Sweden and Germany

benscott85 — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:46:00 GMT

Hi all,

I'm in an internet cafe in Prague, so sorry if this is short or abruptly cut off. The week we had in Sweden was fantastic. We spent four days in Gothenburg at Matt's mate Mikey and his girlfriend Olga's place. They had a beautiful apartment and this was a great recovery time for us after the festival as we were absolutely knackered. We spent most of the time just lazing around in the town, or having beers in some of the pubs. We then caught the train up to Stockholm for the weekend. Stockholm is a beautiful city made up of hundreds of islands all connected by roads and bridges. It has quite a similar feel to Sydney or Auckland as the whole city is surrounded by water, hence there is boardwalks, bars and boats everywhere. We spent our first night catching up with an old friend of Matt's which was good fun, and then spent the Saturday walking around the town and checking it out. The centre island is called Gamlstan, and is the old part of the city. Here is the castle which was pretty impressive, as well as lots of old narrow cobblestone streets which is quite easy to get lost in. We also caught a ferry over to another island which has a big theme park (the Swedes love their theme parks) but also the Vasa museum. The Vasa is the hilarious story of a Swedish king back in the day constructing this boat, and insisting on more and more cannons being placed on it, that once it set sail to great fanfare it promptly sunk to the bottom before it even left the harbour! The ship has been restored beautifully though, and is amazing to see. We also caught up with our Swedish Roskilde mates: Max, Hlin and Idun, who all live in Stockholm and took us out for beers one night. We went to this brilliant bar on the highest hill in Stockholm, and at sunset it was absolutley breathtaking. The fact the sun doesn't set until 11pm or so, and they have like 3 hours of twilight makes it even better.

We then spent a day travelling to Hamburg where we had two nights. Hamburg was nice, but if anyone was travelling on a tight schedule I'd recommend skipping it. We explored the city, and spent a day walking around and there is some beautiful town squares and bars on the water, but it is mainly an industrial city with docks, large ships and cranes. Berlin though, was something else. We spent 4 nights in Berlin and had a fantastic time. We got into Berlin on the Wednesday and headed straight to an Aussie bar around the corner from our hostel, and met up with my mate Carey who was already seated in front of the tv for Origin. Even though the result didn't go our way, it was still great to watch it and have a few beers. We spend the next few days walking around with Carey which was great fun. We've discovered a company called New Europe, who run free 4 hour walking tours in all the big cities and they're fantastic. The guides are all knowledgable and run off a tip only basis, so it's cost you 5 euro or whatever you want really. Our Berlin guide was a Scottish bloke who had a degree in German history and was fascinating. We saw the Brandenburg Gates, the Holocaust Memorial, Hitler's bunker (which is now just a carpark), the Luftwaffe headquarters, the Berlin wall, the site of the Nazi book burning and many, many churches. I found Berlin incredible, and could easily spend plenty of time there. It was pretty much the centre of history in the 20th century, and I found it fascinating.

We've actually just done the Prague free tour, and head off to a pub crawl tonight, before going to Cesky Krumlov tomorrow, a small, picturesque town in the south of the Czech Republic. We return to Prague on Wednesday before flying to Paris on Thursday for the last week of the trip. I hope everyone is well at home and once I'm back in London I'll be sure to stick all my pictures up. Talk to you all soon!

Roskilde Festival

benscott85 — Thu, 9 Jul 2009 20:17:00 GMT

I'm currently sitting in Gothenburg, drinking some instant coffee, with some dodgy American television on. We've now been here since Monday, which has been great fun as most people we've talked to seem to think it's the Brisbane of Sweden. Not a whole lot of tourist things to do, but beautiful and perfect to go to if you know people there. Hence it's been perfect for recovering from Roskilde Festival in Denmark last week.

We arrived in Copenhagen from London last Tuesday, after walking out of Ando's Putney flat at 6am without our Roskilde tickets. We had to wait for him to get back from his run, and then a rushed 90 quid taxi ride to Gatwick costing approximately 80 more pounds than we were initially going to pay! We got there eventually however and spent a great day in Copenhagen just walking around, drinking beers on the river and sleeping for 12 hours that night which was great preparation for Roskilde. We caught the train out to the town of Roskilde, which is a small Danish university town about half an hour out of Copenhagen. The festival sits just outside town, and hails about 90,000 people every year. The campground is split into Camp East and Camp West. Most people arrive on the Monday and set up camp for 4 days before the actual music starts on the Thursday. Having got there on Wednesday, we landed in Camp East and walked for an hour across the campsite in 30 degree heat with two packs each, trying to find a campsite. Eventually we found one which was perfect in a newly opened part of the festival, which meant the facilities were kept reasonably clean compared to other parts, and it was still a close enough walk to the music.

In a huge stroke of luck, when setting up camp Matt noticed two other guys setting up camp behind us, one of which was sporting Bonds undies out the back of his shorts. This we thought had to be a sure sign these was other Aussies! Steve and Scott were two blokes from Melbourne, and from then on we had a crew of 4 Aussies at the festival which I now can't imagine not spending it with them. We had awesome fun having other people that understood us, even with the Victorians not quite sure who we were talking about when we'd say "old mate". In our section, we also had 5 or 6 Finnish blokes, an American and 7 Swedes who we'd often end up with just sitting around drinking and chatting with. The Swedes were from Stockholm, and are going to show us around this weekend when we get there. The beauty of travelling!

The weather was amazing the whole festival, with the exception of the last day it was 30 degrees and clear skies. It was impossible to sleep in this heat though, so we were always up early feeling sorry for ourselves. In true Aussie cricket tradition though, and a lack of hats, we constructed some beer carton hats. Completely unexpectedly, these turned into a massive novelty for the Europeans! In the first two days we would have been photographed 30 or 40 times, including the Danish TV station TV4 and the biggest Swedish newspaper.

I could talk all day about the music, but I'll save it and only include a few highlights. My biggest was Coldplay, who closed out the festival on the Sunday. They were absolutley amazing, and the crowd sang along to ever song. Halfway through the set the stage went pitch black, and the band popped up the back in the middle of the crowd with just an acoustic guitar and performed Green Eyes (one of my favourite Coldplay songs) and also a cover of Billie Jean in dedication to Michael Jackson. During Yellow they also released thousands of yellow balloons into the crowd which was visually incredible. Oasis were also fantastic, being the true rock stars with lots of posturing and carrying on. Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger were huge. Pete Doherty was on the last day at 2pm on a side stage, and was one of the best things I saw. It was just him and his guitar, and he was amazing. He played a cover of Neil Young's Needle and the Damage Done, which was pretty appropriate seeing he's a massive junkie. Beautifully done though. Also good were Kanye West, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Whitest Boy Alive, Fleet Foxes, First Aid Kit, Pet Shop Boys, Madness, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Faith No More. There were many more but I'm hopeless with trying to remember them all.

Anyway, this has been a massive entry already so I'd better go, but it was an amazing week. We're off to Stockholm tomorrow, before heading to Germany next week. Hope everyone is well at home! Big up and respect!

Ben's Travels

Sweden and Germany

Roskilde Festival