marrakesh express

My last night in Lund, Sweden, Europe. I'm sitting here in Murray's tastefully decorated room as he cooks up a farewell feast, sipping a longneck of german beer and reminiscing about the fun timez and crazy antics of the last couple of weeks. But i'll continue on in a linear fashion from my last post.

Our string of hilarious room mates in hostels continued in The Oki Doki hostel in Warsaw. We were sharing our room with Kevin, the recruiter from Norway who oozed positive energy and pithy inspirational one-liners (heard: "eliza, the future's so bright i need sunglasses"; "today is my favourite day - do you know why? - because it's a new day!"). We would have laughed him out of the room if it wasn't for his chiselled features, incredibly tight buttocks and his perchance for wearing leggings everywhere. Also: a girl who talked about nothing but museums: being in them, where they were, the little information labels, the opening hours, the fact she didn't eat lunch because she was so busy looking at exhibits. Great company.

In Warsaw I got my hair cut, a fun activity consisting of my one polish word "Dziekuje" and hastily drawn sketches from my notebook. I also went to the chemist. Oh, of course saw a lot of cool historical stuff, my personal favourite being the Palace of Culture and Science. It's Poland's largest building, a personal gift from Stalin and a dead ringer of the hideous communist buildings in Moscow.

After Warsaw Nikki and I headed north to the coastal village of Gdansk. We had an early train booked, but unfortunately when we awoke Nikki was shivering and feeling faint with a nasty flu bug and basically in no state to travel. She decided to take it easy in Gdansk, so I wandered around by myself being a solo traveller again. It's a really nice town, small and compact with history everywhere, and it would be blissful in the summer months. I took some sweet pics as well. We were the only people staying in the hostel so we took advantage of the eight free beds to do our washing, spread our stuff everywhere and use the internet at will, much to the annoyance of the procession of surly polish teenager girls who passed as "staff".

I said goodbye to Nikki and flew to London Stansted. Flying out over a snow-covered Poland was amazing - i've never seen snow like that from the air before. Last time I was in Stansted the queue was long and unforgiving. This time I was the only Non-EU passenger on our flight, so I went straight to the front, clutching passport in hand. Then it was a bus trip to London Stansted airport, where i was meeting Murray the next day. The 14 hours I spent at Luton Airport are ones that i will never get back and never want to repeat again in my life. Probably my worst night in europe so far - curling up on my winter coat behind the check-in desks, clutching my essentials close to my chest, teeth gritted as i listened to the security announcements every 15 minutes over the PA.

Then we were on the Ryanair Marrakesh Express to Morocco. In 3 and a bit hours we were in a different continent, and a country as different from Sweden as you could possibly get. We spent two nights in Marrakesh first up. Morocco reminded me a bit of Bangkok in its craziness. The traffic is chaos on the brink of disaster, with motorbikes, horses, bicycles and carts sharing the footpath with pedestrians. It's hard to ignore the fact that you look like a big fat western cash cow to the average person on the street - everyone wants to sell you something, whether it be carpets or orange juice or hashish. The focal point of Marrakesh is the Djeema el Fna square, a circus complete with fire dancers, storytellers, boxing matches, belly dancers and snake charmers.

The sitch is very different for women in Morocco. In the hostels of Prague and Budapest I'd heard the stories - how people buy rings and pretend they're married for the duration of the trip, unmarried couples being given shit at hotels, and the Borat-esque situation where men are asked "how much?" regarding their female companion. All in all, it wasn't that bad for Murray and me. We were conspicuous as all hell, being the whitest people in Morocco and dressed like your average students, complete with cardigans and converse shoes - but with my hand firmly on his arm I think most people got the message that I wasn't for sale. I got told that I had beautiful eyes, and that Murray was a very lucky man to have me on his arm, which did tickle me pink. Murray was very brave and competent with speaking French, which gave me the luxury to sit back and look good i.e. be a lady.

We bussed to the costal town of Essaouira in search of fine weather and perhaps the smattering of an African tan. The weather was quite tempermental and a bit on the chilly side but that didn't stop Essaouira being one of the sweetest towns I have been to, eva. Our hotel overlooked the main drag and we could watch life swish on by, complete with carts full of fresh mint, vegetable shops overflowing, hundreds of well-kept cats, fresh cow carcasses swinging in the wind and the colourful local citizens going about their business. On my final night I had a traditional hammam bath, which was a surreal experience. Firstly, you get naked. Then, the masseuse gets naked. Then you go into a darkened alcove where you are covered with black stuff, then scrubbed until your skin comes off in sheets. Then there's some more black stuff, including mud in your hair. To finish off, the masseuse throws eight buckets of water over your head. You leave with tingling skin and a spring in your step.

The Moroccans have this thing going with rooftop patios which speaks to me. In summer you can sleep on them, under the starry sky, or watch the sun set. In winter you can eat breakfast on them or have a bit of a petite smoke on the fine Moroccan hashish, as is your want. I've resolved to have one on my house, whenever I get around to building it. Australia is severly lacking in them. I will bring the change.

We came all the way from our Riad in Marrakesh back to sleepy Lund in one exhausting day, back though London again. My passport is getting a workout! In Stansted we spotted the Malmo checkin queue straight away - everyone was dressed in black and well groomed, in stark contrast to the Bratislava queue, where everyone looked like they were dressed in 1980s parachute tracksuits. I've spent the last few days either lounging around in bed, catching up with friends, or walking the hallowed streets and trying to remember everything so i won't forget it when I get back to Australia and back to real life. At the moment I'm feeling...well, honestly, a bit mellow because of the beer i've just consumed, but a mix of apprehensive and sad and excited. I will try and find an internet cafe tomorrow at Copenhagen airport and write my final thoughts before my return.

understanding warszawa

Greetings from Warsaw, capital of Poland! Nikki and I arrived here a couple of days ago. I wish I could be more precise with the date but days and dates and time in general doesn't really mean much anymore after almost 3 weeks on the road. I know that we're going to Gdansk tomorrow morning, and that happy hour at our hostel is between 7-9pm, and the rest i can take or leave! Nikki is napping at the moment and I have set out to explore the Old Town, and on the way found a cheap and cosy internet cafe, which is quite the added bonus. Now, to try and remember what we've been doing -

We stayed for four nights in The Stranger Hostel in Krakow. It was pretty sweet place, with a massive couch and really nice staff. For four consecutive nights a group of lads from Britain were falling down drunk by 8pm, which upped the fun value. But after four days the novelty wore off a bit, especially when the drunken Englishman who was sleeping above me vomited pizza and apple vodka all through his bed.

Krakow was nice town, Poland's backpacker hotspot and probably the best place for us to start our wonderful Polish adventure. We wandered around the old town area a lot. which looked quite similar to the Old Towns in Budapest, Prague, Bratislava AND vienna...it seems every single eastern european city has one! We did a day trip to Auschwitz, which was very chilling and confronting, especially seeing the rooms full of hair of the prisoners, or their suitcases with their names on them. We walked through the Jewish area, through synagogues, saw bits of the ghetto wall, and were the only patrons at an authentic Jewish resturant, where I discovered the joys of Gefilte fish. We climbed up Mound (with a D) Kosiosko and took all the obligatory mountaineer and proud explorer photos.

I completed my first non-travelling, real life activity (apart from buying stamps) of my entire trip - a doctor's appointment in the suburbs of Krakow. Getting there - a nerve-wracking 20 minute drive along the major highways and through the forests - was almost as fun as the actual appointment: an after hours, cash in hand appointment with a carrot-orange doctor who switched between German and English and was dressed entirely in white, except for his tie (pink).

So now we're in Warsaw. It seems that Warsaw isn't a city to be explored or viewed, but rather understood. In 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, 9 out of 10 buildings were destroyed by the Nazis. So almost everything is less than 50 years old, the whole city practically reconstructed. There are a lot of communist-style buildings and the skyline is full of ugly housing commission flats. In the centre of town is the Palace of Culture, a personal gift from Stalin that remains the highest and biggest building in Poland. There are developments everywhere and they reckon that Warsaw looked completely different 10 years ago, and in another 10 it will be unrecognisable. It'd be weird to live here and see the city change so rapidly in front of your eyes.

I am having much fun travelling with Nikki. We both like slow starts in the morning and making fun of Polish fashion, so every day is delightful. The weather has been pretty bad these last few days so we've been going to museums or sitting around in cafes. We've been trying to eat out one meal a day, which sometimes works, sometimes not, especially now that we've become hooked on pierogies: vietnamese dumpling-style boiled parcels filled with mushrooms, meat, cabbage or potatoes, and served with - wait for it - bacon or crackling swimming in lard. YUM.

hott new pix!

Thanks to the ingenious Nikki, my well-deserving travel partner, I have uploaded most of my travel pix to date to my flickr page. There's some clangers in there but a lot of gold too. It's all a bit of a hodgepodge so it's probably best to view them by set (on right hand side). enjoy!

bohemia like you

It's probably because I've been eavesdropping on Swedish people for the last half year in the hope of picking up the language, but I'm hearing Australian accents EVERYWHERE. In the street. In the park. On the crowded metro in rush hour. The only other people at a deserted lookout. On the stairs, in the shower. In the cathedral. Explaining their design proposal to Austrian curators in a viennese coffeehouse. In every single hostel that I have had the pleasure of being in, the Australians are by far the loudest, drunkest, and dare I say friendliest, majority. There's many opinions on why - the three month uni holiday for students, our culturally sanctioned gap year initiation period where the youngsters find themselves before taking on uni or work, the fact that Europeans don't really travel around Europe that much, or that Australians simply having the money to travel. I don't really mind it - there's always someone around you can bond with and talk about the good ole days with.

I left Vienna behind without a second glance. Although it's a beautiful city, and I do feel a bit "spoilt kid in Europe" saying it, it didn't really grab me. That being said, I didn't really take the tourist route around the town - my first stop was the Zentralbanhof, the massive cemetary where composers like Brahms lie six feet under; reading the International Herald Tribune in the window of Cafe Sperl, the most gorgeous of Vienna's coffeehouses; wandering around Sigmund Freud's old consulting rooms, and spending a lot of time on the metro wondering why all the stops sounded like "schnitzel" and "pretzel". Another thing was that my contact lenses have been playing up, resulting in me having trouble looking at anything directly and a lot of heifer-stuck-in-mud eye rolling behavior (holla to my farming peeps).

One of my highlights of Vienna was, ironically, my day trip to Bratislava. Following a night of drinking games with a bunch of fellow hostellers (Australians, of course) I found myself, hungover as the derries, standing at the Bratislava bus depot, with no money, no clue where I was, no Slovakian in my repertoire and no knowledge whatsoever about the city, except that it had a castle. A couple of gruelling hours later I found myself at the front door of the castle, feeling mightily pleased with myself re: ability to conquer adversity. And I have the Slovak Republic T-shirt, which was the ulterior motive to my trip. I have now walked along the banks of the Danube in three cities - Budapest, Vienna and Bratislava. More to come, hopefully.

I arrived in Prague yesterday and headed straight for my hostel, the Clown and Bard, "Best Hostel in the Universe" according to Brad, who went to the Czech republic just to frequent the bar here. And it's mighty fine, if a bit on the quiet side, and of course putting aside the massive hill and nine flights of stairs I have to climb to get to my dorm. Breakfast goes from 7.00-1.00pm and 2.00pm on sundays, two drinks for the price of one during happy hour, there's a guitar, a massive dog, a pizza place across the road, massive breakfast, free internet, friendly staff and Dvorak on the PA system(?).

Prague is definitely my kind of city. A hell of a lot of people think it's THEIR kind of city as well, judging by the massive crowds of tourists in every street. From the top of the cathedral the most striking thing about the view was not the skyline (which is pretty spectacular) but the camera flashes blinking every two and a bit seconds somewhere down below. Prague has the tourism thing down to an art: touters on every corner, tour groups drifting like packs of sheep, English language signs everywhere. Yesterday I got quite lost and found myself in the real Prague, which was very refreshing, if a little scary.

Today I wandered around everywhere. I climbed to the top of the Prague Castle, walked across the Charles Bridge and looked at the astronomical clock. I called my little sister Georgia for her birthday (again happy 16th sos!). On the arts and culture side, I went to a Mucha exhibition and got inspired to start drawing again. Tonight I'm going to go find some traditional Czech food (which is apparently heavy on the meat, so at least I'm getting my iron Mum). I will write soon with more wonderful adventures.

sweet wien

Onwards and upwards through Eastern Europe! I have now left behind Budapest - the city where pop songs of the late 1990s go to die - and I am writing from the back room of Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth, central Vienna, Austria. Although we didn#t know it before we said our goodbyes in Lund, Nikki and I were both planning to be in Vienna tonight. So after some frantic texting we met up at Westbanhoff station and had our tearful reunion a week earlier. She has now taken me back to her hotel and we are taking advantage of the free internet and polite waiterboys calling us 'madam'. Tomorrow we go our seperate ways, and will meet up again in a week in Poland.

The bus from Budapest to Vienna took only 3 and a bit hours at an insanely cheap student price. We drove through the Vienna Airport (or Wien Lufthaven or however they call it) and it was like coming in a full circle - about 6 months ago I flew into there from Australia, almost asleep standing up, wide-eyed and waiting on a bench for my connecting flight to Copenhagen. At the Hungary-Austria border we drove through kilometres upon kilometres of wind turbine fields, spinning gracefully and silently. All in all a pretty sweet trip.

Budapest was a great city, with a foot in both east and west europe. The weather continued to be beautiful - mild all through the day. Apparently it's going to be getting better this week. Last year the whole place was covered in snow! The Hungarian receptionist put it down to global warming. I experienced a whole manner of pleasures. Highlights included- clubbing with some Australians and a crazy Japanese bloke called Esky, breakdancing hero; walking thought the eerie Statue Park and looking at all the Lenins and wondering whether I should spend my last forints on a 'The Very Best of Communism' greatest hits CD from the ticket stall; treating myself to a delish hungarian traditional meal with goulash soup and plenty of cabbage; and lastly, spending an afternoon in the Geillert Thermal Baths, soaking up all the nutrients and watching incredibly obese (but happy looking) naked Hungarian women totter from the shower to the pool and back again.

Again I am experiencing the highs and lows of travelling solo. I'm loving it at the moment. It means I don't really have to book ahead, or plan anything, and I get to follow my whims to wherever they take me. I also tend to think a lot about a whole manner of things, sometimes useful but mostly idiotic. And I get to meet heaps of cool people in the hostels. The downside is that I keep getting placed in dorms full of canoodling couples, who spend entire evenings whispering sweet nothings in their various langauges (of love) while I try to ignore them and continue to slog slog through Frances' abandoned copy of Pride and Prejudice. I have, however, developed the perfect 'no thanks/fuck off' face ideal for the single female traveller - blank, minimal eye contact, and a general air of disinterest and disdain which pretty much prevents any strange men from striking up conversations on the metro where there is no escape.

Nikki and I have an engagement to attend to now - an English screening of The Third Man, a film set in Vienna and also number #45 of the Greatest Movies of All Time. More when I find out what this Vienna place is all about.

auf wiedersehen!

Back in the fomer USSR

soooo! finally, another post. I am writing today from a tiny internet cafe off one of the main arterial roads of Budapest, staring at an hideous orange wall and simultaneously in wonder down at my keyboard. My most recent emails have been short and angry because they'd mangled by the French keyboards. Damn French, it's not enough to add all their ridiculous accents but they also insist on scattering the keys around in some kind of defiant, nonsensical, anti-West way. This may not bother some, but for an ex-typist it drives you insane. Anyway, Hungary is much more superior in this regard. If you are interested. aaaand that's about enought talk of keyboards for now!

A lot has happened since I last wrote. I took the 19 hour bus from Lund to Paris. Nothing of importance happened. We caught the ferry from Denmark to Germany(unexpectedly for me, I still haven't learnt my European geography). Following a little trip to the duty free store onboard the ferry, the eight Swedish youths on the back seat of the buss shed their cold exterior and got ripsnorting drunk. Typical. Made me proud to be a temporary residential Swedish citizen.

I spent New Year's Eve and the days immediately prior and after with Fiona and her family at their Summer House in rural France. They live in a small town (something-sur-Amboise) near Nevers, about 2 hours south of France. Basically, it was one of the best New Year's I have had. Fiona's family are Scottish and I think there is something about the Scots that clicks with the Australians - our mutual love of taking the piss, tounge-in-cheek humour. Or our love of a good drink, perhaps. Whatever it was, her family took me in as if I was their own - plying me with outstanding food and wine INCLUDING HAGGIS! WHICH I LOVE, THANKS; setting me up, taking me iceskating where I was upstaged by 2 year olds; taking me clubbing at the local nightclub where it's custom to buy a bottle of vodka with your entry fee, and a bike riding excursion through the countryside that ended in tears when Fiona's pedal snapped off and fell into a ditch.

New Year's Eve was a feast. One of their French neighbours, Bernard the ex chef, did all the cooking. Everyone from the street was invited. I was far and away the worst French speaker, so I did a lot of "smiling and nodding" - the international gestures of non-comprehension. We celebrated both the French and the Scottish New Year's Eve and spent the rest of the night dancing away to traditional dances called a Caidleh (don't quote me on that spelling). Being the token Australian, I was of course the object of much merrymaking. And for my journey back to Paris on Tuesday, Fiona's mum Moira made me a packed lunch. They are fantastic people and I really hope to see them all again.

After a whirlwind tour of Paris on Tuesday afternoon (cruise on the Seine; Eiffel Tower, Trocadero, Sacre Coeur and Montmatre, the Moulin Rouge, many hours spent on the Metro) I left for Budapest on Wednesday. I flew with Wizzjet from this countryside airport called Beauvais and was asleep by the time the plane left the runway, probably unknowingly drooling on the Hungarian girl next to me. From the Budapest airport i was shuttled via minibus to the Red Bus Hostel II, my abode for the next few days.

Red Bus Hostel II - yes, it's the sequel - is a small backpackers run by a man with a passionate dislike of Budapest. Within moments of me arriving he was telling me that the people here don't care for your feelings, it's too busy, got too many cars, and there's dog shit everywhere. The last comment I can back up - i don't know how the Budapestarians (? - no, budapedestrians! hahaha etc.) walk around so carefree when I am dodging feces every five steps. But as to the rest, I haven't really come to a decision yet. Budapest is kind of like St Petersberg, without the snow and the Cyrillic. At the moment it's a toasty 4 degrees, slightly overcast with patches of clear skies - precisely how I like my European winters.

First impressions of Budapest. There is a disturbing number of solariums here. The bad fashion epidemic of Eastern Europe has lost its shock value- everyone seems to dress like tourists, and it doesn't bother me as much as it used to. A big beer costs about 80cents AUD. Everything is half run down and half built up, like they're building with their new money a new city over the ruins of the Soviet one (which is in all likelihood exactly what's happening). They have fancy trams that put shame to the ones in Melbourne. It's pretty good for walking around in, and that's what I've been doing all day. My Converse chucks are almost falling apart but I think they'll last me out. Today I've been to the House of Terror (not to be confused with the Albury Show's House of Horrors), the Hero's Square, the Opera House and a gigantic ice rink. After paying for the internet i'll head off to the Buda side of Budapest and go climb through a cave or something. Also on the menu - geothermal baths in the ancient Turkish baths, a trip to the communist Statue graveyard; and of course looking at heaps of church things and bridges.

ok my hunger is urging me onwards - I will try to write again soon, probably in Vienna - until then peace out lovelies.