So it's been a while since I've sent out a group email. Sorry about that. We've been a little busy travelling about and having adventures. The last time I wrote I think was from Vienna. Since then we have spent a bit of time in Prague, went up to Poland for almost a week, back to Prague for a couple of days, and then to Berlin. We have been in Berlin for 8 days now and we leave to go to Amsterdam on Wednesday. We had to stay here a bit longer becausr there are some good bands playing here soon that we didn't want to miss. The Ladybug Transistor is playing tomorrow (Sunday) night, and Adam Green on Tuesday night. We then have booked 5 nights in Amsterdam in a pretty dodgey sounding place (everything else was booked) and then we head either to London to find a job, or maybe to Scotland if we haven't gone through too much money.
We found Prague a little boring, but we stayed there for a while. The highlight was probably when we went to vist the bone church at Kutna Hora. That was pretty amazing. If you're not on facebook and want to see the photos then let me know and I'll send you the link. We wandered around a lot and visited the castle and the astronomical clock and Charles Bridge. Charles Bridge would have been nice if it wasn't packed with tourists and people selling stuff to tourists. There was usually an entertaining band playing there though. Everything was old and pretty but I got over it after a couple of days.It was ok but not too exciting. We didn't go out much at night because we always were a bit tired. Towards the end of our time there we went out a little bit but didn't do anything to exciting. The people in Prague weren't as nice as the people in Vienna and they often tried to overcharge us at restaurants. It got quite annoying after a while. We have a lot of photos though. Oh and we managed to find the library which was nice.
We caught the overnight train to Krakow (after Liz dealt with very annoying, rude, unhelpful staff at the train station). We couldn't really read our tickets, and didn't know what we were doing, but we somehow managed to find our way to the right train. I woke up as we were approaching Krakow (and about 4 or 5 times in the hours before that) and loved Poland straight away. It was freezing cold, it was about 7am, and we were walking with heavy backpacks not really sure where we were going, but we found our hostel thanks to Liz's detailed directions she had written and then went to explore. The people in Krakow were much nicer than in Prague, and the hostel we stayed at was one of the best so far. We met a couple of English guys (from Doncaster) and went out with them a couple of times. We looked at the castle and wandered around the city looking for food and toilets. We went to Auschwitz which was an interesting experience (and the reason I wanted to go to Krakow in the first place) and I took lots of great photos but I haven't been able to upload them. I learnt a lot that I didn't already know from movies, and I can't believe that there are people that survived staying there at all. I also can't get my head around how it ever happened at all... I didn't know that 80-90% of every train load of people that arrived there were sent to the showers as soon as they arrived. It's also unbelievable when you see how big it is... Anyway, we also went to the salt mines which was quite interesting. I got some good photos there as well. It goes down a couple of hundred metres and there was a restaurant at the bottom which was a big room that had been carved out of the salt. I ate some food there and later was very sick because of it. I have a feeling it had been sitting there a while before they served it to me, it wasn't very nice. We also went to the archaeology museum which was interesting. Liz loves looking at stone tools, and we went to see a movie (Vantage Point) which wasn't too bad, it was nice to hear some english being spoken for a change.
After Krakow we went back to Prague for 2 days and then we went to Berlin. Berlin has been great. We originally only booked 4 nights but we're now up to 8 and staying for a few more. There is so much to do here, and we've finally been staying up late and actually going out at night. We met a couple of guys at the first hostel we stayed at who run the alternative berlin tour. We went on that and it was fairly interesting. We saw a lot of stuff that we would never have known about. They take you to the places that tourists don't know about, and probably wouldn't know about without this tour. They took us to a market, to an art gallery which was really good, and we looked at the closed off side of the berlin wall. We had to climb under a gate to get out. They sometimes go places that you're not exactly allowed to go. They also had a lot of interesting stories to tell about the city of Berlin. The next night we went on a pub crawl which was ok. We went to 5 places and got home at about 5am. We did a proper Berlin tour as well and it was great (and free!) All the places we have been recommended to go out to at night are for music that we don't like with thumping techno music or whatever but we managed to find a nice place that plays great music called Bang Bang Club. We went there the other night to see some UK bands and it was great. After not seeing live music in so long it was great to hear some really good loud music. We had a really fun night. It's a bit strange over here though because places don't open till about 10pm and the first band (of 3!) doesn't even start playing till 11:30!! So it ended up being a late night. But a very fun night. Last night we went and saw a movie called the Savages which was a bit depressing and we didn't really feel like going out after. It was after 10 when the movie finished but Bang Bang didn't open till 11pm last night so we just went home and read for a bit and then slept. We're staying at a terrible hostel at the moment (we had to change hostels when we extended our stay), you'd think it would be a great hostel since it is situated directly between a library and a record store but it's not. It really is a terrible place. It's very big, and full of big groups of kids who are annoying, loud, play terrible music, and always running between each others rooms. We're not there much though so I guess it's not that bad.
We've been missing a lot of the news these days as well. We're not sure what's really going on in the world. If there's anything interesting happening please let us know. Everything that happens over here happens in German. We stumbled accross a protest of some sort today with a lot of people waving Chinese flags about and chanting things but we weren't really sure what was going on. It seemed to be an opposite of a free tibet thing, very strange. We always seem to be in the right place at the right time in Berlin, everyday we find something happening. We find markets and events and various things happening with big crowds of people. There's always something happening. Beer is very cheap here. 1 euro gets you one bottle of becks.
I guess I better end this email. I can't think of what else we've done but I'm sure there's more. Hopefully it won't take me as long to write another email to you all. Hope everyone is doing great and hope to hear from you all soon. I'm not to homesick yet but I do sometimes miss working at the library, and I miss watching a dvd (or anything in english) I also miss just being able to walk up to people and speak English and know they understand me.
Please forward this to anyone I've missed or anyone else that's interested. I've only sent this to a few of you at the library so please forward it on.
Glenn
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Email from March 23 - Vienna
sorry it's been so long between emails. There#s not really any net cafes in the sahara desert. Since I last wrote we've been on a 12 day tour around egypt. Starting with the pyramids. We would have liked to have a bit longer there cos they were quite interesting and liz was slowing things down by stopping every few steps to pick up rocks and examine them. Apparently they were, or used to be stone tools... at least that's what they looked like. We then went to the a papyrus museum which was a bit boring, then to the cairo museum where we could look at all of tutankamen's goodies. He had a lot of stuff, it would be interested to know how much stuff a pharoah that ruled for more than 10 years would have been buried with.
Next was the overnight train down to Aswan. Apparently the toilets on the train were the worst ever but fortunatly I didn't feel the need to go and look at them. We didn't sleep much on the overnight train. It's hard to remember all that we did because i don't have the itinerary here with me but we basically did all the tourist stuff, looked at way too many temples, went on a felucca for a nubian dinner and party which was a lot of fun, shopped in the bazaar which was quite frustrating after a while. The first time we went we just wanted to look and not buy anything. A guy offered up 2 outfits for 300 egyptian pounds. we didn't want them, we were ust looking and would buy something tomorrow, but then he said "ok ok ok.... 290 pounds" we would say we were just looking but thanks anyway" then he would say "ok ok ok, since you are very nice people i'll give them to you for special price 280" again we said no but he kept going down by 10 pounds. when he was around 200 pounds i said "you could tell us 10 pounds and i'll still say no, we're not buying anything today" but he wouldn't listen. He ended up going down to 70 pounds. We still didn't buy, but we had a good idea of what price to look for the next day.
We went on a 3 day cruise down the Nile which was a highlight of the trip. Beer and a pool with the occassional trip to a temple or two, it was a fun time. We also rode on donkeys to the valley of the kings from the nile (those photos are uploading onto my facebook right now), and we went in a hot air balloon over the valley of the kings, which was another highlight. We went out into the sahara for 5 days. The 12 of us went it 3 jeeps and camped under the stars for 3 night and stayed in a terrible "reed hut" that was made of concrete or something - probably the worst nights sleep i've ever had. But the desert camping was so so great. We all loved it and would go back without hesitation. We occassionally had police escorts which seemed strange and unnecessary. I thought the food was a bit average during the desert trip as well. We swam in a natural well and it was one of the strangest feelings I#ve had It was just water down to about the waist and after that it was like "swimming in wizz fizz" as one person described it. There was no ground, or bottom to it, but you couldn´t sink cos bubbles and air kept pushing you up... Actually, bubbles and air are probably the same thing so just ignore my stupidity in that last sentence. You could just into it from the high ledge and it went deep but pushed you straight back up. We all turned orange from that swim, it was quite funny. We also rode on camels for an hour to get to a campsite and probably did other fun stuff as well.
Getting back to Cairo was a bit sad cos we were back in traffic and bad smells but the hotel we thought was a dump at the beginning of the tour suddenly seemed very nice and i got to have my first proper shower in about 6 days.Some of the showers during the tour were like standing under a dripping tap.
And so now we're in Vienna. We had no accomodation planned cos it's supposedly only busy in the summer months. No one told us we'd be arriving the night before easter sunday though. We managed to book into one place for the night but were spending more than we would have liked. The next day we found a nice hostel but it was a bit out of town, we had to go to the end of the train/underground line and then on the bus. But it#s a good hostel and worth it when this morning we woke up to about 10 cm of snow on the ground!! I was quite shocked. I opened the curtain to check if the sky was blue and was pleasantly sueprised to see snow everywhere! Vienna is really easy to get around and we haven't had too many problems with the language yet. Just a couple of tiny ones. We haven#t really done anything exciting yet. Everything was closed yesterday (Easter sunday) and today as well. Highlight here so far was probably the snow this morning. If I don't run out of time i'll stick some photos of vienna up on facebook.
Glenn (and Liz but she's not actually here at the moment)
Next was the overnight train down to Aswan. Apparently the toilets on the train were the worst ever but fortunatly I didn't feel the need to go and look at them. We didn't sleep much on the overnight train. It's hard to remember all that we did because i don't have the itinerary here with me but we basically did all the tourist stuff, looked at way too many temples, went on a felucca for a nubian dinner and party which was a lot of fun, shopped in the bazaar which was quite frustrating after a while. The first time we went we just wanted to look and not buy anything. A guy offered up 2 outfits for 300 egyptian pounds. we didn't want them, we were ust looking and would buy something tomorrow, but then he said "ok ok ok.... 290 pounds" we would say we were just looking but thanks anyway" then he would say "ok ok ok, since you are very nice people i'll give them to you for special price 280" again we said no but he kept going down by 10 pounds. when he was around 200 pounds i said "you could tell us 10 pounds and i'll still say no, we're not buying anything today" but he wouldn't listen. He ended up going down to 70 pounds. We still didn't buy, but we had a good idea of what price to look for the next day.
We went on a 3 day cruise down the Nile which was a highlight of the trip. Beer and a pool with the occassional trip to a temple or two, it was a fun time. We also rode on donkeys to the valley of the kings from the nile (those photos are uploading onto my facebook right now), and we went in a hot air balloon over the valley of the kings, which was another highlight. We went out into the sahara for 5 days. The 12 of us went it 3 jeeps and camped under the stars for 3 night and stayed in a terrible "reed hut" that was made of concrete or something - probably the worst nights sleep i've ever had. But the desert camping was so so great. We all loved it and would go back without hesitation. We occassionally had police escorts which seemed strange and unnecessary. I thought the food was a bit average during the desert trip as well. We swam in a natural well and it was one of the strangest feelings I#ve had It was just water down to about the waist and after that it was like "swimming in wizz fizz" as one person described it. There was no ground, or bottom to it, but you couldn´t sink cos bubbles and air kept pushing you up... Actually, bubbles and air are probably the same thing so just ignore my stupidity in that last sentence. You could just into it from the high ledge and it went deep but pushed you straight back up. We all turned orange from that swim, it was quite funny. We also rode on camels for an hour to get to a campsite and probably did other fun stuff as well.
Getting back to Cairo was a bit sad cos we were back in traffic and bad smells but the hotel we thought was a dump at the beginning of the tour suddenly seemed very nice and i got to have my first proper shower in about 6 days.Some of the showers during the tour were like standing under a dripping tap.
And so now we're in Vienna. We had no accomodation planned cos it's supposedly only busy in the summer months. No one told us we'd be arriving the night before easter sunday though. We managed to book into one place for the night but were spending more than we would have liked. The next day we found a nice hostel but it was a bit out of town, we had to go to the end of the train/underground line and then on the bus. But it#s a good hostel and worth it when this morning we woke up to about 10 cm of snow on the ground!! I was quite shocked. I opened the curtain to check if the sky was blue and was pleasantly sueprised to see snow everywhere! Vienna is really easy to get around and we haven't had too many problems with the language yet. Just a couple of tiny ones. We haven#t really done anything exciting yet. Everything was closed yesterday (Easter sunday) and today as well. Highlight here so far was probably the snow this morning. If I don't run out of time i'll stick some photos of vienna up on facebook.
Glenn (and Liz but she's not actually here at the moment)
Email from March 11 - Cairo
Hi everyone.
Thought i'd send out a quick update about where i am and what i'm doing.
We're in Cairo and have just found an internet cafe close to where we are staying. The flight over was long 7.5 plus 10.5 with a 2 hour break in singapore. I watched 2 days in paris on the plane which made me not want to go to paris so much. Singapore airport was really nice and we would have liked to stay there longer and visit the actual city. The second flight was terrible because i wasn't able to put my seat back cos the guy behind me didn't like it. It was uncomfortable and hard to sleep.
When we got to egypt we were rushed here and there. i changed some money to egyptian pounds and then we were driven to our hotel through the craziest traffic i've ever seen (am used to it now though). We went straight to bed but it was hard to sleep after all the excitement. We only got 5 hours cos we had to get up to go to alexandria. We visited all the sights there with a tour guide and the next day we were on our own. We caught a tram to the fort which is where the light house used to be and walked around there taking photos. We had a policeman give us a tour. Saw lots of interesting things, we got a horse and his driver to take us to the library next which was very big and nice. I have a lot of photos of everything which i will get up somewhere soon. We then found a nice "expensive" restaurant and had a great meal. It's hard to find a good place to eat here, everything is so dirty and doesn't look healthy but the meal last night was great.
Today we come back to Cairo and went to look for food and met a local guy who spoke good english so we got him to take us to a nice place for lunch. we had a popular local meal then he took us to his cafe for egyptian tea. he was very nice and liked us cos it helped him practice his english. He then took us to his cousins shop who tried to sell us art, then his brothers shop who tried to sell us perfume. He was very nice though and we weren't bothered again and again when we said no to things. Unlike the taxi drivers and various others who don't give up on trying to take us places. It can get annoying and tiring. Better send this now because i don't have much more time here. Feel free to reply if you like. Not home sick yet though so not too bothered if you don't.
Glenn
Thought i'd send out a quick update about where i am and what i'm doing.
We're in Cairo and have just found an internet cafe close to where we are staying. The flight over was long 7.5 plus 10.5 with a 2 hour break in singapore. I watched 2 days in paris on the plane which made me not want to go to paris so much. Singapore airport was really nice and we would have liked to stay there longer and visit the actual city. The second flight was terrible because i wasn't able to put my seat back cos the guy behind me didn't like it. It was uncomfortable and hard to sleep.
When we got to egypt we were rushed here and there. i changed some money to egyptian pounds and then we were driven to our hotel through the craziest traffic i've ever seen (am used to it now though). We went straight to bed but it was hard to sleep after all the excitement. We only got 5 hours cos we had to get up to go to alexandria. We visited all the sights there with a tour guide and the next day we were on our own. We caught a tram to the fort which is where the light house used to be and walked around there taking photos. We had a policeman give us a tour. Saw lots of interesting things, we got a horse and his driver to take us to the library next which was very big and nice. I have a lot of photos of everything which i will get up somewhere soon. We then found a nice "expensive" restaurant and had a great meal. It's hard to find a good place to eat here, everything is so dirty and doesn't look healthy but the meal last night was great.
Today we come back to Cairo and went to look for food and met a local guy who spoke good english so we got him to take us to a nice place for lunch. we had a popular local meal then he took us to his cafe for egyptian tea. he was very nice and liked us cos it helped him practice his english. He then took us to his cousins shop who tried to sell us art, then his brothers shop who tried to sell us perfume. He was very nice though and we weren't bothered again and again when we said no to things. Unlike the taxi drivers and various others who don't give up on trying to take us places. It can get annoying and tiring. Better send this now because i don't have much more time here. Feel free to reply if you like. Not home sick yet though so not too bothered if you don't.
Glenn
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