hi guys i have a bit of free time and its the first time in weeks that ive had free internet so im going to update my journal a bit and add in some more details
at the moment in in venice and using the free internet in our hotel ... the girls left this morning and tonight im taking the train to paris and then to england ... to stay with uncle john n aunty sue in the cotswolds
my last entry on contiki was a bit brief so im going to add some more details ...
day 1 - berlin
spent this day arriving to berlin ... caught the plane from london to berlin and made my way to the hotel ... first thing i noticed about berlin was that it wasnt as architecturally beautiful as paris ... dave our contiki tour guide explained that this was because many parts of berlin were bombed during ww2 and heaps of the city was destroyed ... when it was rebuilt it was rebuilt with lots of concrete and little detail following 1950s desgins ... there are lots of kebabs in berlin>! it is there takeaway - hang over food ... berlin looked a lot like poland to me actually ... heaps of flats where people live ... really big ones that look like the commission housing we have in melbourne ... and on the outskirts of berlin they have these holiday house things ... what they are is basically just 6 or 7 acres of land, each divided into 8 square metre plots .. people from cities build little bungalows on them and have tiny gardens ... its like a holiday house in the city ... they had heaps of these in poland too because so many people lived in flats that they holiday house things a few kms out of the city where a common getaway escape thing ... slept in the avo in the hotel ... and at dinner we met the other contiki people ... were a few cute boys ... and each of us girls called dibs on our respective ones ...that night me sarah lou and kaylz went into one of the boys rooms (juls, steve and matt) and spent the night drinking and talking to everyone ... jane and clare were there as well and the boys friends gene will and mike .. ended up nstaying up until 4am and had to get up at 7am ... we met this hilarious aussie bogan too ... we called him townsville ... hes the most annoying loudmouthed yobbo who comes from townsville and is a miner ... real idiot
day 2 - berlin again
we had to wake up at 7am aggghh and had a huge buffet breakfast ... i ate eggs!!!! so crazy ... after 10 years of not eating eggs i ate scrambled eggs on contiki ... im not sure whether ive suddenly changed taste buds or whether i was just so hungover all of contiki ... but something changed my pattern ... that morning we took a bus trip and got shown all the historical sites of berlin like the berlin wall ... checkpoint charlie ... reichstag and the brandenberg gate ... the funniest thing happened ... as we were visiting the berlin wall the bus tried to get through this narrow alley way ... the roads were all glazed with ice, and the bus started slipping sideways into the cars hahah and the driver couldnàt control it because the bus was slipping on the ice so all the boys had to rush out of the bus and push the bus so it didnt crush the cars hahaha ... we spent about 2 hours getting out of this alley way ... i have some funny pictures of all the boys ppushing the bus ... our tour guide dave explained the history of berlin and we had that afternoon free ... us girls spent a few hours playing in the snow yayayay yes it snowede in berlin!!! so beautiful ... and then we went and revisited the reichstage and brandenberg gate and went to a museum ... that avo we all came home ... and we had an organised pub crawl and a german dinner... dinner was apple strudel and potatoes ... and some random meat thing for the others ... the germans are huge on potatoes ... all over berlin there are stalls selling potatoes and sauerkraut and wurst - wurst are german sausages ... then some cool german girl with hot pink tights took us on the pub crawl ... we drank apple schnapps in the streets ... beacuse drinking in the streets is legal in germany and very common ... u always see people with beers on the train or streets ... we went to three pubs which i mentioned in the other blog and then a club ... big night ... late night again ... ....
day 3 - berlin
we woke up earlish and had a free day ... the bus took us from our hotel to the centre of berlin ... we went to starbucks got some cofffees and did a free walking tour of berlin ... catually we started the tour ... did about 10 minutes of it ... then it started raining n snowing n it was minus 2 degrees so we thought screw that and left the tour ... way too cold ... that avo the girls went home to sleep and i went to the train station to organise some stuff re transport ... then went to checkpoint charlie ... this was a booth during the cold war through which people could pass from east to west berlin ... went into the museum and saw some crazy stuff that peolpe did in trying to cross the wall ... walked around berlin for a few hours and even now there is such a diff between east and west berlin ... east was the russian part and west was the allied part ... west berlin is still where all the designer stores are and looks a lot wealthier ... the bus was picking us up at 4pm so i went home with all the boys ... the girls had gone home much earlie r... were meant to go to a beer hall but it was shut so me and lou had kebabs and beer ... this was the first time i have ever actually bought a beer!!! i even drank most of it!!!! i have spent this trip trying to teach myself to drink bee r ... we sat around our rooms again at night and had a few quiet drinks ... went to bed around 1ish
day 4 - berlin to prague
big bustrip day ... took us about 6 hours ... i have some funny photos of everyone sleeping on the bus ... stopped at dresden for lunch, german down near the border which got almost totally destroyed by ww2 bombings ... had dinner at the hotel in prague and then went bar hopping with everyone from the trip that night around prague ... had absinthe!!!the absinthe in the czech republic has worm wood ... this is the stuff that makes u hallucinate<!!! we had a few shots of this and some drinks ... another late one ...
day 5 - prague
early start this morning again arggh the 7am wake ups were really taking a toll ... had an organised walking toour with this awesome czech lady and saw some things like hrdcany castle, st vitus catherdrale , st charles bridge and the old town square ... the old town sqaure has a famous astrological clock built in the 15the century ... really pretty clock with all these dancing figures etc ... dave our tour guidew warned us how dodge prague was ... he warned us to count our change and to check receipts from purchases on credit to make sure extra 0s werent added ... apparently fake cops even walk the streets of prague and us to check peoples money to see whether it is counterfeit and then they just steal it ... we had a cruise that afternoon for lunch ... had traditional czech food ... potatoe dumplings etc ... and lots of meat and some cool cakes ... potatoe dumplings arent like the polish perogi ...they are these huge doughy things that are really yuky ... just big balls that are a bit like raw dough ... awful ...it was good to be in prague because i could understand a lot of the menus and a lot of what people saidbecause it was so similar to polish ... that night we went out to this awesome club that wasw 5 stories and each level played a different kind of music ... the bartenders were really dodgy ... just before they gave u your change, they would try n take it and say TIP ... if u said yes then they would take ur change ... we are really lucky we went trhough prague on an organised tour and had an informed guide to tell us all about this!!!
day 6 - prague
930 wakeup ... free day so we went awlking around ... went through the jewish quarter and the havelska markets ... that night we were so tired we didnt do anything ... us girls just went out and had a cheap czech dinner...
prague was very beautiful but a lot different from berlin ... the people in rpague were always trying to rip off tourists ... dave explained that this was because after the poverty of communism, heaps of dumb tourists would come into prague and because of the poverty, the locals took advtange of them ... berlin was very diff so were the people ... they lacked the haughtineess of the french ... dave said this had something to do with the fact that germans were still so ashamed of their history ... they are not arrogant at all ... much warmer people
day 7 - trip to vienna
stoped at some down for lunch ... dont remembr where ... arrived in vienna late ... most ofthe boys were too tired to go out so us girls went out with matt and gene ... that night after dinner at the hotel we had an organised night bus tour of vienna ... then us girls and matt and gene and the american hank went to the bermuda triangle area ... thats where all the good bars are in vienna ... drinks were so cheap before 10pm!! all half price ... a really funny touristy bar and they had pole dancing ... have some really funny and stupid photos of that night ..
day 8 ' vienna
last day for us ... we woke up early and had a bus tour ... saw the bofburg palace and stephensdome ... had the aftenroon free so walked around saw some sites ... went shopping at zara and bought prtty red shoes yay ... we had a schniztel lunch and i had some traditional potato salad from vienna yum ... that avo went to a famous cafe where trostky beethoven and mozart used to go .. and had apple strudel ... apparently vienna has a huge cafe culture where people sit around for hours drinking coffee .. sort of like melbourne ... that avo the whole tour went to a schnapps museum ... the son of the owner took us around the factory and we got free schanpps tasting yaya ... there was this gold schnapps with real bits of gold ... and absinte too .. real schnapps is not what we have back home ... its more like vodka ... its about 50% ... i think we all had about 8 shots haha and then that night lou and kaylez went to some mozart concert ... me and sare went back to the hotel and had some pre drinks with the boys ... we all went out that night and met lou and kaylz at the bermuda triangle ... had a big farewell for our last night ...
