It’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve returned to Melbourne now and I’ve had a bit of time to organise my thoughts regarding my 7 week trip around Europe. Firstly I should do some recapping of stuff that’s happened since the last entry.
The soccer match was pretty amazing. Barcelona dominated Mallorca 3-1 in a pretty rough match with 11 yellow cards and 1 red. We were extremely lucky to catch Henry just back from an injury and even luckier to see him score a goal. The atmosphere at the stadium was pretty amazing and I’d hate to be a player from Mallorca on the field there where 99% of the support is for the home team, Barcelona. We were only in Barcelona one night for this match before leaving on the overnight train to Madrid.
Madrid is a fairly new city actually, so there wasn’t alot of architecture to see there like there is in Barcelona (I’ll go over that later…) What there is to see in Madrid is the Royal Palace and also alot of modern art museums. The Royal Palace was particularily notable for its massive armoury with a ridiculous amount of medievil weaponry. The modern art museums were full of art which I didn’t really understand but it was pretty interesting in its own right. We spent about 4 days in Madrid then we returned to Barcalona via overnight train again.
Now that we had some time to wander around Barcelona, there is actually alot to see there. After talking to some people at our hostel we were told to check out all the Gaudi buildings in the city, particularily the Sagrada Familia Cathedral which has been under construction for 200 years and is still only 50% complete. It’s still ridiculously large and awe inspiring. Also, while in Barcelona, we met up with some people from our tour group who also happened to be around. Together we visited the other Gaudi buildings which are just on main shopping streets and serve as bank buildings or clothing stores. It’s really easy to walk right past them but they’re actually quite unique. I heard that there was also a Gaudi building in Madrid but we didn’t know what to look for so we didn’t see it… There’s also a park to the north of Barcelona which has been designed by Gaudi. Pretty interesting stuff all round.
After Barcelona we returned to London for 3 days before heading home. I used this time to visit some museums we missed in London while we were staying at Jon’s house. They have a fairly large science and technology museum with a pretty children’s activity room. I spent quite alot of time in there trying to build bridges and arches and stuff like that. This happened quite alot over the course of our tour actually… I’d get stuck at festivals and markets if there was a stall selling puzzles… Anyway, next to the science museum there’s a natural history museum which we walked around in for a bit but ultimately didn’t spend much time in. One good thing about London is that the museums are free. Other than that the food is expensive and not particularily tasty and everything is generally more expensive than the rest of Europe. I did buy a nice coat though.
So now that I’m back home everyone asks me what my favourite city is, but I’m not really sure how to answer them because each place that I visited is so different and each place has their own culture and history. Not being a historian myself, I learnt about most of these things through tours or museums and so my understanding of each city’s culture is not always on the same level. If forced to select I would have to say Munich but you might hear Rome or Barcelona if you asked me on a different day.
Someone also asked me what I learnt about myself, from my tour of Europe. I told them that it made me feel insignificant in comparison to the sheer history of great people inhabiting every museum I visited throughout Europe. If I want to make a mark in history I’ll have to try harder…
This will be the last entry in this blog, but I’ll leave it up, so that anyone who might be interested in my trip can read about my experiences. Thanks for reading.
So we just arrived in Barcelona about an hour ago. The flight from Amsterdam was fairly painless and there is absolutly no customs to go through at Barcelona Airport. A bunch of stuff has happened since I last updated so I’ll try to cover as much as I can remember. After leaving Munich we flew to London and immediatly went looking for cheap theatre tickets after checking into our really dodgy hostel out in the middle of the suburbs somewhere. We managed to find tickets to Les Miserables for the following night for about 36 pounds. We also walked down Oxford, Regent and Bond streets (the green monopoly properties!). The shops were all packed because they moved all the boxing day sales to Christmas eve. Even so the clothes were rather pricey so we didn’t buy anything but I’ve still got a few days in London after Spain so I might get a nice coat or something there. The next day we went to the British Museum which was way too big to get through in one day. We also had to do some grocery shopping since we’d be staying at Jon’s place and he apparently didn’t quite have enough food to feed us. That night we went to see Les Miserables. It was an amazing production and the seats we got were very good for the price so all in all, pretty enjoyable. The next day we had to make our way to Jon’s place in Radlett. It took us a while to work out how to get there with all the holiday scheduling and closed lines but we made it in the end. We almost missed the stop which would have put us in the next town with no more trains coming back. That would have been an expensive taxi ride… So we spent Christmas at Jon’s place playing 500 and watching Black Adder and Monty Python. Jon cooked us some delicious roasts for dinner and we had some pretty good pudding with what is reputedly the “best custard in the world”. On the 28th Dean came to stay at Jon’s place too so we a good time just catching up. Dean is ridiculously tanned now and it looks as though he’s lost weight. I’m not really sure if I’ve lost or gained any weight but apparently I’m looking a bit pale? On the night of the 28th we left for Gatwick airport since we needed to be there at 6 in the morning and the earliest train on the 29th would arrive at 8:30. So we arrived at about 2am and spent 4 hours sleeping at the airport and reading some books I have on my laptop. On arriving in Amsterdam I was pretty dead on my feet and as soon as we reached the hostel I went to sleep. When I woke up in the middle of the afternoon I found that everyone else in the room (a 6 bed room) had come back and were also lying in bed sleeping too… That was pretty odd. Needless to say, new years in Amsterdam was pretty fun, but we did manage to squeeze in alot of museum time too. So now we’re in Spain and we have tickets to see a spanish league match here in Barcelona tonight. We’ll be watching FC Barcelona play RCD Mallorca at Comp Nou stadium. I have no idea who RCD Mallorca are… but oh well. It should be a fun game.
3 days ago we arrived in Munich via bus. The only things I knew about Munich were that they held Ocktoberfest in October and that it’s home to a really large science and technology museum. I was also hoping to catch a soccer match here but it’s now the middle of the off season so the season is suspended till mid-January. Our last hope is probably Spain since tickets to matches available in Amsterdam were really expensive (Ajax vs PSV for 200 Euros) and also the boxing day matches in London are pretty expensive too. So after arriving in Munich we spent about 15 minutes trying to find our hostel which turned out to be less than 2 minutes walk across the street. The hostel is really nice and they have an indoor garden area for lounging and using wifi. Its also ridiculously close to the Hautbahnoff. The first thing we did was head to an authentic Munich beer hall. The guy at the front desk recommended the Augustiner where we had a variety pan thing with a large roasted pork knuckle, 2 sausages, a slice of roasted pork, half a roast duck, and a potato dumpling for about 12 euro. There was also beer drawn from a keg and the whole place just felt very lively and fun. After dinner we walked around the Ocktoberfest grounds where a different festival was running called the Tollwood Festival. There were lots of different tents set up there such as a theatre, a market, a bazaar, a food court as well as lots of outdoor stalls selling mulled wine and clothing amongst other things. It seemed as though things were a bit expensive but we walked around anyway and spent quite alot of time at the puzzle stalls inside the market. Then yesterday we did some shopping and I bought a new pair of jeans sans hole in thigh. We also spent almost all of the afternoon at the Deutches Museum of Science and Technology which is much too big for even a whole day. There are 50-some different departments and 8 stories of really cool stuff. It’s a bit like scienceworks only much crazier and covering a much larger range of topics. I will definitly want to come back to this museum sometime in the future. Tomorrow morning we leave on a bus to Berlin where we stay a night before catching a plane back to London. In London we’ll probably try to catch a stage-show since they’re pretty cheap in comparison to back in Melbourne, and shows run everyday too…
So we’ve been in Berlin for about 2 days now. Yesterday we visited Altes Museum, the Berlin Cathedral, and some empty ground where a palace used to be… The Museum was showing alot of ancient artifacts and some Egyptian stuff that they stole during an expedition. The Berlin Cathedral was meant to be comparable to St. Peters Basillica but I think it was not quite as impressive. When you first walk into the cathedral you can see a huge stain glass feature with a large altar beneath it. It’s actually quite nice but when compared with St. Peter’s, it’s nothing much. (maybe…) Anyway, today we went to the Lego Discovery Museum thing, and it was well worth the time and effort required to get there. There was a rather large room inside with miniture lego models of Berlin’s major attractions which we’d just finished seeing yesterday and the previous week when we were here. It’s probably not so easy to appreciate the miniture models if you’ve never seen some of the buildings before so if you come to Berlin and want to go to the Lego thing, do it last.
In other news, both pairs of jeans which I brought with me have now somehow developed large holes in the upper right thigh. This means that I will probably need to buy a few new pairs of pants in Munich which is where we’re heading tomorrow. Whilst there I also hope to catch a soccer match and see the 8 storey science and technology museum there…
So the tour has ended now and we’re back in London for about half a day before we leave for Berlin. It was a bit sad watching everyone leave after you’ve been living on a bus together for the last 18 days. I was hoping to watch Les Miserables with some of the people from the tour while some of them are still here, but the flight to Berlin leaves at 6:35PM and the show starts at 7… So I’ll have to do that when we get back to London. I think quite a few people from the tour will still be around Europe while we’re around so we still have many opportunities to catch up later on. Until then…
It’ll be good to have more than a few days in a city now though. The tour was really hectic in that regard. We only spent 1 day every city and its just not enough to see everything. So when we get back to Berlin there is still a lot of stuff that we didnt have time to see. Maybe we’ll move on to Hamburg or something after 2 days…
I’m in Prague now and contrary to my expectations, everything is not really that cheap… In fact, most things are actually the same price as in other parts of Europe. There are plenty of Christmas markets around here too, just like in Salzburg. The Christmas markets are really good places to try tons of the local food. In Salzburg, we had some mulled wine, and a bunch of small cakes and bread things. Here in Prague we tried some fire pit roasted ham, and some roasted pork and dumplings. There was some round pastry with cinnamon on it that we tried too which was fairly tasty. We just ate dinner at a local restaurant too, where we had a bunch of random Czech food and some really cheap and tasty beer.
Wandering around Prague today, there wasn’t really alot to see. We visited the St Vitus Cathedral which is in the Prague Castle grounds. The stained glass inside was amazingly bright and vivid. After the castle grounds, we wandered around Prague, climbed the bridge tower, took some nice pictures, and visited the Christmas markets before grabbing dinner. All in all Prague has been pretty interesting but I think I’ve missed out on alot of what there is to do here due to the fact that I don’t know what there is to see here. Maybe if I come back next time I’ll be more prepared…
Since I last wrote, it seems as if a ton of things have happened,even though it’s only been 5 days. It was raining almost our entire stay there and I picked up a cold (which has since disappeared). Florence was really nice and the food was amazing. I shared a 1.2 kg Florentine Beef Steak with some other peeps from the tour. It’s easily the best steak I’ve had ever! Marcus asked me to look for Modiano poker cards but I didnt really get much time to look around in Florence. I did find them in Rome but there was also so much stuff to do in Rome that I didn’t buy enough packs. Sorry Marcus but I only have 2 decks, and they’re not poker index. Unfortunatly for you, visiting the Vatican, Michelangelo’s David, the Colloseum and the Roman Forums took up most of my time. Rome is probably my favourite city so far even though we had to be constantly on alert for pickpockets and crazy drivers. After Rome we went to Venice and the weather went back to being bleak and rainy. Venice was pretty good for shopping and generally exploring but not much else. I expected more canals but the amount was sufficient :P We’re now in Salzburg, Austria and still with the tour for 6 more days. The christmas markets here are pretty amazing and theres tons of things to try. The mulled wine is especially tasty. Tomorrow morning we leave for Prague where I’m hoping the markets will be cheap and awesome. Until next time…
