Tonielle's European Adventure

On the road again...

tonielle_krisanski — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 05:13:00 GMT

Seeing the “Goodbye Bansko” sign, was a big woohoo moment, having had a great season, but completely ready to move on! Only 2.5 hours in the transfer car (I treated myself an extra 10lev to get in with a few of my mates), I’d arrived in Sofia, which treated me like an old friend. This is the third time I’d been to Sofia, and even the hostel lady remembered me! I had a walk around to reacquaint myself with the city before I met up with my favourite Sofia ladies – Sasha and Asya, the crazy Russian and Bulgarian girls I met the first time I was in the city.

I had dinner with the girls – lots of catching up and lots of wine… and then our blind dates arrived. Haha, not really, but it’d felt like that’s what Sasha had done to us! She’d met these guys a few nights before at a Japanese restaurant, where she’d met a Japanese drum band that were touring

the city, and these Dutch guys were working on the production. They did come bearing gifts though, a few tour t-shirts, oh and they’d gotten our drinks bill paid for too… so they weren’t half bad. ☺

By midnight, I was falling asleep at the table (we had started at seven) and we said our goodbyes, but I had to promise that I wasn’t saying goodbye to Sofia for the last time, and neglect my girls. It was so nice to arrive somewhere – know the city, have somewhere to stay, and have local friends to catch up with… so I will have to go back there again someday.

Wednesday was a train day. A long, boring, tiring train day. I left the hostel at 8am, and arrived at my new hostel in Brasov, Romania at 12am the next morning. There was some excitement though, around 10pm, when I’d fallen asleep, felt the train stopping, looked at the time, thought “shit, this is my stop”, grabbed my stuff and bolted off the train – only to look around and realise that I was on a tiny town platform, not a large city platform. The train was leaving, and I ran to the only person on the platform, “is this Brasov?” “No”, she said. SHIT!!! I looked panicked, asked her what I could do, and said “can you stop the train?” expected a look that said “don’t be stupid”. Instead, she looked at how much train was left on the platform, grabbed her walkie talkie and started yelling into it… and the train stopped!!! She opened a door, I thanked her a thousand times, and then an hour later, I arrived in Brasov. Now clearly it wasn’t my fault cos the train was so late, and European stations are so poorly marked! I was very lucky not to be stranded in the middle of nowhere, close to midnight, and on my own though… it pays to be traveling as a single girl sometimes!

The next few days I spent in Brasov, a lovely little city in the Transylvanian region of Romania. I did a lot of exploring of the city, mostly of the old town – home to the “black church” which isn’t very black. It’s a really old church that was nicknamed the black church after a huge fire that turned it black… but they must have cleaned it because its not very black anymore. I also visited the “smallest street in Europe” which is probably only about one meter wide, walked through the “outcasts village” where all the people that didn’t belong in the city walls had to live, and found a lovely view of the city from a hill. That was about the extent of the excitement of Brasov, because even my hostel was empty.

I did a day trip out to Bran on Friday, which is home to “Dracula’s Castle”. Lovely castle, where I imagined a fairytale princess living… not Dracula, but who am I to argue tourism? There was something a little freaky about that place though, because I was eating my lunch in a little park next to the castle and I spotted this bat, injured, crawling along the footpath. Only little, basically a mouse with wings – it kinda put me off my lunch, but I helped it along, off the footpath, so no one stood on him.

On Sunday, I was off to Sighsigoaha (pronounced Sig-i-shore-ra), which was a great little town. It was a beautiful hot day (the first day I’d warn a t-shirt and had to sit in the shade since October), and I explored the well-preserved Old Town, which had a great museum in the old clock tower, and the house Vlad Tepes (the real guy that was the muse for the character Dracula) was born in… which is now a fully renovated restaurant, shame. I only spent one night there, in again, an empty hostel, before I moved on to Cluj.

Cluj-Napoca is Romania’s largest student town, so I expected a party, and I wasn’t wrong. In the first 10mins of arriving, I met Matty the Hungarian, and after walking around town, seeing a few sights and having dramas trying to exchange Bulgarian Lev (no one takes it, even though they’re neighbouring countries???) we headed back to the hostel with some beers and vodka. Which were polished off, just in time to head out with some others heading to a “ladies only” night at one of the locals. Bonus, was I didn’t spend any money that night, with free drinks from the bar and some of the punters… negative, was the most disgusting hangover I’ve had in a long while.

I didn’t see much more of Cluj, spending the whole of Tuesday recovering, and then Wednesday I was on the road again, heading up to Sighetu Marmatiei, a town in the Maramures region.

Sighetu Marmatiei didn’t have a very nice greeting for me – it started pissing down with rain as soon as I stepped off the bus, and then I took me twenty minutes of walking in the rain to find the place, cos the dot on the map was marked wrong. Once I’d gotten to the hostel, everything was fine, except the grandmother and granddaughter of the English man that owned the hostel were the only ones there, and I had to communicate through the ten-year-old… and I only saw her at the start and at the end of my stay. Again, I was the only one staying there (I was beginning to get a complex) and that’s when I realised how hard it was to get around a town without that one overly helpful English speaking hostel worker or any kind of information center, or a reliable internet connection.

I did ok though, I was there for three nights, and on Thursday, I found the Museum of Arrested Thought – which was about the time between the 1940s-1980s when Romania was a communist state, and a learnt a lot about the incredible amount of people that were killed, or jailed, or put in hard labour camps. They even had a few buildings through the country that were “personality adjustment” centers, just like in the book 1984. Unfortunately all the displays were in Romanian, and because my Romanian is a bit rusty, I only had an English booklet describing the displays, which didn’t really do it justice.

Friday was more eventful, with the plan to get to Sapanta where the Merry Cemetery was. I had got a little information from a local that said the town was only about 20km away, and when I asked about a bus, he said, “no, just hitch-hike”. Since I’m not really a fan of getting raped and plundered, I figured that I could manage cycling 20km. After getting a frustrating glimpse of google maps and confirming that the distance was correct, the route was fairly flat, and there was only one road, so getting lost would be hard – I borrowed one of the hire bikes downstairs and off I went.

Cycling was a great way to take in the sights and smells of the countryside, and with a slight burn in the thighs, I made it to Sapanta. The Merry Cemetery is named as such because all the tombstones are painted in bright colours and carved from oak, with a picture of the deceased and an inscribed story telling of their life. Again, because my Romanian isn’t up to scratch, I couldn’t read what was written and I’ve heard the stories are quite funny and anecdotal – told in the first person, they talk about the persons life, good and bad, and sometimes about how they died too.

For example “I grew up in Sapanta where I lived all my life as a farmer. It was a pretty shit job, but someone had to do it. Everyone loved me and many people traveled miles to visit me. I had a loving family, but I cheated on my wife. I died by one of my cows accidentally sitting on me, until I suffocated.” Not even kidding, this is what some of them say!

The ride back in the afternoon felt quicker than the way there. Probably because Sighetu Marmatiei is a bigger town and I had a countdown of the km on markers home, and I wasn’t worried that the cemetery might turn out to be 35km away, not 20km. So I made it home with a sore ass, but none worse for wear, and had a beer to celebrate making the journey, and cycling over the border into Ukraine four times – without a visa! I’m such a rebel.

Anyway, so today (being Saturday) I’ve had a fabulously boring day of buses and extremely long waits at bus stations to arrive in Sibiu tonight at midnight. I do have one friend though, a Japanese guy I met at the bus station, who was deciding where to go, and has come along. I’ve got four days left in Romania before I cross the border into Hungary and am greeted by some crazy Hungarian relatives in Budapest!

Ciao xoxo

Ide Ciao Bansko!

tonielle_krisanski — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:52:00 GMT

On the train today… all day from Sofia to Bucharest, then onto Brasov. As much as this is a bum-sore, it does give me plenty of time to reflect on my time in Bulgaria and “get that bloody blog done”.

For the last five months, I’ve been in this frustrating, intriguing, rough and beautiful country that is Bulgaria. I started by traveled through it, getting my first taste in Plovdiv, the capital Sofia and then the original capital Veliko Ternovo.

It’s the kind of place that the fairy tales are told from, the castle on the hill, with impressive stone fortresses, the river winding through the city, broken up by impressive arching bridges and the rolling fields out in the distance. While I was in the city, I enjoyed wandering through the ruins of the old castle on the hill and the quirky town below. Leaving there after a couple of days, we (a guy I’d met at the hostel) headed to Varna, a beachside town on the Black Sea coast. The first night involved finding a cocktail bar we’d been recommended and drinking ourselves silly with cheap, amazing cocktails. Until we decided that we had to go to bed… but couldn’t find the hostel. Our navigation skills were so impaired by cocktail goodness, that we were lost for over two hours in the wee morning until we found the hostel… and we had a map!!!

I enjoyed Varna, even though it was November, and was way too cold to swim in the water, it was still lovely to breathe in the sea air again and put my toes in the sand. The town had a great skate-graffiti culture, and I found this amazing pier, covered in fantastic graffiti. Other drawcards included ruins of ancient Roman baths, an amazing cathedral, and the local markets. No “dolphin park” though.

From Varna, onto Ruse, the bordering town to Romania. Seperated by the River Danube it was cool to stand on the edge on the Bulgaria side, and see Romania on the other side. I spent two nights there, but there wasn’t really enough to see to justify this decision in the end. The weather was miserable while I was there, and apart from the nice town square, there wasn’t much else to see.

The day before my birthday, I got the train from Ruse, over to Romania, and Bucharest. I arrived quite late at night, and with only the address of the hostel, I had to ask around before I finally found it. And who was waiting there? Tom and Jerome! Two fantastic guys I’d met traveling a couple of times previously, and had found out were in town for my birthday as well! That night we had a catch-up session at the hostel, and then midnight birthday cocktails at a nice little bar.

The next few days included lots of laughing and general craziness, with a lovely picnic lunch in the park for my birthday, visiting the Palace of Parliament, the second largest building in the world, and using up all the rest of our Lay to buy the best train picnic ever, for our 12 hour train ride back to Sofia.

Sofia with the boys was another couple of fun days, introducing them to my crazy Sofia friends, Sasha and Asya. And then before I knew it, it was time to say goodbye to the boys* and head down to Bansko to hopefully find a season job.

Bansko. Where do I begin?

I had the help of a saint in the unusual form of Boris the Bulgarian – the guy that owned the hotel I stayed in. After he laughed in my face when he found out I was trying to find work in Bansko, “you left Australia to come and work in Bulgaria?” He only charged me 6euro a night instead of 26, and then started introducing me to some English expats in town. Which is how I landed the job in Harry’s Bar. I got a sweet deal with rent, snowboard hire, a meal every night, a wage and tips – sorted!

Snowboarding was great fun, and surprisingly enough, I did a pretty good job of it, considering I’d had no real lessons all season! The people I met were pretty sweet overall. Being a very small town, there were a few clicky groups around, but I got on with everyone generally and I definitely made some lifelong friends.

Work was a bit painful at times, especially because I was the only foreigner and female working there, and Bulgarian men that I worked with could be chauvinistic asses sometimes who got completely stressed out when it gets a bit busy. However, it was a great way to socialise with everyone in town, and meet some cool tourists as well, and get paid for it.

Probably the best snowboarding story I have happened not long into the New Year. I had been boarding with some friends since first thing because there was fresh powder and around lunch-time for my last run, Chris took me off-piste, through this easy shrubbery (I was just learning how to ride powder and off-piste at the time). I was following him because he’d done it heaps of times before, I’d fallen over a few times and struggled to get back up because the powder was almost a meter deep and if you put your arm down to get up, it just went through, straight down to your shoulder. Chris said we had to start going left again, back on piste, because you can get stuck down here… and after we kept trying to get over the hill and work out where we were, Chris said “I have no idea where we are”. F***ing great! So we keep trying to go left, as it started getting steeper into a valley and the trees are getting bigger and thicker. I’m struggling, because it’s the first time I’ve ridden through trees and in this much powder, even Chris was struggling and he was a much better boarder than me.

Luckily Chris still has battery and signal on his phone and called our other mates to tell them where we were (well where we’d gotten lost from), and we kept making our way, with things getting sketcher by the minute. We didn’t want to go down into the valley, so we stayed in the trees, where it got quite steep and icy in places. At one point my board slid out on the ice, and I lost control, flying downhill on my ass, about 20m before my thigh slammed into a tree trunk and I managed to stop myself. Very scary. Chris thought I’d broken my leg, because he couldn’t see me and I kept yelling about my leg… I just got a bloody huge bruise instead.

By then, we’d found four Bulgarians about our age, lost as well, and then went down into the valley. We figured it’d be better to stick together, so we followed. And then it turned into a rock cliff! About 5m high, they’d un-straped their boards and pushed them down, and then slid down after them. Another scary moment, when Chris is ahead of me, un-straps his board and then disappears yelling. I picked a different spot to go down, but it was bloody scary trying to get grip on the rocks in your boots so you don’t just fall the whole way down.

So after that, we found a cross-country cat-track (a thin track through the snow), so and started following that, and then when we saw we were going parallel to the river (that goes through Bankso) we finally knew we were going in the right direction. We followed that for a good few kilometers, and left the Bulgarians behind who were resting, and the track ended in a road, with cars parked there! There were a few guys standing there in ranger uniforms, so we tried to ask him if we were going in the right direction, and how far to Bansko. He informed us that it was illegal to snowboard in the national park and that he could confiscate our boards. We said that we were lost and that we didn’t want to be here! Before anything could get out of hand, we left and eventually we found the ski-road, that leads back to town, and hitched a ride back.

This Bulgarian guy and his son picked us up, and when we tried to pay him, he wouldn’t let us. Instead, when we got out, he got us to pose in photos with his son and our boards, like “look at the cool snowboarders we met today”. It was a hilarious end to our crazy afternoon. It took us three hours to get back to town, and I was late for work! I gave myself another hour to get myself together and eat before I went into work exhausted!

Other Highlights of the Bansko season.
We had a great Australia Day, seven of the seasoners being Australian, so we organized a bbq on the mountain, lots of beer, and a house party that night. There was a great group of “gappies” in town, who were doing their course to become snowboard instructors, which I got to hang out with quite a bit which were great fun, loved their tequila and ‘shot face challenge’ and (almost) all of them passed. A great swap-race (where all the skiers had to snowboard and the boarders had to ski) most of us dressed up in onesies and pushed our ski’s hard down the mountain and into Harry’s Bar for a pint – I’m happy to say I came 6th from last! Had a fun day quad-biking with a few of the guys through the neighbouring towns. And to finish it all off, an even better end of season party, which also included dressing up, beer on the mountain, and another house party.

All in all, a great season. I’m hooked now, and definitely doing another season next (European) winter.

141 days in Bulgaria > Overstayed 51 days. Oops.

Cyrillic Capers

tonielle_krisanski — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 22:24:00 GMT

Bulgaria… where do I begin? I arrived in Plovdiv train station early in the morning, and had to get to the hostel. That is usually a bit of a challenge in a new country, but not too difficult… that was until I realized that EVERYTHING was in Cyrillic. Now I knew that Bulgaria had their own alphabet, and that it was going to be more of a challenge to get around, but what I didn’t realize was that I wouldn’t even be able to find the bus station from the train station!!??

I had two options, so I picked one, and just started walking. I got to a bus depot, perfect. I decided that I was getting hungry so I should grab some breakfast. Had a look at the café, and again, the menu board was all in Cyrillic… shit! Orange juice from the fridge it is… at least I can point at that! Eventually after realizing that the bus I wanted wasn’t coming, I got enough body language and a few words of English from a staff member to realize this was the distance buses, I needed to go outside to find the local buses.

And because luck was on my side that day, I found the bus I needed… and caught it going the wrong direction! I ended up at the end of the line before the ticket lady felt sorry for me and pushed me onto another bus that eventually got me to the right stop. It then took me a good half hour of walking around the cobblestone streets of the old town in Plovdiv before I found one person that spoke two words of English, and after a three-hour ordeal from train station to hostel… I arrived!

It was then that I realized, Bulgaria is probably going to be the most challenging European country I’ve been to so far, but that was part of the fun of traveling, so I was going to have A LOT of fun in Bulgaria. ☺

I really enjoyed Plovdiv, the old city was beautiful, even if the cobblestones were particularly deadly. There were several Roman ruins throughout the city, the best was the amphitheatre made completely of marble and well preserved, the main arches and statues were still erected, which made it very impressive to see. The other one I saw was actually in the main street, there was a hole through the middle of mall strip and below, the remains of another theatre. I had read that they wanted to make some of the flooring around it see-through to really showcase the ruin, but as yet it hadn’t happened (I’m not sure it will to be honest). It was sad to see important historical ruins looked after like that.

After a walk around town and a stop into a trendy coffee shop (it had been so long) I went out to dinner with a couple of girls from the hostel – one French, one German that were both studying in Istanbul. It was the restaurant that was recommended and it wasn’t bad. It was so cheap (comparatively to western Europe and even Turkey) that we went a little crazy, bottle of wine, main and dessert – the dessert was the size of the main! It was great to be the only Aussie in the hostel and to go out with people from other nationalities and have an interesting conversation about our different cultures!

The next day, I made the trek up one of the seven hills in the city to the giant statue on top – The Statue of Liberation. It was a nice walk up, surrounded by autumn trees, even if it was a crappy day. A great view from the top, it was a nice way to wile away the morning. The rest of my time in Plovdiv was spent walking through the city, it just had a nice atmosphere.

I had plans to go to a small town called Koprivshtitsa the next day, but the bus didn’t leave until that afternoon, and the lonely planet mentioned a small day trip out to Asenovgrad to hike to an old hilltop fortress, so away I went. Silly me, I didn’t really research it very well and when I’d arrived I couldn’t find any information or anyone that spoke English… and then it started to rain. So I ended up in a café instead, for lunch. Because it is a small town, their menu was only in Cyrillic, so I tried speaking to someone at the bar, asking what I should order. One of the guys could speak a little English so he asked what I wanted to eat, he said snitzel, I was like whatever, that sounds fine. Then he started asking me something, that I didn’t understand, and he didn’t know the English word, all the other staff were watching us, laughing along. We weren’t getting anywhere, so he went out to the kitchen and came back with a slice of bread – he was trying to ask if I wanted a sandwich. We all pissed ourselves laughing, that he’d done that… sometimes I love misunderstandings, they can be hilarious!

I eventually got the bus back to Plovdiv, had to run back to the hostel to get by bag and then run back to the bus station to get the bus to Koprivshtitsa, but it turned out that the hostel guy sent me to the wrong bus station, and because the bus was leaving shortly, I didn’t have time to get to the other one, so I ended up getting a bus straight to Sofia instead.

Sofia. I arrived at night, and found the hostel reasonably easy. I spent the next two days, walking through town, seeing the sights. Even though the weather was miserable, it was still an enjoyable city to wander through. The third night I was in Sofia, I went out with a few guys from the hostel, had dinner and then wandered around trying to find somewhere we could have a drink. It’s an odd city in that it doesn’t really have any noticeable bars and pubs around. So we saw a girl come out of a building and we asked her if there was anywhere to go and she said “yeah, I just came out of a pub, its up the stairs”. There was this open hallway that she’d just came from, an unmarked door on the left and then stairs leading up to McCarthy’s – a hidden away Irish pub that was packed!

So we went in, ordered a drink – my vodka-coke came out as three glasses – one with ice in it, one with vodka and the third of coke. Complicated! I ended up chatting to this larger than life Russian woman called Sasha. She was brilliant – this was her local, so she came in and owned the place, knew everyone and soon I had met half the bar and found out that shaking her hand almost crushes every bone in your hand!

Soon it was just Sasha, her Bulgarian friend Asya, another Russian guy and one of the English guys from the hostel, Matt and I. We had a great night out, drinking vodka on the rocks (I had a coke chaser, crazy Russians!) and talking lots of crap, ending up at this great little café that was serving food and drinks at 3am! The girls invited me out to dinner with them the following night, so we bid our goodbyes and then I met up with them the next night for similar mayhem.

Again, we met at McCarthy’s and had a drink before heading to this great restaurant called Olive’s where we met up with the forth member of the party, an English guy that was working in Sofia, Geoff. Another great night, and many bottles of wine, we went to a couple different bars including one that was accessed by a garden gate – and was a backyard barn, only lit by candlelight! No signage anywhere, it was still pretty busy - all locals, and everyone looking at Geoff and I saying “how’d you get in here?”. It was great to go out with locals in town, it just felt like a normal night out with friends, rather than a bunch of foreigners sightseeing in the city, which was nice for a change.

That next day I was off to Veliko Tarnovo, but the girls became friends and everytime I go back to Sofia, we’ll definitely be in touch!

Lightning Clouds & Midget Porters

tonielle_krisanski — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:46:00 GMT

East Turkey

So after an amazing night bus (note the sarcasm), Justin and I arrived in Malayta (or more like were dumped at the side of a main road) at seven in the morning. After finding some breakfast, we followed the “Tourism Info” signs through town, which by chance took us exactly where we wanted to be! We had a mission to accomplish that day – to find the tourist guru that lived in the town’s fun-park to organize a cheap tour up to Mount Nemrut for that afternoon. How do we find him? Easy, he’s the 80s looking man with the long, grey, combed-over hair wearing bell-bottomed jeans!

Talking to the guru, he suggested that it probably wasn’t a good idea to climb the mountain at the moment, the weather had been really bad, but we could still do it if we wanted to. Of course we went against our better judgment and decided that we’d just spent seven hours on a bus to get here, so we were gunna climb the damn mountain! The bus up to Mount Nemrut didn’t leave until lunch-time, so we walked around town, found the bazaar and bought some dried apricots – Malatya is famous for them!

The bus from Malatya was a good three hours long - along windy, wet and muddy mountain roads – that Justin had the pleasure of watching and cringing at (I was trying to sleep) and we arrived in our hotel – only 2km from the summit. The hotel was freezing, but we were soon invited upstairs where there were copious amounts of tea and a warm fire. They decided that the conditions were too bad for us to attempt to the top that afternoon, so after dinner we relaxed next to the fire for the evening and had an early night (no shower however because the hotel ran off solar heating, and no sun for the last few days meant no hot water!).

Up bright and early the next morning to tackle the mountain, it wasn’t raining which was a good sign, but the thick fog wasn’t good. We rugged up in all our warm gear (not really owning much, I had to borrow a think jumper from Justin) and off we went.

The first kilometer up wasn’t bad – thick fog, but that was ok (this is when I took my one and only photo), but then the wind really picked up, and then the rain started. Ok, we were expecting this, but hail, we weren’t expecting. It was probably only the size of a pin-head, but it bloody hurt when it hit your face and hands! We’re still climbing, and I couldn’t see much except where I was putting my feet, and the occasional glance ahead to make sure I was keeping up with the boys. It’s a struggle, but we finally made it, to the summit, and the ancient monuments.

Now, the reason why we were putting ourselves through all that was to see the two thousand year old memorial sanctuary built on top, by an odd, self-loving, self-proclaimed king. On the top of Mount Nemrut, was an artificial summit (made by a hill of limestone), which is surrounded by giant statues of gods, and one of the king himself. Most of it still remains, with the statues now sitting headless – their heads scattered around below. It was amazing to see (I’m sure even more amazing if we could have seen it without the torrential rain, hail and wind, and the view is supposed to be spectacular). After walking around and taking it in for as long as we dared, we started our decent.

By this time the weather had gotten even worse (if that was possible), and the thunder and lighting had started. Lighting struck near where we were, hit something, and for a second all we could see around us was red! That’s when we realized that we were actually IN the storm cloud and that we’d better get back quick-smart. We all started running down the hill – which is a surprisingly hard task to do when you are soaked to the bone in skinny jeans (which don’t allow for much movement) and the rubber shoes that you borrowed are full with water!

The two kilometers that took an hour to climb up, probably only took us 20 minutes to get back down, with the lightning still going off all around us. What a relief it was to arrive back inside the hotel and start peeling off the wet layers of clothing. I was wearing two long shirts, a thick jumper and a ‘shower proof’ jacket and I was soaked right through. The worst part was – no hot shower! So after toweling off and putting on any other warm, dry clothes that we owned, Justin and I went upstairs to huddle around the fire to try to warm up again.

After we could feel our fingers and toes again, I had patched up the giant blisters that had formed on my heels, and we had thrown all our wet clothes into giant plastic bags, we were ready to face the bus ride back down the mountain. We were a sight to be seen – Justin wearing a pair of pants generously given to him by one of the hotel men and socks with sandals (his only pair of pants and shoes had gotten soaked), and me hobbling around wearing trackie-pants and a “drowned rat” style hair-do.

By the time we’d gotten back into Malatya, and onto a bus to Diyarbakir, we were exhausted. It was a crazy adventure, which turned out to be more about the journey rather than the destination, but was well worth it… what’s a bit of rain anyway?? ☺

The next day was spent exploring the old-town area of Diyarbakir, a city in eastern Turkey. What I liked about Diyarbakir was that it really felt that we were observing what life in Turkey was really like. No tourists (we were the only foreigners that we saw), no souvenir shops and no one that could speak English, it was just normal life. There were men pulling carts behind them pilled high with tobacco, kids playing in the cobble-stoned streets, and old women wearing their head scarves staring at us as we walked past. It was the first part of Turkey I had been in where I was the only woman without a headscarf on.

We visited one of the oldest Catholic churches in Turkey, built around 400AD. It was a small, hidden away building that was quite beautiful inside, with amazing paintings in a crude, old style that I had never seen church paintings in before. The other highlight of Diyarbakir was the fortress wall that still completely surrounded the old town part of the city. It was still in great condition, with only some parts of it starting to crumble away. The city was also the poorest part of Turkey I had seen, and you could tell that homeless people lived inside parts of the wall.

That afternoon, Justin and I were on the same bus, but with different final destinations. About half way into the trip, our bus was pulled over by a roadside army to be checked. Our passports and everyone else’s identity cards were taken and checked through (we’re pretty sure they were scanned through a computer in their car) and the luggage holds were searched. We’re pretty sure they were just doing a routine spot search, and it seemed nothing was found, so after half an hour we were on our way again. The country has a mandatory two-year military service for all men, so there is always random military men with machine guns around the place, often doing the most menial of jobs.

I said goodbye to Justin when the bus arrived at Sanliurfa, and continued on to Gaziantep. I didn’t arrive until night-time (which is always the worst) and after talking to the men behind the desk at the bus station, one of them offered me a ride into town for 10lira ($7) so I gave him the name of the hotel I was aiming for, and off we went. It was a good 20min trip into the city, and there were two of them in the car, trying to talk to me (even though they knew no English) and I gathered that the young one was trying to pick me up, so I had to be careful what I was saying yes and no to!

They dropped me off at the hotel, and as I made my way in, I realized that this was probably the wrong place, because it looked way too ritzy for my budget! After asking for a room, my fears were confirmed - he was asking for 60lira a night ($50). After trying to explain that that was too expensive, and realizing that this was the wrong hotel with a similar name to the one I was looking for, I showed him my diary with the hotel name and 35lira written next to it. After contemplating for a minute, he said 35lira was ok! Stoked! The porter (he was a midget!) showed me up to my room, which was the nicest room I’d ever stayed in. Double bed, ensuite, tv, I was very happy. When I headed downstairs for dinner, they directed me to the hotel restaurant, which was included in the price, and I ate alone in this huge dining room with a man playing traditional Turkish music with a disco ball going off over his head – it was pretty funny.

The next morning, after discovering that the train I wanted back to Istanbul didn’t exist, I booked a night train for that evening, and headed into town to check out the history museum. It was a great museum with lots of mosaics from Greek ruins around the south-east of Turkey all perfectly restored. I spent a bit of time there, and then headed back to the hotel to take advantage of the room and the late checkout time. I pigged out on the best Baklava I’d ever tasted (Gaziantep is where it first came from) and then jumped on my night bus.

Now, in the past, every bus I’ve caught in Turkey stops every two hours, and at meal-times for at least half an hour – this bus didn’t make its first stop till midnight – six hours after it left! I hadn’t had dinner assuming it would stop for that, so by 10 o’clock, I had resigned to the fact that maybe the bus was just driving on for 14 hours until we got back to Istanbul! I got maybe four hours sleep for the whole trip (the beauty of night buses), and got into Sultanahmet (old part of Turkey) around 10am. I didn’t know where I was staying – I was meeting up with Rob that afternoon, a mate I’d met in Selçuk – so I made my way to Bahaus Hostel (where I stayed last time I was in town), and used the fact that the guys that ran it were so excited to see me again, to use their internet.

I spent two more days in Istanbul, walking around town, catching up with Rob, and getting some more bargains at the Grand Bazaar for the cold weather that I was gunna have to get used to. Friday night a little group of us hit up Taxim Square (the nightlife part of town), going out for a cheap dinner and then finding small bars for beers, and strong vodkas (for me). The area was packed, thousands of people trying to wander through the small back streets. It was a great night to finish off my time in Turkey.

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021492&id=219300161&l=82825522ac

Turkey adventures - hospital visits, horse capers and rock climbing!

tonielle_krisanski — Sun, 1 Nov 2009 04:25:00 GMT

Selçuk to Capadocia.

After Gallipoli, I had an eight-hour bus to Selçuk where I stayed at a fantastic hostel called Allita’s Getaway. I had one day of sightseeing out to a small fruit wine town called Siringe, and saw a few ruins in town and then that night I was up vomiting and diarrhea for five hours until I got one of the guys to drive to the hospital in town. Turns out I’d picked up a bug somewhere, and had bacteria in my blood… so I ended up on a drip all day, and then had to go back the next day for another one… not fun.

So that extended my say in Selçuk a little longer… I ended up staying there for a week, which the boys (Attila, Carlos and Rob) were very happy about. After a couple of days, I was back up and went to explore Ephesus - amazing Greek ruins near town. It is one of the best preserved and largest sites in the world, a whole Greek city. It was so impressive and you could walk down the old streets and really imagine what it would have looked like all those years ago.

The next day was market day, so we went into town to check that out, seeing all the amazing fresh produce made me really want to cook up a storm, but the hostel did a pretty good job of feeding us. That afternoon, Attila, Liz, Sam (girls from the hostel) and I all went horse riding over the mountains and down to the beach through Selçuk and it was nothing but eventful. The others had all grown up with pony club or ridding horses a lot, so myself with only two horse trails under my belt was the inexperienced rider of the group. We were all shocked about the condition of the horses, all were un-groomed, ratty hair and were really skinny which wasn’t a good start. Within five minutes of riding on the rocky track, going pretty fast, my horse tripped, landed on its knees and I did a perfect somersault over the horses head and landed on my bum on the side of the track. I couldn’t believe it, I was just sitting there a bit shocked and after everyone had found out that I was ok, they were pissing themselves laughing and said that it looked amazing! I wish I’d got it on video, I could have made a fortune on “Funniest Home Videos”.

Leaving Selçuk the next day, I headed for Fethieye, a town on the coast with its main feature, their marina. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t in my favour, and after a night of in town watching Istanbul football in a local bar, my boat tour was cancelled due to bad weather and so I spent the day catching up with Jen (an aussie girl that I’d met up with twice before through Turkey) and walking through town, getting caught in torrential rain. This made my decision easier to leave the coast and start heading inland, and the next day I caught a bus to Konya.

Unfortunately I didn’t get into town till after midnight (that’s always the worst), and after talking to the men from the bus company desk, and after finding out I had to catch a 45lira ($30) taxi into town, they took pity on me and one of the men drove me into town, straight to my hotel for free! Now, I don’t usually make a habit of getting into cars with strangers, but the Turkish are so hospitable and usually want to help you out, that I decided to trust this guy, and it all worked out.

Konya is just another city to be honest, but it broke up the journey to Capadocia, so I spent the day wandering through town and found this fabulous Dervish mosque that has since been converted into a museum of the faith. Unfortunately I couldn’t take any photos, but it was filled with 40-something coffins of Dervish soldiers that were draped in cloth and each had their hat sitting on top. It also had many artifacts of the faith, books and carpets and clothing. I was walking through it myself, trying to avoid large tourist groups when a Turkish man approached me and started to describe the museum for me. Now I knew he would probably end up asking me for money in the end, but I let him take me on a tour anyway and it was a great way to learn about the Dervish and their rituals.

The way I understood it (and I could be completely wrong) was that they were part of the Muslim faith, but more like monks in that they had rituals and meditation as part of it as well. The man explained that if a young man wanted to become Dervish, he had to study for 1001 days. When he first arrived he sat on his knees and had to stay in one room and meditate for three days. If after that time he wanted to continue he began jobs – starting at toilets, working his way up to gardening, all the way up to merchant and chef and also had to study – the Koran and the books of the Dervish people, meditation, and the twirling until finally 1001 days were up and then you were a fully fledged member of the Dervish.

Other than that, there wasn’t much else to see in Konya. I managed to be there for Independence Day, so I saw some traditional dancing demonstrations in town, and eventually made it to the top of Aladdin’s Hill which was a park with café’s and a really old mosque and one remaining pillar from the palace that used to be there. There was a Sultan Aladdin there at some point – I saw his grave… but I don’t think it would be the carpet-riding, monkey owning street kid that we all know and love.

The next day I caught the bus to Capadocia – Flinstones Country! I had been warned by someone who had come from there about a scam they pull, where the bus stops at the town before Göreme (where I want to be) and someone official looking will come onto the bus – while the conductor is busy with bags – and tells you that this is Göreme and you need to get off here. So you do and then he’ll take you into his tour shop and try and sell you tours/accommodation etc. Then, he’ll get a shuttle bus and take you into Göreme.

Well knowing this, I thought I’d be right, but unfortunately I still got sucked into it! What confused me was that the conductor was also telling me to get off there, so what could I do? Sure enough, I get off, this man tells me I can wait in his shop for the shuttle and then proceeds to try to sell me stuff. I was pissed off… cos I’d known about it and still did it anyway, so I gave him short answers and kept asking when the shuttle would get here. When he’d decided that he wasn’t getting anything from me, he said “Ok, shuttle here now” and took me outside, pointed me to a big bus that had been sitting there the whole time and left. So I walked over to the bus, where they told me it would be an hour before it left!! I was really angry now, so I stormed back to the office where the man had typically disappeared, and after ranting at anyone that tried to sell me anymore stuff, I managed to find someone who would tell me there was a dolmish station up the road and one passed every half hour to Göreme. So eventually I got the dolmish, and I was finally in town, and happy knowing that that prick of a man didn’t win! :P

Besides that experience, I loved Capadocia! After dumping my backpack at the hostel, I did the trek out to the Open Air Museum, a few k’s out of town. It was pretty incredible! Its basically an area with many churches and houses all condensed together. Capadocia came about because there were three volcanos making a triangle, and it was in the middle. So when they were active, the area was constantly covered in ash and lava, where it layered and formed bazaar rock formations. Then one day in the second century, there were a group of Christians that needed to hide from persecution, and so they built houses and churches into the rock formations and lived and taught Christianity there, virtually invisible from the main trade roads. So the museum explained about the various buildings in the area and showcased the still remaining fresco’s painted over the walls and ceilings of the churches. Very impressive.

The next day, I joined the “Green Tour” and our first stop was to Derinkuyu Underground City. The villagers in this area had to hide from invasion and attack as it was on the main trade route, so underneath their homes, were tunnels where they could quickly escape down if anyone came. This particular underground city was seven levels down, and had to accommodate a few thousand people for up to three months at a time. So they had it decked out with things like ventilation shafts, curvy chimneys (so the smoke from cooking would filter out slowly), food stocks, a church, a wine cellar and circular rock doors that could close the tunnels, and not easily be removed – just like the Flinstones had!!!

It was really deep, and although I’m not clastrophobic (a couple of people had to turn back, cos they freaked out), you did feel very trapped and felt that there was less air down there than normal. I don’t know how people would have stayed sane having to live down there for three months! It would have been so crowded and stinky and dank!

After getting some fresh air back on ground level, we headed off to Inhara Gorge. Apparently a tenth of the size of the Grand Canyon, it was nevertheless still impressive, with a small river flowing down the middle and its own little micro-climate down below, we took the track down into it and enjoyed a half hour trek through it, before popping back up for lunch. It was really beautiful down there and made me realize that I really need to do more nature sights on my journeys!

Back on the bus, and we headed out to an old monastery that served initially as a place to teach travelers far and wide about god, then later as a resting house on a busy trade route, where travelers could stay and get a feed for themselves and their horses, all on the government’s bill. These were by far the most impressive buildings I saw in Capadocia, with most of the facades crumbled away, to reveal inside. It was cool because we had the opportunity to climb through them and explore all the rooms connected through various tunnels and stairs – just like kids!

That night, Justin (Canadian guy I’d met at the hostel) and I headed out to meet F (woman from bus) for dinner at this little café in town. The night before we had a crepe there, and after talking to the mother and son for a while, they had invited us back to try a local dish she would make for us. Our dinner was kinda like a vegetable stew, very yummy with lots of those nutrients that we’d been missing from eating too many kebabs of late!

Over dinner, we found out F’s story and discovered that she’d always loved traveling, but at the start of the year, after her husband had left her and she’d retired from her job, she decided to sell her house and everything she owned and hit the road. Her plan was to just keep traveling for the rest of her life! She’d just done two months riding her bike through Italy! Crazy lady… but good on her!

The next day was our adventure through the Red and Rose Valley’s. We walked for over five hours, probably 15km or so through an amazing landscape, climbing through different buildings carved from the rock and some sketchy parts of the slippery valley (yes I fell on my ass and scraped up my elbow!) and most importantly, didn’t get lost!!! Every time we’d turn another corner, there would be another amazing landscape in front of us, and there was more than a few occasions I just stood there going “wow”!

After our trek, we were pretty wrecked and then spent the evening dreading getting onto our night bus to Malatya. 10pm we arrived at the bus depot where we got on a shuttle to the next town and a bigger bus stop. We were told our bus got there at 10.30pm, then 11pm, then midnight… by the time the bus came at 12.30am, we were cold and pissed off, but all you can do is go with it, so we got on for a seven hour bus ride, with maybe three hours sleep if we were lucky. All part of the fun of traveling through Turkey!

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021448&id=219300161&l=84fe75dc0c

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021448&id=219300161&l=84fe75dc0c

Walking in the shoes of the Gallipoli ANZACS

tonielle_krisanski — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:48:00 GMT

I’ve always been fascinated and horrified by the story of the ANZACS of Gallipoli, and today I had the chance to relive the story on a tour of the battlefields in Gallipoli, Turkey.

Our tour guide Bülent is one of the best, (the Australian Government has booked him for ANZAC day 2010) and at our first stop, Kabatepe Museum, he explained the history of the battle and the events that lead up to and beyond the 25th April, 1915. The very general explanation was that the Allied forces objective was to conquer Turkey and its capital Istanbul to secure an ice-free sea supply route up the Dandanelles into the Black Sea to Russia and open another front against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

After an unsuccessful sea attempt by the British Navy, the British organised landings of the ANZACS on Brighton Beach, and figured it would be so easy that they would have captured that by breakfast, the Dandanelles by lunch, and be having dinner in Istanbul that evening. Instead, by an unknown error, the 20,000 ANZAC soldiers landed at ANZAC Cove, only one peak north of their intended landing spot. Here, they tried to gain ground, up high, soft cliff faces, while being held back by only 180 Turkish soldiers shooting at them from above.

The ANZACS only managed to gain 1km of ground, which neither side could advance from for the rest of the campaign. August 1915 was the last ditch attempt by the British, landing 20,000 British soldiers to the north, forcing the battle at The Nek (as seen in the last scene of Gallipoli the movie, with Mel Gibson in it) to take the Turkish attention away from the landing, however this failed to work also.

Eventually the Allied forces withdrew in December 1915, after almost nine months of battle in Gallipoli, with one of the most successful withdrawals in history, not loosing one soldier and tricking the Turkish into believing they were still there until they had all left.

An interesting side note – the Turkish commemorate two different dates of the Gallipoli battle than us, the 18th March 1915, when they fought off the British Navy, and 8th August when they won back Chunuk Bair (the highest land point and most strategic point of the area) from the New Zealander soldiers, forcing them back to their eventual withdrawal.

So, after our little history lesson, we visited some of the war memorials scattered throughout the battlefields of Gallipoli. The most moving for me being ANZAC Cove where the poem by Ataturk was posted (see below) and Lone Pine, which is the largest ANZAC memorial site. Just seeing all those tombstones and reading the messages from the families was moving, but what really got me was the ages of these men, most all under the age of 25. The legal age to enlist was 18 with your parents permission or 21, but many kids with the fantasized view of war lied about their age to enlist – the youngest soldier in the Gallipoli battle was just 14!!! The other thing that sticks with you is the same year on the tombstones – 1915 – over and over again.

During the tour we also had the chance to walk through old trenches that were still throughout the landscape, and really see how close these ememies were fighting each other. The smallest no-mans-land was at Johnston’s Jolly, and was no wider than the road that now winds through it. During the months of June and July when there was a lull in the battle, soldiers stationed here from both sides would throw each other tinned foods amongst other things to get some variety in their diet, and a respect formed from both sides. Apparently that was one of the ‘fun’ times during the battle, which is why that area is called Johnston’s Jolly.

I think that was another thing that stuck with me during my time there, was the respect that each side had for one another. There are stories of soldiers from either side helping the injured enemy – one in particular saw an Australian soldier being hit in no-mans-land, and calling out for help, but the other Australians couldn’t help him because they would be killed trying to retrieve him. A Turkish soldier climbed over the trench to the no-mans-land with a white flag, and carried the Australian over to their trench, and then walked back to his trench. In how many battles in the wars have you heard of stories like that?

So at the end of six hours, we had covered most of the 20-something ANZAC memorials around Gallipoli, and also had the chance to visit one of two Turkish memorials there. These are only a recent addition to the battlefields (the ANZAC memorials have been there since the 1930s) and only happened because of the growing number of Turkish people visiting the area. There are still many Turkish flags over the landscape, marking burial sites for the soldiers that are yet to get a memorial.

The most interesting thing that I learnt was that although the common reason behind the ANZAC failure at Gallipoli was landing at the wrong spot, I now don’t believe that that was the case. After the failure of the British Navy in March, the Turks knew that they would try for the Dandanelles again and knew that Brighton Beach would be a likely spot for the enemy to land – it being a relatively flat path to the river. Which means it was heavily defended at the time of the ANZAC Cove landing, and the reason why only 180 soldiers were defending that area.

The Gallipoli battle in 1915, really gave birth to two things – the ANZAC digger and the respect that the world now has for our soldiers, and the Turkish as being a formidable and respected country.

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021447&id=219300161&l=7f283bdac9

London to Istanbul - West to East

tonielle_krisanski — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:38:00 GMT

After almost three months in Lagos, Portugal working behind a Portuguese bar, I left the warm beautiful beaches (where I’d only seen rain twice) to get on a plane that landed in a rainy, cold London.

I spent a week here, staying with Leah who I met in Lisbon and went down to Lagos with. We get on like a house on fire, so I had a great time with her. The first night I arrived was Leah’s birthday, so we went out that night to a great Mexican restaurant in Covent Garden with some of her housemates and friends.

The next few days were spent trying to track down someone from the Italian Embassy to enquire about a visa – I had a flight to Naples booked for the following day. But alas, it seemed it wasn’t to be, and so I researched countries I could visit outside the Schengan zone, and came up with Turkey. That night I met up with Antony, my first friend from home I had seen since I left five months ago. It was great to catch up with him over a few pints of Magners.

The rest of the time went very quickly with house parties, random bus rides to Elephant and Castle (a town in London), and lots of Scrubs and Friends on tv.

I flew out of London at 6am (meaning I left Leah’s at 3am) and arrived at Istanbul at midday. The view from the bus into the city was pretty chaotic with crazy driving, men on the highway selling water and bread rings, and extremes between built up areas with houses on top of each other, to expanses of nothing. By the time I got to the hostel, I was pretty shattered, so I had a nap, only to be woken at 4pm by the call to prayer from the mosque. Four times a day, a very loud “Call to Prayer” is sung in mosques throughout Turkey, and played through loudspeakers off the mosque towers to call the Muslims to the mosque to pray. As we found out the next morning, the first one of the day is at 6am, and usually woke everyone in the hostel up every morning.

The first night was great fun in the hostel. I got back into the backpacking swing of things and started talking to the only other guy at the bar, which after a couple of hours of wine and kebabs, ended up with a table of about 15 of us, swapping stories and passing around the shisha pipe. Shisha is basically flavoured tobacco smoked out of a water pipe. Its very popular in the middle east – which I found out I am now in!

The next day, after hostel breakfast (which consisted mostly of bread, white cheese, tomato, cucumber and boiled eggs), two girls from the hostel – Sarah and C….. and I made our way through town to the Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is one of the oldest marketplaces in the world, and is HUGE! We spent over four hours in there, and we still didn’t see it all.

I had to start getting harassed by local men again (reminded me a lot of the Philippines) and because we were three girls together, we got an awful lot of attention. Most shop keepers would spot us a mile off, and start yelling hello, good morning, where are you from, you are beautiful, are you angels… to us. You would also get hilarious comments like “are you charlies angels?”, or we walked past a rug shop with the man trying to get us in, and went into the next shop which was selling jewellery and he said “I wish I was selling jewellery”.

After lunch of more kebabs and managing to barter for a scarf from 65lira to 25lira, and a anklet from 40 lira down to 25lira, I was pretty happy, and left the girls to visit the Blue Mosque – the biggest mosque in Istanbul.

What an amazing building. I also loved the ritual before entry – taking off your shoes and covering your head and shoulders with a scarf. It was huge, covered in ornate pattern, with lush Turkish carpet between your toes. There was low hanging lights throughout the building with a barrier between the praying area, and the visitors area.

Afterwards I tried to walk back to the hostel, only to get pretty lost in town, not worried that I could get too far away, I enjoyed seeing different streets of the Sultanahmet area, before I eventually got back. I realized I had got rusty in being able to get myself around a new place from being practically a local in Lagos.

That night, a group of us decided to be brave and try a Turkish bath. With Sarah and C…….. we headed into the bath, with only a towel wrapped around us, to a room with a huge round stone in the middle, heated like a sauna, with about 15 women lying on their towels half naked, and half with knickers on. We felt a bit ripped off since no one had told us we could wear undies, so we put our towels down and layed naked on the stone. We were there for maybe five minutes, when one of the ladies threw us a pair of knickers each, meaning we had to then stand up and put them on in front of everyone. By this stage, I’d gotten over the shock and embarrassment of being naked in a room full of women and was almost disappointed that I could put undies on.

After another five minutes of heating up lying on the stone, one of the women tapped me and lead me over to another part of the stone where I layed down, and she proceeded to wash and scrub me. They had this kind of soapy mesh that when they put it through the water it created thousands of bubbles, where she then used her hands to scrub you down, then you turned over and they did the same again, definitely not shy to also massage your breasts (I’ve had a Philippino woman do this before, so it didn’t overly concern me this time). They then get you to sit up and they do your arms and rinse you off with buckets of water.

The woman then took me into one of the side alcoves and sat me down on the tiles next to a water basin to wash my hair and do a final rinse off. By this time, I met up with the girls again, and we all went into the next room where the hot bath was. The size of a small pool, the bath was so hot, I only managed to stay in there for five minutes or so. By the end of the hour, it was totally normal to be walking around with a group of women topless and it had a bit of a sisterhood feeling to it, women of all nationalities, shapes and sizes together.

Feeling fabulously clean and chilled out, we headed back to the hostel to tell everyone about it – the guys enjoying the re-account a little too much. We then headed out to a big group hostel dinner, about 10 of us, to a restaurant down the road, where they organized to get us 10% off and free apple tea and shisha at the end of the meal. We were by far the roudiest table in the restaurant, getting evil looks from the other diners, but we had a great time. We continued on when we got back to the hostel and ended up in bed well after 2am.

The next day, I went into town with Mike (a guy from the hostel) and checked out the Aya Sofia – which was pretty amazing. It is a huge old cathedral that was converted into a mosque, so you can see crosses painted over on the ceilings, and Christian mosaics plastered over – only revealed after the mosque was converted again into a museum. Afterwards, picking up another chick Sheryn, we made our way to the Spice Bazaar, on the Bosphorus River – getting ridiculously hassled to pick somewhere for lunch. It was amazing the different way you are treated in town when you’re walking with a male – they’re a Turkish man repellent. When Mike was walking with the two of us girls, he was getting comments like “lucky man”… hilarious.

The Spice Bazaar was pretty fun – complete with Turkish Baklava Viagra! I did get a heap of Turkish Delight which was delicious and then walked back through town to visit the Bacilica Cistern. This was a built way back as a water store for times of siege and during tough summers. It has since been restored several times and is now a fantastic attraction in town. It’s lit up by red lights, giving it a dramatic feeling, walking through the maze of columns on a boardwalk, with fish swimming in the shallow water underneath. When you got to the back corner, there were two statues of Medusa’s head underneath two columns… no one knowing how they got there. I really enjoyed walking through there, playing with the settings on my camera to get some great shots.

My last day in town, I spent the morning riding a ferry up the Bosphorus with a couple from the hostel – basically just a few hours enjoying a new view of the city, swapping stories, and getting rained on for lunch. That afternoon I battled through the rain (without an umbrella) and I went through the old palace which was ridiculously ornate and extravagant. Cloth made with gold thread inlaid with rubies and emeralds, huge gold thrones with massive gems in them, gold everywhere! It was interesting to walk through, but I was wet, cold… and after an hour of battling through crowds to look at a crown behind glass, I decided to head back to the hostel.

That night, I met up with Harris, an aussie guy I met back in Lisbon and caught up on the goss over a wine and a game of backgammon (which I won, by the way), and then headed into town, over the bridge to his mate’s restaurant. I didn’t even see a menu, he just starting putting stuff on the table… and it was all delicious! They had a live traditional Turkish band playing, and I had a great night – well overspent my budget – but we were there till 1am, and then went on a mission to find Taxim Square (the night district). There were hundreds of people down the main “mall” street – it reminded me a lot of The Valley actually. We had a drink and watched the world go by, before we got a worrying taxi back to my hostel, and then Harris attempted the journey back to his place by himself… I was happy to hear he made it back ok.

A 7am bus the next morning was hating me, on the way to Gallipoli… but loved Istanbul, and will be back there before I leave Turkey.

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021424&id=219300161&l=9e754c16c1

Running with the bulls - really!

tonielle_krisanski — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:37:00 GMT

From Madrid to San Sebastian was an early train, but the first travel day without dramas! Who would have thought that was possible in Spain? I arrived in San Sebastian looking forward to the beach – but the whole time I was there, it was cloudy and rainy… typical when they have the best beach I’ve seen in Spain! I decided instead to go for a wander around old town, and ended up doing a four hour walk around the headland and up the mountain in town to visit the biggest Jesus I’ve ever seen! I was getting high from breathing in the salty air and walking through trees - the most greenery I’ve seen in a while… it was really nice.

Afterwards, I retreated to my hostel and started meeting my fellow Fanatics… 90% of which were Australian… it was the most Aussie accents I’ve heard since I’ve left, but it was kinda nice, no effort required. That evening, we all met in the hostel for a briefing and the first thing Shano said, one of the leaders, was “Ok, first things first, we need to get you all alcohol, you all need to be wasted for the opening ceremony tomorrow”. Haha… I definitely knew I was on an Aussie tour group when he said that!

That night (and every night after) was tapas and sangria at a few of the local bars. The bunch of people I was with were fantastic and we had so much fun. There were 30 in our hostel, 30 in a second hostel and 60 camping in San Sebastian (an hour outside of Pamplona) and then a huge amount camping in Pamplona – there were about 1500 Fanatics all up I think.

The next morning – the Opening Ceremony of the San Fermin festival. We were up by 6am, and on the bus, huge bottles of sangria being passed around already! We were all decked out in our whites – tour shirts, white pants, and our red scarves tied around our arms. We were in Pamplona by 7.30am, and got more alcohol – I was carrying a bottle of champagne and a bottle of sangria just for myself. The atmosphere in town was infectious… the biggest party I’ve ever been to (and apparently the second biggest in the world, behind the Carnivale in Rio). By 10am, a small group of us made our way into the small square in front of the town hall – where the party was at! It didn’t take long before our white’s were no longer white and we were dripping with sangria! Most of the sangria bought is to go on others, and it didn’t take long before we were yelling “too clean, too clean” to passers by in white shirts and throwing sangria on them! Plenty of it got in the mouth though, it was definitely the earliest I’ve ever been pissed before! The most fun I’ve ever had… the crowd was screaming and yelling “Olay, Olay” dancing and throwing sangria. Apparently, its custom to bring flour and eggs into the square to throw also, but the police were on the side streets checking everyone’s bags as they walked in and confiscating it… which I’m so glad for… the sangria was fun, but eggs and flour would have been nasty!

By 11.30, the square was absolutely packed, the craziest mosh-pit I’ve ever been in. Our small group got split up, and as it got closer to 12, we were slowly getting dragged further and further into the centre, which wasn’t good. I ended up with a few of the crew from the San Seb. campsite, and two of the smaller girls almost got dragged under a couple of times, we had to pull them back up. I ended up with this guy in a Fanatics shirt, and we were pretty much holding onto each other for dear life. It was a couple of minutes of being the closest to anyone I’ve ever been to in my life before we introduced ourselves… Dom saved me in that square! And then he lost his shoe! It got pulled off by the crowd, and he was trying to hop along without it – the ground was covered in glass, my ankles got all cut up and I still had my shoes on!

When 12pm came, the rocket went off, and everyone got their red scarves and held them into the air facing the town hall and chanted “San Fermin, San Fermin”. I was so squashed that I couldn’t even move my arms to try to undo the knot on mine that I’d tied around my arm. Eventually Dom and I got ours undone and raised ours up… a few minutes after everyone else! That was what signaled the start of the fiesta, and everyone now wore them around their necks for the week. I was still somehow holding onto my champagne bottle, and shook it up into the crowd, and got about three mouthfuls! Eventually the crowd moved and we had space again, and this guy came up to Dom and said, “is this your shoe?”… it was his exact one! We couldn’t believe it! So then we started collecting the shoes we found on the ground and holding them up for people to see, and we reunited one girl with hers!

I ended up back with my group and we made our way to a bar on the hill called the White Horse… where parts are quite blurry! There was still a lot of sangria going around, and I remember at one point, one of the girls from our group was sitting on a chair outside of the low wall that surrounded the bar, and this Spanish guy came up to her and started pulling the chair out from underneath her, yelling at her in Spanish. She was holding onto it, yelling back at him (we knew he didn’t work there) and he ended up punching her! We couldn’t believe it… that’s when the boys got involved and he left, but it was all quite messy. Bec (another girl from the hostel) and I also went to pee along a wall at some point also… I’m quite glad I don’t remember all the details of that bit! Haha.

That afternoon, Hughsy (the other tour leader) took a group of us around and we walked the bull run, he pointed all the trouble bits out and explained different parts. By the time we got on the bus, it was 5pm, and we were all trashed and exhausted. I think we all passed out on the bus back, and we didn’t have a big one that night – that shower was the best one I’ve ever had though!

The first day of the bull runs! We were all up and on the bus by 4.30am, and got into town by 6. There were a few people who were running that morning, so they left and the rest of us all went over to the arena where the run ended. Now a few notes on the bull run for you…

• The legend goes there was a bull herder that one day had a few too many sangria’s and ended up being dragged through town by a couple of bulls, killing him – San Fermin – he is now considered something of a saint, and is the reason why the running of the bulls came about, its also said that they used to have to move the bulls through the town to get to the bull fighting arena, and the youths of the town would race through them.
• The bulls are sacred animals. While running, you aren’t allowed to touch the bull (especially the horns), this is why all the runners carry a newspaper, because that is what you can touch them with – you can be fined or beat up by locals if you touch the bulls – especially in the arena where they can get a good group into you!
• There are two types of bulls that run – 6 bulls and 6 oxen. The bulls are generally black, are scared out of their minds and are the aggressive ones that attack people that are in the way. If they get separated from the pack, they become dangerous. This is the first and only time that they run the track. The oxen are castrated bulls and are the grey coloured ones. They are a bit bigger, and have run the course for years, so they are there to guide the bulls through the track. They aren’t dangerous unless you are in their way, because they’ll run over you.
• At the beginning of the run, the local hardcore runners will crowd around the start of the track where there is a statue of San Fermin. They chant and pray for a good clean run.
• A good clean run is when all the bulls stick together in the pack, and they run straight through. Generally this is when there are few injuries, and the run only takes about 1.5/2 minutes.
• At 8am, a rocket will go off signaling the bulls being released from the pen, then another will go off when they are all out of the pen and on the track. They will race through the track, everyone running with them, until they reach the arena, where they are hearded into another pen. When all the bulls are returned, another rocket will go off to signal the end of the run. Another three oxen will also be on the track, to make sure all the bulls are through, and they are the last to finish. After they go through, the gates to the arena are closed.
• Dead mans corner is the most dangerous part of the track. It is a sharp corner that all the bulls lose their footing on, and hit the outside wall – so you always want to be on the right hand side of that corner!
• The run ends up in the arena. You don’t want to arrive at the arena before the bulls because that means you’re a coward and you get booed and things thrown at you. But you also don’t want to be too much later because they shut the gates after the last three oxen come through.
• Only 15 people have ever been killed in the race since records were started in the 1920’s

So we got seats in the arena, and as it got closer to 8am, the crowd was going crazy. There were some men behind us that I think were still drunk from the night before, and we heckling us with “Yankie” and “Blondie, Pretty”… eventually they threw a cup of sangria onto us, hitting four of us. I was in my dirty whites from the day before, so that didn’t matter, it was so cold though… yeah it was fun yesterday, but not today! People that were running started entering the arena before the rocket even went off… the bulls hadn’t even entered the track yet, so naturally they got booed and had things thrown at them. 8am came and the rocket went off! They had screens in the arena, so you could watch the run. A few people got hurt, but it was one of the cleanest and fastest runs in history! It only took about 1.5minutes and it was all over.

When the first oxen entered the arena though, it ploughed into a runner – he was out cold! What had happened was, when he entered the arena, he started to run to the left, then changed his mind, and as he was running right, someone ankle-tapped him, and he went flying. As he was getting up, the first oxen came through the gate and ploughed into him, knocking him out cold. The huge group of bulls then came through, and we were all cringing thinking he’d be trampled for sure, but somehow they just missed him. Someone then grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him to the side. Apparently he was taken to hospital, but was ok.

That was when the real fun started. With everyone in the ring, they would release a baby bull into the crowd with its horns corked (so it couldn’t do too much damage) and they would have a play. It was hilarious! Most people were just running out of the way, but some were taunting it and trying to get close enough to tap it on the ass (with the newspaper of course!). When the bull had had enough, they would herd it back in with an oxen, and then another one would come out – six in all. It was like gladiators, except no one got seriously hurt. One guy got hit pretty bad though, he was in a Fanatics shirt too. He was hit by the bull straight in the chest and fell back and didn’t get up. A few people grabbed him and pulled him over the fence, and when he was on the stretcher, we saw him convulsing! We were all freaking out, wondering who it was… turned out he was from the Pamplona campsite, and he was ok, but they took him to the hospital anyway.

And after that, its all over… and its only 8.30am! The rest of that morning, we walked through town, listened to the stories from the runners and checked out the photos taken from that morning, back on the bus by 11am. Nothing much exciting for the rest of the day, just siestas, and chilling out. We all went out that night, and most of them had a big one, but a few of us went home by 11.30… knowing we’d have to get back up at 4am again the next morning.

I hadn’t decided I was gunna run until that morning. It was interesting how it happened because I’d planned to come to this months earlier (it was the first thing I booked for my trip) and whenever I told people I was going, their first question was “are you running?” and I was like, hell no… I don’t have a death wish… I’ll be quite happy spectating. But then you get there, and I somehow decided that I could do it, and I would really regret it if I left and I didn’t.

So that morning, I headed out with the runners to the track at 6am, we started at the town square (where we’d had the opening ceremony), which was about 1/3 of the way down the track, just before “dead mans corner”. There were about 8 girls from our group that were running, so Shano ran with us (even though he’d run for his second time yesterday). Something we were worried about was getting bad attention from the Spanish guys or the police taking a big group of girls out of the track, so I bought a hat from the hostel and tucked my hair under that. The guys that ran the first day said it was a lot more packed, and by 7.30am, we could hardly move.

At 10 to 8 though, the police opened up the barricade that held everyone in the square, and about 300 people moved through… and were subsequently ushered off the track. We knew better though, and stayed put, so with five minutes to go, there was room to move again. Everyone was quite nervous by this point (I’m feeling nervous again just writing about it), the nervous energy was crazy, everyone chanting, clapping, singing, everyone watching the clock.

8am, the first rocket goes off – all the girls ran for it (the boys were to stay there for about 20 seconds before they ran). Luckily Shano was wearing a bright yellow headband, so he was easy enough to follow through the crowd. Already everyone was pushing, and I was definitely doing my fair share also. It took a long time before the second rocket went off… and that made me more panicked – did that mean they were all spread out, what had happened? We passed “dead mans corner” and the started bolting up the street. I kept running until I saw a good gap in the crowd beside a wall, so I stopped and about 3 seconds later, the group of bulls ran past. I can’t even try to explain to you what that felt like… there was only one man in front of me and those bulls, were so big and they were going so fast!
After they had run past, I got a move on again, but still looking behind me, because there was no way to count how many had passed, so we didn’t know if they had separated or not. I don’t think I will ever see that many men’s panicked faces again in all my life. So many people were jogging up the hill, and I was like “stuff that”! I sprinted like I’ve never sprinted before, pushing people out of the way, trying to make it up to the arena (there was no way I was getting locked out!). I was on the home straight heading into the arena when the three end oxen passed me, and then I was through! Omg, again, I can’t explain it to you, but I’d really like to know what my heart rate was up to, because it was pounding out of my chest. I couldn’t remember how long they waited till they started bringing the baby bulls in, so I was running through the crowd, trying to find my mates, hugging the edge of the ring. Eventually I found a couple of them, and I found a spot on the fence – there was no way I was playing with any bulls, I’d had enough fun for one day.

I started to feel really sick from all the adrenalin pumping through my body, and when the first bull came out, it didn’t take long before I’d jumped the fence and stood on the outside. A few times the bull came close to where we were standing, and everyone tried to jump the fence where I was… but it wasn’t until the fourth bull that it got hairy. A bull decided to run for the fence where we were standing, and actually rammed one of the guys that was standing right in front of me.

From the seats, you could see quite clearly where the bull was, and watch the sea of people part when it came close, but being down on ground level, most of the time you could tell about what part it was in, but you had no idea until it was almost on top of you. The day I ran, there were a lot more people, too many people, so it made the arena not as fun. By the time that was over, it felt like a whole day had gone by and it was only 8.30am! It was only after I found some breakfast that my body had started to settle back down, and I didn’t feel so sick anymore. We checked out the photos, but I couldn’t see myself in any of them… and then we headed back to the bus.

Running with the bulls… I can’t believe I did it. I picked a really good day to do it on too, it took just over two minutes and there were only three people that were injured. The bulls did separate a little, but that was further down the track, after they had passed me, which was good. Doing the run, I got a little nervous in the 5minutes beforehand, but it wasn’t too bad. When I started running, that’s when it was basically sheer panic… trying to run as fast as you can, while looking back waiting for the bulls, pushing people out of the way, but trying to keep your footing so you didn’t get pulled under. It took about an hour before the adrenalin and my heart rate had started to go down, and then I was on the biggest high for the rest of the day. I didn’t get any footage (the police kick you out if they see you with a camera), but I’ve found the video of my run online, and a few of the group have photos of me, so when I collect them, I’ll put them up.

I was so lucky that I didn’t get hurt, and I’m so glad I did it and experienced probably the craziest thing I’ll ever do in my life!

As a side note, on day four (yesterday) a man was killed doing the run. One of the bulls got separated and panicked, goring a Spanish man while he was trying to escape under the fence. The horn got his throat, and he died almost instantly. The footage is horrifying… and is a definite reminder that it isn’t a game. His is the first death by goring since 1995 (another man was trampled in 2003 and died in a coma months later), and the 16th death that’s been recorded since the 1920’s.

Well I can definitely say I’ve got balls now!

xoxo

photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021020&id=219300161&l=c324a3fbe5

running of the bulls 8th july (the day i ran) video: http://esp.kukuxumusu.tv/html/index.php?lang=eng&idv=1210

Tapas, sangria and having a gay ol' time

tonielle_krisanski — Thu, 9 Jul 2009 01:07:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

Granada was the next stop of my Spanish journey, and when I left you last I was on a train that ended up being delayed by three hours, making it an 11 hour journey! So by the time I got into town, it was 10.30pm and the directions by bus that I had were useless to me. I ended up getting my first taxi of the trip, costing me 10euro, but I’m so glad I did. Turns out my hostel is on the city hill in the old town of Alhambra, and it would have been a pretty horrific walk. I met a few characters in Granada, my taxi driver looked about 18 and he kept trying to talk to me even though he spoke no English and honked his horn at other taxis “my amigo!” he’d say. Then there was the hostel receptionist, an Irish guy who was more keen on chatting than checking-in three of us that had just arrived from the train, even though we all had looks of defeat on our faces from the day we just had… he was cute though, so he got away with it. The third character of the evening was the owner of the tapas bar we ended up stumbling down the hill to (myself and two Canadian girls that had also just arrived). He was from London, and looked after us with sangria and tapas, including marinated prawns – which I introduced the Canadian girls to – they’d never eaten them before, so I had to show them how to peel them!

After that long day, the next one was a slow one. I made my way down the hill, enjoying the fabulous view of the city, but not the heat so much… the further I’ve traveled into Spain, the hotter it has gotten. Granada was an easy city to explore, lots of little alleyways with little poky shops and then a big cathedral! After a few hours, I may have gone back to the hostel and had a four hour siesta (whoops), but by the time I’d woken up, it had cooled down somewhat at I managed to meet up with the Canadians again, so we went off a mud map the Irish guy gave us of a great tapas bar on the other side of the hill. It turned out to be this cute little bar that looked like a butcher shop from the front (all the meat hanging), but we found some tables out that back, and since we didn’t know what the menu said, just selected the sharing plate. It had a heap of different ham, sausage, salami, cheese and pate - now I’ve never tried pate before (the idea disgusts me), but I was brave and had some, and I have to admit that I quite enjoyed it… although I still couldn’t get past the idea of it!

The next day I got up bright and early and lined up at 7.30am at the gates of the Almambra – the old palace and gardens. It was an amazing sight to see! The palace walls were filled with the most intricate carvings I’ve ever seen… and then the gardens and water fountains outside were beautiful too. I spent a good few hours exploring the grounds before I had to check-out and head down to the train station. The journey was already becoming a disaster when I caught the bus to the train – I missed my stop, and ended up at the end of the line, where the bus driver made me pay again, before I’d drive off and do the route again. This time I got the driver to point it out to me, and I made it… to find that the ticket office had closed for siesta! The two officers in the station were convinced that the train that I wanted to catch at 1pm didn’t go to Seville at all, and that I definitely had to catch the 4pm one. So I sat in the station café, where I met a group of ladies who were in town for a hens weekend, and sat and had a chat until their train left. I figured that I better check if the ticket office was open yet – because I needed to reserve my seat, and yes they were, with a big line. So by the time I got to the front, it was about 10mins before my train was due to leave, for the officer to tell me that the train was full, and the next one was at 8pm that night! I was almost in tears… I can’t wait that long again! So I got my 8pm reservation, and as I was walking out, I thought stuff it, I’m just gunna get on this train! So I walked on with everyone else, and luckily enough I found a couple of seats in between compartments that weren’t numbered and took one of those. I was packing it… what is my excuse/lie gunna be when the ticket officer comes along? Eventually the ticket man comes along and I pass him my eurorail pass, then he asks for the reservation, so I pass it to him. He looks at it and asks in Spanish why I’m not at my seat, and I said that I like this spot better, he smiled stamped my ticket, and I got away with it!!! Somehow he didn’t see the time that the ticket was for, but all the better for me! Haha.

So I finally got to Seville at about 7ish, and walked around for the next hour or so until I found my hostel, hidden in a tiny backstreet. It was an interesting hostel, but had a homely feel of a share house, it also had the first tv I’ve seen in over a month, so I ended up hanging out with people from the hostel, watching superman in Spanish. The next day, I spent it checking out the sights, The old palace was pretty cool (but after the Almambra, not so much) and I met up with a few of the kids from the hostel for a bit of it, before we all lost each other again. The cathedral was pretty sweet, it had it all – an awesome bell tower that you could climb, Christopher Columbus’s tomb and a Guinness Book of Records certificate for the cathedral with the largest area.

That afternoon was spent chillin’ out beside the river in the shade, before I met up with one of the girls in the hostel, and we went to find this Flamanco club I had been told about. At first we couldn’t find it, the street looked so deserted, but we walked past a guy out the front of a door and he saw our lost faces and he asked if we wanted the club, we said “si” and he pointed us through the door. I thought it looked a bit dodgy, the part we could see was empty, but we walked through and then we found the basement room that was packed with people! There was a woman and two men on stage singing and playing guitar, so we joined the throngs of people with a jug of sangria and found a spot. Soon enough the flamenco started, it was pretty cool to see… but she kinda looked like she had Terets or something… lots of very sudden movements, but it sort of worked. The guys were playing guitar, singing and clapping – a lot of the dance has to do with foot stomping and clapping, and it was a good show. They had a break for a while and came back with some more songs and this time, she was dancing with a fan, and it seemed to make it flow better, and it looked fantastic. It would have been great to see a couple dancing or a few ladies, but we got the show for free, so we weren’t complaining. We left around midnight when the show ended and the place became almost empty and enjoyed wandering back to the hostel, the city lit up so nicely.

The next day, I had another train disaster. Taking the trains around France was so easy, the train tracks connected the towns in a logical order and going geographically round the country worked… it doesn’t in Spain! Again, I got a time from the website that worked everytime in France, and the ticket men who couldn’t speak English couldn’t understand what train I wanted to reserve… saying again that that train didn’t go to where I wanted to go – Merida. At my wits end, I tried being creative… ok how bout Lisbon – midnight train - that didn’t work, in the end I got the ticket to Madrid because that was the only way to Merida… on the train though, I decided that I may as well stay in Madrid. I was planning on doing Portugal before the bulls and Madrid after, but it wont hurt to change the order around.

So I arrived in Madrid, with nothing booked… but luckily I had a hostel recommended to me (back in Strasborg… haha) so I got directions to it and turned up there. Luckily they had a bed, so for the next five nights, I was in Madrid. In my room, I met three other Aussies who I ended up having dinner with them that night at a little tapas place. They were a lot of fun, and ended up having a late night with them… not by choice, but because we had six loud American guys in our room also, that packed their bags and got ready to go out until 2.30am… didn’t give a shit that there was someone sleeping, or three others in bed waiting to. Then they arrived home at 5am, waking us all up again… and then again at 9am, we were all woken up by their alarm going off… for the next few hours! I got up, showered, had breakfast and came back, and they were still asleep with their alarm going off… but someone had shoved it under a pillow though (I’m guessing one of the other Aussie girls… you don’t mess with an Aussie), so I really hope they missed where ever they had to be, because that was painful! That day I went to Reina Sophia – the modern art gallery in town… and loved it! I spend at least four hours there, they had some fantastic stuff from Picasso, Dali and local Spanish artists too. It helped that it was air-conditioned too, so I beat the heat outside while enjoying some great modern art.

That night, a group of us from the hostel went out for drinks and dinner at this great bar down the road… more tapas and more sangria! We all ended up at the hostel bar, where we all proceeded to get drunk on 3.50euro 1L cups of sangria. It didn’t help that we were playing “King’s Cup” a drinking game that was fun… but deadly, and ended up wandering the city at 3am, checking out the sights and all the people around. Spainard’s nights are just beginning at 3am!

The next day we were all feeling a little sorry for ourselves, and a bunch of us decided to check out the big park in town with a picnic… as in check out how comfy the grass is for siesta! We enjoyed the shade there for a few hours before we musted up the energy to check out some sights… Alex being our tour guide with his guidebook. Slowly our group dwindled down to three of us, and we decided to find a café to people watch for a while. Our plan was thwarted when we found that unlike Paris with a café on every corner… they aren’t so plentiful in Madrid. Eventually we found a bar in the shade. Alex had announced that morning that I was to be his wingman for the evening, so when I saw two lovely ladies sitting at the table next to us, I told him to ask them what they were drinking (even though it was clearly sangria)… he was like, why don’t you ask them thinking I was just being lazy… and I had to specifically point out to him that they were two very good looking ladies, and I was trying to do my job which will be very hard if he kept being so slow! Eventually he understood, and had asked them, and when ours came out, he invited them to sit with us. They were cool chicks, from America, but of Spanish origin, and we chatted to them for a good while… the boys were doing well, one of the girls even told Matt that he had “eye’s like the ocean”… which was hilarious. Eventually we left and invited them to the hostel that night – and I was surprised that we didn’t see them again that night… I think the boys were disappointed… I thought they were in for sure! ☺

That night was very similar to the night before, except I had even more to drink and got honoured with the Kings Cup also (the cup in the middle that people have to pour their drink in when they get a king card… then the person with the fourth king has to drink it) – which luckily only had Sangria in it that night… but it was pretty nasty. We had fun though. Alex did end up getting lucky too… I saw him with a German girl by the end of the night, maybe not directly from my doing, but I like to think I still completed my job. Hehe.

The next morning I had to get up at 8am to put my name down for a cancelled bed (because Friday and Saturday night’s were booked out). It was a struggle, but it was worth it, I got another bed, and after a recovery lie-in, I eventually left the hostel with Dave, a cool Aussie guy I met and we wandered up town, checking out the cathedral and palace before reaching the park we were after, complete with an Egyptian temple! We had a picnic and siesta, and before we realized it, it was 6.30pm… four hours since we got there! But bonus was, now the temple was reopen (after their four hour siesta also) and we got to check that out which was cool. It was an ancient Egyptian temple that was given to the Spanish people as a gift to say thanks for helping them in rescuing some other temples in Nubia, as you do! It was great inside, hieroglyphics on the walls and the stone had so much character to it… it was amazing to think it was over 2,200 years old.

After that, we made our way back into town and found an area called La Latina, where the girls I met yesterday told me about a great restaurant they went to. I only had a name, so we went into a Pharmacy and asked the staff if they had heard of it. For the next ten minutes, they tried looking it up for us, but they couldn’t find it, so they recommended another one for us, and drew a mud map and everything… they were fantastic! The restaurant they sent us to, was pretty good, but we were the only ones eating – because it was only 9pm… and Spaniads don’t eat dinner till at least after 10pm! Afterwards we walked through Puerta del Sol (the main hub of the city) and enjoyed all the buskers and crazies out! We also found the 0km point that was on the street… it is the point where every distance in Spain is marked from.

The next day we walked though the giant park again and made our way up to a street which the Lonely Planet said was a clothes market… there was a small marque in the middle of the street with about 10 stalls in it! So it took us a minute to look through it, and then made our way back to the park for lunch. Today was also the day of the Gay Pride Parade… so we found the street it started at and enjoyed watching the festivities. It was hilarious! Eventually the parade started at 7.30pm and we found a spot on the road to watch for a few hours, but it took so long! It just wasn’t moving at all… the party buses we saw lined up waiting to go, took two hours before they even started moving through the parade. It was fun, and I’m glad I went, but after a few hours, we left to find dinner… and had paella. It was exactly what we wanted… and although it wasn’t as good as the Valencia paella I had, it was still pretty good. The meal even came with a begger that stood at the front of your table asking for food or money or whatever, while you try to keep the conversation going, hoping that they will leave if you ignore them long enough! It was only after the waiter came outside and made him leave that he did… it was so awkward! I didn’t like it at all, and Dave was saying he was worried he’d stick his finger in the food saying “are you gunna eat that?”, which is what happened to one of his mates once.

We wandered back through town after that and eventually found the gay street party… still going, with a big stage and dj playing. So we danced with the crowd… it was huge… and had a great time spotting all the crazy outfits! The gay boys liked Dave too… with was even more hilarious!

xoxo

photos of Granada & Seville: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020959&id=219300161&l=ac059026bd

photos of Madrid: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021020&id=219300161&l=c324a3fbe5

Arrow Slits & Murder Holes

tonielle_krisanski — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:10:00 GMT

So its been a week… and no blog, which means this is gunna be a big one!

I finished off France in a small town called Carcassonne. It was an adventure just to get there… my train didn’t get into the station till after 10.30pm, and I’d forgotten to look up the directions. So I figured that I’d just walk towards the town and work it out from there. I found a map on the way, so I was trying to find the street when I felt someone coming up behind me, shit! I turned around to keep walking and it turned out that it was this cool English chick that had just got off the train too and was planning to sleep under a tree because she didn’t know of any hostels. We managed to find a nice hotel that gave us a map and directions, and we were off.

It was an interesting walk and I was kinda glad I didn’t do it myself, there wasn’t many people in the street by this time, but the ones that were either wanted to tell us how beautiful we were or let us know that “I’ll show you the real Carcassonne” (no thanks!) we’re pretty sure we saw a few prostitutes on a street corner too. Eventually though we met an amazing sight – the Old City lit up in all its glory. The hostel was right in the middle of the town’s old fort – which only has a population of 120! I think they are the hotel/restaurant/tourist shop owners because it is a purely tourist area.

The next day over breakfast I met this great American chick called Leah who was planning on doing a walking tour from her guide book, so I joined her and had a great time getting lost within the walls of the fort. We had a go discovering the new part of town down the hill, but it was dead, even the markets were pretty disappointing. It was really odd, where was everyone? It was a pretty decent sized town so why wasn’t it open? Haha. We ended up back up the hill and did a walk into the castle and around the turrets, which we somehow managed to do for free! We only paid a few euro and got an audio guide that was narrated by Eugene Viollet-le-Du who was a famous architect and historian that restored the fort and prevented it becoming ruins. It was pretty funny, it had fantastic French arrogance to it, and we learnt the difference between Arrow Slits and Murder Holes and other such important facts.

After working up an appetite, we had an amazing long lunch in town for 14euro that included three glasses of wine, a fantastic warm goat cheese salad, steak and chips (it was my first steak since I’ve left) and really nice French dessert. It was a huge wine day - last night in France though, it had to be done! We bought a bottle to share for the afternoon, trying to chill out in the courtyard – but the masses of school kids staying there killed the mood.

When the sun set, we walked out to see the fort lit up, and got some great photos, and on our way back in, we stumbled upon a great bar that was full of locals and ordered another bottle of wine. We had a great time there, checking out the French guys and generally talking shit (a day of drinking wine does that to you). Towards the end of the night, this French guy came up to us (thank god Leah is fluent in French) and basically told us that he had a little restaurant around the corner and we should come for a free drink. We decided that was probably not a good idea and that we had successfully liquored ourselves up enough, so headed home instead.

The next day was an exciting seven hour train ride to Barcelona. Half way through the trip though I met this cool Canadian guy from Quebec and we killed the time swapping travel stories and teaching me some basic Spanish. Jean was a great teacher and I got a few things down-pat which was great. That night, I met some more Canadian girls at the hostel and we hung out, and Australia and Magpies came up. Turns out Tina had seen some videos on YouTube of people getting swooped by Magpies and thought it was the most hilarious thing she’d ever seen, so she ended up getting one of the guys to look it up online, and everyone was laughing – except this other Aussie guy and myself, who were cringing, remembering childhood memories of such incidents… they definitely weren’t funny when they happened! Haha.

Welcome to Barcelona… the first place I’ve started wearing my money belt, and where a guy in my room got coffee “accidently” spilt on him on the metro and his bag stolen! The next day I caught the metro into town and walked down Las Ramblas checking out the hilarious street performers in ridiculous costumes and the masses of tourists and football supporters (there was a big game on that night). There was a big produce market off to the side too, which was over-priced, but it was cool to check out. Apparently I missed the best bit of it though – whole sheep’s heads for sale right up the back – gross. It was a huge walk, but eventually I got to the beach, and I was a bit disappointed. I guess coming from Marseilles and Nice I was spoilt, so the over-crowded, windy, dirty beach of Barcelona didn’t impress me. There were hundreds of people selling everything from “Cola, Agua, Beer, Fanta” to guys with 30 hats on his head, asian massage and apparently there was even a guy balancing a huge tray of donuts on his head!

I bought a bottle of wine – cheapest one yet 1.50euro – and joined a great crew up on the hostel’s terrace for the afternoon. I wanted to check out the Barcelona nightlife, so two Canadian girls and I went back into town and into Las Ramblas. There was a pretty crazy vibe going on at night – guys selling beer from a six-pack in their hand every ten meters and ladies handing out flyers for their 10euro cover charge clubs. As we tried to find a bar, we passed a pack of black prostitutes clinging to this (obviously) American man – he had his hands out like doing breast-stroke, trying to get away from them and then one of them got hold of his passport. They just looked at the picture, laughed and waved it in his face, “you want your passport back” trying to show how clever they were and gave it back to him. As soon as we’d seen that, Tina (one of the Canadian girls) got a breast grope from one of them! Another said to her “it means she likes you”… she was horrified! It was so funny, but then mum suggested she was probably checking if Tina had her money hidden in her bra – which is probably a fair point.

The next day the Canadian girls and I met up with Jean (from the train) and headed out to Parc Gruel – a garden designed by Gaudi, Barcelona’s famous architect - it was amazing! Full of wacky bridges, fantastic views, beautiful mosaic artwork, cool street performers and vendors selling things on sheets on the ground, ready at a moments notice to run at first sight of the police. We spent a good part of the day there, had a picnic under the trees and eventually wound ourselves out to the giant lizard which is the feature of the park. We also managed to stumble apon one of Gaudi’s most famous buildings, La Pedrera - Casa Mila, it was amazing the curve and the iron work.

That night, I had a food disaster! The night before I’d bought a frozen lasagna and salad and had half in the fridge for the second night… and it was gone! Who steals a crappy half lasagna from the fridge? This was Sunday night too, so nothing was open… my only chance was one convience store left – it has two sparse shelves, so I had to get creative. I managed to make a semi-edible tomato pasta, with a bottle of wine to wash it down, I was quite impressed with myself.

Everyone was off to the huge beach party that was on that night – it was for the end of the Sonar music festival that had been running all weekend. So a group from the hostel of at least 30, headed out on the metro and then 40min bus to this beach in the middle of nowhere to find this crazy beach with people everywhere and this techno music pumping from the DJs on stage. We had a great time dancing to the music, going a bit crazy – sand dancing really kills your legs! Before we knew it, it was 5.30am and the music stopped… time to find our way home. We went out to the main street, and stood around, like the hundreds of other people, thinking “now what”? I think we were there for almost an hour before the first bus came. We bolted after it and ended up trying to fight our way through the swirling mass that was in front of the door, trying to get on. Somehow, we managed to get on (I still don’t know how) and from the original 30, only six were on that bus! I don’t know what most people did, but I know a few people caught taxi’s that cost them 40euro! By the time we got back, the sun was well up, and everyone slept till at least midday… trying to sleep it off! ☺

I eventually managed a bit of sightseeing, including the Gaudi cathedral Sagrada Familia, the Hospital de Sant Pau which is still a running hospital and now a world heritage site and in the Barri Gòtic (old town) which still had Roman walls remaining and the La Seu Barcelona Cathedral. The cathedral was a let down – they are doing restoration work, so they have scaffolding covering the whole front of the building with a poster of the façade covering it all – I didn’t really go there to see a picture of it! That was about all I could manage… I ended up back at the hostel, and planned my Spain itinerary on the terrace.

I hung out with these Aussie girls that night – I’d met them in Nice and had a great time with them, and then we randomly met up again at the hostel… it was fantastic! The next day Tegan (one of the Aussie girls) and I went on an adventure to find the Salvador Dali museum in Figueres, about two hours by train away. It was in a great little town, in a building that was originally designed by Dali. They had a heap of stuff in there, a lot of his studies and early works and some fantastic instillation art, but I was so disappointed that none of his famous works were there! No melting clocks, no elongated animals with drawers coming out of their bodies, and the one painting I did recognize was on a poster saying “currently on loan to a gallery… in MELBOURNE, Australia”!!! I couldn’t believe it. We had a great day though, and made it back home by 5pm, just in time to get ready for the biggest Barcelona beach party of the year!

Wednesday (the next day) was Saint John day – a public holiday, so they have this fantastic party every year. There were fireworks going off all afternoon, some sounded like we were in a war zone! Darren (and Aussie who I’d met in Paris) joined us at the hostel, and at about midnight, we made our way out to Barceloneta avenue – there were people everywhere! Music playing, fireworks going off, drinks… unfortunately though I’d lots all the girls, and so I was with a different group from the hostel, and all we did was sit on the beach… by about 3am, I was falling asleep on the beach, so I decided to go home – alone because no-one would come with me! It wasn’t a problem though, I just walked fast, head down, “fuck-off face” on… all good. ☺

The next day, I found out one of the young Aussie guys staying in my room got nicked by a scalpel from this Spanish guy on the metro home. It sounded like he wanted a fight and stirred the guys up until they were yelling at each other and then he pulled out the scalpel – luckily he only got nicked on his arm, but that morning he was finding a nearby hospital to get a blood test to make sure he didn’t get anything from it. Pretty scary.

That morning was a struggle… hungover from the night before, and finding that my sore throat was getting worse - making the trip to the train station, I felt like death. Luckily I did it with the Aussie crew, so that made it easier to handle.

I arrived in Valencia that evening and found that one of the guys I met in Barcelona was in my dorm room – so much for not knowing anyone when you travel overseas! Haha. I hardly slept that night, but fortunately in the few hours I did sleep I missed the show that happened in our room. Two of the people from our dorm room got really drunk and got back about 4am, and had really loud sex in the dorm room… a room with 12 people in it! It was pretty hilarious, Eric (the guy from Barcelona) told me he’d seen the whole thing and that everyone was awake sniggering and watching the show! I’m really glad I missed it, because from my angle, it wouldn’t have been pretty!

Thursday, and I was still struggling… turns out I’ve got tonsillitis!!! So frustrating, but luckily I can diagnose myself these days, so the antibiotics have started. I spent the morning checking out the Conjunto Catedralicio which is the huge church in town, and bearer of the only “Holy Grail” that the church accepts is the true one. It was a very ornate and elaborate church filled with gold and paintings, except the gothic main walls were bare, it was an interesting contrast. I also had a look at the local market – Mercado Central before I had a Spanish siesta… which was amazing. The siesta is inconvenient if you want to get things done, but if you can join the locals for a nap, it’s the best – especially when your hostel has air-conditioning!

That afternoon, Eric and I checked out the beach. It’s a good 20min bus ride out of town, but really nice. Not very crowded, water was beautiful, the sand was a little dirty, but Eric said it was because they had a similar beach party on Tuesday night here too. That evening I joined a few people from the hostel and had Paella (pronounced Payeya here) in this great little family restaurant around the corner. It was only 10euro each and we got two different ones to try – Paella Valencia (chicken and rabbit) and one with squid and prawns in it. It was delicious! I’d been waiting to get to Valencia to try Paella because it is the birthplace of the dish… and with two dishes and four people, we couldn’t get though it all. The owner was a crackup too… (I think) he was trying to tell us this story about how in Valencia they use rabbit – demonstrating by making rabbit ears on his head, but other places they use rat or something… the story got shady by that point! None of us speak Spanish, so we just smiled and nodded and laughed at the right spots.

So now, its Friday lunchtime, and I’m on a train that was heading for Granada. A journey which was already going to be an incredible 8hour train ride… will now be at least 10 hours (if not more) because our train has broken down, and we’re waiting for another train to come by to pick us up so we can keep going. This means I’m not gunna get into Granada till at least 10pm tonight… sucky Spainish trains!!!

xoxo

Carcassonne photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020933&id=219300161&l=4fa11ee761

Barcelona/Valencia photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020959&id=219300161&l=ac059026bd

Go swim in the Med… get stung by a jellyfish

tonielle_krisanski — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:02:00 GMT

Wow! That is the best word to describe my experience of Nice.

I arrived in the afternoon by train from Marseilles, and the first thing I did was walk down to the beach. An easy 15min walk and I was having ice cream on the beach in Nice! That evening I found out that the kitchen was where the party was at. I met a few of my fellow hostel-mates there and we all went out for a drink. The Americans wanted to go to a bar called Waynes (if you’ve been to Nice, I think you would have been there, it’s the young tourist bar). We found out that it was an American bar that was full of Contiki and Top Deck, was expensive and really crowded! After one drink a few of us left and found a smaller bar outside that was half the price and we could actually talk. I swear I’m not getting old, but why would you want to go to Nice to go to an American bar? But this way, I got to meet Rachel from Canada and Michael from America… we had a great time anyway. ☺

The next day Michael and I made our way down to the beach (managing to find a couple of mats in the hostel that were definitely needed to lie on the pebbles). Found some great markets on the way and got some great fruit for lunch. The beach was great. The water clear and not too cold (definitely not as cold as Marseilles!) We had fun soaking up the sun and making pebble castles. I wasn’t very successful at it, so when mine fell over I threw a rock at Michael’s so he didn’t have one either. Haha. I think he was shocked that I would do something like that! When we’d decided that we should probably get out of the sun, we made our way back.

By that time Victor from South Africa was feeling less sorry for himself (a bad hangover is what you get if you stay at Wayne’s), and so even though I’d just got back, we made out way back down to the beach, wandering through Old Town. We found some great break-dancers and an full orchestra playing in the park, so we got our culture fix for the day. Had a great time having a wine on the beach watching the world go by, that one wine turned into two and a beer (turns out I like Heineken). Eventually we started on our way back, and found Socca on the way – a local dish, it’s like a big chickpea crepe that is cut up and thrown on a plate, doesn’t look appetising, but it was really quite good. For 2.50euro, it filled me up!

Back at the hostel, we found a crowd gathering outside, they were all heading out (to the beach if you can guess) for drinks. I was like… I just got back!!! But down we went again, and I’m glad we did. I got another wine and we had a great group on the beach drinking and watching the sun set. We made it back quite late, when we were all quite happy from lots of wine, and someone dared Michael to get into the fountain and ride the horse that was in it… and he did! It was hilarious, and he got so wet… he was lucky too, because the police walked past about 30secs after he’d got out… that would have been interesting! So we had a “quiet Sunday night”.

Monday, a group of us made a day trip out to Monaco (not Morocco like I kept getting it confused with). We walked the promenade, checking out the town and the boys were excited about the main road (the grand prix is held right through town). We found some great gardens, and the Casino, but we were too early to get in, so we made our way back and got a picnic lunch at the other Casino – a brand of supermarket in France. We found a nice little park for our lunch, and then made our way up the hill to the Palace. Monaco is its own country (I’m not sure the right wording for it), like the Vatican in Rome. It was over-thrown by a guy with henchmen that were disguised as monks. The view from the palace was beautiful, and we found some markets in the old town that we walked through. Heading back down, we went back to the casino where we had to hand in our camera’s (so sorry, no photos). We could get into the lobby and a little room with a few Pokies in it… and unless you wanted to pay 10euro, that was as far as you could go! Victor put 5euro in… and was having no luck but in the few goes I had I managed to win 2euros!! Which we quickly lost again. Haha.

We then finally made it to the beach (saved the best till last) and enjoyed the cool water. It was more gravel-like stones for a beach, but the water was beautiful and Craig and I swam out past the nets and out towards the pontoons. As I was swimming I felt a sharp sting on my chest and was like… what the hell? Then there were a few people on the pontoon and they said “jellyfish”… then I panicked a little and got out of that water as soon as I could. Sure enough, on the pontoon, we spotted a jellyfish. Its head was about the circumference of a tennis ball and the tentacles were about 15cm long… so I must have swam straight over the top of it. I got a nice little burn from it on the top of my boob (nice) and it took a while before the sting settled down. I thought it was hilarious that Australia has so many blue bottles and other jellyfish and I’ve never been stung before until I get to the Mediterranean. What is that about?

It was so beautiful on the pontoons, watching the fish (and jellyfish) in the water, but I think the sting made me a bit nauseous and the rocking of the pontoon didn’t help, so just as Victor came out to join us (sorry Victor), we headed back with a couple of Aussies that we met on the pontoon. The aussie guy was our jellyfish spotter and we swam in single file, it would have looked pretty funny, but it was worth it, we saw and dodged three on the way back to the rocks. So we found out what those nets were for!!! After we enjoyed icecream, watching Craig bury himself in the “sand” and had a light conversation about history (random I know), we headed back to the bus stop, and home to Nice.

I was supposed to meet up with the Brazilian guys I met in Marseilles that day for the trip, but they didn’t make it. I got back to find a note on the door saying they were staying there also, and to meet up with them after. So when they got back (they went to Monaco too, we missed them by 15mins!) I hung out with them for the evening which was fun – even though Yuri is the only one that speaks English… he was translating the Portuguese for me. It was cool to see someone that you’d met again, a little familiarity was nice.

The next day I met up with the Brazilians again and Yuri managed to find another Brazilian girl at reception, so she came too (lucky she spoke English), and we took a train to a SANDY beach about 40mins away. It was a lovely little town, and it was great to not be in pain when you laid on the beach! We found a great little café for lunch and had a fantastic baguette. When we ordered, she showed us the English menu, and it looked like it was 50cents dearer on the English side… so Yuri asked her, “why is it more expensive in English?” and she laughed and said that the price was smudged, and it was the same… lucky for her!

After we got sick of the sun, we headed back to Nice and back to the beach for the afternoon. I now understood what it was like for Flavio the other day (he was on the beach hike) and everyone speaking English, because that day I was the odd one out, everyone spoke Portuguese and even though Yuri and Joanna translated some stuff for me, you couldn’t really be involved in the conversation, so I was a bit quiet that day. We went back to the hostel and got dinner, and then headed back down to the beach with a wine and beer. The beach is the happening spot, there was so many groups drinking, playing music… we walked past a guy playing amazing bongo’s so we sat down with them and enjoyed it for a while. Another guy in their group turned up with an accordion, and the two of them played together… not something you’d ever think you would hear, but it was cool (see the video).

We walked down further and there was an amazing group of African’s playing traditional instruments, so we went down to that group too and sung and danced with them… the dancing didn’t quite work on the pebbles, but we gave it a go! We eventually found a fantastic spot on the end of the beach on some rocks overlooking the whole scene, and spent the rest of the night there until we realised it was 3am, and we should probably go home.

So that brings me to today. I got up and did laundry today (I lasted as long as I could, I’ve only been doing undies in the sink so far) which was really exciting and then got to the train station to dump my stuff and book the train. It was 4 hours away, so it gave me time to get the bus and go out to see the roman ruins just out of town. I’m really glad I got to do the trip, it was amazing. There is a whole little village that they have recovered underground, and you can walk around to see it… for free even!

So now I’m on the train (again) heading for Carcassonne – the longest train so far… over 6 hours, and I don’t get into town till 10.30pm, but I have a hostel, so its all good.

I’m quite stoked… my blog has caught the attention of the world nomads site, and they have just featured one of my stories for the second time in two weeks… so thanks world nomads and hello to anyone that has found my blog… I hope you’re enjoying it!

xoxo

photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020933&id=219300161&l=4fa11ee761

Gallery: Euro Adventure

tonielle_krisanski — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:02:00 GMT

Snapshots of my trip

Following The "Treasure Map"

tonielle_krisanski — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:54:00 GMT

Well I’m sure you’re all wondering what happened after I left you last. I was on the train to Lyon, hoping that I’d have a bed at the only hostel in town… don’t panic, everything worked out. It was surprisingly easy to get to the hostel, a bus, then a cable car up the hill to the little town at the top. I got there in the morning, so I had the day to explore the city. Lyon is one of my favourites so far, very beautiful. The main part of the city has two rivers running through it and then there is a rocky hill behind it – where I was staying. It was quite small, easy to get around.

That afternoon, I met Marchello (Italian) and Lai (Aussie) that were also staying at the hostel, and we found this great little bar down a small cobblestone alley where we had a couple of drinks. We somehow got onto the topic of relationships, and found out that Marchello is currently seeing three women and because he still lives at his parents place (he’s 28) he has to “entertain” them in interesting places. Woman #1 – lives out of home, so its at her place, woman #2 – has a car (I hope its not a mini), and woman #3 – has neither of these things, so they have to book a hotel for the night (apparently he pays). Very hilarious conversation with stilted English!

Lai and I had dinner together and I had a great duck dish, and she had a raw beef mince stack thing. I tried it… not my thing (how do you not get food poisoning from that?).

The next day I walked to the top of the hill, where there were some ancient Roman ruins. It was pretty cool to see, they had recovered two theatres (among other things) and it was set up for an upcoming opera using the original seats etc. After wandering through there, I visited another cathedral – it was beautiful! Nothing like what I’ve seen so far, it was a white building that had ornate mosaics on the walls. The grounds it was on also had a fantastic view of the city.

After my small morning adventure, I made my way back to the train station – only one night in Lyon. The same bus driver took me back to the station and we had a conversation about how he was my own personal driver, he was quite cute and young for a bus driver!

Then the train onto Marseilles (pronounced Marsay – it took me a while to get that). The first thing I noticed about Marseilles was that it was a completely different France to what I had seen so far. It was much grittier, it looked like a poorer city, with far more graffiti than what I had seen so far. I also found out that the hostel was so far out of the city, it wasn’t on the map! It took a metro and a bus to get to – and I only managed to get there because a Canadian couple (who spoke fluent French) were also at the bus stop, and they were staying right by where I was.

I finally got to the hostel, and found that the “reception” was actually a couch in the living area – where I later found out that the owner and his brother also sleep on at night, and sit on all day (the brother wasn’t wearing pants either, just white jocks, looking up loveinasia.com on his laptop). My room was on the terrace up two makeshift staircases, and it consisted of two double mattresses on the floor – I was to share a bed with one of the girls already there! Now this doesn’t really bother me, but I found it quite hilarious! The fantastic upside of the place was that it was incredibly social. I think I met just about everyone that was staying there, and everyone was chatty and friendly.

I decided the first thing I wanted to do was make my way to the beach. After three weeks without a beach, I was starting to crave it. It took over an hour to walk to, and it was probably the worst beach I’ve ever been to, but it was fantastic! I was so excited to be on the beach, even though it was really windy and the water had a smell suspiciously like sewage. By the time I got back, it was about 9pm, and the party was just starting on the terrace. Everyone had a bottle of wine, and I had a great time learning everyone’s stories and talking lots of shit.

The next morning, a crew got together for what our host told us was a “beach hike”. We gathered supplies (picnic lunch and water) and caught a bus to Cassis (about 40mins away) at 9am. We had a map from the owner which we called the “treasure map” because it was basically a coastline and a walking track marked, and that was about it. We stopped at the beach in town and enjoyed the freezing water and giant pebble beach. Cassis was a beautiful little beach town, and the idea was that we would do a six hour walk around the coast back to Marseilles. We started the walk at about 11.30am, and we lost a pair as soon as we found a little “nudist beach” on a rock over the water. The two Swedish guys stayed there for the day we found out, and we kept on.

The landscape was amazing… but we had no idea what we were in for.

After walking along the road for a half hour or so, we came across a carpark that looked out across the water, a thin port – but how do we get across? Turns out we walk a half hour around it! By this time we discovered there was a proper walking track marked (if you call a splash of paint on a rock marked). We made our way along the track, the sun was fierce and I now knew why we were told to bring 4 litres of water each! The track started to become a steep incline and quite rocky. We managed to get to the top, and enjoyed the view until we realized that we now had to go down an even steeper and rougher track into the rocky valley!

With a heavy side bag, the track was quite a challenge in parts. It was really steep and there were rocks on the track that were really slippery, I managed to only slip once when I was sliding myself down, so I thought I did quite well. Haha. Once we got to the bottom, the only track we could see went straight back up the valley! But we spoke to another hiker and they told us there was a Calanque beach within the valley, sweet.

It was probably the most amazing and different beach I’ve ever seen in my life! The water was so clear and a beautiful blue, sheer rock faces on either side and a pebble beach that we quickly dumped out stuff on and ran into the water. It was freezing, but after the walk there, it was refreshing. We had our picnic and I managed to find a shady spot to escape the sun which was even better. It was about 2pm I think, it took us 2.5 hours just to get to this point, and judging from the map we were only a third of the way!

We eventually got ourselves moving again, and one of the two other girls on the trip was already whinging. She had only brought one small bottle of water, so she’d already gone through it. I filled hers up with my water (I had brought 3L and it was so heavy, so it was annoying to carry it that far and then give it to someone else). We kept on and then we found a split in the path. We were sitting there trying to decipher the “treasure map” – I thought it was to the left to keep going along the coast, and we were going to head in that direction when we met a couple coming from the path straight ahead. We spoke to them and they really put a downer on the group. They said that Marseilles was really far away, that if we went straight ahead we would get to a road, that we should head back to Cassis instead. So I was outvoted and we made our way straight, back up the hill. After an hour I think, we made it to a carpark where we found another older couple who had a real map that we could look at. Turns out I was right (I so felt like rubbing it in) and we’d walked up to a small town, instead of walking left, so we were miles from the coast. The couple offered to take 3 people back to Cassis, and the other two girls and one of the guys took it. So there was four of us left. We decided that it was pointless continuing to Marseilles because we’d have to double back before we could keep going, so essentially we did a triangle, and walked back to Cassis. Luckily shortly along the path we came across a ranger’s house and we managed to steal some water from the tap outside, we were seriously running low. The sign said only 5km, but it was definitely lying… we were walking for hours. By the time we got back to town it was 7pm! And we had just missed the last bus back to Marseilles.

So to add to the misadventure, we had to catch a bus, a train, a metro and then another bus back to the hostel. By the time we got back it was past 9pm, and we were exhausted! That beach though, and the adventure made the pain worth it we decided. The others were glad to see us home, it was dark so they were worried, and the whole hostel heard about our tale which was pretty funny. I should have gone to bed, but I had bought a bottle of wine and there was another party going on outside my door, so I joined them.

The next day I was exhausted, so I checked out and made it to the train station. I wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed at the station waiting. After waiting 2 hours for the train, it was cancelled! So I had to wait another hour. If I had known that, I would have definitely had time to check out the city – I never got around to it, which was a bit disappointing.

So then onto Nice…

xoxo

photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020933&id=219300161&l=4fa11ee761

Une Carrot, Just Une Carrot

tonielle_krisanski — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:33:00 GMT

Coming to you from a train… traveling from Dijon to Lyon (where I hopefully have a bed tonight).

Since I’ve updated you last, I’ve been to a few places in the French countryside – Nancy, Strasbourg and Dijon. I’ve enjoyed being off the ‘beaten track’ as it were, the only problem with that is you don’t meet anyone. In the last three places I’ve been to, I’ve shared my room with French girls that are there to study/work, so they aren’t really keen to socialise/talk at all! Exception to that rule was in Melanie in Nancy, but I’ll get to that shortly.

Nancy was a beautiful town and with the hostel at 14euro a night, it was a bargain! I didn’t arrive at the hostel till 9pm (without a reservation) but got a room and I met Melanie when I was worried how I was going to eat dinner – I was well out of town. Turns out she needed dinner and we found a pizza place in the middle of nowhere – where they made Hawaiian! Stocked. Melanie was there for work and a really lovely chick, we got on like a house on fire, she thought my Aussie humour was hilarious!

So I found out that Nancy is freezing (well it was on this particular day) and promptly froze for the whole day because I left my jacket at the hostel. But lovely never-the-less. They have some beautiful old buildings, a church and a statue on every corner (turns out pretty much every town in France does). I found a great rose garden which was nice to soak the sun up in. They even had a mini petting zoo – with a gorilla!

That night, I had dinner with Melanie and a friend of hers from work. Had a great meal – Chicken and Cous Cous – probably the most nutritious thing I’ve had in a week! Her friend translated the menu for me, which was nice, until they made me order dessert – I tried, but then sort of cheated by pointing at the menu.

The next morning, I got the train to Strasbourg. I loved it as soon as I arrived! It is a beautiful city, an eclectic mix of French and German (they are pretty much on the border between the two), with a river running around it. I spent the afternoon exploring the town and enjoyed wandering around – only needing to know where I was to get back to the hostel.

Saturday was market day, so I found some great markets selling everything – except fresh produce, I didn’t find a fruit shop anywhere in this place! I took it easy, sitting by the water watching the birds, reading my 1.50euro book from the book market – they had one tiny crate with English books that I found a really trashy chick-lit. For dinner I tried the Strasbourg speciality "La tarte flambée" It is basically a really thin pizza with a cream sauce and bacon and onion on it - it was pretty good.

As it was the first Sunday of the month – all the museums and galleries were free, so I spent Sunday going through galleries (which was handy because it was a terrible day outside), and I’ve gotta tell you, I’m over religious paintings! Its always the same, Mary and Jesus, Jesus on the cross… I think I’ve got my fill, and I know its only the beginning of seeing all of that. I also got to go to the top of the cathedral for free, so I climbed the well worn stairs and enjoyed the great view of the city. Unfortunately the only English I heard in Strasbourg was whining Americans. When everyone else speaks French and German, English stands out when you’re on the street, and I swear standing up the top of the cathedral, all I could hear was this sorority princess whining that her hair was ruined because it was windy.

That night, I finally met some cool people – two guys were sitting at dinner, American and English and I had a great evening chatting to them. The English guy was in his 60’s and he’d traveled to over 100 countries! Man he had some stories! He’d been captured by rebels somewhere, trekked somewhere else… it was amazing. The American guy was my age and had just been to Spain, so I’ve been recommended a few hostels, which is great. We ended up going for a late night walk around town, it was a full moon, and it was beautiful!

Next day I quickly checked out the cathedral inside (it was shut Sunday for a ceremony) and they had an awesome astronomical clock in there. Train onto Dijon that day and I arrived that evening where it was pissing down with rain… and my hostel was two busses away! Now I don’t usually curse old lady’s, but the one that talked to the bus driver as he drove off from the station and didn’t stop till a few stops later, when it was too late to find out that I was on the wrong bus… I wasn’t very happy with! I had to get out in the torrential rain to find the right bus, which I could have avoided at the beginning, but anyway!

Had dinner at the hostel that night because it was still pouring. The girl that I was sharing the room with was there to study, so didn’t talk to me… another boring hostel. Was a nice town though when it wasn’t raining the next day. Turns out that all they museums in Dijon are free, but that is no use to you when you are there on Tuesday (they are all shut)! The markets are on Tuesdays though, and they reminded me of the markets in Melbourne, an inside bit with deli, meat, cheese stuff, and produce outside. The market guy thought it was hilarious that I only wanted one carrot (I’m trying to get in my vege intake). He took the carrot and waved it around saying “Une carrot, just une carrot”.

Spent some time in the nice park, where a French guy tried to pick me up! Gotta give him an A for effort because he didn’t speak much English, but still tried for at least 20 minutes, and I’m sure he was a lovely guy, but I didn’t really want to go have coffee with a guy that found me on a park bench. The conversation didn’t get very far, found out he was my age and was here to study (but couldn’t work out what). He wasn’t bothering me, it was pretty amusing, but eventually he said do you want me to stay – Oui or Non… and I had to tell him non. Haha. I’m such a heartbreaker. I would have got a photo with him for the album, but I think that would have been sending the wrong message!

I managed to find one gallery open – a private collection with all sorts of stuff in it, the lady made me put my bag in a locker… not sure why, in case I knocked something, or stole something? I dunno. So I walked around with my passport (that never leaves me) and they had some pretty cool stuff, lots of old furniture too.

So now, Wednesday morning, had to get up early (6.45am, is way too early for the backpacker life) and since the only hostel in Lyon said it was booked out online last night, I rang them this morning and she said if I got there quick enough, I should get a bed… but since my train doesn’t get in till 10.30, and I won’t get to the hostel till 11, I’m really hoping I’m lucky. Otherwise there is nowhere else to stay that won’t cost me a fortune, so I think I’ll get a train onto Marsellies instead.

Anyway, I’ve been fairly lucky so far, so hopefully it continues!

xoxo

photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020898&id=219300161&l=c56292eb4e

I see (too many) dead people!

tonielle_krisanski — Wed, 3 Jun 2009 22:29:00 GMT

Bonjour!

Well I’ve been a little slack – choosing to see the sights rather than sit at my computer (funny that) and now I’ve been putting this off, because I need to write about the past week. So hold onto your hats, its gunna be a long one!

The rest of London was lots of fun… mostly because I wasn’t bed-ridden, and also because I had new friends to hang out with. Monday night I got to see Billy Elliot at the theatre for 38 pound… it was amazing! The kid that played Billy had some talent! The only hard bit of the musical was that it was about a kid learning to dance, so no one could really bust out the moves, which was a little frustrating, until the finale, and then everyone went crazy, which was great. They really got to show off their stuff.

Tuesday was the 1 hour flight to Paris, which landed at 9.30pm, and then it proceeded to take me 4 hours to get to my hostel! There was a strike on the trains (typical) and although I got to ride the trains that did come for free, I had to change trains 4 times, and it was only from the help of nice locals that I made it out alive! Then I walked to my hostel – 20 mins past the street it was on! So by the time I got to my hostel, and in bed, it was 1.45am!!!

Scary hostel! I knew it wasn’t going to be top notch, because the online reviews weren’t good, but it was the only one I could book. There aren’t actually many hostels in Paris… and since the French Open was on, and it was heading into Summer, paying 26euro (almost $50 a night), for a scary hostel was something I had to do. My room was a makeshift room, as in it only had one key for the 10 people that were in it, and the door was so loud and squeaky, that you woke up every time someone opened it, and it was right beside the courtyard where everyone hung out till 2am!

But I met some cool people there, like the two Canadian guys that I met the night I arrived. I was trying to find my room, and they were pissed! One of them offered to carry my bag, and eventually (after reminding him that the bag on his back was mine), I found my room. The next morning, surprisingly, they recongised my face, and we ended up going on the free walking tour together. The tour was great… our guide, completely crazy… the city, amazing! It was a four hour walk, and covered everything (see the photos).

That afternoon I had a picnic under the Eiffel tower with some hostel buddies, Hilary (Aus) and Steve, Jordan and Bri (Usa). We each paid 5euro, and got 6 bottles of wine, some frommage and baguettes, I stole my blanket from my bed, and we had a great time getting drunk under the Eiffel Tower. Until it started getting late and we caught the attention of the local police. They said the time was over for public drinking, and we had to leave. I think it was because we were tourists and were getting rowdy, so we made out way home, very happy.

When we got back to the hostel, I started talking to a French guy. Apparently I made an impression on him, because when I went to bed, he asked Hilary where I went. She said “to bed”, and he said “I’m Hungry. I’m hungry for your friend!” Eww!!!

Thursday, I met up with Darren, an Aussie from the hostel, and we checked out the Louvre. IT IS HUGE!!! It almost defeated us, but we managed to get around most of it in 5 hours. Saw Mona Lisa in the flesh… the bedlam around her was amazing. She almost had a whole room to herself, and the crowd was at least 10 deep to get to the front. I threw a few elbows in, and managed to get to the front, where there was a barrier, 4m in front of the painting, which was protected behind bullet-proof glass! You can see it better from the books, seriously!

We saw lots of other cool things – even the building is amazing. It used to be the palace, before it was turned into a museum, so most of the ceilings are decorated in paintings and sculpture. Darren and I had lunch together, and the waiter called me madam (assuming we were married)… I’m a mademoiselle damn it! ☺

After we made it out alive, we raced off to Roland Garos to try to see some tennis. On the Metro, walking through a tunnel, there were some guys ahead that looked like they were harassing people. So I put my head down and kept walking. The man was calling out “mademoiselle”, and I put my hand out saying “No, No”. It was only after he was still calling out to me and I realized that Darren had stopped, that they were actually the police checking tickets! I thought they were trying to sell me something! So I tried really hard to get arrested in Paris.

We got to the tennis by 7pm and didn’t wait long before we could get tickets for 20euro to see Jelana Dokic play! Sweet… we were only 4 rows from the front and she played so well (we were clearly the only Aussies in the crowd, definitely the loudest) until she did something to her back and had to retire in the second set. Which sucked for us, but we managed to sneak onto another center court and see Djokovic play for a while, until it got too dark and they postponed play. Lots of fun, definitely made mum and dad jealous!

The next day I explored Paris myself. There was the first blue sky I’d seen since I’d got there, so I climbed the Eiffel Tower that afternoon. I swear I lined up for over two hours during the visit (getting up and down), but it was totally worth it. You can see so much of the city, Paris is so big! Then I had to change hostels and although I paid 30euro a night ($60 a night) for this one it was totally worth it… luxury! The shower was amazing, I was only sharing with 2 other people and we even had a little Parisian balcony! First goodnight sleep since I’d got into the city.

On Saturday, I hired a bike (a city initiative, only costs 1euro for the day, and there are stations all over town) and rode my way around to the sights. Went to the Catacombes in the morning. Waited over an hour to get in, but met this NZ band behind me and I’m glad I did… it would have been way too scary going through by myself! Basically, when the great Plague hit, they put all the bodies in a pit in the city. But then everyone was getting sick from that, so they built these Catacombes around town where they dug under ground (the one I visited was an old quarry) and dumped them in there. Later on, they went back in and cleaned it up, and creepily arranged all the bones into over 1km worth of tunnels. I’m pretty sure we didn’t see all of it and we saw 1km… that was enough! I mean it was fantastic to see and I’ve never seen so many human bones before (and probably never will) - I think there is over 1 million people in there, but when you’re in there, and you really think about it… its pretty creepy!

After that experience, I then rode up towards Notre-Dame, finding this amazing park on the way. Turns out it was Jardin du Luxembourg, which are the palace gardens. This garden had everything… go-carts, fountains you could race your boat in, jungle gyms, donkey rides, statues every 10m. Lucky I had the bike, it was huge. All the Parisians were out having picnics and sunning themselves, being fabulous.

Eventually I got to Notre-Dame and got to see inside for free. It was pretty amazing, not exactly what I was expecting (damn Disney movies), but it was so detailed and so beautiful. I almost want to be converted so I can go worship in these magnificent buildings! Almost.

I then rode all the way up the Avenue Des Champs Elysees where all the big name brands are represented. And I got to the Arc de Triompe… its huge! The roundabout is crazy, at least 5 cars wide, no lanes, and 12 exits! Apparently there is an accident there every half hour (I actually saw a tow-truck with a car as soon as I got there!), and if you drive on it, no insurance will cover you for that spot. There is an underpass to see it, and the eternal flame for the unknown soldier.

All in all, I rode between 15-20km that day… by the end I was struggling a little, and I think riding without a helmet on the road with big busses up your ass, being on the wrong side of the road and crazy French roundabouts… and not crashing or getting run over was more luck than skill!

Sunday morning. I rushed over to another hostel to chance it and get a bed. The internet said full, but if you go first thing, most places will have something (a trick I’ve learnt in the backpacking world). I went through hell that morning, and only saved 1euro! But it gave me a new neighbourhood to play with. Found some amazing markets around selling fruit/veg, frommage, bagettes, deli stuff, seafood and meat, and then nick-nack stuff too. Walking around that morning, I really wanted to be with some good-looking Frenchie and getting some great food to take to Sunday lunch!

I checked out Musee d’Orsay, the next modern gallery from the Lourve. I was a little disapointed, for 5euro I should have seen Picasso instead, but it was still ok, just very busy – you had to jostle with people to get in front of each painting. Got to see lots of Cezanne, Matisse, Monet and Van Gogh. Saw “Whistlers Mother” too (remember that painting from Mr Bean Movie). Lots of great sculpture in there also.

Monday, hired another bike and checked out Montmatre – home of the Moulin Rouge. You could tell when you were in the right area, sex shops everywhere! Moulin Rouge was also a bit disappointing… but then I saw it during the day. I also checked out the cemetery there – that was amazing! The craziest graveyard I’ve ever seen, so many family crypts, some from the 1700s, and then some pretty shinny new ones too. Was very peaceful and beautiful – except for the map of “famous people’s” graves (I didn’t recognize any) and a giant car bridge built over the top of it!

That night I went to the Place de L’Opera and saw my first ballet… in Paris, for 10euro. Last minute tickets… were either 10euro or 60 or 80! So my seat was pretty crap, I stood up the whole time and could only see half the stage… but it was still great to go to. During intermission I managed to go to the next stall and there was a better standing spot there. Haha… I think it was a mixed bag night, as in there were a few different stories in the one show… because it didn’t flow at all. The men are gods (and probably gay)… their bodies are amazing! At one point this guy got naked on stage… an ass like it was sculpted from marble! Haha… and a woman did a whole dance with a few guys with her boobs out (well nipples out, ballerina's don't have boobs), this show had everything! Definitely took me by surprise, but the dancing was great. :P

That brings me to yesterday… I took the train to Reims and got a city pass which got me a tour of the cathedral here, also called Notre-Dame and my reason for coming to the town… champagne! The real deal… I went to a winery and got a tour of the caves, all the champagne is kept in caves underground where it is kept constantly at 10ºC. I went to the Pommery winery and they have 16km of caves with more than 2 million bottles of champagne aging! They also have this awesome art in there, modern and old sculptures. Some bottles are up to 21L in size and take 9 years to mature! I got to taste a glass – quite nice, and I bought a small bottle (at 13euro for a half bottle size)… for a special occasion, or when I can access a fridge! Haha.

So right now, I've paid 1euro ($2) for a 50c cone at McDonalds to use the internet. I've got a train this afternoon to Nancy… can’t remember what is there, but Deirdre recommended it, so it must be good! Then Strasburg for the weekend.

If you’re made it this far… I’m proud of you, I promise I won’t leave it this long again, but getting a decent internet connection is proving difficult.

Finally photos are up... http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020863&id=219300161&l=2a60f96579

Swine flu, snakebites and sunburn

tonielle_krisanski — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:44:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

Shortly after I finished the last story, mum suggested that I should go to the doctor to get a checked: "I don't want to alarm you, but you might have swine flu, so just go and check". I found a free walk-in clinic, and I was worried that as soon as I wrote "flu" on the form, I would have been quarantined and not seen for weeks. Turned out I did have the flu, but not of the pig kind.

Thursday night, I met up with Shannon and Megan (Grace's friends) and went to this pub called "The Slug", and Aussie bar and drank snakebites, which are half pint fosters, half cider and a swig of red cordial. Sounds disgusting, and I don't drink beer anyway, never mind Fosters!!! But it was really quite good, and cheap. Had a really good night there dancing to "you're the voice" and ACDC. Ended up staying at Kylie's place (one of the girls there) since it was too hard to try to get to my hostel after the tube shut (at midnight, can you believe it?). Lost my voice, and probably put my recovery back, but heaps of fun.

Friday, I made my way back to the hostel, and went to visit Trafalga Square and the art gallery. I got to see some of Picasso's prints, Van Gogh and Monet. Got so excited when I saw "Van Gogh's Chair"... I'm not sure why, I think it's because we studied it at school and I'd always seen pictures of it, and then seeing it for real, was awesome. Ended up at Westminster Abbey, as was going to do mass at 5pm, (just to see inside for free) but the priest out the front was telling everyone that it was quite a dull service today, so only if you're really into it, to go it. It was probably a test, now that I think about it, but either way, I didn't go in. :)

Saturday was Tate Modern (which was awesome! got to see Jackson Pollack, Kandinsky, Monet's "Water Lillies" and Picasso's "Weeping Woman" and some Salvador Dali) and Tower Bridge, and then I met up with a Jack the Ripper tour. It was quite good, hearing about all the dark stories of London, met some pretty cool chicks there too, and ended up meeting them at the pub crawl that night also. Our pub crawl group was the biggest they'd ever had - 137 people! Was a bit too big, but I had fun. Also got shortchanged 10pound by a guy at the bar!!! so pissed off, I've since been back, and they still won't do anything about it!

Sunday, glorious Sunday... the sun was out ALL day! I even got burnt! which wasn't good, but I wasn't the only one. Apparently England has a worse case of skin cancer than Australia, simply because when the sun does come out, everyone roasts themselves! I met up with Kylie and her friend, and we checked out Speakers Corner in Hyde Park (see video above). The tradition is you stand on something, and as long as you believe what you're talking about, you are free to say anything! This is where "get on your soapbox" came from. So we walked around, enjoying all the crazies... mostly regigion, some just weird. Then ended up in Hammersmith and had a few drinks outside the pub, on the grass, was awesome! There is no way you can do that in Australia.

So today, I need to book some form of accomodation in Paris for tomorrow, and then hopefully we're finding some cheap last minute theatre tickets to see Wicked tonight... hopefully! haha

xoxo

photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020852&id=219300161&l=14854fdfc7

Chillin' out in chilly London

tonielle_krisanski — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:31:00 GMT

After a 13 hour flight from Kuala Lumpur, i finally arrived in London! Found my hostel very easily (especially after the KL debacle), and went straight to bed! After being awake for over 20 hours, i definitely wasn't in the party mood.

Monday, sunny Monday. I met this guy Michael from my dorm, and we went on the free walking tour they offer, around the royal part of London. Our tour guide was fantastic, telling us all these crazy stories about each monument. My favourite story was about Green Park...

It is a park near the palace, and King George 3rd (i think) would walk through this park every evening to visit one of his many mistresses. And on his way, he would pick a big bunch of flowers from the park to give to the mistress (how romantic of him... haha). The queen was so pissed off about this going on, that she eventually ordered all the flowers to be pulled up and banned all flowers in the park. So to this day, it is the only Royal park in England that doesn't have flowers!

After the tour and getting cold and wet from the random patches of rain, I started getting sick (awesome)... and just hung around the hostel, till Michael and I went and had dinner at this awesome place called Wagamama's. I'm pretty sure there is one of these in Brisbane, it was really good food. I tried Saki for the first time... not sure if I really liked it or not, but it wasn't bad, and only ended up paying 12pound (about $24) each, which is pretty good considering you can't get a main meal in Australia for less than that. Ended up at the hostel's bar, talking lots of crap for the rest of the night, had a really good time (except for the fact that I couldn't stop the "hose nose" all night!)

So yesterday I forced myself to get up and checked out the British Museum. Was pretty awesome, got to see a lot of stuff that is definitely not in any Australian museum. Lots of Roman pottery, busts, and lots of Egyptian stuff, saw my first mummy which was awesome.

Just crashed last night, and woke up at 5am this morning by one of the guys alarms going off every 10mins for over an hour... how could he not hear it??? By 6.30am, i got up and saw him awake, gave the mobile to him "is this yours?" Turns out he missed his contiki bus... bugger! haha, didn't feel sorry for him at all by that point!

Anyway, just hanging out in the common room for now, and I'm still taking it easy, but I think I'll head off to the Gallery today, stay indoors. They've got some Picasso showing at the moment which will be cool to check out - Literially, its still freezing here at the moment 14ºC during the day... its supposed to be Spring!!!

Photos here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020830&id=219300161&l=14ec182923

xoxo

p.s. I've also started my "Man in every country" gallery... you can see my progress here :) http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020834&id=219300161&l=de995c16aa

"Hey tall lady, where you from?"

tonielle_krisanski — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:49:00 GMT

On Saturday, I got up bright and early to visit the Patronus towers. I was there by 7.30am to line up for a free ticket to the observation bridge, and found there was already a growing queue. As it is the main tourist attraction in town, you have to get there early to claim one of only 2500 tickets for the day. Lucky for me, after an hour and a half of queuing, I managed to grab a 9am ticket (score!)

As you can see from the pics, it’s a fair way up! It was the tallest tower in 2003, but two have since passed it. It is now the tallest “pair” of towers in the world. Not a bad view, but I was somewhat disappointed because I thought (for some reason) that the floor of the bridge was glass… that’s your fault dad!

Anyway, after that checked off my list (I mean, you can’t go to KL without doing the towers), I power walked the 30min trek to my hostel, and another 10mins past my hostel to the bus terminal I had to go to for my ride to Melaka. After finding help in the jungle that is KL bus terminals, I found the right counter and the right platform, and managed to find my bus. A two-hour luxury bus ride later (for RM24), I was… not where I thought I should be. I was in Melaka mall… shit. Turns out there is a local bus that leaves the mall for another 20min drive to the historical part of town that I was looking for (thank you to the only white people I found in the mall, for that tip).

Melaka is pretty cool. Once you get past the searing heat (I arrived at midday) and the men trying to get you to ride their ridiculous trishaws, or hold their snake round your neck for a photo. “Hey tall lady, where you from,” was one of the lines a busker used on me when I walked by. He got a smile, but no money. Haha. Luckily I found a map, that told me in 25 words or less about each monument, so I had a vague idea of what I was looking at – will definitely be doing a little more reading up before I go next time.

The history of the place is pretty cool. Next to the water, the town was occupied by the Dutch, Portuguese and the British before it became independent (with the rest of Malaysia of course). So there are churches that were built by the Portuguese, and modified by the British, there are Dutch graveyards, which the British later used for their dead, ruins of a battle fort built by the Dutch and torn down by the Portuguese (I hope I got these the right way round!) Anyway, you get my point. Check out the pics.

So leaving at 4ish, I made my way back to the giant mall, and waited by the bus terminal, only to discover 2 minutes before my bus was due to leave that I was waiting at the domestic bus terminal, not the big bus terminal. Thank god a lovely local woman saw my ticket in my hand and ran me to the right one, just before the bus left… thank you!!!

What I have noticed (only 4 days into my travels) is how willing everyone is to lend you a hand (especially all the local men on the side of the road… just kidding), but other travelers, and local women. Again this morning, making my way to the monorail to get to the airport, I was waiting on the wrong platform again (what is wrong with me, it just didn’t even occur to me to ask), a lady pointed me in the right direction, aka, the other side of the tracks, and I was able to run on, just before it left. Of course I’m only new to this, and I’m not naive enough to believe everyone will be so kind, but if I manage to pick the nice ones from the bad ones, I think I’ll be ok! It seems someone is looking out for me anyway.

p.s. sorry guys, i had a heap of trouble downloading these photos, but they're finally up now... http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020828&id=219300161&l=acd566cb83

Sweating in Kuala Lumpur

tonielle_krisanski — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:49:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

Well, the adventure has begun... in Kuala Lumpur. I arrived at 6am yesterday morning, and was greeted by a slightly worrying sight... every staff member was wearing a mask, and giving out forms to sign saying that we weren't suffering swine flu... no masks for us or anything!? Not that I'm particularly worried about getting the dreaded swine flu, but if they are worried, you'd think they'd at least give us a mask to wear too!

So I got into town by train and then went to find the monorail station. Getting myself only slightly lost, I eventually found it, along with the billboard for the Taken movie... something you really want to be reminded of while trying to find your way!

Arrived at my hostel an hour later... very sweaty (after walking around the same little area that whole time trying to find it!). It is a very cute hostel, in a pretty good spot, now that I know where I am! :)

I went for a marathon walk to find china town that afternoon, it was worth it. I couldn't get any photos inside the market because it was just too chaotic and packed. I was too busy holding onto my bag so it didn't get swiped. There were hundreds of stalls selling every "genuine imitation" you could think of. I managed my first bartering experience and got pair of DC sunnies and a wallet for RM75 (about $25). Made it back and was in bed by 8.30pm (my excuse was that it was 10.30pm in Australia).

Today, I went on a half day city tour, where we got to see lots of shops they wanted us to buy stuff from, but we also got to see a few cool things (i'll explain in the photos captions).

After that, I went to Little India with an Australian couple I met on the bus, Bob and Bev from Adelaide. Had a great Indian meal there, and then they took me to Central Markets where I had a foot spa by fish! Crazy I know, you'll have to see the video (above) and photos to believe it, but apparently they eat the dead skin away from your feet and improve circulation, leaving them smooth. 10 mins for RM5, bargain!

By the time I got back, it was too late to make the trek out to visit the Batu Caves... next time I guess. I want to see Malaka tomorrow which is a 2 hour bus trip out, so that will be a whole day's worth.

KL is a pretty easy city. It is pretty clean, and was surprised by the lack of homeless and begging here. I guess after the Philippines, it was a surprise. Lots of hawkers on the street, offering taxis, massages, but they are easy. It is quite hot and humid here, would be over the 30's each day and doesn't really cool down overnight. Luckily our room has aircon. I've seen a few tourists here, but not heaps, a very diverse crowd, lots of Muslim women in their head gear, Indian men, and other asians. The guide said today that KL has a population of 7 million, with only 2 million of them Kuala Lumpian.

Well that's is it for now... having a great time, met some great people at the hostel, everyone is willing to start up a conversation, which is really good.

To see the photos of KL, visit this link... http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020802&id=219300161&l=52a6c9f0f7

xoxo

Finished work... now onto becoming a full-time backpacker!!!

tonielle_krisanski — Wed, 6 May 2009 16:53:00 GMT

So I finished up at work last week... very exciting. Had some fun drinking cocktails with my work mates, and seeing Frank (our editor at work) sing me a song... you can see it above(pay special attention to the last verse... it had something to do with a comment my mum made about staying on peoples couches).

Now the most exciting recent news is that I FINALLY have my UK visa in my hot little hands... which means I'm now allowed to travel there... so my flight is booked for 13th (this wednesday)... one week away... very exciting and scary!!!

So the first stop is Kuala Lumpur - it is a stopover that I've extended for 3 nights. From there I fly onto London where I'll be for a week, then down to Paris for a week where I'll start touring France for 3 weeks. Then I'll make my way down to Spain and Portugal, being in Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls in early July (very excited about that one), back up to England to find work over the Summer holiday's and then over to meet up with the boys in Croatia in mid August for a week.

From there... it depends on the money situation. I'll either keep going onto Italy, or stop and find some more work somewhere.

Well that is where the plan is up to so far. Still so much left to organise, but I think I'm getting there.

Just wanted to share the video and my latest plans with you all.

Been partying a little with everyone to say goodbye... if you wanna see the pics... just click on this link...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020789&id=219300161&l=df3400921d

xoxo