Italy!

Hi all,

It's been a while since our last post, so this one will be extra long and probably extra boring.

Since we last wrote (while we were in Switzerland), it became freezing and since Al and I haven't packed appropriate winter clothing we had to run away from the cold. We packed our stuff and headed south towards Italy.

After a short - but nevertheless expensive - train trip we found ourselves in Milan. We walked out of the train station and were instantly lost, and this is how we were to spend 90% of our time in Milan. After walking around like losers for a good hour or so, we bit the bullet and got a taxi to our hostel. Driving in Milan is much like driving in South Korea it seems. There are rarely lane markings and most signs seem to be taken as making friendly suggestions rather than enforcing road rules.

We dropped our stuff off at the hostel and went to find somewhere to have a beer. The guy at the hostel had given us a map and highlighted all of the local attractions so we figured it shouldn't be a problem to find our way around. Wrong. Either the map is wrong or someone has been slowly removing streets from Milan, but the two don't match up. We spent most of our first night wandering around being lost, until we called it a night and went home.

The following day we went to find some coffee and breakfast. As you'll probably know, coffee in Italy is freaking awesome. After breakfast, we figured it'd be best to get lost again, so we did. Like any major city, Milan has a lot of people wanting money for rather simple things (buskers etc), which we mostly managed to avoid, but during this particular lost adventure we were targetted by some very sneaky africans. They quickly grab you, tie a tiny bracelet around your wrist, shake your hand and then don't let go until you pay some money. Al managed to get two bracelets for 40 cents, but I ended up paying 1 Euro, 50 Polish cents and 10 Czech cents and I only got one bracelet! Here's what it looks like to be a sucker in Milan:

So after a few days in Milan, most of which was spent looking at a map, we decided to meet up with a friend of ours, Sonia, who lives in Zone. Sonia picked us up from the train station and took us to see a sweet Italian castle. The first thing you’ll notice about this part of Italy is how healthy the trees and plants look, and after staying a while it’s obvious why...just a bit of exercise each day can work wonders:

After a bit of a wander, we went back to Sonia’s place for some dinner. Sonia’s house is beautiful, and so is her cooking. Our first night and we were enjoying authentic home-made Italian pasta..my god I don’t know if I’ll ever leave.

Attention! Sonia’s uncle is Italian, is a plumber, and his name is Luigi! Also, he wears green overalls and hat and has a pet dinosaur.

The following day we woke up around 11, slowly had some coffee and breakfast and set off to check out some Italian sights. Here’s a photo of Al and Sonia enjoying some sun:

We took a trip around a massive lake, but unfortunately we weren’t able to capture any decent photos. Either our camera sucks or our photography sucks...hmm. We got drunk that night. After waking up without hangovers, we packed into the car and made our way to Venice.

First thoughts when you arrive in Venice: “looks like someone left a tap on here! No wonder mum went mental when I’d do that as a kid”. It’s very beautiful in Venice, and it’s my guess that it’s probably very romantic there also. One downside is that it’s very difficult to get a good photo of the city (or is it the photographers?) but here’s the best one we could manage:

We drove back to Zone that night and got some sleep because the next day was going to be a big one. But then it wasn’t, we had a few beers and slept most of the day. Al and I have been keeping an eye out for arcades throughout Europe, and noticed that there aren’t many (particularly in Germany), but we found one here! Nice! We approached the lady behind the counter to ask whether we needed to purchase tokens to play the machines, but she didn’t speak a word of English. After a bit of pointing and miming, she handed us each a pair of bizarre looking shoes and pointed us down the hall. Turns out we were now going to play a bit of bowling. A bit more pointing and miming and we had a beer each. Here’s a photo:

Waking up each morning at 11 to spend the day eating and drinking had been quite stressful for Al and I so we decided we needed to find somewhere to unwind. Sonia suggested some hot springs at the top of a snowy mountain close-by and we all agreed this was a great idea.

Notes on snow: Cold and wet.
Note on hot springs: Warm and awesome.

So we walked through the snow for a bit, paid 40 Euros each, changed into bath robes and started relaxing in saunas, mud baths and a pool heated by the hot springs. Not that we deserved it, but it was truly relaxing. While floating around in that pool over looking snow capped mountains you could’ve told me the fourex brewery had burned to the ground and I would not have batted an eyelid. I don’t think we were supposed to take photos, but here’s a few we snapped:

After we were done relaxing, Sonia let us know about a nearby town where you could buy duty free alcohol. Al and I had a quick private discussion weighing up the pros and cons of duty free alcohol and came to the conclusion that we should go there.

The roads became a bit icy and for a while I was scared (for maybe the first or second time in my life), but duty free is duty free so we pushed on. It was negative ten degrees here, and this is what it looked like:

Additional notes on snow: Fucking freezing.

Here’s a photo of Al, AKA the ambiguous entity (he’s a man...but he’s wearing a scarf?).

And Dan, AKA the man (I carry a scarf, but don’t wear it. It’s simply for giving to ladies or strangling bears etc). By the way, this photo also displays Al's great photography skills, a good example of his favourite "finger across lens" technique.

Long story short, it was freezing there and I was happy when we got home and I could cruise under my doona.

Speaking of doonas, Al and I have been having to share double beds a bit on this trip, which is normally fine because we sleep with our backs to each other on opposite extremes of the bed. I only mention this because the other night, in his sleep, Al tried to hold my hand! Ha! What a girl! Don’t worry, I woke up swearing and saying homophobic stuff. He says he doesn’t remember it, but I think he probably does.

Well that’ll probably do for this blog post. I think we’ll be staying in Italy for a little while yet so I’ll update this blog with other boring stuff.

Take care dudes,

Dan and Al

Switzerland!

Hi dudes,

An update from our trip so far.

We left Mainz a few days ago and caught a train to a town called Heidelberg (still in Germany). I was in charge of finding our way to the town from our hotel but after a few blocks of walking it was discovered that I had taken us in the wrong direction. Al wasn't impressed. As everyone knows, there are varying degrees of wrongness but in this instance I was 100% wrong (as wrong as possible) so we took a 180 degree turn and started heading the other way. After some time walking under Al's leadership, we started to feel that we were once again heading in the wrong direction, so we asked a local. She advised us that we were about 50% wrong so we took a 90 degree turn to the left and continued on. We made a few more wrong turns (usually between 10% and 25% wrongness) but finally made it to town.

I had been told that Heidelberg has the longest mall in the (world? Europe? Germany? Heidelberg? I can't remember), and it was indeed quite long, but mainly filled with clothes shops and Al and I have no room in our bags so are only allowed to spend money on consumables (read: beer and food). Here's a photo of the big mall:

At the end of the mall, Al and I were surprised to see a sweet castle in the distance. We decided to head up and have a look. Here's the castle from a distance:

We walked up the hill (steep as all buggery) and found out that you could just walk around the castle as you wanted and didn't have to pay or anything. Al and I like not paying for stuff so we decided we'd spent the rest of our day here. As usual, Al and I had not done any research into the town we were in so we didn't know alot about the castle, but Al thought he might have learnt about it in school and remembered a few details. For instance, here is the courtyard where they used to play four kings on saturday nights. Of course the rules were different back then, but the game was essentially the same:

There used to be a late night kebab shop to the right hand side of that last photo but it was destroyed in the second world war. And here is a famous Heidelberg bridge, the bridge over troubled water:

There were some sweet lions heads made from stone that lined this castle, and some of them had really bizarre expressions on their faces. Underneath each lion head was a plaque where they used to carve the name of employee of the month (for being a good jester or not dying of dysentery or whatever).

Anyway, enough about the castle. I'll put heaps of photos on facebook if you'd like to have a look. The castle is really cool and I recommend checking it out.

The following morning, Al and I thought we'd head off to Switzerland to stay with some of his family. We thought it'd be best if we grabbed the cheapest train we could find but apparently this is a dumb idea. Picture a five hour train ride with four train changes (most of which only had about 4 minutes to get to the next platform), and no free seats on any train. Dear deutsche bahn, f*#k you. Mind you, this trip still cost us 106 Euro.

Finally we arrived in Zurich, Switzerland. Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland, but not the capital, what sort of bizarre country would think that's a good idea?! The following day, we thought we'd check out the town so we grabbed a tram and headed to the town square. Then we discovered something about Zurich...it is freaking expensive here, man. I saw a hungry jacks meal for the equivalent of $16 AUD! We were hoping for a nice beautiful sunny day to check out the sights, but instead we got this:

Even though the weather was crappy, we found a tourist pamphlet that told us to check out this certain mountain for a sweet view of the city. So, doing what we were told we headed to the mountain by train. It was cold as hell and also foggy, which gave it a sort of creepy vibe, which I hope is captured by the following photo:

Once we got to the top, Al jumped on to the telescope to check out the famous view of the city:

And this is what he saw:

Beautiful eh?!

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll get some more photos up on facebook or another blog when I'm not starving. Time to eat! By the way, it's Al's birthday today! Happy birthday Al.

Bye,

Dan and Al

More Germany

Hi all,

I know it's pretty soon since our last post but I managed to find a computer so thought I'd make the most of it.

I have a few photos that I wasn't able to get onto the last post, so I'll pop them up here. The first one is what Al looks like drunk (taken at the 90's party):

And here's a photo of what I look like drunk (and dancing which some will know is a rare occurrence) :

After that night, armed with mean hangovers we decided to deliciously check out the town. Osnabrük has some sweet castles and cathedrals and shit but what's even more interesting than that is a mode we found on our camera..."fat mode", here's a demonstration:

After seeing the sights it was time to get deliciously drunk again, so Lena took us out for a few drinks. During the night she had a great idea! Why don't we go and have one of the most disgusting shots Osnabrük has to offer?! I can't remember what it's called, but I do remember that it tasted truely horrible (it's super hot like ten million chilli's). Here's a video (sorry a bit dark) of us drinking them...if you can't make out what  is said, I think it may be "this is just fucking stupid":

The following day with even bigger hangovers we took off to check out Lena's home town, Cologne. Unfortunately we were only there for a night but she showed us some nice forest near her place. It was really cool and a bit like Narnia, not that I've seen the movie since it's for girls but I've seen posters so that's how I know. Here's what it looks like:

After a bit of a walk we popped out of the forest and into open fields where a lot of people take their dogs for walks. The dogs in Germany are weird man, they eat grass all day but they were quite slow-moving so we managed to get a few nice photos:

It was soon time to go so we went and slept for the night and the next morning Lena took us into town so we could grab a train to our next destination. She showed us a theatre in town that was built underground, but someone made a few mistakes and if pedestrians walk on the pavement above the theatre (which is just normal walking area) it echos super loud in the theatre so now if there's ever a show on they hire security guards to line the perimeter making sure no-one walks on the forbidden zone...ha crazy Germans. She also showed us a bridge that couples attach padlocks to and throw the key into the river, it's supposed to symbolize their love and can't be unlocked etc etc. There were literally thousands of padlocks on this bridge, but if you look to the top left of the following photo you might be able to see a few clever cookies have used a black combination lock! Ha! Good thinking!

 

Al and I then jumped on a train destined for Mainz to meet up with another couchsurfer we hosted in Brisbane, Urs. He picked us up from the train station and guess what time it was? Time to drink! We went down to the local irish pub (which is called "the irish pub") for a fairly massive night. Hangovers in Mainz are very similar to every other city and usually consist of headaches and sore stomachs. Not sure what to do for the afternoon, we found some plasticine for 1 Euro and thought we'd have a competition to see who could make the hotest plasticine woman. Here is Al's:

This one made by Urs:

And finally my entry:

 As all three of us were in the competition, we had to ask Yoshi to judge for us:

Unfortunately Yoshi doesn't speak German or English and none of us speak Yoshi so we still don't know who won, perhaps we'll leave that up to you.

Alright, that's all for now. I think in the next few days we are going to head to Switzerland so maybe something interesting will happen there.

Take care,

Dan and Al

Europe!

Hey guys,

We're in Europe! We didn't bring Al's laptop so haven't been able to write a blog post in a while. Since the last post, Al and I spent a few days checking out London, which is a cool city. As all good Australians should do, we went to visit the Queen.

We took a few trains to somewhere and first dropped in on Big Ben, he was welcoming and allowed us to a take a few photos. Unfortunately we were cheap and bought a camera memory card from ebay and all the photos we have taken since our last blog post are corrupted! Whoo China! A blog without photos is pretty boring so I'll steal a few from Google. Here is a photo we took of Big Ben:


We left at 11:13 AM and headed for Buckingham Palace to see if the Queen was up for a cup of tea or J-Bomb or whatever. Disappointingly, when we got there she had about 500 other visitors which must have freaked her out a bit so she hired some bouncers to stand out the front and ensure people can't get in. Believe it or not, her bouncers actually do less work than Australian council workers!

Upset that we weren't able to catch up with the Queen we thought we'd have a look at her garden where we were told she walks her dogs from time to time. Dogs in London are bizarre man, they climb trees and eat nuts but they were very tame which allowed us to get a few nice photos.

Then we went to Trafalgar square and that was a bit boring and so was the rest of our time in London until we got to Standsted airport ready to fly to Poland. We caught up with some friends from Townsville, Steph and Marissa and Nicole, and a girl from Melbourne, Laura. Then we jumped on the worst plane anyone can ever be unfortunate enough to ride. It was a ryanair plane, I think maybe a 737 that seemed as though they had forced double the amount of seats that are supposed to be in that type of plane. It was a shitty flight but we landed in Krakow a few hours later.

Krakow the most beautiful city I've ever seen. It looks like this all over the city:

Seriously though, the most beautiful women I have seen in my life (except my mother and any past girlfriends reading this). The bars in Krakow are really cool too, they're mostly underground and a bit hidden away but we found some real gems.

We did a tour of Auschwitz concentration camp, which was quite confronting but I still recommend it. I got heaps of great photos which made me even happier when I found out that the memory card didn't work! Also we checked out the Salt Mine which is quite far underground, so it's a great trip if you get a bit of the claustrophobia like ol' Danny boy. You can lick the walls there, which we did, and taste salt. Then you can consider how many other people have licked that wall and taste regret.

After a few days we took a train to Prague in Czech Republic. Prague is full of old churches and beautiful buildings. You can google image search if yourself if you want to see what it looks like. After a night in Prague we took a train to a small town with an unpronounceable name about an hour away. Here in this little town, we caught up with a friend of Marissa's who took us to stay his beautiful chateau. If you're ever in Czech republic, definitely see if you can stay here:

http://www.zamek-hostacov.com/

We lived like freaking kings man. One night, just before we all headed off for bed, in a freaky old dark castle, our host was nice enough to tell us a story about the chateau. Apparently when they were renovating in the 18th centurary, they found a body that had been walled in just above our room. How exciting! Night guys!

After a few days, the group split up and Al and I grabbed a train to Hamburg, Germany. The ladies in our cabin spoke rapid fire German to each other from jumping on the train to their station, which was a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes. This is an increbile feat, god only knows what they were talking about. Six or so hours later, we were in Hamburg getting picked up by a German friend of ours who couch surfed with us in Brisbane. Here are some photos of what every shop looks like in Hamburg:

After a night of heavy drinking in Hamburg, we drove in a sweet convertible to Osnabrueck. Here's a photo of Al and the two Lena's looking cool as:

And just to prove we were being sufficiently annoying in the car, here is a video I took (sorry had to take it down it exceeded my upload quota):

Once in Osnabreuck, we decided it was time to get drunk. So we went to a local club which was having a 90's theme night. I know this sounds weird, but it was in the toilets in the club that the highlight of my European trip so far took place. I went in and this guy spoke loud German at me for a little while. I said I was Australian and only spoke english and he said this to me (add german accent): "I vas just telling you about deese toilets. There are three urinals on the left, and two cubicles on the right so if you want to make big ones or small ones it's up to you".

Since then all we've done is have hangovers which is nice.

Ok, that's our trip so far, we're going to get some dinner.

Bye.

Dan and Al