well, i think i under estimated the distance between Glasgow and Belfast. I caught the bus at 4:00pm and i didn't get to my hostel until 11:00pm. but the boat ride across was a bit of fun, though quite rocky at times.
Belfast is in full christmas swing. the city centre is packed with food stalls, Christmas lights and action with George Micheal's 'Last Christmas' being played wherever you roam. i dunno if its a tourism fad at the moment but i've noticed a hell of a lot of ferris wheels on my travels (even in Australia too, theres one in brisvegas and just before i left Melbourne they were completing the eye sore which is a poor attempt to liven up the dockland... it won't by the way) and Belfast is no exception though i'm told its temporary, even though it doesn't look like it is. its right next to the City Hall which is a beautiful old building. Belfast is a pretty place, its kind of hard to believe what happened here with all the IRA and stuff, there are still some things that remind you of it. for instance theres a cage on some of the door of a pub in back streets. i was told it was because there was a few murders in that pub and to stop it they installed a cage. if you wanted to get in you would have to ring a bell, the owner would check you out, and if they knew you were ok, they would let you in, if not, no entry. theres a swanky hotel here called the Europa hotel that has the rather unlucky title of the second most bombed building in the world, also, some of the Peace lines that divided the city are still standing. in some parts of town the curbs on the side of the road are painted in either red, white and blue (english flag) or green, white and orange, (irish flag) depending on where you are. having said that, it is still a really pretty city, the people here are really friendly (EVERYONE says 'hello') and there are some really cute little lane ways around town that you can duck down, half the time you you totally forget and don't even realize what happened here in the past.
famous soccer player George Best came from Belfast, he was considered one of the greats of the game, but by the sounds of it, he played hard but it sounds like he partied a little too hard, he we was a bit of a playboy in his day but ended up an alcoholic and died of liver troubles. While i was here i came across a book of his quotes and it was GOLD! heres a few of them:
- 'I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.'
- 'I used to go missing a lot...Miss Canada, Miss United Kingdom, Miss World.'
- 'I've stopped drinking, but only while I'm asleep.'
- 'In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.'
The area i'm staying in is right near the Queens University which to some people is the most beautiful building in Ireland. it is very nice, kind of makes you WANT to study. The uni is right next to the Botanic Gardens which isn't that big in comparison to others i've been to but it has a glasshouse thats a couple of hundred years old called 'the palm house'. also the area around the uni is quite good. nice streets with cool shops and places to eat.
the Titanic was built here in Belfast almost 100 years ago when the towns port was pumping, now however its a shadow of its former self. but i heard that they are redeveloping the area and building apartments and restaurants and i read in the paper that they are thinking of building a building at replicates the Titanic for tourism, but from the artist impression it looked pretty dodgy. at least this time with it on solid ground and with no icebergs to run into it will stay afloat. fingers crossed!
I did a day trip up to the causeway, which are rocks that formed strange hexagon shapes from volcanic rock thats over 6 million old. the weather was a pretty average and there was an eerie mist that came in over the sea and over the rocks, it was pretty amazing to look at, the trip was so worth while. we then went up to Londonderry or Derry depending on which side of the fence you sit, along the way you see the London either written in or rubbed out. it was also a really beautiful city but also has a terrible past. Londonderry was where Bloody Sunday took place. i went down to where the 'Free Derry' wall stands and saw some of the murals. i have to admit, i was a little awestruck. they were amazing. and i was surprised that they hadn't faded but the tour guide said that they had put a varnish on them to protect them. pretty tragic.
There are a few murals in Belfast also and on my last day there i went and checked them out. it was a little bit out of the city in a rougher area. and i saw a couple of kids (probably about 8 or 9 years old) and they looked like they were up to trouble, nothing serious, just mischief. they saw that i caught them and they said a coy 'hello' and i said 'hi, how are you going?' back, they were really shocked to a different accent. i had my big backpack on and one of them said to me 'where ya get yer bag from, mister?' i said 'Australia'. 'whoa!' they both said, then the other one said to me 'are you catholic?' it was quite and awkward question because i didn't know which area i was in so i said 'i'm nothing...' they both seemed a little confused and asked 'are you goin to beat us up?' i laughed and said 'no, of course not' then they just shrugged there shoulders and said 'ok, see ya mister'. it was really bizarre. obviously people still have there guard up even though there seems to be peace within the area.
it was funny i was in a CD shop just looking around and in the corner of my eye i saw something, a CD titled 'the many hits of Jason Donovan'. now, correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't remember too many hits coming out of old Jason, except for his duet with Kylie, 'especially for you', what a classic that was. maybe the it should've been titled 'the many flops of Jason Donovan' or perhaps the CD's title was a double entendre and was actually commenting of Jason's drug past.
another thing that amazes me about the UK is how any girl can get a boob job, be a page 3 girl, become a W.A.G (W.A.G.S is a group of woman that date sports stars. it stands for Wife And Girlfriends of Sportstars) suddenly there a celebrity. its amazing! i was in a book shop and they had a book written by Katie Price aka Jordan and it had written on the front that it was a Number 1 seller. i was so surprised, i didn't think she would be about string a few words together to write a book! can anyone say ghost writer..?
one night i went out with a couple of guys that were staying in my room. they were from Newcastle and were over here riding there bikes around the coast of Ireland. (i think if i did that i would get about 100m up the road then give up.) they were really good guys we checked out a couple of REAL Irish pubs around the area which were pretty good. so much better than the imposers that you get in Australia, in fact you get them around Europe also. which i was surprised at, i thought it might have been an Aussie thing. its a bit like a Kebab shop, no matter you are in the world, or at what time, you will find a Kebab shop open.
anyway, i'm off to Galway, i think... depending if i catch the bus on time. bye!
Glasgow
i got to Glasgow and Georges Square was pumping with music, lights and rides it was the first day of the Glasgow Winterfest. also both the Glasgow football teams were in town so there were a heap of supporters, which was a great vibe to be around. i heard that the football crowds can be quite violent but i didn't have a problem. supposidly Glasgow has the highest murder rate in all of the UK, maybe they should sell T-shirts at the tourist information that say 'I survived Glasgow' then again, maybe not. by the way, its definately winter now, i've even resorted to wearing the thermals. but even that didn't stop me from coming down with a cold. the few days i was here i felt really average and my nose was running like a tap! but i'm feeling much better now in case you were wondering.
Something i learnt pretty early on in my stay here was they are mad about this guy called Charles Rennie Mackintosh, he was an architect and you can't go far without seeing a building of his, there littered throughout the city. i went to a tea room that he designed called 'The willow tea rooms' on the Sauchiehall street. they were quite nice i suppose. not far from there is the Glasgow school of Art which i think he help design also, this is where band Franz Ferdinand went to school.
Something i did like was the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (i think it was better than the Modern art gallery). there were some nice pieces of art work in there, even a Dali. but there were two displays there that touched me the most. the first was a huge display of stuffed animals around the world, the kids were going nuts for them. but it really shocked me when i figured out the room was full of animals that are now extinct. i couldn't get over the number of different wildlife that were no longer walking on this earth. it was pretty tragic really and in a way quite embrassing as a human being. i felt terrible that this is the only way of seeing these beautiful creatures. the second exhibit was women being abused. i actually have seen a couple of exhibits like this in Glasgow, there must've been a big problem here in past or perhaps even present, it was pretty full on and something i didn't really expect in a museum, but i think it was a good idea to teach children that its not ok to abuse people, physically or emotionally.
Glasgow science centre is an interesting modern building and just across the river from it is the Scottish exhibition and conference centre, to me, when you look at them together they both kind of look like two big snails sliding along the riverside. not suprising i suppose, scotland has great weather for snails, its generally drizzling. The Barras Market was 'interesting' to say the very least, if you want to go people watching, here was the place to do it. i'm pretty sure half the stuff there was hot goods, if not it was going to be stolen for the stall. The Barras Market was right near the Peoples Palace which, in my opinion is nothing to really rave about except for the glass house on the back of it. it boasts about its terracotta fountain at the front of the building, supposedly its the only one of its kind from that era.
something i really enjoyed seeing was the Clava cairns. they are these ancient burial mounds that are thousands of years old. looking at them, theyre a little bit like stonehenge i suppose but with a pile of rocks in the middle. not much is really known about them apart from they used to cremate people in them. so amazing.
we went to a waterfall on the way home and there was a small old building on the top of crest that overlooked the waterfall. it turns out it was owned by one of the Dukes that lived around there a few centuries ago, and lets just say it wasn't used for hoildays. the Duke had a taste for ladies of the night and would take them up there. so i guess you could call him a McPimp daddy!
on the trip i heard so much about the different clans, Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, the Campbells (not the soup company) and the McDonalds (not the fast food resturant) and it was a little hard to take it all in. but one thing i did take in was it was a very violent history did you know that to find out if you were a witch they would throw you into a river and see if you drowned, if you did, congrats your not a witch however your dead and if you did float you were burnt at the stake. another way of finding out if you were a witch was if you had red hair, so if if you had fanta pants your in big trouble!
it was really nice to get out into the country for a bit, such a nice change from seeing cities. the only annoying thing was that the tour ended in Edinburgh so i had to catch a train back to Glasgow, but it ended up being quite good because i was sitting right near the toilet on the train, generally its not the hottest seat on the train but this time it was. there was this drunk guy on the train and he was trying to get the door to the toilet open but he didn't realise that it was an automatic door and all he had to do was push a button, instead he was trying to pull the door open. i was going to tell him, but it was too funny. then he finally openned it and went inside. i pushed the button so it would close but he didn't see me. the look of confusement on his face was priceless, anyway after a while he tried to force the door open again, by this stage there were a few people aware of what was going on and we all just look at each other and giggled. when he finally got out he said in a drunk scottish ascent 'that toilets haunted!' i couldn't help but laugh. classic.
Something i'm really enjoying about the UK in general is the radio soaps. call me an old foggy but they are pretty good! so nice to hear theater of the mind. i don't think they do them in Oz, which is a real shame. this probably explains why i'm so bad at coming up with ideas for radio ads! so far the food over here has been rubbish! its no wonder a lot of people over here are so over weight. i went into a fish and chip shop one day and ordered some chips, the girl behind the counter asked if i wanted some sauce on my chips i said 'i'll just have some salt please' the girl nearly fell over with shock, she said that everyone that orders chips from here always put a million types of sauces and stuff on it. i told her i was a purist! however the only thing unhealthy that has sucked me in is fudge, i could eat the stuff all day!
Oh well, that was the Glasgow experience, now i'm off to Belfast. Bye!
Something i learnt pretty early on in my stay here was they are mad about this guy called Charles Rennie Mackintosh, he was an architect and you can't go far without seeing a building of his, there littered throughout the city. i went to a tea room that he designed called 'The willow tea rooms' on the Sauchiehall street. they were quite nice i suppose. not far from there is the Glasgow school of Art which i think he help design also, this is where band Franz Ferdinand went to school.
Something i did like was the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (i think it was better than the Modern art gallery). there were some nice pieces of art work in there, even a Dali. but there were two displays there that touched me the most. the first was a huge display of stuffed animals around the world, the kids were going nuts for them. but it really shocked me when i figured out the room was full of animals that are now extinct. i couldn't get over the number of different wildlife that were no longer walking on this earth. it was pretty tragic really and in a way quite embrassing as a human being. i felt terrible that this is the only way of seeing these beautiful creatures. the second exhibit was women being abused. i actually have seen a couple of exhibits like this in Glasgow, there must've been a big problem here in past or perhaps even present, it was pretty full on and something i didn't really expect in a museum, but i think it was a good idea to teach children that its not ok to abuse people, physically or emotionally.
Glasgow science centre is an interesting modern building and just across the river from it is the Scottish exhibition and conference centre, to me, when you look at them together they both kind of look like two big snails sliding along the riverside. not suprising i suppose, scotland has great weather for snails, its generally drizzling. The Barras Market was 'interesting' to say the very least, if you want to go people watching, here was the place to do it. i'm pretty sure half the stuff there was hot goods, if not it was going to be stolen for the stall. The Barras Market was right near the Peoples Palace which, in my opinion is nothing to really rave about except for the glass house on the back of it. it boasts about its terracotta fountain at the front of the building, supposedly its the only one of its kind from that era.
One thing Glasgow is known for is its music scene. quite a lot of big bands come from here, like Franz Ferdinand, Travis, Belle and Sebastian, the list goes on. i checked out 'King Tuts Wah Wah bar' (which is consistently voted one of the best venues in thr UK) and 'the Arches' which is where a lot of the bands played some of there first gigs. so that was kinda cool, they were both pretty cool bars. i can't say i really enjoyed Glasgow as much as i thought i might, i don't really know why, i just don't think it lived up to expectations. i would say West End was the only part i truely liked, they had some good shops, interesting laneways and a good vibe about it which i kind of felt the rest of the city lacked a little.
while i was in Glasgow i took a 2 day tour up to the highlands. the scottish highlands are absolutely stunning, and i had a really great time. i think it helped that we had amazing weather and our views weren't spoilt, but also, our tour guide was hilarious and had a one liner for everything, he was brilliant off the cuff too. he took us to some really amazing places and things (we saw highland cows too, which are one of the oldest breed of cows in the world.) i was suprised to find that the mountains aren't that high in comparison to other ones around the world, but our guide was saying that more people had died climbing them than in the Alps. mainly becuase they don't look that high up and they underestimate the climb. while we were up in the highlands i saw my first dump of snow since i've been in europe. and naturally we had a good old fashioned snow ball fight! brilliant! along the we saw plenty of lochs but of course we saw the most famous of them all. Loch Ness, funnily enough i didn't see Nessie but supposidly over time, a thousand people have. the whole time i was there i kept thinking of this episode of 'The Goodies' and how they went for a swim in the loch and got chased by the loch ness. pretty strange i haven't watched the goodies since i was really really little. its funny what you remember.
we stayed the night in a place called Inverness which was a really pretty little town. even though its quite small, the girl that worked at the hostel told me, its known for its music and have a lot of great bands in the area, also the guy who wrote Peter Pan is from here. on the trip i met a guy from Spain, Ismael, he was there with his girlfriend who didn't speak much english. so when we stopped in Inverness they saw a spanish restaurant and said that i MUST come with them to try some tapas with them. it was actually a really good experience because they told me about the foods and how they should taste and how they're cooked. it was funny, ordered one dish that had blood sausage in it, Ismael asked the waiter where abouts the sausage was from and it turned out it was from the same butcher that his girlfriends father worked at. small world. i spoke to Ismael about his english and asked him if he learnt it in school, he told me that he did get taught it at school but he mainly learnt english from playing Nintendo! he told me when he was a little kid he got a Nintendo but all the games were in english so he was sit down in front of the TV with a controller and a dictionary to translate the words! i couldn't help but laugh. TAKE THAT all those people that say you don't learn anything from computer games!
something interesting i learnt while i was on the trip was that the kilt you see today is different to the way they originally were. they actually were a lot bigger and thicker and were used mainly in the highlands becuase it was so wet up there, it was quicker and easier to get throught the terrain if you didn't have pants on because you would get weighed down when they got wet. also they would smear animal fat on them to keep them waterproof and of a night use it to wrap themselves up in to keep warm.something i really enjoyed seeing was the Clava cairns. they are these ancient burial mounds that are thousands of years old. looking at them, theyre a little bit like stonehenge i suppose but with a pile of rocks in the middle. not much is really known about them apart from they used to cremate people in them. so amazing.
we went to a waterfall on the way home and there was a small old building on the top of crest that overlooked the waterfall. it turns out it was owned by one of the Dukes that lived around there a few centuries ago, and lets just say it wasn't used for hoildays. the Duke had a taste for ladies of the night and would take them up there. so i guess you could call him a McPimp daddy!
on the trip i heard so much about the different clans, Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, the Campbells (not the soup company) and the McDonalds (not the fast food resturant) and it was a little hard to take it all in. but one thing i did take in was it was a very violent history did you know that to find out if you were a witch they would throw you into a river and see if you drowned, if you did, congrats your not a witch however your dead and if you did float you were burnt at the stake. another way of finding out if you were a witch was if you had red hair, so if if you had fanta pants your in big trouble!
it was really nice to get out into the country for a bit, such a nice change from seeing cities. the only annoying thing was that the tour ended in Edinburgh so i had to catch a train back to Glasgow, but it ended up being quite good because i was sitting right near the toilet on the train, generally its not the hottest seat on the train but this time it was. there was this drunk guy on the train and he was trying to get the door to the toilet open but he didn't realise that it was an automatic door and all he had to do was push a button, instead he was trying to pull the door open. i was going to tell him, but it was too funny. then he finally openned it and went inside. i pushed the button so it would close but he didn't see me. the look of confusement on his face was priceless, anyway after a while he tried to force the door open again, by this stage there were a few people aware of what was going on and we all just look at each other and giggled. when he finally got out he said in a drunk scottish ascent 'that toilets haunted!' i couldn't help but laugh. classic.
Something i'm really enjoying about the UK in general is the radio soaps. call me an old foggy but they are pretty good! so nice to hear theater of the mind. i don't think they do them in Oz, which is a real shame. this probably explains why i'm so bad at coming up with ideas for radio ads! so far the food over here has been rubbish! its no wonder a lot of people over here are so over weight. i went into a fish and chip shop one day and ordered some chips, the girl behind the counter asked if i wanted some sauce on my chips i said 'i'll just have some salt please' the girl nearly fell over with shock, she said that everyone that orders chips from here always put a million types of sauces and stuff on it. i told her i was a purist! however the only thing unhealthy that has sucked me in is fudge, i could eat the stuff all day!
Oh well, that was the Glasgow experience, now i'm off to Belfast. Bye!
Edinburgh
the story of Edinburgh starts with a bus ride to the airport. i got stuck sitting next to this Indian guy how kept asking me questions, but i had absolutely NO idea what he was saying. i had to asked him to repeat it a million times. but i think he was incredibly dodgy. the questions i did understand were 'can i buy flight to Rome at airport i don't have ticket' and half way there he said 'how much longer until airport' which made me think, why is this guy in such a rush to get out of the country. then he said 'immigration? will they check immigration at airport?' i think he was smuggling curry or something... THATS RACIST!! sorry, bad joke. then on the flight i fell asleep and i woke up with some strange hippy girl asleep on my shoulder. scared the shit out of me!
Edinburgh is a really beautiful place. i kind of have to kick myself sometimes when i get to places because its hard to believe i'm there. one of those moments was looking up at the old castle that has so much history attached to it like Mary Queen of Scots and all that Jazz. i went up and had a look around and saw the crown jewels and the stone of destiny. The stone of destiny is a really big thing to the Scottish people, i was where the first king of Scotland sat when he was crowned. to put a long story short, it was taken by the English and kept at Westminster abbey until in the 1950's where some Scottish students stole it and brought it back to Scotland. but after they got it all the way to Scotland it was taken back again by the English. but it was eventually given back to the Scots in the mid 90's. another thing about the castle is at 1 o'clock they set off a cannon. they have done this for hundreds of years so that the ships down at the docks in Leith know what time it is. i really enjoyed walking around old town, its so beautiful walking around the small lane ways. i didn't like the New town as much but i liked its design. it was designed so it looked like the union jack, but it turned out more like the Scottish flag.
at the other end of the Royal Mile is the the Palace of Holyrood House, which is where the Queen comes to stay when shes in Scotland, but shes not such a hit around here. in fact the Scots HATE the English, so, needless to say, she doesn't visit very often. but right near there is Arthur's seat which is quite a climb, i think i deserved some kind of medal for getting to the top. i was exhausted! but the view was truly worth it. amazing to say the least.
not too far from there is Calton Hill which i think is a funny part of town. on top of the hill is this big Greek half finished Parthenon kind of thing which seems a bit out of place. it was put there because Edinburgh was considered the Athens of the United Kingdom and began to build this thing, but ran out of money and never finished it because one one liked it.
I really enjoyed walking around the botanical gardens too, they were really beautiful but best of all there were heaps and heaps of squirrels! they are really cute, i couldn't get over how close they come up to you and check you out.
i really enjoy the Scottish humor too. for instance there is a wine bar called 'the last drop' and most people might think it was named that because of the wine. but actually its because in front of the bar is where they would hang people. hence the last drop. also there is a statue of a guy named Hume. and the story goes he didn't believe in superstitions so the Scottish people tell tourists to rub his big toe for good luck!
in the UK, national museums are free to check out so i went a bit museum crazy. i saw a Rembrandt, Monet, a couple of Van Goghs and a Lucian Freud which was quite cool. also in one of the museums they keep Dolly the Sheep. you might remember Dolly, she was the first mammal ever cloned. and did you know they named her Dolly after Dolly Pardon. why? because she was cloned from the breast of another sheep. (theres that Scottish humor again!)
I'm a sucker when it comes to terms and phrases and where they come from. a heard a beauty while i was here. at one stage before it plumbed people would throw there waste outside on the street. as you could imagine it caused a bit of a mess as well as a bit of a smell, so the government passed a law so that everyone at 1opm had to go to there window and yell out something along the lines of 'watch out below!' then throw the waste out the window. the only problem with that was a lot of the pubs closed at 10pm also. so, if your a little bit drunk, stumbling down the street on your way home and you hear someone yell something out the window above you, your most likely going to look up. except if you did on this occasion you would get a whole lotta shit on your face. hence this is where the term 'shit faced' came from.
There are some really amazing stories in Edinburgh. there was this really when known locksmith in Edinburgh who was known for being really trustworthy and he did the locks for all the people in town, especially the rich, but the truth was, he would keep the spare key and rob people without having to force entry. it baffled the police for years. and it ended up being the inspiration for the book 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'.
another great story is of this woman called Maggie Dickson. she had a baby out of wedlock (or something like that, i can't fully remember) anyway, it was enough to get get here hanged. after she was hanged and pronounced dead, put into a coffin and started hauling the coffin up to the cemetery they heard some knocking. they opened the coffin and found her alive so they went to hang her again and as they put her head in the noose some lawyer yelled from the back 'you can't actually do that, you can't hang someone twice for the same crime' so lucky for her she got off. then opened a bar right across from where they she nearly died in an area called the Lawnmarket.
another is of these two guys called Bourke & Hare. the story goes, one of them had a girlfriend who was a landlord and she was upset because one of her tenants died penniless and owed here £3 (which was a lot of money in those days) so old Bourke and Hare took the body up to the university to be used for medical purposes. and got £7 in return for the body. which made the two men think, if they kept getting bodies they could make a lot of money, so the two went on a massive killing spree and killed somewhere between 15 to 35 people until they got found out. crazy. with stories like this its no wonder that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's brain started ticking over and created a character by the name of Sherlock Holmes to fix some of the crime going on around the town. living in Edinburgh there would've been plenty of inspiration around, the stories would pretty much write themselves.
The national dish here is Haggis so i had to give it a go. and to be honest it didn't look exactly as i thought it might but it tasted pretty good, it was served with neeps and tatties which in plain English turnips and potatoes. while i'm on the topic of how things are pronounced, i know that i'm in an English speaking country but sometime i really don't think i am. the accent here is so strong, i'm forever going 'pardon?' or 'could you repeat that?'. anyway, i think the national dish here shouldn't be Haggis, it should be the deep fried mar bar! thats right, a mars bar, battered and deep fried. its actually really tasty. i believe its more of Glaswegian thing so it should be interesting what else they deep fry when i get to Glasgow.
Something that i really like about Edinburgh is there commitment to being Carbon Neutral by 2020 and are at the moment putting in a tram system around the city. its causing a bit of chaos, because of the road works, but good on them for there forward thinking i say! anyway, off to Glasgow to try all there deep fried treats. more soon!
Stockholm
The bus ride didn't really go as planned. i still had half a book to read but before i knew it i had finished it and was no way near half way on the bus. I'm still in two minds about whether or not i liked the ending of it. some days i do some days i don't. on the bus just sitting across from me was some really old guy that i thought might keel over at any moment. he was coughing and spluttering the whole way, at one point i did think he was going to make it to Stockholm, actually, he didn't... he got off a couple of stops before.
a bit of a positive is a got into a really good hostel. Eleni (the Australian girl i met in Gothenburg) told me about the place. its quite central and you get free pasta there (so guess what I've been eating for lunch and dinner all this week?), a sauna (which is a must do when your in Sweden, however your meant to go naked i didn't fancy getting kicked out of the hostel so i kept my boardies on.), free internet and free ice skate hire! naturally i had to go for a skate, i hadn't been in years, i was a little shaky at first but after a while i got into the swing of it, it was like riding a bike. it was really nice to go skating outside too. I've never experienced that before. oh, and i didn't fall over once! while i was here they showed a swedish film called 'Evil' it was about a boy who used to get beaten by his step father and got sent to a boarding school where he got bullied, it was quite a good film actually, i won't tell you the end, but i'm sure you can guess it.
while i was there i met 3 English blokes. one of them was moving over here to be with his girlfriend and the other 2, as they put it, were here to make sure he stays here. they were really funny guys and we went out one night to checkout the nightlife in the Stureplan. because they were clubs, i didn't really enjoy them much, not really my scene, but the company was good. i have to say the next day i struggled a fair bit. i think the best part of town for going out at night and also for checking out during the day was the Sodermalm area. with some really cool little bars with great vibes as well as great clothing stores, new and old.
something that doesn't really have to do with Stockholm, but just up the road from when I'm staying is a really good record shop, i found an original Rolling Stones 'Sticky fingers' record that had the fly stuck on the front, just as Andy Warhol had intended when he designed the record. they stopped reproducing them with the fly because the records would get damaged from the fly sticking in them. i guess something that doesn't really have anything to do with Stockholm but i was excited by it.
something interesting I've found here is when you go to the supermarket, you don't hand your money to the check out chick, you put it in a money counting machine and it spits out the correct change for you.
i was actually really shocked at the size of Stockholm, its really quite big, compared to many of the other places I've been before. but its really nice to just walk around and take it all in there are some really cute little streets. i took a walk around the old town which is quite pretty with little streets (some of them are REALLY small) and tall buildings leaning in on each other. it kind of reminded me of parts of Prague actually. very nice. also its where the Royal Palace of Sweden is so that was kinda cool to see i guess, but i believe its not really where the Royals live. i got a kick out of the kids that were mucking around taking the piss out of the statues. some of the statues are quite camp to say the least, and one little boy did a great impression.
on my way to ice skating i saw this place called the Kulturhuset which, when i looked in the window, looked like there was interpretive dancing classes, which was hilarious! i know that the swedes are really big on the arts, for instance they really encourage music in schools from an early age. which, kinda explains ABBA!
it seems everyone here wears either Nudie jeans or Cheap Monday jeans. and rightly so, there both really good Swedish brands. I've had a couple of pairs of Nudies, there brilliant. but i have to say, i like the Cheap Monday story. 3 guys opened a shop in outer Stockholm called 'Weekend' (because it was only open Saturday and Sunday) considering it was a little out of the CBD, the shop took off. one of the guys saw that a lot of what they were selling was so expensive and felt they could make a cheaper alternative that was the same quality. so they created Cheap Monday. within a couple of weeks they sold out of there jeans. i went to a store that sold Cheap Monday and i couldn't get over how many types of jeans they had, it was mental. they have grown so much since 2004. and i never knew they made shoes either, they might be something new.
it was raining one of the days i was here so it was good museum weather so i checked out the Vasa Museum which holds this big old ship that sank 350 years ago then in the 1960's they pulled it out of the ocean, restored it, and built a museum around it. when the Vasa set sail it was one of the mightiest warships in the world with something like 60 odd guns and 300 soldiers. but i didn't get far, the ship sank within a few minutes of it sailing. in the 17th century there were no scientific methods of calculating a ships stability, it turns out it was quite common for warships to sink back in those days. it was pretty amazing to see, it looked like Captain Hook's ships from Peter Pan, i couldn't get over the detail in the carvings. Brilliant!
one night i check out the Absolut Ice bar, there are a few around the world now, but i believe, from what I've been told, this was the first one. it was a bit pricey but i justified it because you got a free drink. i have to say its not normally something i would do, but i did think it was pretty good advertising. creating a ice bar and incorporating your brand by having complementary drinks of Absolut cocktails served in an ice glass. though the way they create the bar and carve the ice is pretty clever.
i think i would've liked to have stayed a little longer in Stockholm but i'm flying to Edinburgh, i got some really cheap flights at Ryan Air a couple of weeks back so i had to go. but, i'm looking forward to seeing a bit of the UK. more when i get there.
a bit of a positive is a got into a really good hostel. Eleni (the Australian girl i met in Gothenburg) told me about the place. its quite central and you get free pasta there (so guess what I've been eating for lunch and dinner all this week?), a sauna (which is a must do when your in Sweden, however your meant to go naked i didn't fancy getting kicked out of the hostel so i kept my boardies on.), free internet and free ice skate hire! naturally i had to go for a skate, i hadn't been in years, i was a little shaky at first but after a while i got into the swing of it, it was like riding a bike. it was really nice to go skating outside too. I've never experienced that before. oh, and i didn't fall over once! while i was here they showed a swedish film called 'Evil' it was about a boy who used to get beaten by his step father and got sent to a boarding school where he got bullied, it was quite a good film actually, i won't tell you the end, but i'm sure you can guess it.
while i was there i met 3 English blokes. one of them was moving over here to be with his girlfriend and the other 2, as they put it, were here to make sure he stays here. they were really funny guys and we went out one night to checkout the nightlife in the Stureplan. because they were clubs, i didn't really enjoy them much, not really my scene, but the company was good. i have to say the next day i struggled a fair bit. i think the best part of town for going out at night and also for checking out during the day was the Sodermalm area. with some really cool little bars with great vibes as well as great clothing stores, new and old.
something that doesn't really have to do with Stockholm, but just up the road from when I'm staying is a really good record shop, i found an original Rolling Stones 'Sticky fingers' record that had the fly stuck on the front, just as Andy Warhol had intended when he designed the record. they stopped reproducing them with the fly because the records would get damaged from the fly sticking in them. i guess something that doesn't really have anything to do with Stockholm but i was excited by it.
something interesting I've found here is when you go to the supermarket, you don't hand your money to the check out chick, you put it in a money counting machine and it spits out the correct change for you.
i was actually really shocked at the size of Stockholm, its really quite big, compared to many of the other places I've been before. but its really nice to just walk around and take it all in there are some really cute little streets. i took a walk around the old town which is quite pretty with little streets (some of them are REALLY small) and tall buildings leaning in on each other. it kind of reminded me of parts of Prague actually. very nice. also its where the Royal Palace of Sweden is so that was kinda cool to see i guess, but i believe its not really where the Royals live. i got a kick out of the kids that were mucking around taking the piss out of the statues. some of the statues are quite camp to say the least, and one little boy did a great impression.
on my way to ice skating i saw this place called the Kulturhuset which, when i looked in the window, looked like there was interpretive dancing classes, which was hilarious! i know that the swedes are really big on the arts, for instance they really encourage music in schools from an early age. which, kinda explains ABBA!
it seems everyone here wears either Nudie jeans or Cheap Monday jeans. and rightly so, there both really good Swedish brands. I've had a couple of pairs of Nudies, there brilliant. but i have to say, i like the Cheap Monday story. 3 guys opened a shop in outer Stockholm called 'Weekend' (because it was only open Saturday and Sunday) considering it was a little out of the CBD, the shop took off. one of the guys saw that a lot of what they were selling was so expensive and felt they could make a cheaper alternative that was the same quality. so they created Cheap Monday. within a couple of weeks they sold out of there jeans. i went to a store that sold Cheap Monday and i couldn't get over how many types of jeans they had, it was mental. they have grown so much since 2004. and i never knew they made shoes either, they might be something new.
it was raining one of the days i was here so it was good museum weather so i checked out the Vasa Museum which holds this big old ship that sank 350 years ago then in the 1960's they pulled it out of the ocean, restored it, and built a museum around it. when the Vasa set sail it was one of the mightiest warships in the world with something like 60 odd guns and 300 soldiers. but i didn't get far, the ship sank within a few minutes of it sailing. in the 17th century there were no scientific methods of calculating a ships stability, it turns out it was quite common for warships to sink back in those days. it was pretty amazing to see, it looked like Captain Hook's ships from Peter Pan, i couldn't get over the detail in the carvings. Brilliant!
one night i check out the Absolut Ice bar, there are a few around the world now, but i believe, from what I've been told, this was the first one. it was a bit pricey but i justified it because you got a free drink. i have to say its not normally something i would do, but i did think it was pretty good advertising. creating a ice bar and incorporating your brand by having complementary drinks of Absolut cocktails served in an ice glass. though the way they create the bar and carve the ice is pretty clever.
i think i would've liked to have stayed a little longer in Stockholm but i'm flying to Edinburgh, i got some really cheap flights at Ryan Air a couple of weeks back so i had to go. but, i'm looking forward to seeing a bit of the UK. more when i get there.
Oslo
the train, i feel way have gone a little too well. except for the customs people setting there hound on me, but if i were them i would've too, (my hair is really long and i haven't shaved in about a month, i look a little bit like 'The Dude' from the movie 'The Big Lebowski'.) i read about half of the book! which i was hoping would take me longer. but its such a good book, it was hard to put it down. oh well, hopefully there is a good book swap up ahead. i was thinking maybe i should read all the classics while i'm away, i've been meaning to read 'The Animal Farm' for years. by the way i think i'm falling in love with the Swedish scenery. its absolutley stunning! plenty of trees and every so often you see a beautiful lake. oh, and in Norway i saw plenty of Norwegian Wood (see what i did there).
Oslo is a really nice place. the town is quite tradional, you know the deal, tree lined streets, beautiful old buildings etc. probably 15% of it is new building the rest are pretty old. the only really cool new one is the Opera house it was only openned this year. and they seem quite proud of it, theres photos on just about every tourist pamphlet you pick up. and i don't think the town is that big really, you can walk it easily.
Famous artist Edvard Munch is from here, there quite fond of him too. so much so he has his own Museum, i didn't bother going because i'm not a huge fan and i saw a lot of his works when they came to Australia a couple of years back. his most famous painting is 'The Scream' and i think i know what happened to make him paint it. he must have gone into a shop and seen the price tag of something because EVERYTHING here is so expensive. i've been cooking for myself so thats been saving me quite a bit of money. thank god i can cook pasta! funny thing happened while i was at the supermarket. i was looking for some canned tuna and was walking down the aisle when i saw a can in the corner of my eye. i went over to inspect it and found that there was a picture of a little girl on the can and not much else. i turned to the person next to me and showed them the can and said 'surely theyre not canning little children, are they?' turns out it was like a chicken paste that you put on bread. i brought some to try it. it was rubbish, maybe it was a little girl.
its funny i was having a wander around the Royal Palace gardens, just minding my business when the guards started making a bit of fuss. i thought they were changing guards or something, but then i realised it was too early for that so i went up to inspect a little, when some guy in a limo rolls out of the palace and gives me a wave. i waved back and i turned to a girl who was standing not far from me taking a photo of the limo and i asked her 'who was that?' and see replied 'The King of Norway'. i dunno if it was, because really, she could've told me anything, i had no idea what the hell the King of Norway looks like. but i'm gonna run with it.
i also checked out sculpture park which was quite pretty. there are over 200 statues of naked people doing all different sorts of things and in the middle is a pillar thats made out of people climbing and laying on top of each other. quite amazing really.
a part i really liked was checking out the Akershus Fortress and Castle which is built right on the water. i found it so interesting because it must be centuries old and to build something like that back then, just to collect all the rocks and stack them correctly to make it would've taken so long! i was equally amazed when i went to the Viking ship Museum. the Viking were clever guys, there boats were designed to be really shallow so they could come right up close to the land so they could attack with a suprise. also i couldn't get over how a lot of the things they used back then, is essentially the same design as today or are made in a similar way. i never realised that the Vikings were quite similar to the Egyptians when it comes to the after life. when Vikings died they were buried in there boat. and it would be filled with food and drink as well as jewels (in one case they found a peacock!) to prepare you for the next life. i learnt so much at that museum i can't wait to do a little bit of raping and pillaging when i get back home (i know, bad joke)
i went into a clothing store in the city and had a chat with the guy behind the counter for what felt like a good hour. he was a really cool guy, the shop was his (if you were wondering, it was called 'Vegas') and he was telling me about his trip to Australia and about sharks, boy this kid knew about sharks! Sounds like Norweigans as tight buggers too, he was saying that Norway is one of the richest places on earth but still a lot of the Norwegians go over to Sweden to do there shopping because prices here are too high. by the way there are some great little shops around too. i was just a little bit outside of the city when i found a couple of streets that had all these cool cafes, bars and vintage clothing stores. brilliant! and i think i found the best music store EVER, some really great vinyl as well as CD's. you name it they had it! there are some really cool furniture shops here too. i dunno where this love of furniture has come from but ever since i started traveling, i love going into furniture shops. strange!
i had a minor freak out the other day. i know what caused it too. its because i haven't been creative for a while. its something i've had for years but i've only in recent years figured out what it is and how to fix it. its like a strange energy i get and i can only let it out creatively and as you can imagine its a bit hard to do that at the moment. i get really restless and can't sleep properly its kinda strange. its a good thing when i can create but i'm finding it really frustrating at the moment.
Off to Stockholm next, which i think will be pretty cool. can't wait!
Oslo is a really nice place. the town is quite tradional, you know the deal, tree lined streets, beautiful old buildings etc. probably 15% of it is new building the rest are pretty old. the only really cool new one is the Opera house it was only openned this year. and they seem quite proud of it, theres photos on just about every tourist pamphlet you pick up. and i don't think the town is that big really, you can walk it easily.
Famous artist Edvard Munch is from here, there quite fond of him too. so much so he has his own Museum, i didn't bother going because i'm not a huge fan and i saw a lot of his works when they came to Australia a couple of years back. his most famous painting is 'The Scream' and i think i know what happened to make him paint it. he must have gone into a shop and seen the price tag of something because EVERYTHING here is so expensive. i've been cooking for myself so thats been saving me quite a bit of money. thank god i can cook pasta! funny thing happened while i was at the supermarket. i was looking for some canned tuna and was walking down the aisle when i saw a can in the corner of my eye. i went over to inspect it and found that there was a picture of a little girl on the can and not much else. i turned to the person next to me and showed them the can and said 'surely theyre not canning little children, are they?' turns out it was like a chicken paste that you put on bread. i brought some to try it. it was rubbish, maybe it was a little girl.
its funny i was having a wander around the Royal Palace gardens, just minding my business when the guards started making a bit of fuss. i thought they were changing guards or something, but then i realised it was too early for that so i went up to inspect a little, when some guy in a limo rolls out of the palace and gives me a wave. i waved back and i turned to a girl who was standing not far from me taking a photo of the limo and i asked her 'who was that?' and see replied 'The King of Norway'. i dunno if it was, because really, she could've told me anything, i had no idea what the hell the King of Norway looks like. but i'm gonna run with it.
i also checked out sculpture park which was quite pretty. there are over 200 statues of naked people doing all different sorts of things and in the middle is a pillar thats made out of people climbing and laying on top of each other. quite amazing really.
a part i really liked was checking out the Akershus Fortress and Castle which is built right on the water. i found it so interesting because it must be centuries old and to build something like that back then, just to collect all the rocks and stack them correctly to make it would've taken so long! i was equally amazed when i went to the Viking ship Museum. the Viking were clever guys, there boats were designed to be really shallow so they could come right up close to the land so they could attack with a suprise. also i couldn't get over how a lot of the things they used back then, is essentially the same design as today or are made in a similar way. i never realised that the Vikings were quite similar to the Egyptians when it comes to the after life. when Vikings died they were buried in there boat. and it would be filled with food and drink as well as jewels (in one case they found a peacock!) to prepare you for the next life. i learnt so much at that museum i can't wait to do a little bit of raping and pillaging when i get back home (i know, bad joke)
i went into a clothing store in the city and had a chat with the guy behind the counter for what felt like a good hour. he was a really cool guy, the shop was his (if you were wondering, it was called 'Vegas') and he was telling me about his trip to Australia and about sharks, boy this kid knew about sharks! Sounds like Norweigans as tight buggers too, he was saying that Norway is one of the richest places on earth but still a lot of the Norwegians go over to Sweden to do there shopping because prices here are too high. by the way there are some great little shops around too. i was just a little bit outside of the city when i found a couple of streets that had all these cool cafes, bars and vintage clothing stores. brilliant! and i think i found the best music store EVER, some really great vinyl as well as CD's. you name it they had it! there are some really cool furniture shops here too. i dunno where this love of furniture has come from but ever since i started traveling, i love going into furniture shops. strange!
i had a minor freak out the other day. i know what caused it too. its because i haven't been creative for a while. its something i've had for years but i've only in recent years figured out what it is and how to fix it. its like a strange energy i get and i can only let it out creatively and as you can imagine its a bit hard to do that at the moment. i get really restless and can't sleep properly its kinda strange. its a good thing when i can create but i'm finding it really frustrating at the moment.
Off to Stockholm next, which i think will be pretty cool. can't wait!
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is quite a nice little town but its a lot bigger that i thought it was going to be. i was expecting a quaint little fishing village or something, geez, i was wrong! its still quite quaint with beautiful little shops, tree lined streets, cute little gardens and laneways. overall its quite a tradional town, you don't see many really new Über (thought i'd pop that word in somewhere because its swedish) modern buildings which is nice. i was staying near the old town, all the roads there are cobble stoned and on the top of a hill is an old military tower, from there i got a great view of the city.
Gothenburg is well known for the Liseberg, which is there amusement park (i think its the biggest in Sweden) but it was closed until Christmas, because i think they decorated it for the Christmas period, which was a bit of a shame but i'm not really that shattered.
I met some people in my hostel that recognized me from the hostel in Hamburg, the group of them are from all over the world, the girls are from Austria, France and Portugal and the guys are from Spain and Poland. and they are all studying in Denmark. which made me think, i should've studied abroad, it would've been awesome! but i don't think it was offered in my course, oh well. they are all really friendly and one day we went to Sweden's biggest park, Slottsskogen. which was a bit of a highlight. it was really beautiful even though it rained a little bit. the park has a zoo in it and everything, i saw seals (who were such show pony's, once they knew you were watching they would show off and do tricks), penguins, dear, moose and many more. it was strange because there didn't seem to be anyone official around so it didn't really feel like a zoo, if there were a zoo like this in Australia i'm sure people would try and climb in and swim with the seals... i was tempted! the park itself had a few lakes and the golden leaves on the ground made it look picturesque!
you might remember how i wrote in my last blog about Scandinavians getting depressed from not getting much sunlight. in Gothenburg there are heaps on solarium's, there everywhere, theres even one in my hostel! i think this is there way of trying to fix the problem. so everyone here seems to have a great tan or at least some horrible tan lines - its a very fine line. while i'm on the topic of sunlight, it gets dark around 4:00pm here. which is so strange for me. and it kind of makes you feel tired, i was exhausted last night and it was only 9:00pm, i'm turning into a Nanna! soon i'll be having my dinner and 4:00pm!
I met a girl from Melbourne while i was here, her name was Eleni (i asked her about here name because i'd never heard of an Eleni before, i thought it might have been short for Melanie or something, she told me it was Greek and translated it means Helen) anyway, we checked out 'Cafe Publik', which was a cool, low key bar, just down the road from us. everyone that was drinking there was ridiculously cool, there's just something about the Scandinavians and i can't put my finger on it. it might be that everyone is really good looking and that they all dress really well, hopefully they all have terrible personalities so there is still a chance for people like myself.
an interesting fact about Sweden is they have restrictions on alcohol, for example: you can't buy highly alcoholic drinks in bars, you have to go to a special shop to buy it and regardless of how old you are (even if your 70!) you need to show ID. i'm pretty sure the government introduced it, pretty crazy, but i don't see many drunks wandering the streets.
one night when i was on my own i ran into a gallery openning, so i went inside and had a bit of a look around. the artwork was a bit out there. all the works were made out of fluro squares and triangles. i think if you had it hanging on your wall you would have a seizure every time you entered the room. but in the gallery they had some amazing chairs and furniture, which reminds me, there are some great furniture shops here, really interesting designs.
One thing i like about, not only Gothenburg but Europe in general is (this is really nerdy of me to say) its recycling. they have bins that are broken up into paper, plastic and general rubbish, which obviously makes it easier to recycle but also when you buy, for example, a coke you pay a little bit extra and then when your finished you bring it to any place that sells coke and you get a refund. its brilliant! i know they do it in Adelaide (i never thought i'd think Adelaide was cutting edge) why not do it all over Australia? its actually really good for homeless people also, i always see them picking up cans and bottles and recycling them for cash. sure beats them begging for money on the street.
a thing i found funny about Sweden is the Grey army here don't just one walking stick, they have TWO! so when they are walking down the street they look like they are skiing cross country. i think its called 'Nordic walking' keep a watch out for it Nanna, its coming to an RSL near you!
Overall i've found Sweden, so far, not to be that expensive which is really good, but all that is about to change, i'm going to visit Norway, possibly one of the most expensive places on earth! anyway more from Oslo when i get there, hopefully the train ride is made easier with my new purchase, a book, the classic 'The Catcher in the Rye'. i have to say i'm kinda embarrassed that i've never read it before. its one of those must-read-before-you-die books. though i've never been much of a reader, except for those 'goosebumps' books when i was a kid, but i'm pretty sure on m ost of them i gave up half way and never fully read them. anyway, looking forward to reading this one. cheerio!
Gothenburg is well known for the Liseberg, which is there amusement park (i think its the biggest in Sweden) but it was closed until Christmas, because i think they decorated it for the Christmas period, which was a bit of a shame but i'm not really that shattered.
I met some people in my hostel that recognized me from the hostel in Hamburg, the group of them are from all over the world, the girls are from Austria, France and Portugal and the guys are from Spain and Poland. and they are all studying in Denmark. which made me think, i should've studied abroad, it would've been awesome! but i don't think it was offered in my course, oh well. they are all really friendly and one day we went to Sweden's biggest park, Slottsskogen. which was a bit of a highlight. it was really beautiful even though it rained a little bit. the park has a zoo in it and everything, i saw seals (who were such show pony's, once they knew you were watching they would show off and do tricks), penguins, dear, moose and many more. it was strange because there didn't seem to be anyone official around so it didn't really feel like a zoo, if there were a zoo like this in Australia i'm sure people would try and climb in and swim with the seals... i was tempted! the park itself had a few lakes and the golden leaves on the ground made it look picturesque!
you might remember how i wrote in my last blog about Scandinavians getting depressed from not getting much sunlight. in Gothenburg there are heaps on solarium's, there everywhere, theres even one in my hostel! i think this is there way of trying to fix the problem. so everyone here seems to have a great tan or at least some horrible tan lines - its a very fine line. while i'm on the topic of sunlight, it gets dark around 4:00pm here. which is so strange for me. and it kind of makes you feel tired, i was exhausted last night and it was only 9:00pm, i'm turning into a Nanna! soon i'll be having my dinner and 4:00pm!
I met a girl from Melbourne while i was here, her name was Eleni (i asked her about here name because i'd never heard of an Eleni before, i thought it might have been short for Melanie or something, she told me it was Greek and translated it means Helen) anyway, we checked out 'Cafe Publik', which was a cool, low key bar, just down the road from us. everyone that was drinking there was ridiculously cool, there's just something about the Scandinavians and i can't put my finger on it. it might be that everyone is really good looking and that they all dress really well, hopefully they all have terrible personalities so there is still a chance for people like myself.
an interesting fact about Sweden is they have restrictions on alcohol, for example: you can't buy highly alcoholic drinks in bars, you have to go to a special shop to buy it and regardless of how old you are (even if your 70!) you need to show ID. i'm pretty sure the government introduced it, pretty crazy, but i don't see many drunks wandering the streets.
one night when i was on my own i ran into a gallery openning, so i went inside and had a bit of a look around. the artwork was a bit out there. all the works were made out of fluro squares and triangles. i think if you had it hanging on your wall you would have a seizure every time you entered the room. but in the gallery they had some amazing chairs and furniture, which reminds me, there are some great furniture shops here, really interesting designs.
One thing i like about, not only Gothenburg but Europe in general is (this is really nerdy of me to say) its recycling. they have bins that are broken up into paper, plastic and general rubbish, which obviously makes it easier to recycle but also when you buy, for example, a coke you pay a little bit extra and then when your finished you bring it to any place that sells coke and you get a refund. its brilliant! i know they do it in Adelaide (i never thought i'd think Adelaide was cutting edge) why not do it all over Australia? its actually really good for homeless people also, i always see them picking up cans and bottles and recycling them for cash. sure beats them begging for money on the street.
a thing i found funny about Sweden is the Grey army here don't just one walking stick, they have TWO! so when they are walking down the street they look like they are skiing cross country. i think its called 'Nordic walking' keep a watch out for it Nanna, its coming to an RSL near you!
Overall i've found Sweden, so far, not to be that expensive which is really good, but all that is about to change, i'm going to visit Norway, possibly one of the most expensive places on earth! anyway more from Oslo when i get there, hopefully the train ride is made easier with my new purchase, a book, the classic 'The Catcher in the Rye'. i have to say i'm kinda embarrassed that i've never read it before. its one of those must-read-before-you-die books. though i've never been much of a reader, except for those 'goosebumps' books when i was a kid, but i'm pretty sure on m ost of them i gave up half way and never fully read them. anyway, looking forward to reading this one. cheerio!
Växjö
Caught the train to Växjö. the trip was quite nice, beautiful country side which is thick full trees. i couldn't get over the fog in some spots it was so thick you could hardly see. When i got there i noticed how much colder it was, it least a few degrees colder at least. anyway, i found a phonebooth to change into my superman costume (only kidding) i called Andreas to let him know i was here so he could pick me up from the station, but the number he gave me had the country code on the front so i couldn't get through to him becuase i wasn't sure which numbers to drop so i went across to a music shop across the road and the man in the shop was so helpful, he didn't just explain to me which numbers to drop he actually let me use his phone. how nice!
when i spoke to andreas, his wife Christine had the car so he could pick me up in an hour so i spent the time walking around the town, which is quite small but very pleasent.
Andreas and Christine have a home just a short bit out of town in a nice area, they only just moved into there house recently and are in the middle of renovating. they brought it with there good friends Lars and Linda and they have divided the house, which is quite big, into 2 apartments. Lars and Linda and there 2 daughters live down stairs on one level, and Andreas, Christine and there 1 and a half year old Alve son live upstairs. Alve is a cute little kid, always smiling and talking to himself, he's such a little terror at times getting into everything and pushing boundries, but he's just at that age.
when he's not touring, Andreas is a stay at home dad, looking after Alve during the week and then he works a couple of days a week at a local TV station as a web programmer, he took me to see his work and got a bit of a tour of the studios etc. the part where he worked was where the designers were and had a pinball machine and a nintendo wii, it was really fun to be in a creative environment again, and it make me think of how much i kind of miss working and being creative on a daily basis. Christine works full time helping disabled people, which i think she would be very good at, she seems like a really kind, patient person.
While i was here we just mucked around and chilled out a lot of the time. we took Alve for walks around town and check out a few things like a local castle and a big water tower, that is designed in a way that when you stand directly under it your voice bounces around and creates an amazing delay, which was pretty cool. we caught up with the other guys from the band also and had a couple of drinks at there houses. Thomas (the drummer) and his girlfriend have also just moved into there new home, which is really nice. while i was there they played music from a few different Swedish bands, which was cool, i think i knew some of the songs. Thomas teaches drums his girlfriend is a nurse. another night we went to Pierre's, who is the other guitarist. he is still studying and lives on campus in a cool little student apartment. i think he teaches music also.
we all chatted about Sweden and Scandinavia in general, they were telling me that in the winter it gets realy dark here and that a lot a people get depressed because of lack of sunlight and its quite common for people to go on anti depressants. they also told me about the swedish royals and how when i get to copenhagen to watch out, they're not a great drivers and have a reputation of running people over! also childrens author Astrid Lindgren who wrote 'Pippi Longstocking' came from around the Växjö area and so did the guy who created IKEA.
it was really nice to chill out and do, in a sense, nothing for a bit. traveling constently does kind of get to you after a while. also to have some home cooked meals i was so sick of eating cheap rubbish food or my own cooking. it was so nice of everyone to have me stay at there place and hang out with me and show me around they are all really great people, it was kinda sad to say goodbye to them. off to Gothenborg next, more soon.
when i spoke to andreas, his wife Christine had the car so he could pick me up in an hour so i spent the time walking around the town, which is quite small but very pleasent.
Andreas and Christine have a home just a short bit out of town in a nice area, they only just moved into there house recently and are in the middle of renovating. they brought it with there good friends Lars and Linda and they have divided the house, which is quite big, into 2 apartments. Lars and Linda and there 2 daughters live down stairs on one level, and Andreas, Christine and there 1 and a half year old Alve son live upstairs. Alve is a cute little kid, always smiling and talking to himself, he's such a little terror at times getting into everything and pushing boundries, but he's just at that age.
when he's not touring, Andreas is a stay at home dad, looking after Alve during the week and then he works a couple of days a week at a local TV station as a web programmer, he took me to see his work and got a bit of a tour of the studios etc. the part where he worked was where the designers were and had a pinball machine and a nintendo wii, it was really fun to be in a creative environment again, and it make me think of how much i kind of miss working and being creative on a daily basis. Christine works full time helping disabled people, which i think she would be very good at, she seems like a really kind, patient person.
While i was here we just mucked around and chilled out a lot of the time. we took Alve for walks around town and check out a few things like a local castle and a big water tower, that is designed in a way that when you stand directly under it your voice bounces around and creates an amazing delay, which was pretty cool. we caught up with the other guys from the band also and had a couple of drinks at there houses. Thomas (the drummer) and his girlfriend have also just moved into there new home, which is really nice. while i was there they played music from a few different Swedish bands, which was cool, i think i knew some of the songs. Thomas teaches drums his girlfriend is a nurse. another night we went to Pierre's, who is the other guitarist. he is still studying and lives on campus in a cool little student apartment. i think he teaches music also.
we all chatted about Sweden and Scandinavia in general, they were telling me that in the winter it gets realy dark here and that a lot a people get depressed because of lack of sunlight and its quite common for people to go on anti depressants. they also told me about the swedish royals and how when i get to copenhagen to watch out, they're not a great drivers and have a reputation of running people over! also childrens author Astrid Lindgren who wrote 'Pippi Longstocking' came from around the Växjö area and so did the guy who created IKEA.
it was really nice to chill out and do, in a sense, nothing for a bit. traveling constently does kind of get to you after a while. also to have some home cooked meals i was so sick of eating cheap rubbish food or my own cooking. it was so nice of everyone to have me stay at there place and hang out with me and show me around they are all really great people, it was kinda sad to say goodbye to them. off to Gothenborg next, more soon.
Copenhagen
So the bus ride was an interesting one. I got to the bus depot at 7am (which is pretty bloody early for me) and found that my bus would be running half an hour late, which was fine. but half an hour turned into and hour and an hour quickly turned into 2 hours! the reason it was late was because the police were checking it out for drug smuggling, which supposidly is quite common on buses that go to Hamburg. Anyway, on the way to copenhagen i couldn't get over the amount of wind farms on the coast of germany, they were everywhere! i don't understand why, theres plenty of wind why do we need to farm more? (only kidding) there was one guy on the bus that must have loved them because he was going photo crazy! the bus ride took about 6 hours and included a trip on a boat, which was a VERY rocky ride, i definately didn't pack my sea legs. but i got there in eventually.
Famous Author Hans Christian Anderson came from Copenhagen and i can totally understand why he wrote some amazing fairytales, because Copenhangen is like a fairytale. there a big fan of him too, there is a street named after him and a statue as well as a few statues of his characters like the Little Mermaid. The town centre is quite old and boasts the worlds longest pedistrian street in the world, which are full of cafes, restraunts, bars, clothing stores etc. there are some really beautiful old buildings in it and outside there is a mix of old and new. what i liked is the new architecture is really modern but so tastefully done it works really well. the Opera house is a really good example of this. i really liked the Rivoli which is a beautiful old amusement park, unfortunately it was closed when i was there so i couldn't go on any of the rides. but it didn't stop me from taking a peak at some of them.
i went to the Royal Palace and thought i'd drop in and have tea with Princess Mary, i thought she might like some Australian company, but she wasn't home. they love her here, shes always in the papers and magazines. while i was there and totally by accident i saw the changing of the guards which was kinda cool. i actually nearly walked into the middle of the whole thing because i didn't realise what was happening. the guards look just like the ones in England but have different colours. while were on the topic of the royals a funny little fact is the Danish Queen married a French guy, who is now King of Demark, but he was too lazy to bother to learn Danish.
a really nice part of town is the Kings gardens which are stunning, full of box hedges and lush green gass also its close to the Rosenburg castle which hold the crown jewels. there were plenty of guards there but they clearly weren't doing there job very well, i just walked in and wandered around, it wasn't until later that i realised i had to pay to get in.
An interesting part of town is 'Christiania' it was originally an army barracks until the 70's when hippies and squatters moved in (by the way, why are they called squatters? the only logical explaination i can think of is, when dogs mark there terriory they wee, and a guess it might have been the same for humans at one stage. if anyone knows, please drop me an email and tell me) Christiania used to be known for its drug problem and at one stage it was legal to smoke pot there, but today its still bohemian, especially compared to the rest of Copenhagen, but its pretty tame, fully of hippy stalls and artwork etc.
I found 'Retro Cafe' where 'Final days Society' (the band i met in Hamburg) were playing and check out there show, they were glad to see me and introduced me to there girlfriends who had come down to Copenhagen to see the show. they joked that i was a confused groupie because i had actually never seen the band play. they were all really nice and the guitarist Andreas and his wife invited to stay at there place in Växjö for a couple of days which was very nice of them. by the way the show went really well, they were pretty tight as a band i liked there music too, kind of indie rock i suppose. we wound up having a few beers back at the hostel, which they were also stay at. they had brought a heap of alcohol from Germany becuase they told me that its cheaper to buy it there because of taxes, and that many Swedes regularly go to germany fill there car to the brim with alcohol and drive it back to Sweden!
some of the bars here are pretty cool too. there is one in particular that i found, where you can actually drink and do your laundry at the same time, it was really popular, i suppose it makes you want to do the washing, maybe i should start a bar where you do the ironing while you drink? i imagine there may be a few burnt shirts after a couple of beers.
there are some really cool places to shop also, wheather it be for vinyl or for threads, there are heaps of vintage shops as well as new cutting edge clothing. i have to say, everyone here is dressed so well, there is just something about them that makes them all look REALLY cool.
Famous Author Hans Christian Anderson came from Copenhagen and i can totally understand why he wrote some amazing fairytales, because Copenhangen is like a fairytale. there a big fan of him too, there is a street named after him and a statue as well as a few statues of his characters like the Little Mermaid. The town centre is quite old and boasts the worlds longest pedistrian street in the world, which are full of cafes, restraunts, bars, clothing stores etc. there are some really beautiful old buildings in it and outside there is a mix of old and new. what i liked is the new architecture is really modern but so tastefully done it works really well. the Opera house is a really good example of this. i really liked the Rivoli which is a beautiful old amusement park, unfortunately it was closed when i was there so i couldn't go on any of the rides. but it didn't stop me from taking a peak at some of them.
i went to the Royal Palace and thought i'd drop in and have tea with Princess Mary, i thought she might like some Australian company, but she wasn't home. they love her here, shes always in the papers and magazines. while i was there and totally by accident i saw the changing of the guards which was kinda cool. i actually nearly walked into the middle of the whole thing because i didn't realise what was happening. the guards look just like the ones in England but have different colours. while were on the topic of the royals a funny little fact is the Danish Queen married a French guy, who is now King of Demark, but he was too lazy to bother to learn Danish.
a really nice part of town is the Kings gardens which are stunning, full of box hedges and lush green gass also its close to the Rosenburg castle which hold the crown jewels. there were plenty of guards there but they clearly weren't doing there job very well, i just walked in and wandered around, it wasn't until later that i realised i had to pay to get in.
An interesting part of town is 'Christiania' it was originally an army barracks until the 70's when hippies and squatters moved in (by the way, why are they called squatters? the only logical explaination i can think of is, when dogs mark there terriory they wee, and a guess it might have been the same for humans at one stage. if anyone knows, please drop me an email and tell me) Christiania used to be known for its drug problem and at one stage it was legal to smoke pot there, but today its still bohemian, especially compared to the rest of Copenhagen, but its pretty tame, fully of hippy stalls and artwork etc.
I found 'Retro Cafe' where 'Final days Society' (the band i met in Hamburg) were playing and check out there show, they were glad to see me and introduced me to there girlfriends who had come down to Copenhagen to see the show. they joked that i was a confused groupie because i had actually never seen the band play. they were all really nice and the guitarist Andreas and his wife invited to stay at there place in Växjö for a couple of days which was very nice of them. by the way the show went really well, they were pretty tight as a band i liked there music too, kind of indie rock i suppose. we wound up having a few beers back at the hostel, which they were also stay at. they had brought a heap of alcohol from Germany becuase they told me that its cheaper to buy it there because of taxes, and that many Swedes regularly go to germany fill there car to the brim with alcohol and drive it back to Sweden!
some of the bars here are pretty cool too. there is one in particular that i found, where you can actually drink and do your laundry at the same time, it was really popular, i suppose it makes you want to do the washing, maybe i should start a bar where you do the ironing while you drink? i imagine there may be a few burnt shirts after a couple of beers.
there are some really cool places to shop also, wheather it be for vinyl or for threads, there are heaps of vintage shops as well as new cutting edge clothing. i have to say, everyone here is dressed so well, there is just something about them that makes them all look REALLY cool.
as my first taste of Scandinavia, Copenhagen was brilliant! i would've loved to have stayed longer but it was just too expensive. it was pretty hard to find a cheap eat around, even in the areas out of town. i was reduced to jam sandwiches a few times there. maybe i'll come back one day when i'm rich... i might be waiting a long time. anyway, i'm off to Växjö to stay with Andreas (from the band) and his family for a couple of days which should be fun. more when i get there.
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