Milan day 1

I woke up and immediately headed to the nearest McDonald's. I had heard from the 2 Italians that McDonald's was promoting their breakfast menu by organizing a pajama party. It wasn't much of a party; just a really long que of people wearing pajamas waiting to get their free pastry and coffee. Oh my God, the McDonald's here is amazing! The place was so fancy, the service was awesome, the food was delicious and beer was on the menu! If I wasn't wearing a torn shirt and baggy clown pants then I would have thought I was in a 5 star resteraunt.

Next step was the university. I found my way to the mathematics department which looked like a beaten down shack compared to the architecture skyscrapers around it. I found a lecture running and looked through the window. They were learning projectile motion, which is a 1st year subject, yet the students all seemed aged around 25. Either the students here are very slow to learn or very fast to age.

Next I took the metro to Duomo which was a giant tourist hotspot because it featured a giant church. The line was too long to go inside, so I just took photos from the outside. The detail on the sculptures was phenominal; I'm no biblical scholar, but I think they made statues of every major biblical character - I couldn't find Jesus though, so I think they fucked up a bit.

I met Federica afterwards and we decided to head to the nearest pub.

Let me stop here and tell you about a few discoveries I made about Italy:

1) Milan has very few pubs in very inconvenient locations
2) in some pubs you need to pay for the beers (€5) and also pay to sit at the table (€10)!
3) you can legally buy beers from the supermarket and drink in public, but literally no one does it.

What the fucking fuck, Italy!?! You're in Europe! Where is your drinking culture?

At least their Nastro Azzurro beer is quite nice... It better have been :<

I was advised to go to Navigli for dinner, because supposedly it had cheap and awesome food. Whilst the atmosphere was enjoyable, the food definitely wasn't. There were only all you could eat beffets around and the food tasted artificial and packaged.

I was very disappointed because I missed a delicious pasta dinner I had been dreaming of for a long time and I had McDonald's for breakfast... What was I thinking? At least I had pizza for lunch.

All was mended though once I found out that chiao means both hello and goodbye in Italian. I had a lot of fun saying 'chiao chiao' to strangers I passed in the street.

Marseille day 2

I woke up super early and went for a walk around the town. Marseille is located right next to the ocean so the views were spectacular. There were seafood markets right by the dock selling fish, squid and crabs. The food was so fresh that most of the seafood was still alive when you bought it.

The architecture was pretty cool too. Years of playing the computer game 'age of empires' leads me to believe that its got a strong Italian theme to it.

I also really like the accent of the locals here; they speak French but they sound kinda Italian. As if I don't have enough language barriers already...

After i did the whole touristy thing I purchased 1 baguette with Bree and 2 chocolate crausants (how the hell do you spell that word?) And headed to the train station to finish my journey to Italy.

The train ride was unusually annoying. There was a guy listening to opera on his phone really loudly somewhere in the carriage. Also because of the nature of opera music, every 10 seconds it sounded like it was coming from a different direction - I felt like I was being surrounded. Personally I don't get why you'd listen to opera on your phone anyway, the only entertainment you can get from that genre is by watching little fat men dramatically waving their arms around on stage.

Oh and don't get me started on train taps in the bathroom! The "motion sensor" in each tap is like a blind tennis umpire. I was acting like Bruce Lee stabbing the air trying to get the water to come out, but it just wouldn't budge. Not cool Italy, not cool.

When I arrived at my hostel I messaged the two Italian girls I had met in Prague earlier in the month. Even though it was 10:30pm they were still keen to join me in a pub. We met up in this great place just around the corner and had a range of different beers. I had Salta-foss which I thought was an Italian beer until I read that it was a 9% Belgian triple. The girls had stouts (really strong and bitter dark beer) because it tasted more like coffee.

I really enjoyed talking to Federica and Beatrice. They're the least patriotic people I know, but that didn't stop them from recommending dozens of cool activities around town. They told me there was an Engineering and Mathematics university right by the hostel. I was about to make plans to go there until I realized its surrounded by the faculty of architecture - eww.

Marseille day 1

We all woke up and began to drive in the direction of Madrid. While in the car I looked at hostelworld & Google maps to see where I should go next. I didn't get very far though because Boaty gave me a riddle which occupied my mind.

I said my goodbyes to the Spaniards when they dropped me off at Lleida. At this point I was pretty devastated that 1) it might be at least another 2 years until I see pablo and Africa again and 2) my world trip was almost over. While I was in line for a train ticket I made an impulsive 'mid life crisis like' decision to go to Italy.

The train took me past Barcelona with a 2 hour layover. This turned out to be perfect timing because it meant I could try Paella and beer! I went to a cheapish looking resteraunt and didn't ask for a menu. The waiter tried so desperately to communicate to me in broken English that the serving size was for 3 people, but I tried equally as hard to convince him that I didn't care.

Sadly it was a 24 hour trip by train with a 6 hour layer in Marseille, so I decided to stay a night in Marseille and head to Milan the next day.  

I walked from st. Charles station to the nearest hostel. It was getting very dark and there were drunk soccer hooligans everywhere. With my giant backpack, phone and innocent confused travelers expression on my face i was the perfect target for a mugging. At one point my GPS started walking me down an ally containing a few loitering black men - I'm not racist, I was just really scared because the men were naturally camouflaged.

I arrived at the hostel stabless and breathing. I instantly made friends with the receptionist and an American girl and a Brazilian guy. We all sat in a group on the balcony drinking bottles of wine from the bottle. Even at midnight you can still buy good wine for €2 - good on ya, France. Everyone had really cool stories to tell. The south African receptionist was an ex military special forces anti highjacking mercinary who (supposedly) had killed over 100 people. The Brazilian guy was a French sounding, musicially talented stonner. And the girl from Washington DC was teaching English to French kids in Paris for 9 months.

Skiing day 2

I woke up this morning covered with bruises. I gave Boaty (that's not his actual name, that's just what I call him) permission to punch me whenever I snore.

After 3 bowls of cerial and a shit tonne of water we headed to the slopes again! The weather definitely wasn't as textbook beautiful as yesterday but the mist settling half way up the mountain was an awesome sight to see. I felt like I was in Jurrasic park; which reminds me, they need to make another Jurassic park set in the snow.

I separated from the others for a while to see if I could find some more challenging slopes. Strangely what they label double blacks are extremely easy; about an equivalent blue in Australia. I still managed to almost fall over a few times though, so I can't brag.

We all met again near the top of the mountain for lunch. It had just started to snow so we all decided to have a snowball fight. It was cut short once I got a direct hit on Africa's face and gave her a nose bleed. I'm so sorry Afri, please forgive me :(

Afterwards we decided to go to a pub and get some beers. The local beer is amazing! En par to some of the best German beers I've tried. Very impressed!

I got talking to Boaty and he said he teaches high school maths, physics and chemistry with a friend for money. He also said he's very keen to branch off into online education. He is also a mechanical engineer so perhaps he can translate some of my educational videos and impliment them in his university. If this goes through, I would be so very very happy.

We drove into town to experience some tapas. I love the system here - you just grab food off the table and eat it wherever you want. Sooner or later some waiter will come by and count the number of toothpicks on your plate and know how much to charge you. I really admire that trust. The food is awesome too - they had everything from smoked eel to goats cheese on toast.

After the quick tapas appetizer we all went to grab dinner. Fun fact; the Spanish eat very very late. There were people entering the resteraunt at 12:30 at night. I love eating so late though, it's just a great way for me to escape the guilt of midnight snacking.

Skiing day 1

We woke up this morning after sleeping in by about half an hour. We all surfaced at about 8:30 and the ski rental place and lifts opened at 9:00. The atmosphere was electric; filled with an extacy of fumbling and Spanish profanities.

I decided to rent twin tip skiis so that I could practice skiing backwards! €90 for a 3 day rental - ouch. I shoulda just stolen them.

The skiing itself was outstanding. The snow was perfect, the view was perfectly complimented by good weather and the slopes were almost completely untouched. We all had pretty different skiing levels so we decided to stick to greens for most of the day. I got to practice my Spanish by saying small Spanish words/phrases to the ski lift workers as I passed them. Gracias por fe for! Half of them figured out that I was not Spanish just from my accent, the other half figured out by asking me simple things like "please move to the left" and watching my stupidly smile, nod and stand perfectly still.

After the skiing Africa's dad took us all out to dinner. I think his name is spelled Josse but I'm not sure, it's pronounced "hose-A". My stomache was grumbling for paella but sadly you have to order it in advance since it takes too long. I did one of my 'order the food which is hardest to pronounce strategies' and ended up with butifarra; a very tasty sausage with French fries. At some point this trip I have to try paella though!

Barcelona day 1

Today I woke up with only 1 thing to do; go on a walking tour that started at 3:00pm. Ironically, I got so distracted by walking around Barcelona that I missed the walking tour.

Fortunately however, I knew the rough route of the walking tour so I became my own guide and followed in the other guides footsteps.

First stop was the creatively named 'cathedral of Barcelona'. It was pretty pretty. I didn't go in though because the line was too long - sorry God, you'll have to wait.

Next stop was the pub. Not technically part of the walking tour, but it was roughly in the right direction. I enjoyed a beer and tortillas (its like Spanish fried potato cake)

I walked around the whole city center and then went to the beach. I don't mean to be patriotic or anything, but I think Australian beaches are better. But that might be because it was 10°C and off season, I don't know.

Before I left I went shopping for wine, chocolate and beer to give to Africa's parents, Pablo and Africa respectively as presents. I also purchased enough for a small meal for the train later. fun fact: chorizo sandwiches are amazing.

A few hours later I met Africa at Lleida train station. We enjoyed a beer and coke while we waited for Pablo and 4 others to meet up with us by car. Africa has got a full time job at some bank for infrastructure projects in south America; she managed to vent a bit of her frustration about the 9-5 working life before the others arrived. I didn't have the heart to tell her about the devastating social affects of full time work.

The introductions were at first a tad awkward (mainly because I'd forgotten everyone's name) but afterwards we got on just fine.

We drove for a few hours and arrived at a ski resort in the North Piranise. Africa has an apartment in Baqueira that's located literally right next to the snow. Now that's cool.

Skiing day 3

I woke up with more bruises on my body than last time. I think partially because I was hit for snoring, and partially because my Spanish friends wanted revenge for giving Africa a nosebleed.

The visibility was pretty bad today and the slopes were much more crowded than usual. I was actually kind of happy about that though because it made skiing a lot more challenging. I even found a ski park and tried to go over a few jumps; I didn't get very high though. In hindsight I should have switched over to snow boarding.

The evening was fun. We made Sangria out of Gin, lemon soda, red wine and fruit. Once that ran out we started drinking beers and gin & tonics. Once that ran out we started drinking coke zero - except for some strange reason the Spanish call it 'zero coke'. I found it quite misleading that the bottles weren't packaged empty.

For dinner the girls made this awesome pasta while the guys sat around and drank beer. (Just so you know, I wanted to help make the pasta but was pushed out of the kitchen). I wish I had helped make the pasta because it tasted divine. I asked what ingredients were used but I was unable to understand what was said to me. Maybe goats cheese and spinach?

I felt quite guilty that I was just a measily monolingual speaker because everyone had to switch to English just for me. I felt the frustration in the air whenever they couldn't communicate as well as they were used to. I don't think my ability to understand the Spanish accent has gotten any better either. Asking to repeat words or phrases throughout the night lowered the average quality of conversation I think.

None the less, I'm so happy I got to go skiing in Spain. It was an excellent end to an awesome vacation! Gracias!

Brussles day 1

Brussels (or Bruxelles as they call it here in da hood) is amazing! I loved it. Fantastic beer, fantastic food, awesome culture and friendly locals - they have it all.

I woke up and immediately went downstairs to enjoy the all you can eat buffet for €7. I met a cool American from California there called Nicole. She had also arrived from Berlin the night before. She was much more organized than me and told me about some free walking tour that was starting very close to our hostel.

The walking tour was great: we had a very enthusiastic and quirky tour guide, we passed dozens of cool churches and parliament buildings and it was filled with a whole bunch of Americans, Canadians and Brazilians. One thing I noticed more than anything was the Gothic architecture. Apparently it wasn't always this way though; in the 1800s the French invaded and played their violent game of angry birds on Brussles. Rather than rebuild it the way it was, the Brusselonianites decided to construct the city anew using Gothic style.

At one point we stopped over to have Belgian waffles! Holy crap! They're sooooo good. They had an entire menu for the type of dogh you wanted to eat. I got the Liege waffle which had special sugar crystals in it that had just started to caramelize by the time it came out of the waffle press. It was beautiful and soft - like an edible pillow. It didn't need topings, but I got Belgian chocolate (they just call it chocolate here) and powdered sugar anyway.

At this point our tour guide started talking about WW1. I was casually and carelessly smudging waffle in and around my mouth as he described the Schleffen plan. In WW1, Germany needed to knock out France in the first 6 weeks so that they could focus their army on the stronger but slower to mobilize Russians. Some bloke (I think it was Wilhelm or something?) who was in charge of the German army made a plan to go hit Paris via Belgium. Now that I think about it, his name was probably Schleffen. But Belgium was a total badass and held back the German army for 6 weeks which was enough time for France to prepare themselves. Our guide was so wonderfully enthusiastic and nerdy that he even started acting out some of the war scenes as if he were there. I was so entised by the story that I caught myself at one point wide eyed with chocolate dripping from my cheeks and chin. Kinda like how a kid eats ice cream, but much much more embarrassing.

After the tour I gave the guide a tip of €10 and promised him that I'll join him for the beer tour that he was also running in a couple of hours.

At this point I was hungry again so I suggested to the others to get frites. Everyone got fries with samurai sauce, except for me who got a steak and frites sandwich. I was in such a dilemma about whether I should finish the sandwich or not because it was so delicious, yet I was extremely full - I don't think even Aristotle could help me out with that paradox.

In the spare time I had before the beer tour I decided to go to the train station to see if I could find a way to Lleida pirineus. I need to get there on the 18th at night so that Pablo and Africa can pick me up to go skiing! Its actually really difficult to get there without paying a shit tonne of money on bullet trains and night riders, so I wanted to see if there are longer but cheaper routes that aren't posted on my rail planner app. Unfortunately they couldn't help me because they said they had lost some business contract with France and they couldn't see all possible connections to Spain. It's not the biggest deal though coz I was planning on heading to France tomorrow anyway. I'm sure I'll figure out some way to get there - nothing is going to stop me from skiing.

The beer tour was outstanding. Our ticket gave us each 4 holy nectars to sip on. I liked the Lambic cantillon the most because it tasted like no beer I had ever tried before - for this beer they didn't add yiest in the fermentation process, instead they let natural bacteria eat away at the sugar. Its a very old school method of brewing passed down by the monks, but its also a dangerous method of brewing because you massively increase the chance of your brew getting infected if it gets exposed to the wrong type of bacteria. I also learned that a lot of brewers here also make their beer by adding 'brouwland' sugar - I might try that when I get back to Australia.

We only had 4 beers, but they were all around 9.5% alcohol so we were starting to all feel quite tipsy by the end. The group and I decided to continue on to the next pub afterwards which was just down the road. The next pub was perfect; it was underground, made of wood & stone, low lit, had a low ceiling, and had great beer. I honestly can't imagine a better atmosphere for a pub. They also sold large salami sausages with nuts that you could chew on. Perfect.

Overall I just had a fantastic night. I think its for 3 main reasons; I didn't get plastered drunk, the company was great and I DIDNT go to a club! That's right! NO DANCING!! Wohoo!

Oh yeah, I was too slow in the morning to ask for an additional night in the hostel, so I ended up not having a place to stay when I got back. Fortunately a few of the Americans were kind enough to sneak me into their hostel and let me crash on the floor in their 16 bed dorm.

Brussles day 2

I woke up in the morning to travel to France - the land of unnecessary letters on the end of words.

My plan was originally to stay in Paris for a night, sort out my travel plans, and then head to Spain tomorrow to meet Pablo and Africa. When I arrived in Paris by 12:30 however, I found out that there was a train that was almost completely full heading to Barcelona which had massively discounted tickets. The lady at the help center told me that it leaves from another station in 20 minutes. I payed the €20 for a ticket (much better than the alternatives I'd found online) and sprinted off to the metro. It took a while for me to find out where the ticket machines were and how they worked, but eventually my alcohol stained brain figured it out.

Its a bit of a shame I couldn't stay at least a few more hours in Paris though. It would have been good to explore a bit and possibly meet up with Marine briefly.

On the bright side I'll be in Barcelona for tonight and most of tomorrow! I managed to book a hostel when I arrived by stealing some WiFi from the nearest McDonald's. The hostel is called graffiti hostel and was filled with a few Germans, a couple of English, some girls from Hungry, one Canadian and and a whole lot of Irish.

I was super happy there were a lot of Irish there because it was also St Patrick's day which meant I had an excuse to splash out a bit of cash and buy a Guinness. Unfortunately we were pre drinking for so long that by the time we got to the pubs, they were closed. We managed to find 1 Irish pub that was still open, but wasn't letting anyone in. We decided to tactically place the girls in front of us and march our way to the bouncer - after all, no bouncer can refuse entry to 7 girls (especially when 2 of them are super hot girls from Hungry). We all managed to get in without a problem. It was a good night.

I find it strange that I've absorbed more of the Irish culture than the Spanish culture so far in Barcelona. The closest 'conversation' I've had with a local here is me asking "where is the bathroom" in Spanish to a janator - that's right, I actually used that line! Sadly his hands were full so he just described where the bathroom was back to me in Spanish. Dammit! I didn't anticipate that I'd need to know Spanish to understand the answer! 4 years of intense Spanish study for nothing...

Berlin day 2

You win, Germany. Your beer is more than I can handle. I woke up so unbelievably hungover and sleep deprived. Why is the beer here so delicious and easy to drink!?

I met one of the American girls in the morning and I asked her for advice on where I should travel next. She's the type of American I really don't like; overly extraverted, and a master of small talk. The only advice she gave me was 'don't go to Belgium, the underground parties are borning'. 1 hour later I was on the train heading to Brussels.

I usually hate the idea of getting day trains because they seem to waste a lot of time. I welcomed this train ride though because it gave me the opportunity to catch up on my blog and recover from my hangover. Sadly the first leg of my journey to Dusseldorf was 3 hours and I didn't think ahead to bring water. All I had were the remains of my Doner kebab from last night. Gross.

Berlin day 1

I woke up at 8ish and walked around to see if I could find some food. I went to a place called Istanbul supermarket which unsurprisingly served almost exclusively Turkish food. I purchased two giant slabs of bread, a tin of hummas (is that how you spell it?) and a couple of apples. I'm actually really glad Berlin has such a strong Turkish influence here. If I can't visit Turkey, then I'm glad Turkey can visit me in Germany.

I made friends with a few Americans at the hostel and they advised me a few places I should look at while in Berlin. I left the hostel with a map flooded with scribbles and began my walk to the nearest liquor store - I needed to capitalize on the whole public drinking thing.

Walking around Berlin with my €1 wheat beer listening to 'whillst do' and 'fick ihn doch' was actually the highlight of my day.

I did the whole touristy thing. I saw the Berlin wall, old SS buildings, Siegessaule and a few memorials. I saw a whole bunch of people smiling and making the peace sign while taking selfies of themselves by the memorials. I couldn't decide whether I found that disrespectful or not.

I had lunch at a resteraunt right by the river. I had Rinderroulade & knodel and a bitburger pils. The food was good, but I was very disappointed they didn't sell spatzle. I'm terrified I might leave Germany without trying it!

When I got back to the hostel I met up with the Americans again and made friends with a few people from Finland and Spain. I asked the receptionist where any good pubs were and he told me they were littered everywhere along the street.  I told everyone the good news and we all decided to go on a pub crawl. Sadly, 'everywhere' and 'pubs' were pretty drastic overstatements because we only found empty clubs or cafés.

Eventually after walking around mindlessly and drinking beer, we all decided to go to a shitty club. Eaargh, more dancing... I'm starting to notice a theme here. I got plastered drunk so I could fit in.

Heidelberg day 2

Sooo hungover.

I crawled up off the floor I passed out on and bravely ascended the stairs of Jonas's apartment to get to the bathroom.
Jonas awoke shortly afterwards and we both decided to find food. We squared our shoulders for the task ahead and began our treck to the cafe next door. Even though it wasn't on the breakfast menu, they were kind enough to make me a Weiner schnitzel & potato salad. I decided it would be best not to have wheat beer for breakfast today.

A few hours later 3 others from the party last night rocked up at the house. All of them, including Jonas, were driving to Cologne to go to a concert tonight. I don't know how they have so much party stamina. They had a spare seat on the car so they offered to drive me. This was quite fortunate because I could easily get to Berlin from Cologne.

The car ride was fun despite me falling asleep every 30 minutes. We drove along the autobahn at a peak speed of 180km/hr listening to ramstein. Somehow I still felt safer on the autobahn than I usually do on highways in Australia.

When I arrived in cologne, I said goodbye to the partyaholics and walked my way to the train station. The train left at 6:48pm and was scheduled to arrive late at night.

A very friendly 40 something old man called "Gecko" told me how I could save a €20 cab fare by catching a series of public transport options from Berlin Hbf.

The walk to my hostel was pretty cool. All the stereotypes are true; hipsters and graffiti everywhere. The hostel I'm staying at is surrounded by pubs and Doner kebab places. I think I'm going to like it.

Heidelberg day 1

I woke up today at 8:00am and headed immediately to the closest supermarket with Jonas. I insisted that I wanted a traditional German breakfast consisting of Pfefferbeisser (sausage), Landjager (another type of sausage), pretzels and Paulaner hefe weissbier (wheat beer). Poor Jonas just wanted cerial.

From the second that wheat beer touched my lips I made it my mission to make the rest of the day a beer tasting boosefest. I had many different types of beer, but the only ones I wrote down were Klosterhof bernsteinweizen (topaz wheat beer) and No1 welde (pilsner beer popular in just Heidelberg).

We packed two bags jam packed with No1 Welde, jagermeister, and melon schnaps and began hiking our way to the old town via a scenic lookout. The view was spectacular, but it was made that much more impressive because we were legally allowed to hike and drink beer at the same time. Oh my God nothing feels better! I can only imagine the feeling would be just as pleasurable as being able to go to the toilet while you're driving.

When we got to the old town we decided to get something to eat. We decided to get one of the most traditional German meals around; a Doner Kebab. Or at least Jonas told me it was traditionaly German. Maybe he just told me that to escape my 'I'm only eating German food' campaign?

Afterwards I forced Jonas to show me the university. I waddled into the math building in the hope I'd be able to chime into part of a lecture, but alas there were no classes at that time. I guess I'll have to reenact Good Will Hunting elsewhere.

At about 1:00pm we met up with about 10 of Jonas's friends in a park by the river Neckar. Coinsidently they'd been drinking all day too so it was a lot of fun. They all speak perfect English (or at least I remember them speaking perfect English) and are incredibly friendly and welcoming.

We went to a house party afterwards which was heaps fun. I got talking to a whole bunch of people about my travels and about Australia. This one German girl told me about her exchange experience to New York state when she was 16; she said her foster family was super religious and forced her to go to church every Wednesday and Sunday! She told me that because she wasn't 'saved' she was strongly ostracized by the religious community. I told her that her experience of America was an unfortunate and unlucky one and she should still try traveling through the states. I swear I've become a walking advertisement for the US...

After that we went to a pub in the old Town. God I love the pubs here. Even at 11pm they hadn't degraded themselves to club level. I could still sit down and chat.

Sadly though, all good things must come to an end. The group decided 12-1 (guess who was the 1) to go to a club. The place hardly had a dance floor but that didn't stop people from vibrating all over it. Despite that the night still ended on a high because the music was good and the drinks were very cheap. Only €2 per beer or cocktail.

Oh yeah, I shaved. I'm no longer the guy parents hide their children from! Its a good feeling. I felt that if I kept my beard growing any longer, I would get awarded a club by the international beard society for reaching caveman level.

Prague day 2

I woke up a little hungover and sluggishly pulled out my phone to look at trains leaving to Germany. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to go Meinz, Berlin, Heidelberg or stay in Prague so I dropped the phone on the floor and collapsed back into bed.

I woke up a little hungover and sluggishly put on my shoes so I could go on the hunt for breakfast. I managed to find this epic cafe that served me sausages, mustard, cheese and really really spicy chillies; I think it was called Aeiz burnar.

By the time I got back to the hostel I had heard a reply from Jonas telling me I could get free accommodation at his place in Heidelberg. I grabbed my stuff, checked out of the hostel and began my treck to the train station.

I'm so excited I'm going to Germany. A place where drinking in the morning isn't a condition, its a culture. A place where eating absurdly large quantities of meat happens all the time, not just on special occasions. A place where drinking in public isn't illegal, its legal.

I met a girl from Hungry roughly my age on the train. She was really friendly and told me she was doing a PhD in Education. I tried to tell her some stupid Turkey/Hungry joke, but was fortunate her English wasn't good enough to understand it. Fun fact: people from Hungry have a strangely weak French sounding accent! Hungry is yet another country to put on the list for my next trip through Europe!

My train trip involves me transferring trains at Dresden, Leipzig, Frankfurt and Mannheim. This only gives me 10 minute intervals to buy food and go to the toilet. When I first arrived at Leipzig I sprinted to the nearest bathroom only to find that I needed to pay €1! WTF Germany! Why do I have to pay to go to the bathroom!? That's just evil! To make it worse, I had no euros so I had to sprint to the other side of the train station to go to the ATM to withdraw cash and then change some of the cash into coins at a money exchanger. After the whole ordeal I had no time to eat a proper meal so... So... So.... I purchased a whopper from Burger King. I'm so ashamed of myself. I've been dreaming of the first meal I was going to try in Germany for so long! If only they had a pork schnitzel with schpetzle burger...

I arrived at Heidelberg at 10pm. Jonas was there ready to welcome me with a beer. We tried riding his bike but my bag plus my weight was too much for him to handle so we decided to walk back to his flat. It was great seeing him again. He told me about Scotland and all the crazy stuff he's been up to since. Tomorrow were going to meet up with a few of his friends and undoubtably get smashed.

Prague day 1

Holy crap I'm in Europe!

Woah!!! I expected the Czech Republic to be an eastern European smoldering hole filled with delicious beer. Man was I wrong. For starters its not in eastern Europe, and also its beautiful! There are dozens of cool castles, cobbled pavement and beautiful bridges all the way along the main river.

I booked myself into my $4/night hostel and went for a walk around the town. I expected Prague to be filled with bars overflowing with people. I know its only a Tuesday at 2:00pm but every place was completely empty. I really struggled to find a pub, yet alone a pub with people in it. The few 'pups' I did find were practically night clubs because they had neon lights, house music, and patrons drinking only spirits. Eventually I found a nice place right next to the hostel which served wonderful cheap pivo beer ($2) and cheap pub food ($6). I ordered pivovarsky veprovy vrabec (no, I didn't just mesh my keypad) which means pork and potato dumplings. Delicious.

I went for a 3 hour walk around town afterwards and saw a huge collection of castles, museums and statues. I also ended up waddling towards the city center where all the shopes were. For some reason I kept wandering into bookshopes which was stupid because 1) I don't read 2) I already have a book and 3) and the books were in Czech.

When I arrived back at the hostel I made friends with 2 extremely friendly Italian girls. We all decided to go out for food and drinks at the nearest pub. I had some strange potato pancake mixed with chicken, it tasted divine. After I developed the taste for alcohol I suggested the idea of going on a pub crawl. We got drunk but not messy. By the end of the night they convinced me I had to go to Italy before I leave to go back to Australia, and thanks to my spontaneous travel planning, I think I can totally do just that.

Viva la travel!

Dubai day 2

After Vicky and Alex went off to work I spent about an hour strutting around the apartment eating their food, showering and booking a flight for tomorrow. I decided to go to Prague, Czech Republic.

I figured no trip to Dubai would be complete without seeing an artificial island so I went to Palm Jumeirah to catch a monorail to Atlantis adventure. Its a water park constructed on purely artificial ground and it's massive. Right next to it was an even massiver hotel called Atlantis. And near that they were constructing the massiverist thing ever. Calm down Dubai! You don't need to build so much stuff! Everyone thinks you've overcompensating.

One thing that struck me about the island (and Dubai in general) is that it's textbook beautiful. Everything was so perfect and looked after, but it has no character. I felt like a character in Wall-E.

On my way back I asked a tram assistant to direct me to the nearest monorail to go to the gold souk. He was very specific and told me to transfer here and hop on there, but I stopped him half way through and clarified that I wanted to walk to the nearest monorail. He gave me an expression of pure panic and tried to reason with me by saying "but sir, the monorail is a 15 minute walk from here!".

After the exhausting walk I took the monorail to Al Ras to see the souk. It was a big change from the city center. There were beaten down side shops, crappy resteraunts, dirty roads and locals! Finally, some culture. I got lost and ended up stumbling into a resteraunt jam packed with locals. They didn't give me a menu or a knife and fork, they just sat me down and shoved two bowls of meat in front of me with a large slice of bread. I actually enjoyed the system they had there; I didn't get my plates cleaned for me, instead I had to clean my plates myself. I ended up making good friends with another guy there. He was from Comores; a tiny island off east Africa. It's a French colony so his French was awesome but his English was quite crude. I got talking to him for quite a while and he told me about his difficulties in searching for a job in Dubai. He was going to leave back to his country in 1 week because he never found a 'business job'. He spent close to an hour hyping up this magnificent work of architecture that he said I had to see while I was here. He was unable to communicate what it was so he decided to show me; it was only a 10 minute walk to get there. I finally arrived at the 'magnificent work of architecture' and discovered it was just a tunnel with cars driving into it. The poor guy had never seen a tarmac road before, yet alone a tunnel.

Before I left I went to a kebab place. Kebabs are so much smaller here! I guess thinking that kebabs in the middle east would be baseball bat sized chunks of heaven was an unrealistic expectation. Australian kebabs are far superior!

After Alex and Vicky finished work we drove to the burjkalife (I have absolutely no idea how to spell that), which is the tallest building in the world, to have a fancy upperclass steak at some fancy upperclass Argentinean resteraunt. The food was great, the view was spectacular and the tip alone cost what I would usually pay for my weekly food shopping.

On my way back I discovered that Dubai is made up of little specialized cities. You can find 'business city', 'healthcare city', 'internet city' etc etc. How Brave New World is that!?

My lasting impression of Dubai is that its very artificial. Both literally and metaphorically. But I guess that's to be expected from a country which is: teeming with money, has sacrificed some of its Muslim roots, and is made up of 91% foreigners!  Despite that, I still really enjoyed Dubai; it was a refreshing break and a good chance to meet my family. Dubai is a great place to live if you want to live an easy, upperclass and culturally vacant lifestyle. I don't think that lifestyle is for me though.

Alright, my plane is about to land in Prague. I know literally nothing about this place other than it has good cheap beer. Just before I boarded my flight I looked up an address of a hostel:

Na Zderaze 267/10, 120 00 Praha-Nové Město, Czech Republic

Time to continue exploring!

Dubai day 1

I arrived in Dubai on the 8th March at 8:45am. I grabbed my bags, stole some WiFi and took a taxi to the Ritz hotel where my mum and aunty were still staying.

The Ritz is a 5 star hotel (or at least it felt that way in comparison to the shit holes I've been staying in for the past few days). I felt completely out of place at this hotel, I mean they even had free apples at reception! In an attempt to fit in I practiced an arrogant laugh to use on the staff there. "Huahahaeiraph".  After cleaning up and having breakfast my mum checked out of the hotel and took me to my cousins place.

Once we arrived my mum and I walked around the neighborhood to try amd find some Arabic food. God I missed hommus (is that how you spell it? I don't know). My mum then left to go to the airport and I crashed on my cousins couch for 3 hours.

Vicky arrived back from work early and we decided to walk to the beach (less than a 5 minutes walk away) to grab a few beers. Ironically I got a lot of flashbacks of England because the last time I met my cousins Vicky took me to the nearest pub to have a few drinks with the promise Alex would join later. Alex got off work about an hour later and we walked through the beach resort to the Weston to meet him; he was too lazy to walk to us. Typical Alex.

The place we ate at was a very upper class pizza parlor. It had wood fired pizzas, fantastic drinks, good service and PORK! That's right, it turns out that the only thing that can work its way around strict Islamic culture is a hotel. The US army could learn a lot from this.

When we got back to the apartment Alex went to bed but I stayed up talking to Vicky for a few hours drinking wine on the balcany. We were on level 68 in the highest (or second highest, I can't remember) residential building in the world so it had a wonderful view of the city. With no need for a map, Vicky just lazily pointed at places I could visit tomorrow while she was at work.

Nepal day 4 - day i can't even remember

As I'm writing this post I'm sitting impatiently in the departure gate of the Kathmandu international airport. My flight was scheduled to leave on the 4th but the earliest flight I could get was on the 8th due to a Turkish airlines flight crash landing on the runway, canceling all flights. Consequently for the last 4 full days I've been trapped in Kathmandu with cheap food, great beer and awesome people. Its been such a nightmare. I've been keenly following the repair process of the Turkish airlines flight so I could have a better idea of when I'd be able to escape this god forsaken paradise. It turns out that they'd planned on sending 11 Engineers to the airport to repair the plane; no wonder it took so long! The Engineers flight was probably canceled.

OK OK OK there's a lot of blogging ive missed out while I've been hiking up Everest. Let me just start from the beginning and go from there.

The Everest crew and I began our adventure by catching a small broken down propellar plane to Lukla. We flew through the air like a cannon ball and landed on a landing strip that was no longer than 100m. I now find it ironic that the international airliner crashed and not our crappy folded piece of paper.

When we started tracking we were bombarded with awesome views of the country side. There were villages, mountains, rivers, yaks, dogs, cute Nepalis children, muels and porters to gawk at. The porters earned a large deal of respect from me because they carried 4 of our 10kg bags each. At first I thought that the porters must be the hero's of Nepal. A few days later I would discover how incorrect I was. The first walk was a peice of cake; it only lasted 3 hours and really made us all underestimate the difficulty of the rest of the hike. To end the day our guide, Dinesh, asked us to partake in a group activity where we all say 2 highlights and 1 lowlight about the day. Daniel (ze German) was honest enough to say "the food is pretty expensive..." but was cut short by Dinesh almost bursting into tears. We learned afterwards to always say "no lowlights" for the next few days. Don't worry though because by the 3rd day everyone was genuine with their 'no lowlights' comment.

Everyday got harder and harder, yet the reward got better and better. We saw no snow for the first 8 days, but that didn't stop us from freezing in -20°C conditions. The views were spectacular, especially when you crossed rickity suspension bridges 600m in the air. The food remained expensive and of poor quality; most guest houses along the way had a 'if it can fit in a toaster, then I can cook it policy'. I once ordered "spathetti with soup" which turned out to be a few strands of noodles in boiling water - now that's pathetti.

One of the most memorable things we got to do before we got to the top was play soccer. Most guest houses would have a spare soccer ball which we would use to play against the locals. I'm one of our games we even played against some Monks. Fun fact: monks are awesome at football! Its like they have God on their side or something. We westerners had no chance mainly due to the high altitude. Every 5m of running would be followed by wheezing, coughing and panting. That being said, I think the affects of altitude sickness were vastly overrated for our trip; I never experienced a headache once. The only notable effect of altulitude sickness when sleeping for me was that my dreams became MUCH more real. My roommate would often tell me that I was sleep laughing or sleep screaming at 3:00 in the morning. Pretty crazy, huh?

By day 7 we found a cute dog that followed us for 2 straight days up the mountain. He didn't quite make it to base camp with us, but he got close. We called him "Mo Mo" after the delicious Nepalese snack food. We weren't very creative with our name assigning. Originally Matt Gates was called Matt 1 and I was called Matt a. Later we were known Matt 1a- and Matt a1'. 

The day we reached the top was undoubtably the best. Base camp was nothing more than a pile of rocks, but that didn't make the sense of accomplishment any less amazing. Once we hit base camp we were hit by a blizzard. The snow was so severe that the visibility was only 20m. We also heard 4 consecutive strikes of thunder which our guide later admitted was actually the sound of 4 avalanches. We managed to treck out just before the path to base camp was closed due to dangerous conditions. Everyone behind us had to say goodbye to their base camp dream and head back. I personally loved the challenging conditions because it allowed me to finally get my frozen beard. It was just as awesome as I had dreamed it would be.

Because of the blizzard, the path back home looked completely different. It was like we had trecked into a different world. The snow was wonderfully thick and was great to trudge through. We found Mo Mo again rolling and playing in the snow without a care in the world on our way down. It took 4 days to get back to Lukla with the path we'd chosen. We were lucky with our choice because the other path (which involved going past Pakra one day later) managed to get 6m of snow. The poor guys there had to be helicopter evacuated out.

When we arrived back in Lukla we shared our stories and memories. I personally won't forget how beautiful Everest looked. Unlike any other mountain around it, its tip pierced the clouds which formed a surreal halo around it. Later on the crew decided to go out and dance to celebrate. Sadly this a bad end to an amazing trip because my phobia of dancing got the better of me again and I ended up isolating myself from the group. Seriously why is dancing such an international standard for having fun? Can't people enjoy not jerkjng their bodies in weird directions?

We flew our paper airplane back to the land of sneezing grey filth and dysentry the next morning. Kathmandu was a welcome change though because water was only 15 rupies (unlike the 380 they were charging us at base camp) and food was delicious.

When I first heard my flight to Dubai was canceled, I was at first overjoyed because I thought it would give me enough time to experience the Holi festival which was the next day. The festival was brilliant. I met a few new people and enjoyed splattering the crap out of little kids with paint. I got drunk that night with glass sized vodka and jager shots. By the end my face was colored a sickly mix of red, purple, white, silver, orange, and yellow . I guess you could say my delayed flight made me feel blue (baddmmchh)! Daniel (ze German) got even more wasted than me and ended up stumbling into our hostel room, propped up by the receptionist, shouting that he needed some weed. Now I know what a drug addicted umpa lumpa looks like.

Oh, I'm sorry to end this post on a downer, but I have one lasting impression of intrepid I want to vent to the world. Intrepid really knows their shit, but they rip off locals! I found out that only 5% of the $1350 I payed Intrepid to climb everest actually goes to the guides and porters, the rest goes back to Australia! If you're going to book a trip to Everest, hire a your own personal Sherpa to guide you - it'll be cheaper and you'll do more good for the Nepalis people.

Alright, my flight is about to board! I'm finally going to Dubai to meet my cousins, aunty and my mum who had skillfully tried to surprise me in Dubai. I'm coming mamma!