elsie's romp through europe

17.06.06
Right, well, got back from London yesterday at some ungodly "thats what you get if you fly budget" hour and havnt stepped foot outside since. London was amazing. Even though ive been there before it was a totally new experience, mainly due to the fact that i am now 18...:-D I managed to meet up with a school buddy from new zeland which made the whole trip so much more exciting as we are both totally scatterbrained and embarrasingly naíve. On our first day we visited brick lane markets where we tried as much exotic food as we could bring ourselves to eat, including, morroccan pastries, spanish sweets, indian sweets, italian ice ceam (see a pattern?) coconut milk and greek salad with vine-leaf-rice-things, yumm! We then waddled round in the swealtering 30°+ heat-wave, i was cursing my new german ever-so-tight jeans from hamburg (but they are the only jeans in the whole of germany which are long enough and narrow enough and under 150EUR), but couldnt bring myself to part with 5pounds to buy a sarong. Then we (heres the naívety) headed off to Covent Gardens to find this so called garden and have a little lie down, so after being scornfully told by an obnoxious local that there was actually no garden, we wandered around aimlessly till did find a garden of some description and promptly fell asleep (with our arms wrapped tightly around our bags). We then headed off to the local aussie pub for some refreshments and a dose of down under-ness. then we went home. Although that sentence is misleadingly simple. we couldnt face the thought of the tube (where average daytime temp was around 40°C) we bravely attempted to catch a bus. les just say it didnt work and we found ourselves after 1 1/2 hours back at the tube station we'd started at. so we just said "f**k it, we'll catch the tube". Back at home we had a bottle of wine each with my auntie (best auntie in the world) and went to bed! the next day started at 5:45am with a trip to the tube and farewell to kitty my kiwi buddy and hello to london as a tourist. Actually i spent most of my time in Hyde part sitting under a tree snoozing, but it was just so damn hot!!! I did go to see chinatown and the national portrait gallery and the tate modern. Then Went out for dinner with my auntie and uncle (after the football ofcourse). Tuesday went with nz friend to the tower of london and the london dungeon (which was really fun!) then watched the brazil game at the australian pub, where we met a really nice (tall, blonde and hot) englishman who was planning on going to nz so we were advising him on where to go. then we joined the brazilian street party which was going on outside and i showed off my samba skills (or was it the salsa?) well anyway, id forgotten all the moves so i just shufffled my feet and wiggled my bum like the brazilians were doing, man can they dance!) we then (somehow) got ushered into a club with the band whod been plaing on the street, and the party started! There was quite a lot going on considering it was a tuesday night. Hooked up with the hottst guy i have ever seen in my entire life! he was a brazilian who was in london to learn english. but we then left after we found dodgy photos on his camera.. we then narrowly escaped with our lives after two guys invited us to their "newly opened club" in the inner bowels of soho with "soundproof" walls and no sign to speak of. after they asked us to go trough the musty black curtains on our right we (well my friend, i am as naíve as a....very naíve person)decided to get away as fast as we could, so we left after many protestations from the mottley group of men standing outside. We managed (much to our surprise) to find a bus that would take us home, but then we got out too early and had no idea where the hell we were. After coming across a mountain of flowers and for a girl who had been murdered there a couple of nights before we started to panick. We didnt want to get out our maps and advertise the fact that we were vulnerable lost tourists so we surupticiously (is that how you spell it?) looked around for any landmarks that would help us. well, there were none, but we did find an ambulance (my auntie doesnt live in the safest area...) who kindly informed us of the way. When we finally go home, we sat round in bed talking each others ears off when my friend let out a scream of pure terror and burried her face in my pillow while shrieking "theres a man at the open window!" now, not having my glasses on and not being able to see anything this was a terrifying thought. so after a few moments of panic in which i tried to hide under the blankets we didnt have (cos of the heatwave) i found my glasses and cautiously went over to the (open!) window. i reached out to close the curtains (the window was locked so no-one could get in) and suddenly the man jumped out from the bush he'd been hiding behind and gave me an evil grin. it scared the living daylights out of me, but i managed to close the curtains and ran screaming back to bed. naturally all this commotion woke my auntie who didn't understand why we were so scared...the next day was..wednesday, my "last" day in London (i say "last" day cos i got my flight times mixed up and thought i was leaving on wed when my flight was actually on thur...caused a few problems as you might imagine!)....Hmmm, i can't seem to remember what i did on those last two days...

bummer, my weeks holiday in north germany is now over! Managed to see quite a bit this time tho for a change. Went to the north sea and visited some of the tiny wierd little islands scattered around the place. one of the islands only had one little house all by its lonesome self. The landscape there is really...one of a kind, so unbelievably flat and (when i was there) grey and solitary, not the most exciting of places but great to chill out. and on these islands grows a special kind of salty grass which geese love, so every year 20% of the worlds goose population visits these islands and eats the grass, now that is a sight! Theres also a special type of excursion on offer called "watt wanderung" which is a trekk at low tide through the "watt" or mud. because a few decades ago the islands werent islands at all but throught some massive flood they became islands and now you can walk (albeit through a whole lot of black muck, which is meant to be really good for your feet) to some of the islands. I also stayed in Flensburg (harbour town) where the hairdresser managed to give me the exact same haircut i had when i was 12...i might avoid the 10EUR hairdressers from now on.
Now Hamburg is an awesome city! Friday night was spent on the "große freiheit" which used to be (and to tell teh truth still is) the red light district of hamburg. but now its metamorphisesed into party central. there are so so so many people and every type of club you can imagine, from the all to present techno, to clubs which have really good live rock bands, and anything else you can think of. haha, i dont know if its a common phenomena, but ive noticed the past few times ive been up north that there are always photographers wandering round taking photos of the party-goers. i dont know about the rest of the world, but for me 6 hours of dancing and countless tequilas (we ordered double the amount we wanted through the inevitable language barrier) dont equal the most flattering photos! i found a couple of me yesterday, its a bit unfair that the whole internet-accessing public can see them and then write comments in varying degrees of rudeness...oh well. Tomorrow its back to Hamburg for a great big shop and to pick up my jacket i left there (ooops), meet up with nice boy i met there (yay) and then its back to Munich till my next exploit!
over and out!

still two months till my trip to italy and am having a terrible time trying to organise and arrange everything. unreliable italian government train websites that either dont work or are (understandably) in italian are making it ever so hard to plan our trip. if it was up to me we'd just trekk our way over there and plan things as we went...but i spose if one only has two weeks and a very limited amount of euros its best to plan ahead...damn. but so far we have decided to start in rome, look round for a couple of days then catch a ferry to sardinia where we'll stay for 4/5 night (we decided that the whole beach experience was more important than the history). then were gonna catch a ferry to the mainland and make our way to ...(undecided) and then back down to rome, then over to munich! now all that fails is the details...

i saw advertised today flights for 19EUR to hamburg after i'd just paid 60 a couple of weeks ago...fairly annoying

22/04/06
as i am not actually travelling at the mo it seems a bit silly to start a travel blog at this point in time, but i have anyway so that i can write stuff when i do travel! apart from seeing the obvious dachau (where i live), ive been to saltzburg, augsburg, munich, bangkok (in transit)and the alps (german and austrian). in a couple of weeks im flying up to hamburg and then driving to a villiage close to kiel for a week to stay with family. i plan to update this blog thereafter if anything interesting happens... over and out!