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!
