I am now in Munich at Oktoberfest! Its bloody freezing, windy, and raining. I was quite sick when I woke up this morning (self induced actually - apart from some egging on). Oktoberfest is great, but the beers are enormous! 1L steins blew me away.
More later.
Bryce
Hello all!
First of all, I am jack of the spam in my hotmail account, so I have made it exclusive. This means that I will only receive email from my address book. The problem is that I dont know who is in my hotmail address book and who isnt. Solution: Nobody send email to my hotmail account if you can help it - and you all can. My good email account is bryce@brycewinter.com.
Second of all - the keyboards are weird in Germany. The y & the z key are swapped, so I apologise for tzpos in advance. Also, punctuation marks are moved or gone, so there is a lack of punctuation in general, unless youre very luckz and I can find the one that I
Hello all!
Been a while since my last update, and for this I am sorry. I had a marvelous time in Venice as my previous notes have said. The only drama that I had was on departure. The first two meals that I had where dinner and breakfast. Dinner was at 8pm, breakfast at 8am. So here I am the next morning (Departure to Vienna morning) moseying on down at 7.55am to catch some breakfast for what I thought was 8am breakfast. It was 8am *Departure* - 7.50am loading the coach. I waltzed out of the lift across the foyer on my way to the breakfast room when I was interrupted by Kas, our tour guide. She said to me ‘Have you checked out yet’, I said ‘No, not yet.’, she said ‘Why not?’, I said ‘I was going to after breakfast’, she said ‘you’ve missed breakfast, everyone’s waiting on the coach for you.’ I said ‘Oh bugger’. Fortunately I had packed my bags before what I thought was going to be breakfast so I could just ride the lift, grab my bags, ride the lift, dump my bags in the maw of the coach and climb in. I was in at 8.01am to the coach, so I was moderately pleased with my efforts in the end. I must say that it was entirely my fault for being late, because I didn’t read the day’s information card that we were told about at the beginning of the tour. I only left behind a half-drunk bottle of water too.
It was a long trip to Vienna, but the scenery was good and there were regular breaks (20mins/2hr driving), plus a lunch break (45mins). Vienna blew me away frankly. I was expecting it to be a bit boring and lame, but it was amazing. The reason it is amazing is because of a fascinating family called the Hapsburgs. This family ruled Austria for over 630 years, and at various times the empire spanned most of Europe. The Hapsburgs didn’t acquire any territory from wars, but entirely from strategic marriages into other ruling families. They were artists, hard workers and pretty talented bunch all round. The empire only ended recently just after WW1 when Emperor Franz-Joseph died in 1918. In fact, the reason that WW1 started was because the Croations (I think) asassinated Archduke Ferdinand. Most of you probably knew this, as did I - but what I didn’t know was that Archduke Ferdinand was Emperor Franz-Joseph’s nephew and the heir to the Empire. This is why the Austria-Hungary empire invaded the Croats (again, I think it was them). There had previously been an attempt on Emperor Franz-Joseph’s life which had failed, and so the people built an absolutely stunning building as their ‘Rathaus’ or City hall as a kind of an ‘up-yours’ to their enemies. It is like no other city hall that I have seen - and the whole coach gasped as it emerged into view from behind some trees. It is ornate and majestic - I loved it. Sadly, in the time between the coach orientation and when I got there on foot, a circus had set itself up in front of the building, so I only really have photos from the side.
Vienna is huge, a really big city. Most of the sights from the Hapsburg family (everything there is to see in Venice) are on a ring-road that is comparably small. I could really stay several days in Vienna without fretting it too much. We started our day at the Hapsburg’s *summer* palace. These dudes where so loaded they had a summer and a winter palace. This place is absolutely vast. You look from the back of the palace down the gardens and probably about 1.5km away there is a Romanesque structure signifying the end of the gardens and the beginning of the lake. There is a beautiful fountain in between as well. There are also hedges that fan out from the back of the palace that go to separate areas of the gardens. I couldn’t see to the end of the line of hedge from the ground, that’s how far these gardens stretch for. This was a pretty nice place, but it was painted an ugly baby-poo yellow. This was because the Empress at the time’s favourite colour was yellow. She also had about 18 kids so our Scottish bus driver (Billy) joked that that wasn’t really paint that was covering the walls. This palace was where Mozart had his first concert at 6 years old. I walked through the room where he did it. Apparently when he finished his concert he jumped up on the empress’s lap and smothered her face with kisses. I then caught the U-Bahn (Subway) back to the city and jumped on and off the tram on the way around the ring-road. I have run out of superlatives for these buildings, but they just out-do each other at every turn. The Viennese take great pride in their buildings. The architect of the Vienna Opera House committed suicide after the Emperor criticised his building for being ‘too small’ for the grand streets of Vienna.
I did a tour of the catacombs in St. Stephen’s in Vienna too. That was rather gross, but really interesting. These Hapsburgs are buried in part here, along with most of the other people of import from Vienna. The Hapsburgs are a bit strange because they have bits of themselves everywhere when they die and are buried. The Bodies go in coffins in St. Stephens, their intestines go in barrels in St. Stephens, and their hearts go somewhere else. I don’t know why. The cardinals from St. Stephens are entombed in copper coffins in something like cupboards that run down the side of the catacombs. Also, another group of people (not cardinals, but similar) are buried behind a marble slab with square that signifies where they are buried. The rest of the catacombs for the normal people are where it started to get a bit queasy. They just kept putting bodies in the catacombs and expanding them until they got problems with expanding into peoples cellars and then nobody came to church because it smelt like rotting corpses (as it would). So the prisoners were conscripted to go into the catacombs with scrubbing brushes and scrub the flesh from the bones and stack the bones in an orderly fashion. The perfect solution - saves space and reduced smells! What kind of a terrible job would that have been? Yuck. So we saw areas where there were just piles of bones absolutely willy-nilly from the floor in a mound about 10 feet to near the top of a room and we saw other areas where the bones were stacked tightly and neatly. Even Austrian prisoners doing the worst job on earth do it well. That cost 3EURO (about $6AUD) and was probably the best money that I’ve spent on tours so far. It was a really interesting one.
The dinner that was included by Kumuka was at this groovy little beer hall near where we stayed. We all walked down in the rain and I tried on my bright yellow raincoat to see if it would still fit. I got some strange looks and was accused of being the dude off ‘I know what you did last summer’, but I arrived comfortably and dry. This beer hall brews it’s own beer and has lots of beer specialties. I had ‘Beer soup’, which was really very tasty; A giant pork schnitzel with Potato salad; and ‘Beer pudding’, which was a bit too sweet for me. It was kind of like a beer flummery with lots of sugar. It was a very nice dinner and was accompianied by some very fine beer. I had a 0.5L stein for 2.80EURO (About $5), but I could have got a 1L stein for about $10. The 0.5L one was huge, and none of our group got the 1L one. I would really like to go to Vienna again.
We left for Budapest in Hungary after Vienna. Billy (our coach driver) gave us the low down that Hungary was the only place where you could actually get what you order at a McDonalds. This is because in Hungarian, Shite means Cheese. This means that you can go into McDonalds, order a ShiteBurger, and nobody would raise an eyebrow and you’d get a cheeseburger. You can even get extra shite. We all raised such a commotion in the coach that we decided to drop our standards sufficiently and stop in a Hungarian McDonalds at a re-fuelling stop. I managed to keep a straight face as I ordered my shiteburger, but I couldn’t handle sitting near where the rest of my touring camerades were ordering. ‘I’ll have the chicken…., the fish….., and the shite please’. Nothing quite like hearing that and having the shiteburger you’ve been eating come up your nose as you lose yourself in a fit of giggling that you’ve been holding in.
Budapest is a great city. The Hungarian women are the most beautiful that I have seen so far in Europe. They are stunning! Our local guide (Linda) did a good job showing us around the various sites of Budapest. She was also gorgeous. Sadly I am approaching 1.5 hours at this internet cafe so Budapest won’t get the coverage that it deserves. Linda took us around the various sights in Budapest by coach quickly on the afternoon of the day that we arrived. We saw the Millenium parks (1896 - 1000 years since the Magyars settled Hungary), the Heroes square, Fisherman’s Bastion, the Parliament building, and the Palace (this one only very briefly). Budapest has some great sights and is just emerging as a tourist destination. Some of the places were stunning but the limestone facades were very dirty at a lot of the places, because the amount of time and money to restore them all is not available to the Hungarian government at the moment. There was definately progress being made though, and I think that in 5-10 years Budapest will be one of the must-see destination of Europe. They are aiming to be a member of the EU by 2006. Hungary has a fascinating history, and the last victory that they had in a *battle*, much less a war was in the 1300 or 1400s when a bloke defended Instanbul (I think it was this city which was a part of Hunary at the time) with 100 troops from 5000 turks. After this battle, the Hungarians have not won anything since. The most recent loss was in the 1950s when they tried to rebel against the Communists. The Communists killed 20 000 people within 3 days and then locked their borders down for 10 years. Another disaster story is when Austria and Turkey invaded together after a Hungarian ruler had died. There was a dispute as to who was the true ruler of Hungary between 2 men. So one of the men allied Hungary with Turkey against the Austrians, and the other man allied Hungary with Austria against Turkey. The net result was that Turkey ended up occupying half of Hungary for 150 years and Austria ended up occupying the other half for 200 years. Nice work chaps! It really is a fascinating place and I wish I could put it all here, but I’ve run out of time (1.5 hours gone so fast).
Also - I just got an email from Muenster, and it appears that I now am off the waiting list for accomodation and waiting to sign stuff. Good news!
Missing you all,
Bryce.
Heres an indication:
4 Star Hotel - I have a room to myself. Last night we had dinner provided and it was 3 courses (more than we could eat - I made the mistake of asking for more after the 1st course, they heaped it on me then) and included bottomless wine and water.
Dinner is provided every 2nd night + the last night and its always similar, but the wine is not normally included.
I have had some issues with my study arrangements so I have had to cancel the spain leg of my trip (Haven’t done it yet, but will in the next few days) so I have a bit of time to sort things out (Student visa before bank account, etc).
I am currently in Venice, and it’s a beautiful place. You feel a lot better after a buffet breakfast (another boon of a Kumuka tour) than after a continental breakfast. A continental breakfast is a cold croissant and a drink for those who don’t know. That’s all I got in Rome for the 5 or so days that I was there.
I’ve taken nearly a whole roll of film just in Venice, bringing my total to around 5 films. Tonight I get the single room again in the same hotel, and then we go to Vienna where I will probably have to share with another of the single people. I took the opportunity of a room to myself to do my washing in the sink and the place is now strewn with dripping clothes. It looked pretty bad and you have to crawl through the door to avoid decapitation so I put a ‘Do not Disturb’ sign on the door. I can certainly put up with a 1day dirty room after what’s been happening so far.
We watched glass blowing this morning, and then went on a walk through the master’s shop and looked at pieces of glass (cups and such) that were priced at over $20000AUD. The glass blowing was great - he made a vase and a horse in very short order. I also took a ride on a Gondola! We chipped in to the tourleader and she got us in 5 & 6 / gondola. It was a lovely prelude to just wandering around the island. I then went into St Marks Basilica. Wow. Very gold, very rich, and there are his remains in the treasury which I saw. They were stolen from the Turks and smuggled out amongst pork apparently. I lined up to climb the tower across the square, but I’d never heard of it and it was 6Euro to get in and another 3Euro to get a guide so I could know where I was. 9Euro is about $18AUD so I thought that was a bit steep to see a view after all that I’d done today.
At the moment I’m on my stroll across the island from St Marks Basilica to the Bus station when I saw this internet cafe. I had this excellent gelati earlier from an out of the way street vendor - Pistacchio and another nut one in a cone. The non-pistachio one had whole nuts adorning it, and the girl included a couple in my serving, which was nice.
Now to continue my walk - Next report from Vienna.
Ciao,
Bryce
10/9
Yesterday I wrote a huge post and had to email it to myself because my website was down. Today I am at this useless internet cafe in Rome train station that doesnt have any copypaste functionality at all.
Absolutely useless for
As per the subject. I will be able to send proper emails and personalised replies when I settle down in Muenster. At the moment, these European bastards charge through the nose for internet!
Bryce.
Ugghh, I am very sick. I am in Rome at the moment, and I have had to skip Naples and Florence completely to try to make sure that I,m well enough for the Kumuka tour that I need to go on starting in 2 days from Venice. I was quite disappointed that the only times that I could get out of bed was to buy water, only to see the fruits of my labour wasted so flippantly.
I left Geneva a few nights ago on an overnight train to Rome. Got here 9.35am (to the minute on a 12 hour train trip - these trains are accurate). First day I travelled to the Coleseum, Roman Forum and Palantino. The colesseum is stunning. Absolutely amazing that its nearly 2000 years old and that big. Only took 9 years to build too. The Colleseum costs 8Euro just to get in but I got intercepted at the back of the queue (about 80m long) to come straight in with a tour group for 15Euro. This included entry to the colesseum, the palantino and a guided tour of the colleseum. What a bargain! Interesting fact that came up in the tour was that the reason that these buildings had gone to ruin was because they were abandoned at the fall of the Roman Empire. At that time the population of Rome dipped to only 14 000 from 1 000 000 in its heydey. All of the people moved to another part of town where the Trevi Fountain is now. So there are no old buildings there because they got built over by the idiots, and only ruins of the old buildings in another part of town because they were abandoned by the idiots.
There is a definate lingering of wealth, particularly in the Palatino (The emperors garden). This is really stretching the use of the term garden, because its enormous. Multiple palaces, fountains, completely separate gardens each the size of a rugby field. Even these ruins excude wealth, and it must have been an awesome place to be wealthy in.
I am now going to bed again. Hopefully tomorrow I will be good enough to do the Vatican and St. Peters.
Miss you all!
Bryce.
Hello again,
I am currently at Geneva. So far I have been at Lucerne for a day, and train most of the other time.
6/9 - I flew into Frankfurt, walked around for a bit in a mild daze and then caught the train to Lucerne. Arrived at Lucerne and went to the hostel. That was pretty much all that I did today.
7/9 - Had a sticky-beak around Lucerne today and went up to Mt Pilatus. Lucerne is an absolutely gorgeous city. Currently there is a music festival, so the town was alive. I am amazed at how clean the town is! The bottom of the river is clearly visible, and the locals where filling up cups of water from the foutains to drink. The whole town is just classy really. The main pedestrian bridge across the river has flowers growing along both sides of the bridge, in kind of a trough. Very pretty.
Also went to Mt. Pilatus. This is a big mountain that towers over Lucerne. It is also famous for having the steepest cog-wheel railway in the world. The mountain is beautiful. Switzerland is magnificent. The day trip up the mountain consisted of a steamer trip across Lake Lucerne, the cog-wheel railway up the mountain, walks at the top, a cable car to the bottom foot of Pilatus and then a bus back to Lucerne. Was pricey at about 75 bucks AUD, but it was worth it. I took a whole roll of film. I also took the hours walk to the summit of the mountain. The railway would have been more impressive if it started flat instead of already at about 25 degrees incline. At 25 degrees, the seats are horizontal. Dammit, I wanted to feel like I was going into space! The maximum gradient was 48 degrees. All up, I probably spent about 5 hrs there. Interesting point about Lucerne is the buildings of interest have big letters, Hollywood style, identifying them. Good idea.
Spent the night at Lucerne hostel again.
8/9 - Was supposed to go straight to Geneva this morning, but I caught the wrong train and ended up nearly to Interlaken. After about 2 hours of train travel, I realised my error and proceeded to get off at the next station. It happened to be Briens station. This place blew me away. Its beauty was is not able to be described. Id never heard of it. The water there is just stunning. I can`t say that I`ve ever seen the colour of water before. And of course it backs onto Swiss mountains. Stunning really. Backtracked to Lucern and got a train to Geneva. First impression of Geneva was similar to Bali, but it got better. Loads of awesome cars was my next impression. Not a huge amount to do with very limited time now though. Went and saw the huge water fountain. This baby maintains over 7 tonnes of water in the air at any given time. 200km-hr exit speed from the nozzle. Very smooth.
Overall, I`m not managing as well as I would have hoped. Feeling a bit nauseous and some stomach aches. Hopefully this will pass (no pun) quickly. 3 minutes left of time now, so now I go and look for something to do in Geneva for an hour before my train leaves for Rome. Oh my aching legs and shoulders.
Next account will probably be after Rome.
Good day to you all.
Bryce.
Hi all,
I just arrived in Frankfurt about an hour ago. This is just a quick message, because I have to find out what is going on about travel and such.
Cya all,
Bryce.