6 months Europe

ITALY

We started our trip to Europe with no plan and no time scale. We left Copenhagen and traveled all the way down from there to Rome by bus. The journey was incredibly boring. So tiring and so irritating. There was a girl in front of me who did not stop twisting her hair and that just drove me mad!. We had an hours stop in Berlin which was nice, but not long enough.
When we arrived in Rome we went to the area that Adam and I stayed in a few years before, but for the life of me I couldn't remember where this hotel was, so we walked and walked around this area and bumped into two English guys who were also looking for somewhere to stay. We found a hotel room that the 4 of us could share that was cheaper than the rest, and stayed there the night. The next day we found a hostel and met up with 2 English and 2 New Zealand girls. For the next couple of days we all went around together. '
When it was time for us to go (we had seen what we wanted to see and eaten a lot of what we wanted to eat), The boys were heading in the same direction, the English girls changed theirs and the New zealander's just followed us all to Florence!. We had a fun journey there but things started to get hard when we were looking for accommodation. It was high season and all the accommodation was fully booked, so there are 8 of us walking up 8 flights of stairs to a hostel to see if there was room and then having to come down again because there wasn't. Maurice and I got jack of this soon into it and said we would look for something on our own. We found a hotel and stayed there the night.
The next day we bumped into the two English girls who told us that they had found an apartment that they were all sharing!. So that night we stayed with them in there. It was cramped but cozy!.
We had a great time with this group of new friends, but the apartment was only rented for a week and we wanted to stay longer. We said our goodbyes and went to a campsite above the city. It was fantastic, the camping was terrible, we were not prepared for camping apart from the tent!. But the location and the social atmosphere was wonderful. We had some lovely evenings, with our cooking pot (yes, our only camping equipment) looking out over the city watching the sun set, and eating food fresh from the local markets.
In this campsite, we met two Austrian girls who had a car and were driving back home, and said that they would drop us off in Venice if we wanted to, but they wanted to stay the night in Bologna. We were up for that and decided to go with them the following day. The journey was uncomfortable, as these girls had come totally prepared for any weather condition, sun (bbq, deck chairs...I think they even had a picnic table) or rain (board cames and probably ten packs of cards!) so we were all pretty much stuffed into their small car. But it was fun. It was also quite fun, trying to find where we were going in Bologna with no idea about where we were going, which roads were one way and I seem to remember seeing the same thing a few times as we were going round in circles. Eventually we found a hotel and parking space and settled into our room. Found a place to eat dinner that night and Maurice and I decided to go out for a few drinks. We found an Irish bar and met some silly Americans and drank the night away with them. Then we remembered that even though we had paid a lot of money for our room, we had a curfew, so had to be back by midnight, so Cinderella and I went back to the hotel to see if we could stay out later, but were angrily told 'no!'. Felt very young and naughty.
The next day we went to see the towers in Bologna (two towers on a slant, like the tower if Pisa) and started to make our way to Venice. The two girls found a campsite on their map for us and dropped us safely inside and we said our goodbyes to them.
Our first trip into Venice was wonderful (it took a while to get there from where we were staying, but it was worth it), we got lost and lost and lost round the wonderful winding streets, feeling like you were almost in a maze, trying to find either the beginning or the end and not too sure that if you found the end that you would want to exit!. Although it was an expensive place (we were on a budget for 6 months and we hadn't even done a month by then) it was well worth going to.

SLOVENIA

After Italy, we ended up in Slovenia, in the capital called Ljubliana. We found a hotel the first night that was grim and we were sharing a toilet with another room, with no locks on the doors and not very comfortable, and checked onto a campsite the next day. God knows why. It rained for the whole week that we stayed there, and we couldn't easily have packed up our tent in the rain as it was bucketing it down every 24 hours., everything was wet (then I found out after calling home that that was because the inner and outer parts of the tent were touching each other, but by then it didn't matter. Everything was damp cold and smelly). After exploring the city, we found that the campsite had a wide range of things we could do!, swimming (ok, too wet and cold anyway, but there was no water), biking (you must bring your own bikes), fishing (you must bring your own equipment) and horse riding (yes you guessed it you must bring your own horse). So instead, Maurice and I took a long long walk up the river, through bushes on some wonderful paths, and cooked lunch right next to the river...And the rain stopped for a while.
Finally the rain stopped long enough for us to pack everything up and get away.
We were headed for Hungary. The Lonely planet said that Australians can get their Visas at the road border crossings. So we took a bus as close as we could to the border and walked the rest of the way up a hill. In total I think that it was roughly 6 kms so it took us a long time, both with very heavy rucksacks. When we finally made it all the way up there, we tried to get through, but the customs officials gave me a stamp to get through, then realised that Maurice didn't have a visa, so had to cancel mine as Maurice wasn't allowed in!. We sat in a cafe there stuck, not too sure what to do. There would be a coach coming through the border back towards Lujbliana but that wasn't for another 6 hours, and we weren't guaranteed a seat on it. We started to walk back towards where we had got off the bus, back down the hill, to see if there would be another public bus to take us back to the city. Half way down, we both chickened out. By then it was dark, we had a torch that's batteries were failing, and if there was no public bus service, we would have to walk all the way back up the hill again anyway. So we sat in the customs cafe for hours. I passed away the time by getting very very sick (whether it was the horse burger I ate the day before or nerves, I'm no too sure) but I was sick for ages and ages.
When the coach finally came the customs officials had finally taken pity on us and even though they still wouldn't let us through they got on the coach and cleared the front seat for us, and made everyone else squash together so we could sit down!.
We arrived back in the city and found another hotel that were really sympathetic to me and gave me some tablets to take and we slept for a few hours. When I woke up, Maurice Maurice had already been out, and found the address for the embassy to go and get a visa and also train times, instead of going back to the border crossing again. By the I was feeling better, and joined him in going to the embassy. More problems followed as we had Slovenian currency and Hungarian currency and they would not take either, only dollars, so Maurice had to jump into a taxi to go and change the money, which he was not too happy about.
Finally, we were on the train and arriving into Budapest, with a visa.

HUNGARY

We met an Israeli guy on the train, who had been to Hungary before and took us to a hostel that he had stayed in and recommended. Apart from the reception staff, the people that stayed there were fantastic. It had a small little kitchen, with a HUGE big table so that you had to squeeze every time you wanted to sit down. We made a lot of friends there and had lots of days looking around Budapest with them. We actually met a guy, Sasha,there who we bumped into probably 2 years later in a kebab shop in Copenhagen!. The Turkish baths in Hungary were fantastic. We went to one place that was also a hotel, with around 10 different baths, all different temperatures, beautiful. I liked the atmosphere in Budapest, that and the fact that there was so much to see and do, the big markets, the Turkish baths, the Castle and hero's square among other things.

ROMANIA

When we finally pulled ourselves out of Hungary, we took a train to Romania.
Our first stop, as it had been a very long journey to the border, was a town called ............... That was just on the border of Hungary and Romania. As soon as we got off the train, we both realised that we were risking quite a lot stopping in this town as the station was full of gypsies and drunks. So, we took a deep breath and made our way into the crowds. All cheap accommodation was full up and it was even hard for us to find somewhere expensive to stay, but we finally did and crashed out asleep. The next day, with out the rucksacks, we felt much better about walking round the town, and then it was back on the train and onto the next destination.
We were planning to go straight to Brashov, but the train stopped off at one town called sig....And for some reason, I wanted to get off there, Maurice was not too happy about it as we didn't know where we were or what was going to be there, but I convinced him that we should get off. As soon as we were off the train a guy was standing there with a sign for Elvis Hostel. We had had heard about this hostel chain in Hungary and were lucky that they had one in this town. Sic... was wonderful, It was the home of Vlad Tepes, Dracula and had this wonderful castle and graveyard...so spooky. We spent a few days, visiting the markets, watching them make wine at the hostel and walking round the town and had a great time in the hostel, it was newly opened and had some wonderful offers and great staff. When we left, we pre-booked the hostel in Brashov and as soon as we got off the train, somebody from the hostel was there to meet us and take us to where we had to go.
Brashov was wonderful. The Elvis hostel that we stayed in was very quaint, but had all the mod cons and some wonderful Romanian staff. We spent our days hanging out with new friends that we made and exploring the town. We took the cable car to the top of the mountain overlooking Brashov and then ran all the way own, down forest trails.
We left most of our bags at the hostel and for two nights we stayed in a place called Bran. No this is where the story of Dracula was based. This castle looks so spooky and you can just feel the history, just by looking at it. We arrived by bus from Brashov and as soon as we got off we were greeted by a little boy asking if we wanted to stay at his house with his family. We took him up on his offer, straight away, as there was only one hotel in the village and we were hoping that somebody would meet us like this. He was a very cute kid and his English was ok, but he had to translate for his family as he was their income as he was the only one who could speak English. We went to his house and we were given the guest room, which was warm and cozy. Our first evening in Bran, we took a small walk round the area, up a hill collected apples and fed most of them to a pig and made friends with a sheep, who loved to be patted and stroked!.
The next day, we took a wonderful, long walk through Bran and out of Bran, we walked through some wonderful countryside, meeting 'real farm folk' living their lives in a totally rural setting, and probably not much contact with the outside world. When we decided that it was time to turn back in case it got too dark, we found a slightly different route and ended up passing a local pub. We entered and it was a very local, rural pub, honestly, it felt like the whole day we had been transported back in time. The pub was small and it had benches, like school tables, layed out in rows and it was semi full of farmers. We were given a beer each and after getting some funny stares from the locals, we were approached by an old guy who shook our hands as he was leaving, chatting away in Romanian to us. We didn't stay long after that, we would've loved to but it was getting dark by then and we still had to walk a fair way back to the house.
When we finally left Brashov, we made our way to Bucharest. As we had stayed in the two Elvis hostel's, we decided that this time we would go and stay with one of the bed and breakfast ladies that we would surely find at the station.
The only person in the train station was a tout from the Elvis hostel, who after us waiting and waiting for somebody else to come and ask for our business in their hotel, approached us AGAIN and asked us if we were sure that we didn't want to stay at this Elvis as well. Finally we gave in and took a taxi to the hostel. Obviously we had a great time and this hostel was actually run by the notorious ELVIS (not the real one, obviously, actually an Aussie guy). It was interesting listening how he started the business and he even offered to open one up that we could run... we thought about it and decided to wait until our holiday was over and see how we felt then. As you can guess, we didn't take him up on his offer.
Bucharest was interesting, it's a tough old town, a place where you see young kids taking drugs out for everybody to see, and a very high crime rate, but it was also a very interesting city.


BULGARIA

We took a train to Sofia from Bucharest and by the we knew that we were going to be going to Turkey. We didn't spend much time in Sofia, as we were looking forward to Turkey so much, it became hard to appreciate where we were. We stayed in a lovely hostel that was family run and met some Scottish guys who we did a little tour of the city with we all went wild at one of the local/tourist markets and each came back with a different hat. We left Sofia with the two Scots and got on the same train to Istanbul with them.

TURKEY

To start with I'd like to point out that my spellings of place names may not be accurate and I've even forgotten the names of some of the places. Please help me out if you can, by leaving any spelling corrections or place names in the comments area. I have highlighted the place names that I'm not too sure of. Until I make it to a Turkey travel agent, I would be so grateful for your help!

Istanbul was a wonderful place to start our travels in Turkey, we separated from the two Scots when we got into Istanbul. They found a cheap hostel but, we found a hotel that was the same price, where we were treated like royalty as there were not many tourists around because of September 11th. We spent a couple of days there, visiting the huge bazaar, the mosques and eating the wonderful food. Maurice has been to Turkey before and knew a few faces around town and managed to get us on a tour the was reputed to be the best tour of Turkey, a hop on hop off system. We arranged to be picked up and start this tour (we had decided that we would only go a certain way, and so we paid for that amount of time - up front. To start with the bus didn't show up for ages, so we were late leaving, then (as we were heading for Galipoli) we were told that we would be shown a video about it, to introduce us to the whole history of the area. When we got in the minibus, the tour guide told us that there was no reception, so we couldn't watch the movie. Then got to the back of the bus and immediately fell asleep. The other people on this trip were really timid and didn't speak up about what was going on, until, i noticed that the driver was falling asleep at the wheel. We all told/asked him to stop and pull over, to wake himself up, so he did and splashed water on his face had a coffee and a cigarette, and then he was back in the mini bus, 5 minutes later, just wanting to get there. By this time, it was getting quite scary, as he kept slapping himself on the face to keep awake, while going round all these hair pin bends... .

We finally got to Egebat and by then Maurice was angry. The other people on the tour were doing Galipoili for one day so they would be going back with the same driver, so they didn't want to argue as they would not be able to get back to Istanbul to catch flights, trains, whatever. When we turned up at the hotel, Maurice called the company and told them what had happened. In the end we left that company and went to another who were based also in Egebat and after some negociations we were able to transfer our tour from one company to another. That was much better. Took a walk found the town and met some people over dinner on the roof of the hostel and watched to movie(S!) about Galipoli, in the evening and the next day we were taken there on a tour.

The tour around Galipoli was so interesting. It was moving, emotional and breathtaking. All in one tour. We were shown where the ANZACS arrived, lived, fought, died and now remembered. Around the trenches that they fought from, our tour guide told us that there were still bullets lying around. After a while of searching, the tour guide found one, and gave it to me. Maurice had (obviously) been there before and had found one himself. The bullet that Maurice had found had gone off, while the one that the tour guide found was not (so he emptied the gun powder before giving it to me). To me this means something. Maurice's Grandfather was in Galipoli and died. My great grandfather was also there as a dispatch rider, and survived. These may sound like sick souvenirs to some people, but to me there are a big piece of history. It was an emotional day.

Our stay in Egebat was great. Maurice had been working there before, and we met up with some of his old Turkish friends.

After leaving Egebat, by ferry, and stopping in a few small places on the way, we ended up in Efes where we went to the ruins that were originally made around the 3rd century BC, saw some wonderful places, including the houses where, apparently, the Virgin Mary lived before she died. Sone wonderfully kept architecture.

As we made our way down the coast, we took a small detour and went inland a little to see Pamukkale, the hot springs in one day. Unfortunately the new hotel on above the original site, has drained all the hot springs water, so that now you have to pay to use the hotel swimming pool and all the original salt pools are dried up. It was an interesting place, but it's better to just look at the photos of how it used to be.

The weather was getting colder and colder the further south we got, but we were till having a great time. There were hardly any tourists around and so it did get boring in places, but we kept ourselves entertained with stray dogs and long bike rides. Passing through places like Bodrum, were interestingly boring as the summer season was over and there was nothing to do, socially, but we went to the castle and checked out all the docked boats in the harbor. In Fethiye it was much the same, there were some wonderfully carved out temples? carved out of the rocks on the mountain edge.

We found ourselves in Olympos in absolutely terrible weather conditions. We had driven down in a bus, being warned that the weather may get bad. The night we arrived in our hostel it turned awful, but it was such an amazing hostel it made it so exciting. The hostel's main area was where breakfast and dinner were held in the lower part and a staircase took you to the upstairs area that had a television and loads of blankets, mattresses and cushions every where. The rooms are not rooms at all, but tree houses, each holding no more than 4 people (two bunkbeds). It was mind blowing, our first dinner there (a self service deal of home cooked wonderful Turkish meals) . As we all sat down to eat, the power cut and the staff ran around putting candles on the tables and starting the generator, finally we were back in to our food again and the storm calmed down. The nest day the waters were high and the tree houses were quite a way from the beach. To get there, we had to walk through a river that went over the main road. We arrived on the beach and although it wasn't too hot, the temperature was nice and we relaxed for a while. The next day we took a walk with some Australians and Americans down the beach and up a mountain. We had all heard of this mountain and were really looking forward to seeing it. As well as the wonderful views, on the way up we past a bush that had strings and strings of different colored ribbons of any type of material. This is a wishing tree, you tie your wish round the tree. So I did. But I'm not telling you what I wished for!. As the weather had been bad and the ground was damp the mountain was not as it usually is, as it is a mountain full of gas, with holes on the surface of it. We each found a hole and lit a match and the mountain came alive with gas coming out of its holes. It was the strangest natural thing that I have ever seen and one that I will never forget. What I loved about the place was that it hadn't been turned into another Pamukkale, with all the natural resources being used in other ways other than just visiting the place and enjoying the suprises of nature. That evening there was a huge storm and we were all stuck inside our tree houses freezing our butts off. As they were really made for the summer, the slats of wood were not put together closely, so this meant that the ventilation in their was mad. Luckily, we were on our own that night in the room, so we took the mattresses off the other beds and made ourselves nice and snugly!. The next day as we all emerged for breakfast, woken by the sound of the river behind us running so fast, we ventured out of our trees, to find that the ladders had almost four rungs under water!. The weather continued this way all morning, until the after noon when it cleared up somewhat. It was still impossible to leave the tree area as we were nearly surrounded by over-flowed river. We finally managed to get away from the rain and left the area.

Our next stop was Konya, where the whirling Dervishes originate from. This is the dance where the men where dresses and spin round and round in trances. There was to be a festival in Konya to celebrate the Dervishes, the week that we arrived, we were interested to see the performances, but after 3 days in Konya we were ready to get out, we had spent a long time in places like that town already, with nothing to do, so we moved on before the festival started.

When we arrived in Cappadocia, I was spellbound. Cappadocia is an amazing place. The area itself has been wind beaten and eroded for so many hundreds and thousands of years that it has left huge pieces of mountain? Rock just standing there. Its so hard to describe. We arrived in a place called Goreme, and met one of the girls that we met in Olympos who was now working in a hostel. She showed us the place and we immediately fell in love with it. We were given an amazing room. The whole hostel had been carved. The earth in Cappadocia is so soft that you can chip away and make your own house. This is why the surrounding land is just so bizarre. Our room had a bed that the base of the bed was part of the room, the shelves were deep in the walls, the shower was made from the room and the table and chairs were as well. No chance of people stealing furniture there!. Each room was like this and every other hostel and house in town was like this. We spent a while in Cappadocia, just exploring through tunnels that the wind had made, running up and down sharp points and balancing on steep edges. On one day we took a guided walk from one of the hostel guys and climbed up the Fairy chimneys (huge, tall, cylinder towers). It was so much fun, but so hard. Some of the towers were so thin in parts that you really had to squeeze to get through the small holes. To get UP the towers, different levels had been made and foot holders were carved into the rocks and you pulled yourself up with these.

We had heard that it was possible to go skiing in Turkey, so we left most of our stuff at the hostel and made our way to Kyseri, the ski resort closest to Cappadocia. After finally arriving in the town again (after going up to the actual ski resort looking for accommodation and failing), we found ourselves a hotel and prepared for the next day. It had been a long time since I had last skied, but as soon as i got the skis on my feet, my legs knew what they were doing!. The weather conditions were bad, it was a blizzard, and visibility was poor, so the top ski lift was out of order. This meant that the runs were slow and not very interesting, but it was still great fun. When we got back to Cappadocia, the owners of the hostel decided that they would make a day trip out there as we had such a great time. We decided to go with them again, and this time it was much better, the weather was better and all the runs were open, so there was more variety. Maurice had his birthday in Cappadocia, I called his family to tell them the telephone number if they wanted to ring, and after the phone calls, we took a long walk around the area. When we made it back to the town, we stopped in at the carpet shop that the hostel owners also owned(!) and they opened a bottle of wine for us. Had a wondeful dinner and they had even bought a cake for him!. A few days later and we were off again. This time to Ankara. On the way there, we met and Israeli, and with him, found THE cheapest hotel in Ankara. We had Christmas day there and it was very strange.

Back in Istanbul again and stayed in another hotel with the Israeli. Had a great time re-looking at all the markets and seeing things that we had seen all around Turkey. It took us a while and a lot of shopping around, but eventually, we found a flight for a good price to Ireland.

IRELAND

We flew into Dublin and landed on Danny's doorstep a day later than he had expected, and stayed with him for much longer than he expected as well (sorry!). After showing us the highlights of Collock, he invited us to go with him up to Belfast, we stayed in the Hilton hotel with him.

The first day there, we walked round the city and went to a few pubs in the evening. The people were so friendly and we were really welcomed into other peoples groups of friends and invited on to other places with them. When we took a bus tour round Shankil road, we were all a little star struck (if that's the right word to use?!?!) when we passed Jerry Adams in his highly secured car. The bus trip was very informative, especially as there had been some shootings at a nearby Primary School a few days earlier. We walked down the other side, Falls road, after the bus tour and saw all the political graffiti. It's a moving area, Shankil and Falls roads, its easy to imagine all the violence that has happened there, both places have their scars. Its so sad to see.

Back in Dublin, we both got some work (Maurice's job lasted longer than mine) and stayed with Danny and his other housemates. To get out of Danny's hair (!) we took a trip around Ireland, but had to do it pretty quick as time was running out before we had to go back to Denmark to work.

We started off by getting a bus to Galway, then the rest of our trip, we did through hitchhiking, rarely getting public transport. From Galway, we went through to Limerick, Kerry, Cork and Kilkenny. Out of the places that we visited in Ireland I really enjoyed Dingle in Kerry. It was such a small quiet village, with some amazing landscapes and some fantastic ideas for pubs. Like the pub that is also a hardware store (half the room has a counter of hardware things, then on the other side there's as bar selling drink) or the pub that's a shoe shop (same concept as the hardware store). Fantastic. We had a great time in Kilkenny, experiencing all the nightlife and meeting some great people. The people that we met through hitching were so wonderful, welcoming and funny, just like the Irish in general.

We got a lift with a guy in Cork who wouldn't stop telling us jokes over his shoulder, but really looking at us, while he was driving. We came to some road works and he drove in and out of the traffic cones as if we were in Formula 1 racing... He was a funny nutter. Then we had an American lady driving us out of Dingle, who wouldn't stop talking and not concentrating on the road, so much that I think the hire car would've been pretty scratched from all the bushes she drove into!. Then we got a lift from a taxi driver, who when he dropped us off, didn't charge us, as we were originally hitching!. Wonderful Irish hospitality.

So, after we had our fill of Guinness and stew, we went back to Denmark to earn all that money back.