we took from Germany, which includes, a new appreciation for that song, 'If you like Pina Coladas', the most ridiculous photos I've woken up to after a night out for a long time, some clue as to what the Iron Curtain was all about, and an overpriced piece of the Berlin wall.
Next up: Prague.
It was a simple plan. Take the night train from Amsterdam to Hannover, Hannover to Hamelin, and arrive in Hamelin in time to watch the Pied Piper show. There were few opportunities for us to make a mess of this. But sometimes fate will intervene and even the simplest of travel plans end with a run-in with the police.
As two of our fellow passengers were led away in handcuffs, we started talking to some guys who were also straining out of the window to see what was going on. And so we spent the night playing Danish card games and listening to renditions of happy birthday in 4 different languages with our new buddies, Martin and Michael.
Our train arrived in Hannover half an hour early at 2am (we were all still in our sleeping bags and pjs and all but fell onto the platform) and the next train to Hamelin wasn't until 6am. I'll sum up those four arduous hours in the train station by saying that Bethan slept in her McDonalds while Hayleigh and I played cards, watched by an ever-growing crowd of drunken Germans. Needless to say, by the time we got to Hamlin at 8am, learned that check in was not until 3pm, and wandered into town to take our seats for the famous Pied Piper show, the lack of sleep had taken its toll in the form of hysteria in Bethan and I, and a general hatred for everything and everyone in Hayleigh.
There are a few things you need to know about Hamelin.
1. It is not what you'd call a tourist destination. In fact, the only thing there is to see or do in Hamelin is watch the Pied Piper show.
2. Practically no one in Hamelin speaks English due to the fact that nobody ever goes there.
3. Absolutely everything is closed on a Sunday.
One of the most monumental occurrences happened while we were in Hamelin. Bethan bought her 1 euro travelling hat. How quickly that hat went from being a gem, the best bargain she'd ever found, and a general great investment, to the bane of her life, purely because whenever we travelled she was forced to wear it and be judged by the locals. That in itself is a great indication of how little there is to do in Hamelin. Our highlight was the day Bethan bought a hat.
From Hamelin we went to Berlin, that wonderful city with its famous nightlife. Unfortunately we didn't make it far past the hostel bar on either of our nights there. Cocktails were strong, chilli vodka was free and Liverpudlians were in abundance. All around us, the non-Brits in the bar were sipping their wine in a civilised manner while we thrashed the English at an intense game of ring of fire. The next day the infamous carrier bag made a return.
Germany took from us many, many euros, much of our self respect, a fair bit of Bethan's stomach lining, and more sleep than we can hope to get back in the next 3 months. But what's more important is what we took from Germany, which includes, a new appreciation for that song, 'If you like Pina Coladas', the most ridiculous photos I've woken up to after a night out for a long time, some clue as to what the Iron Curtain was all about, and an overpriced piece of the Berlin wall.
Next up: Prague.
Saturday 14 September 2013
Adventures from my Eurotrip: Paris and Amsterdam.
Good evening from Prague, where we have all gone well and truly mad from lack of sleep!
I'm currently 10 days into a three week long Interrailing journey around Europe with two of my very best friends, Hayleigh and Bethan. Originally I had every intention of keeping you all up to date with our travels by writing a new blog post every couple of days, but it turns out that trying to find a fully-functioning computer in a European hostel is as difficult as trying to find a space cake in Amsterdam (I'll circle back to that particular story later). The point is, I have a whole lot of drama and general madness to condense down into a reasonably-sized blog post so this one is just going to deal with our adventures in Paris and Amsterdam....and trust me, they are numerous.
I'm currently 10 days into a three week long Interrailing journey around Europe with two of my very best friends, Hayleigh and Bethan. Originally I had every intention of keeping you all up to date with our travels by writing a new blog post every couple of days, but it turns out that trying to find a fully-functioning computer in a European hostel is as difficult as trying to find a space cake in Amsterdam (I'll circle back to that particular story later). The point is, I have a whole lot of drama and general madness to condense down into a reasonably-sized blog post so this one is just going to deal with our adventures in Paris and Amsterdam....and trust me, they are numerous.
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