berlin - again

and so our travelling party breaks up once more; henry and zoe to rome, and i'm back to berlin for csd. i met again with maike (see left, refer first berlin entry) and stayed with her for the week.

saturday was parade day, and it was everything i expected, (referring to fast paced kylie tunes), and more (referring to the number of falafels i consumed). regrettably, most probably due to a combination of some unorthodox dance moves and the graceful ascending and descending of floats, my jeans did not survive the day.

i managed to do a bit more sightseeing in this stay, including, after much resistance, tasting the berlin speciality of curry wurst (it was actually quite tasty; i guess there's not too much that can go wrong with a sausage, tomato sauce and curry powder). other memorable times include the security check at the reichstag (german parliament) being slightly confused as to why i was bringing 6 asahi beers into the building in my backpack (i was only reminded of my purchase made earlier in the day by a familiar clinking sound when i placed my bag on the x-ray belt). disappointingly, they did not place these in the fridge for me while i took a tour.

budapest - hungary

lured by the cheapness of eastern europe, we ventured north to budapest. it was only on arrival that we found out that budapest is home to the biggest tesco supermarket in the world! they even had large fish swimming in tanks. unfortunately we did not think to bring cameras to the supermarket, so here are some other photos. below you can see henry and i with sara (who ramjet and i stayed with in london) and her friend atop a monument.

here is zoe and i on henry's somewhat steep 'shortcut' to the fort..
some of the time in budapest was spent recovering from croatia. after this we partied in some pretty neat bars. here is henry giving me hand/back to climb a tree. the reason why i am climbing the tree can not be pin pointed exactly, but it was definitely relevant at the time.

other interesting things include public baths, and the reading material at an otherwise respectable italian cafe being made up of a range of playboy magazines.

split and hvar - croatia

finally we make it to a mediterranean beach! we spent a night in split after our overnight ferry from ancona (highlight being duty free vodka) and headed to the island of hvar for a few nights (beautiful!). here we stayed with luca (luca's lodge); think perhaps a fawlty towers john cleese with a heavy eastern european accent, who progressively increases the volume of his voice through a conversation. luca had cousins who could get anything conceivably and inconceivably possible done for us (when we pointed out some donkeys in a field we were offered the half day or full day hire of donkeys from his cousin's friend).

unsure what we would do with two donkeys for a half day, we took up the offer of renting a boat from luca's cousin for a whole day. venturing out to the islands we discovered some secluded bays with unbelievably still and transparent water. intermittently anchoring up, we jumped overboard for swims (see above for me and below for henry). however, getting back on board was somewhat less graceful due to there being no ladder.

after reading the warning in the lonely planet about sea urchins, and relaying this information to everyone repeatedly, i promptly stepped on a sea urchin. however, having 10 splinters embedded in my foot did not dampen my spirits significantly. below is nurse zoe attending to my injury as i sip on an icey beer (the tastiest coldest beer you can imagine. at this fridge temperature we had to justifiably sacrifice all perishables)

other special moments included luca's non english speaking brother in law(?) cooking us some chevapchichis on the bbq (luca had taken us to his very good family friend the butcher earlier in the day), nights spent at the local bar (where quite violent sparkles were placed in our drinks, and some young french man wearing a nautical outfit including cravat tried to woo me with some ballroom style dancing; luckily he had to be back on his boat soon after this).

the great divide

a change of plans has occurred, and side . ramjet is off to london to see the parents (thus breaking the first rule of npnr; no parents). henry, zoe and i are heading east.....

venezia - italy

here we are in sunny venice/crazy tourist town. for the first day it was not so sunny venice, and it was rather difficult to locate a dry picnic spot. fortunately we found a lovely dank alley in a not so busy area (lost is a strong word) to prepare what was definitely not the first cheese and tomato sandwich i have consumed on this trip. on the rare occasion ham is added, and salt and pepper are considered valuable and luxurious commodities. here is ramsey stretching/about to contract a temporary bridge over the canal.

me and a previously constructed bridge. highlights other than the sandwich included san marco, where we saw olde decaying bits of holy people in elaborate jars. this was slightly disturbing. the bright gold mosaics on the ceiling were inspiring, and i then understood sally's hankering for an extracurricular mosaic class.

one sunny day we went on a boat out to the islands and had a grand time. ramsey and zoe bought lovely glass rings, and henry and i had rather tasty gelati.

ramsey on the island with colourful houses.we also noted the unauthorised use of the CHEMS symbol on antiwar propaganda throughout the city.

münchen - germany

we return to germany, but this time to bavaria. we are informed that bavaria is very different to berlin, i.e., people not too fond of each other, and we are to not mention how much we loved berlin. again we are forced to drink beer so as not to cause offence to traditional culture. but this time ginormous 1L beers. i am a firm believer that lifting this heavy glass stein counts as exercise. here is me contemplating a workout.
in true npnr style, henry and i embark on another pubcrawl. we made a new friend called tess. there are events that occurred on the pubcrawl in which a detailed recount of are not necessary. these events were largely considered a direct result of the event pictured below, in which henry led the way in a team bucket cocktail drinking race.

needless to say, apart from a few inanimate objects, everyone made a full recovery and we went on another free city tour (highly recommended). here we saw the anticlimactic glockenspiel, beer halls where hitler convinced people he made complete sense, and buildings entirely renovated to their pre war days.

one day we went on a trip to schloss neuschwanstein (or the disney castle), built by crazy ludwig. he sure was crazy.

ramsey in the bavarian countryside...

salzburg - austria

we found the hills alive with tourists striking curious julie andrews style poses. it took great strength to suppress the medley of sound of music songs bursting through my head so that they would not escape out my mouth (i may have had some brief moments of weakness).



after a lazy morning of watching a well worn copy of the sound of music, and considering the feasibility of creating a new wardrobe out of the curtains, we headed to the world's largest ice caves. it was recommended that we wear warm clothes and sturdy shoes (as in the past a number of australians decided thongs were appropriate footwear for a walk through a cave, ascending 700 steps, at near freezing point). so with ramsey wearing all the clothes from her rucksack, and i convinced by ramsey that a jumper would be probably a good idea and shorts were definitely not, we headed off on our tour with yet another over enthusiastic australian tour guide (yes australian not austrian. it is apparently our largest export of skilled workers).


inside the cave (really as cold as they said) were many naturally formed ice 'sculptures', and we listened in earnest as they were explained to us as having an uncanny likeness to polar bears or elephants or some other large fat sort of animal in an obscure position. here are some pictures, and one of me carrying a lantern (it is otherwise pitch black inside the cave). my fingers got cold/extremely cold but the novelty of carrying a carbide lamp suppressed any immediate need to complain.
here are some pictures from outside the caves...

vienna - austria

it was without question that in vienna we had to eat a weiner schnitzel. obviously one giant schnitzel per person is not enough, so two massive pieces were served to all of us, in some cases on top of each other with filling inbetween. see below for before and after shots..

now grossly overfull and justifiably unable to move from our chairs, we discovered that it is common to take leftovers home. we adamently packed up some leftover rice and set out for a walk/lumbering roll to the fair ground. here is the oldest ferris wheel in europe. not such a great selling point i would have thought, especially that now it has half the number of cabins due to an incident during ww2. here is henry and i being attacked by a monster at the fair.

coincidentally, there was a soccer match between austria and scotland in vienna at the same time of our visit. ramsey and i were lucky enough to have three scantily clad scotsmen in our dorm, who checked the validility of our chemical engineering graduate claims by quzzing us on the chemical symbols for a variety of elements. convinced that we were genuine, they then entrusted us with buying presents for their wives, as they were running out of time if they were to be start drinking at noon.

other notes on vienna - a taxi cab with a dvd player showing happy feet. this distracted us from where we were going and ended up at a closed bowling alley instead of a nighclub. other attempts to leave the hostel bar resulted in ending up in a 24 hour copy centre. we decided that the hostel bar was not that bad.

cesky krumlov - czech republic

cesky was a beautiful little place in the czech countryside. they had bears at the castle, and lots of fun boating activities. here is us watching from our hostel balcony and drinking beer as people head down the drop and fall off their boat. we found it hilarious.

after watching this spectacle we decided that we should do some boating. here is us with some new australian friends heading down the river. this rowing was significantly more succesful than the rowing in prague, perhaps due to a current which made it quite unneccessary to row at all.



post rowing team shot... this was taken after our graceful landing, which including desperately chasing at least two different havianas downstream.... lunch time on the balcony, zoe, jess and 'no pants tuesday' henry...

other notes: in cesky, people often mow their lawns in their bikini.