Arrived in Brussels

Well We are here in Brussels:

i am typing on q French keyboard so things are q little difficult.

We had q good flight and arrived here on friday afternoon. We met up With Liz and little Abigail and she walked us back to Claire and Christophes place.

Yesterday ze zent up to Bruge; despite the rain and had q good look round, Pedro (lizs boyfriend) was qn qwesome tour guide and the city was beautiful.

We cqme home qnd cookek for liz and Pedro.

well for the moment this xill have to do as the keyboqrd is giving me grief;

byeeeee

sqrqh

Medieval rings...

Just to make everyone of a medieval inclined nature rather jealous, i spend about 30 euro today buying about 4 rather nice medieval style rings.

went to the castle (nice)
went back to that yummy polish restaurant...(very nice)

had some Pear vodka and im sorry today it is sooooooooooo much better than Fijoa vodka!!!!

sorry all

Chris hope your uni application choosing things went ok...what did you choose in the end...send me an email telling me then i can pass it on to chris....


well thats all, tomorrow i'm not sure what we are doing, and we fly out the following day to brussels to see the rest of chris's family that i havn't seen, including the infamous Abbey!!

very quick update

ok.....phew...... tickets to Brussels booked for the 28th of September (i hope)

yesterday was great. We took a bus to the Auchwitz. 1/1/2 hours it took.
the camp was very clean and tidy and neat with beautiful brick barracks (built for the Polish army) however the displays inside were the most shocking. The most powerful thing we say all day was a room that was full of TWO TONNES of HUMAN HAIR. It was all behind glass and lumped in a big pile that reached the roof of the room. It is the left overs from what the nazis tried to burn when thy left the camps. There was also about the same amount of Children's shoes...

we weren't allowed to take pictures of it but we got some of the outside of the buildings.

Birkenau was the on ethat looked like the movies and pictures, kilometers of burn and standing barracks. the toilet barracks were gruesome. a row of stone benches with holes in them on either side. They were no more than 6cm apart with no privacy whatsoever, in fact the guards used to stand infront of the prisoners and count to five and then wack them with sticks to make them stand up faster. The guide said theat most of the time they had explosive "number two's" from lack of food. 5 seconds is not enough.

today we went of a tour of the Jewish district. WE saw the Ghetto and where Shindler's list was filmed. OUr guide had a portable DVD player and showed us the scenes when we were standing at the spots. We saw the factory (went inside)

we were also on the tour with a woman from israel, her parents lived in Krakow before the way. They escaped in 1939!!!!!! to Russia and were put in a work camp. They eventually escaped to what became Israel. All her family died in Auchwitz.

we had lunch today in a VERY expensive restaurant on the Jewish Square. Very POSH. I had Turkey breast with pears and brie and cranberry sauce on top with potatoes and goats cheese feta. i had a starter and two beers. It cost about 25 dollars FOR THE BOTH OF US!!!

anyway better go there is only one computer here....


byeeeee

InPoland

hey all we have arrived after a very very long train ride. We spent out train ride with a Polish girl, a Korean, anPolish lady and a couple from Prague.

we tried to learn Polish on the journey. We managed about a word an hour. Polish is the third hardest language in the world after wierd african language and a chinese dialect.
so we had not a lot of sucess and everyone laughted for about 4 hours. Words that sound the same to my ears mean different things. Please is almost the same as little pig!!

anyway better go off to Auscwitz today on a all day tour.

byeeee


sarah

quick update

Off to Poland by train today (25 euro each) for a 7 hour journey between countries.

it is one of the prettiest train journies you can do apparantly.

We went out for dinner last night. We each had a big meal, 2 LARGE beers and two large desserts and the bill was 25 aussie dollars.

not too bad at all. Poland is supossed to be better.


anyway better be off as breakfast (free) awaits us downstairs in the bar.

byeeee

Another perfect day....another Perfect city...

well another great day in Prague...

have to be quick.

went to the Prague museum today and saw some really cool stuff from pre-history and medieval times. Ate some bread and cheese, them went for a walk over the bridge in the sun shire. Accidentally stumbled on the Senate buildings which were beautiful.

we came back and on the way home we heard medieval music and stopped to have a look, and caught the end of a large medieval demonstration up by the train station. The costumes were excellent and the horses (about 10 of them ) we so well behaved. We tried to have a chat but couldn't get cose enough and we wernt sure they spoke english.

we grabbed some fruit on the way home.

well better go annoying "That culture" of people behind me wanting the net... inclined not to let them as they are SO loud...

byeee....hope they can read this over my shoulder


(oh my god she just asked if aussie has the Simpsons...)
















off to Poland on Sunday,

train from Prague to Poland cost me 25 euro.... soooooooo expensive to travel to another country here.....

good food good beer...

hey all,

went out for dinner last night, chris had 1kg of pork and i had salmon fillets veges salad and potatoes and we each had two jugs of beer that were 10% alchohol and the bill was about 20 AUSSIE dollars. so food is good. Beer is excelent.

the place we are staying is called the Clown and Bard hostel. It has it;s own bar.

it said they had a music room so Chris asked the guy if he good play the drums, the guy said yes and set the drums up IN THE BAR....!!! Another guy said he played the base (also from Brisbane) and another guy who played the electric guitar (from mexico) and they made a band and played all night.

we got free beer because they provided the entertainment. (so cheep anyway i\)

we all got smashed and met up with so many Aussies and pommies and sat round the table drinking all night and are off on a walking tour today together. It even leaves from our hostel.

the free breakfast was good and all you can eat. Excelent after a late night. Chris thinks he was still drunk.

anyway have to go, will post pictures of the night (very blury and drunk looking later on today)

off walking

byeeee

Ok we have hit Prague

Heya all,

we have hit Prague at last after a very beautiful train ride through southern Germany. The train went along a beautiful river in the mountains and because of the rain it was covered in rolling clouds and mist. Made some nice pictures. When i am home i am sorry to say that i was stuck in a compartement with my video cammera and was bored so i have quite a bit of video of the train travelling through non eventful (but beautiful) countryside.


apart from that, things here seem very cheap i got out 400 KK and it came up on my bank as 24 dollars. a meal out is about 80 - 150kk(ish)

free breakfast here and free internet....


bye for now
sarah

Dresden Photos day two

Chris with his pretzel

Church that was blown un and rebuilt 30 years later with the same bricks

pretty...

A real archeological dig at the 1340's market place, site uncovered when war (1945) blew up the square..

Palace again

soooooo pretty..

A bath for the royal horses

there is a lot more footage on my cammera as i took lots of footage of Dresden, as a result there are only a few pictures of Dresen, these are a few of them.

byeeeee

Dresden Photos day one

Berlin train station


Market of beer....





Palace

Dresden

Hey everybody,

Sorry for the mega blog update the other day, and the state of it, but i couldn’t see what was being written and was having problems changing things. I have now gone back through and fixed up a couple of typos.

(hmmmmm…. Edit…. this is rather long too….) sorry :-0

Bascially we are in Dresden, just south of Berlin. If anyone is coming to Germany, then i really really suggest a 3-4 day stop over here. We have had a day and it isn’t long enough.

The weather has been beautiful, sunny and bright, warm but not toooooooo hot. The city is gorgeous to say the least, despite the fact that we blew it to smitherines during 1945 !! 85% of the city burnt to the ground or was destroyed by the bomb blasts. Including all the MEDIEVAL city and much of the surrounding area. As Dresden fell into communist control after the war, much of the bombed out buildings remained as rubble until very recently when the have started to uncover and rebuild. As a monument the Prodestant church was rebuild out of the burnt and broken stones. The church fell to the ground after the blasts of bombs nearby weakened it’s structure and the fire had cracked the sandstone. The left it for years, and then carefully measured and scanned each piece of stone, put them into a computer program, and then put each stone back where it was. Where there was no stone, they bought a new one. Amazing. It was only finished in the late 1990’s. many of the other buildings have been restored and look like they have stood for a thousand years ! Some that have been rebuilt in the past 5 years still look a little modern but are much better than the 1970’s period of building that are there.

We have been sooooo surprised at the cost of beer !! sOOOOOOO CHEAP !!!
1.30 buys you ½ a litre of beer in a cheap restaurant, and 1.90- 2-50 in a more expensive one. Not very expensive even by Australian standards.

Today we went on a tour of the city (photos being posted in next post.) It was a great day. The only problem we have faced is the American tourists ! Last night we had one in our room, and i though well i wonder if Chris or I will smack him in the face first !

He comes in when the German girl is watching a movie and stands in front of the tele screeching his mouth of to chris about his trip (ok thats fine) but he was soooooo loud, every time she turned up the tv, he talked louder to a very unentheusiastic audience. I was reading and Chris was using the computer. Then he asked what Chris did, and chris explained. Then he became an expert on cellular biology when he didn’t even know the function of DNA. Even i with my schoolgirl biology knew he was talking out of his arse.

THEN he was babling on about how germans are all overweight (he was fat and ugly) and said that if he loved the food in germany and if he lived here he would be very fat. ! (snorks snorks as he was HUGE) Not underexagerated by the fact that he came out of the shower wearing the grand total of a pair of boxer shorts ! No top ! all that white flab, i couldn’t even look in the room.

I thoink Chris was about to have a go at him when he started to talk about how good at martial arts he is and how he can smack through 5 boards at least (with his bare hands.) He didn’t look as if he could smack through butter ! THEN he started to do the most pathetic « high-ya » chop kick and then stretch his legs USING MY BED AS HIS BENCH never mind that he could barly lift his leg the foot or two to the rail of my bed. Remember what he was wearing how fat he was and that i was in bed reading. Such an athlete !!

AMERICAN STORY TWO (the most funny of all of them so far) please skip if you have little time to read….but it was sooo funny to watch this happen…

Denmark – the home of people who speak English as a second language. EVERYONE speaks english and very good english ! We were in a que at (so embarrasing) hungry jacks, (we were desperate ok !!) It was full of english speaking tourists. I was in the que infront of an american couple about my age. The girl started whispering to the boyfriend, « i can do this if you want » he replies « are you sure you can handle it, i can do it if you want, » « no no she replies i’m happy to »

Oh i thought, she is going to try and speak in Danish ! Brave !

I go up to the counter and order my food, talking to a young boy who could have been american his english was THAT good ! I couldn’t tell if he was a non-native speaker. All goes well and i’m waiting for my food when the american girl goes up to the counter behind me and starts talking to the boy.

She got right up in his face and said in the loudest, slowest voice imaginable « DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH, WE (pointing to her and boy) WANT TO EAT (pointing to her mouth) SOME BURGERS »

The boy (bless) held his composure VERY well which is more than can be said for the other two servers who ran behind the machines and laughed and laughed. The rest of the customers just stood in shock as she didn’t know she had done anything wrong.

The boy of course responded in perfect English despite the fact that she ordered her food in the same manner.

I don’t get it, they looked intelligent enough !

FUNNY STORY THREE ( The next most funny )

Versailles – Toilets…
We were in the que for the toilets. An English speaking woman came out of the middle cubical and went to wash her hands. An americal woman went into the middle toilet after her. The American woman closed the door and let out a scream and came running out pulling a disgusted face. (meanwhile the woman who had just been in there turns around going …oh my god, what have i left in there…) The American says to everyone, not to use that toilet and she will wait. Someone asks what was wrong (we were epecting poo, vomit, sanitary, pad….. ) but no there was only a thin toilet seat ! HUH ! she proceeded to try each toilet in there, (despite the fact that we kept saying they would all be the same,) before she left (without going in THOSE toilets) telling her friend about the disgusting state of toilets in France and how much better they were in america !


BACK TO DRESDEN !!!

We are leaving tomorrow morning and going to Prague, so i will hopefully be able to update a bit better from there. Enjoy the photos !

Hope you are all having fun in Australia, We want to stay in Germany !


byeeeee

photos

alive and in berlin

Right, well here i am sitting on the lower bunk in a youth hostel in Berlin after eating our delicious buffet dinner (yet again) at only 5 euro. We had chicken, pork, rice, a stew/salsa , salad bar, bananas and tea and iced peach tea.

I am now in possession of all my belongings, but am rather annoyed that my suitcase spent two days in amsterdam before me !!!! (more of that story later….. here on…. You are about to be bored senseless….)

But thats about enough for now, as i know i havn’t been able to update much in the last week or so owing to lack of internet and the expense of the internet.4 euro for an hour gets about ½ of our travel booking done a day, with no email and certainly no blog updates. So i will start at the begining, which, i guess for most of you is around the time we left for Paris.

JOURNEY TO PARIS :

We left London about 11 :00pm and got a bus to Paris, ok you live and learn, that is the last time we do that journey !!! we had to get off about 2 ;00am to catch the ferry to Dover (yes again) and then get off again about 3 :30am an back onto the bus for the journey into Paris. Chris had about 0% legroom, and i don’t think i had much more. When we arrived we had no clue even what area of paris we were in and the ticket machine didn’t work. So we trouped on over to the other end and found a person. A few trains later we made our way to the road we needed.

Paul was away in Marsaille that day and he arranged for his friend to let us into the apartement. Enter Frenchtime… not too bad considering i was so tired i could have forgotten my middle name. Guy was great he showed us everything we needed and then left. About half an hour later he returned with a bag of Bread and croissants !!! i was so happy i could hardly say anything. (we had had nothing to eat since early the night before and had had about 0 hours sleep.) Later that night we ordered pizza (sorry too tired for anything else)

THE NEXT DAY…

Funnilly enough we slept in this day …

THE FOLLOWING DAYS..

All kind of blur into a mishmash of fun.
I dind’t like Paris last time i was here (jetlagged, middle of winter, 6 hour stop over…) but how much i love Paris now ! it was awesome ! luckily my French came back to me far quicker and far better than i thought it was. I was concerned that i wouldn’t be able to converse with people at all. I met Paul’s new lady friend, who i must say is beautiful and loverly, and several other people and i don’t think i said anything toooooo shocking this time. I was concerned when i said something in responce to a « do you want another drink sarah » i responded i french with a phrase and the conversation stopped, ( i thought oh no i’ve just said something reallllly bad…..) but no Paul grabbed my hand and said « you are truly French that is a very very good french expression for saying « i want another drink »
Later on the comment was made that m French was best surrounding drinking phrases…..lol……

The shopping in paris was excellent and sooo cheep !!! we found some really good bargins, including a beautiful warm black ¾ length jacket for chris that was only 39 euro !!

I bought some very very very very very high boots ! black.

These were sorely tested the last night we were there when Paul took us out for dinner (mussels and chips and beer ..ohhhh my god yummmmmmm) and because he paid ( we cursed and tried to bribe the barman but to no avail) we said we would take him out for a nice drink… this happened to be miles away (new boots) to which Paul and Chris keep making comments like : « would you like a wheelbarrow, a fighterfighter carry, and : it’s only 100meters…..every few minutes.

It was a realllllly nice drink and we walked back. Such a beautiful city. Paul was really wonderful. He was working a lot but it was great to talk when we did have time J

A FEW DAYS LATER…

We left Paris, bound for Copenhagen. We didn’t do much here except go to a really good museum. We had no time for anything else. We spend out last day sitting in the airport reading and drinking, (it was pissing it down)
On a high note we found beer in copenhagen that was 2dkk. (about 50cents an bottle..ish…)

BERLIN

Beautiful plane flight into berlin, i took some sneaky and WONDERFUL photos out the window and we landed in Berlin, after a 40 min flight. (I love Europe)
We we at the luggage return spot and a sign came out saying ‘last bag’ Problem as i had no bag, it was late, we were in Germany now so no French speaking for me, and we had to find our hostel. We knew what had happened straight away !! it was the silly girl at Copenhagen airport who sent my bag to amsterday under another passengers name. The reason for this was that my bag was 2kg over the 15kg weight limit. (THANK GOD i took out my unmentionables bag, my cammera cables and my NEW boots and jeans and a jumper and put them into my hand luggage….) while i was repaking my bags she mucked up the process and sent the bag to Amsterdam.

I really am annoyed as my bag in more travelled than me !

It took AGES to get back as they dropped it off 24 hours later and (apparantly) the 24 hour hostel wasn’t open, we rang and rang, (correction) the loverly people at the youth hostel rang and rang, and finally it got delivered 48 hours later. To the great relief of all concerned.

Berlin – Itself…


Possibly one of the most beautiful cities i have been to so far. I was expecting it to be all modern and ugly like the bits of cities remodled after the war. This was not so. I guess most of the building is rather recent, particularily as the wall has only been down about 17 years or so. The wide open spaces in the streets cause by the war and wall are a welcome relief to most city centers and their traffic.

The line of the wall is clearly marked by two little rows of bricks that go through buildings, roads, gardens …

TOUR
We did what was posssible the best tour we have done so far in Berlin. We went on the 3rd Reich walking tour, lead by a very enigmatic guide called Per. He took us all over the city for about 4.5 hours going into details about how Berlin was in the years leading up to and during the war. It was the best way to learn about a side of WW II that i have never really studied. He was really funny and well informed. He made some craking american jokes which i enjoyed immensley. ( I have to dedicate and entire journal to what we call « american jokes » as they are the group of tourists that have annoyed us the most where we have gone.)

Several hours later, and very much better informed about the history, we trecked back to the best hostel in the world with the most irritating room mate.

THE ROOM MATE SAGA !!!!
Ok Berlin YOUTH HOSTEL….

Full of about 200-300 teenagers here on school trips and a few other people, mostly « youth »

Dorms of 12 people in bunk beds sharing a toilet and shower, single rooms are available.

Enter old STUPID woman who thinks it is HER room and she rules the room. She is soooooo funny we all have bets to see how quickly she will have a go at someone in the room and what it will be for.

Yesterday she comes home from « work ? » and the first words out of her mouth were…. »which one of you is it that leaves the bathroom door ajar after you have been in there… » Apparantly the fan that runs for about 30 seconds after the light goes out annoys her. She has taken out 5-6 extra sheets from downstairs and made a cocoon out of her bottom buck to block out anyone looking into herbunk. She turns out all the lights at 8 :30 – 9 :00 and squeals at anyone brave enough to turn them on. She tells us to stop talking well before 10 :00pm.

Last night was possibly the best. About 10 :00pm, She was in her cocoon, We were all in our bunks, in darkness becuase she didn’t want the big lights on, pretending to be quiet, someone wanted to open the window, it was very stuffy and they asked everyone if it was ok, about 10 mins later she huffs and puffs out of her coocoon and storms accross the floor (and the people sitting in front of the window, and slams it shut about 3 times to make her point ! apparantly the noise from the street was too loud !!!!

LOL – we are all quietly giggling away at the amusement, makig sure we all cough VERY VERY loudly and wake her up as often as possible !!

Now onto what we did yesterday…


SACHENHAUSEN – concentration camp

We joined a tour group and went out to Sachenhausen. It was about 40 mins out in a small town. Most of it was destroyed and changed after the liberation and it was taken over by the communists (east germany) and used as a prisoner of war camp.

There was still quite a bit there though, as they are trying to recognise their history a little more and the information there was grim, but well presented.

PHEW….


Ok kinda back to today, just had two more aussies come into the dorm, and warned them about cocoon lady.

WRAP _UP

Basically having a great time LOVE BERLIN !!!!!!! it is Cheep and clean and fun !!!!

Off to Dresden in a day or so and then to Prague for 5 days. Then we are going to Poland but no idea how yet.

Sorry for the very very very very long update, and if you have got to the end then you either are totally bored, have no social life, or cheated and skipped the middle bit on your way down !!!!


Byeeeeee


Sarah and Chris

alive and in Paris

Alive and in Paris with 5:50 seconds left on the internet clock!!!

must Dash!!

shopping shopping shopping....boots jeans jacket


:-)


but not toooooo much...

getting cold but beautiful and sunny


versaille was awesome... Louvre was awesome

had rose saki last night (what the?????) i hat saki but this was yummy...


gotta go.... 4mins left....byeeeeee