European Invasion II

Now, we bought me new car and due to an absolute freak of accounting, we ended up with money left over for a couple of return plane tickets to Europe. Don't ask how this freak of accounting occurred, just accept that it did.

So, on the last Thursday of September 2005, we ended up sitting in the "rich bastards" lounge at Sydney Airport, waiting for our flight to be called, trying to resist the temptation to get absolutely plastered on free alcohol. It's not that we are "rich bastards" - it's just that we have some very nice friends at Singapore Airlines who like to look after us. We like our very nice friends at Singapore Airlines.

Our first stop was, surprisingly enough, Singapore. By "stop", I mean "pause". We were only there for a couple of hours before continuing on to:

Amsterdam

Amsterdam was a city that was on our list for our last European Invasion, but because we spent a little too much time in other places, it missed out. So, Amsterdam is first this time.

Amsterdam is a tourist city. The most obvious tourist is the "Stoned English Student", a pale, fair haired creature that staggers out of "coffee shops" blinking at the sky with bloodshot eyes, slurring to his mates that he needs something to eat before he stumbles into the path of an oncoming bicycle. I find it amazing that Arnott's haven't started selling Tim Tams here - it's a market ripe for the exploiting!

Apparently I look like some well known local named "Charlie". Whenever I walked down the street, very seedy looking men would come up to me and greet me by name. It happened consistently for the entire time we were in Amsterdam, every time we went out.

"Charlie?" they would ask.

"No, I think you have me confused with someone else. Apparently I'm his doppelganger."

Everyone has heard of the prostitutes that sit in shop windows selling their "wares". No-one told me that they were all so . . . how do I put this politely . . . "beauty challenged". If you happen to glance in their direction, they will cup their huge tits in what is presumably an erotic fashion (Remember, I'm not experienced in these things). If you don't glance in their direction, they will bash on the glass window until you do.

Houses built by stoners.

We dropped in and saw Rembrandt's house, now a museum. We also wandered over to Anne Frank's house, but it turned out that she wasn't home anyway so we didn't go in. Won't the long line of Jewish tourists be disappointed.

Naturally, we did all the touristy things, like take a canal tour, but I think the lasting impression will be the buildings all sticking out at different angles. Either they were built without the assistance of any measuring devices, or the builders were all stoned.

Berlin

We've been here before. We enjoyed the ~~hot German boys~~ architecture so much, we thought it was worth stopping over on our way to the Czech Republic. It also gave me the opportunity to buy a new pair or German army cams. I've worn my old pair out.

Berlin hasn't changed much since our last visit. They were building the new Potsdamer-Platz Station then, and they are still building it now.

Prague

We jumped on a train from Berlin through Dresden and then followed the beautiful River Elbe to Prague. Everyone has told us that Prague is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. It's a "must see".

Our room in Prague. I wish!
(Actually, the foyer of the museum.)

Well, the old city centre of Prague certainly has some stunning old buildings, but once you are outside that area, the overall impression is one of a city of lots of run down apartment buildings. That's not really a bad thing - there is a complete lack of concrete, steel and glass sky-scrapers that give the city a wonderful "olde worlde" feeling.

Unfortunately, our arrival coincided with the arrival of the Dutch Football Team and hundreds of Dutch Football fans dressed in bright orange shirts and novelty foam clogs. It sort of takes some of the olde worlde charm away when the city is crowded with drunken football fans who thoughtfully bring along their own brass band.

We had a coffee in the Žižkov Television Tower, the only modern (well, it was in the 70's) piece of architecture that we could find. As impressive as the tower is, most people fail to be impressed by the huge transmitter hall that lives beside the tower. We were impressed, but then, we are that type of person.

After a couple of days we jumped on a train once again for our trek to Vienna. It was interesting to note that for our journey into the Czech Republic, border security seemed somewhat relaxed. In fact, Greig didn't even have his passport on him when the border patrol stopped him walking through the train. He explained to them that his passport was with me in the bag.

"Australian?" asked the woman with her hair in a tight bun.

"Yep", answers Greig.

"Nyah", she responds, waving him on without confirming anything.

Leaving the Czech Republic heading into the EU was a different story. Passports were checked carefully and they even searched all cavities and service hatches on the train to ensure that no-one was trying to escape the country.

Vienna

We didn't spend a lot of time in Vienna. Due to a lack of planning, we needed to be back on a train the next day.

We did get to explore part of the city though.

Vienna does have some stunning old buildings though. And an excellent tram system. We probably need to get back there to explore a bit more. But unfortunately, we had to jump back on to a first class overnight sleeper through the Alps for our trip to . . .

Venice

Venice turned out to be our favourite city of the tour. A truly stunning city completely devoid of any sort of vehicle other than boats. For the person who enjoys walking, it is a dream. Not even a bicycle to be seen.

Rocky and Greig lost again.

We walked along streets that seemed to get narrower and narrower to the point where if you wanted to pass someone, you would need to go side on. The narrow street would suddenly pop out in a huge piazza, edged by little restaurants and coffee shops.

We probably walked every street there is in Venice. We got ourselves lost several times but let's face it - the island isn't that big so it's not difficult to get yourself found again. We walked the streets late at night and were never worried about our security. Perhaps we are just fools.

The canals are alive with gondolas and small boats. Every building has a history that goes back hundreds of years. It almost seems superfluous to have a museum in this place because the whole place is a museum in itself. They do though, and we had a look. It's what we do.

Piazza San Marco's downfall is probably its fame. It is certainly a beautiful piazza but the hoards of tourists, the hoards of street vendors selling crap and the hoards of pigeons (read as "flying rats") kill its appeal for me.

Actually, the street vendors selling crap were somewhat annoying through the whole trip. All of them selling "genuine" Prada leather goods or Ray-Ban's for a coupe of dollars each. Of course they are genuine. How could you even suggest otherwise?

Beggars: Europe - Italy in particular - seems to be full of beggars. Not the sort of beggars we get here in Oz, of course ("Give me a dollar ya cunt!"), but certainly a lot of them.

They range from the limbless sitting in front of a tin on the side of the street through to the "little old lady" who walks back and forth very slowly, one step at a time holding her tin out in front of here. I put the term "little old lady" in inverted commas because I'm still not convinced that she isn't just a young uni student doing this as some form of street art. If you've got a moment, have a look and see what I mean.

Florence

Florence has a whole lot going for it. But then again, it doesn't. It has some of Europe's most stunning museums and galleries. It also has some of Europe's most stunning queues to get into said museums and galleries.

Street vendors selling crap.

Street vendors selling crap are in plague proportions here. They seem to line every street. What they are doing is very obviously illegal because they all employ a lookout to alert them should the police wander too near. If they do, their display of "genuine" Ray-Ban sunglasses on a bed-sheet is gathered up by the corners, grinding all the lenses together and they take off down the street.

Interestingly, we noticed that late at night all these vendors seemed to be piling on to a bus to head off to wherever they sleep at night, which lead us to two conclusions:

That they are in fact all employed by the same dodgy distributor, and;
That they are all probably illegals and the same dodgy distributor is probably holding their passports to ensure that the vendors don't "seek employment elsewhere".

Overlooking the city of Florence.

There are statues of David everywhere. Actually, there are statues everywhere. Historic statues are a dime a dozen in Florence. It's easy for them to just disappear into the landscape. If you do manage to pick them out, many are very impressive.

We love Italian food. Our home is a block away from Sydney's "Little Italy" district and pasta seems to make up a huge proportion of our diet. The food was something that we really looked forward to in Italy. The best meal we had while in Europe was in Italy. The best meal wasn't in Florence. The worst was though.

"Cafe Jolly". Really, just the name should have warned us off. That and the fact that it's in a high tourist traffic area. Café Jolly serves traditional Italian Cuisine without any of the traditional Italian flavour. In fact, without any flavour.

I never thought it was possible to water down pasta, but they seem to have managed it. Soggy pasta in a pool of water with a splash of thin reddish-brown flavourless liquid on top.

The service is second to none. Really. No service was the next step. The staff are uninterested and un-attentive. Oh, and the prices on their menu is not the actual price either.

We let our guard down and broke the golden rule. Follow the locals and see where they eat. If you want the good food, that's where you eat too.

Pisa

Pisa isn't actually a destination; it's more of a pause in your journey from A to B. There is really only one thing to see in Pisa - the Tower. If it wasn't for the fact that everyone expects it to come crashing down any day now, people probably wouldn't bother.

It's worth it though. Pisa is a nice little town. You hop off the train, book your luggage into the luggage check at the train station and then take the twenty minute stroll to the tower. The trail is clearly marked by street vendors selling crap. If you stop seeing street vendors selling crap, then you are off the trail.

Any day now this will be a pile of rubble.

While the tower is a wonderful example of how gravity doesn't always finish the job, the most common comment we heard from other tourists was "It's not as big as I thought it would be". It's nicely presented in well manicured lawns with lots of signs saying "Keep off the grass".

The tower itself is surrounded by Japanese tourists posing for photographs of themselves "holding up the tower". It's like they are all doing their morning Tai Chi.

Anyway, you walk around the tower, have your photo taken while you pretend to be holding it up, and then follow the trail of street vendors selling crap back to the train station where you collect your luggage and get on the next train outa there.

The luggage check is Pisa's most successful business.

It was on the train from Pisa that we met the "seesters".

The seesters are Marilynd and Patricia. Two American girls in their forties originally from Puerto Rico but now living in the U.S. Oh, and they really are sisters.

Marilynd is a travel agent and this is her big "fact finding - see what it's like - get everything for cheap" holiday. To say that she has a "bubbly" personality would understate things just a tad. She is pretty out there. Made even more out there by her Puerto Rican accent. She's huge fun though. Whenever she was around it seemed to be like party time.

Patricia, her sister is a lot quieter. I guess when you grow up with a sister like Marilynd you will probably end up a bit quiet. It would be difficult to get a word in sometimes. I get the feeling that she was glad to have some company that could keep Marilynd quietly distracted with travel stories for a while.

Anyway, the seesters shared a cabin with us on the train from Pisa to Genoa. The lively banter certainly made the time pass quickly. I wonder if they thought they were both in with a chance when they first found themselves sharing a cabin with a couple of guys.

We got off the train at Genoa and they continued on to Nice, making us promise to look out for them when we both re-join the train a couple of days later.

Genoa

From Pisa we followed the Mediterranean Coast to the small town of Genoa (or Genova), the birthplace of Christopher Columbus. That's about its only claim to fame. The reason we stopped here was simply because it put us in a hotel for the evening. I'm glad we did, it was a lovely spot.

We explored the port area which has all been tarted up as a modern "recreational area". Darling Harbour here in Sydney is a tarted up "recreational area".

Unlike Darling Harbour, we found a wonderful restaurant that provided the best service and the best food of our entire trip. We were worried for a while that we'd read the prices wrong on the menu or that they were in a different currency. For the money, the food was excellent and the waiters were wonderful. Greig even sweet-talked one of the waiters into revealing a recipe for one of their dishes.

Monaco

Greig gives Monaco the thumbs up.

From the moment we stepped off the train in the cavernous train station, tunnelled into the side of the hill, I knew we were somewhere expensive. Even the train station cries opulence.

Monaco was amazing. Buildings perched precariously on the side of mountains, streets winding their way up steep climbs and literally hundreds of multi-million dollar "runabouts" moored in the harbour. Everything has a sense of class about it. Even the local park has a dress code!

Greig and I decided that we needed to see one of the casinos. We gathered our coins together and wandered into a palace-like building. The charming girl there advised us that we would need to pay a cover charge to get in. OK, we thought. She then advised that she would need to see some photo ID. Alllllright, we thought. We couldn't help getting the feeling that she was putting up barriers. The next step would be that we would need a coat and tie. The step after that would be that we would need to buy a minimum of 10,000 euro in chips. The next step would be that as new customers we would need to leave our motor yacht at the counter as a deposit.

We decided to find a less discerning casino.

Luckily there was one right next door. It was still pretty classy, but full of the types of people that the other one was trying to keep out. It wasn't nearly as bad as Star Shitty on pension day though.

None of the poker machines accepted the pissy little coins that we were willing to throw at it, so we threw some more significant ones at a roulette wheel and left.

There was one thing that struck me about Monaco. The streets are completely devoid of street vendors selling crap, beggars or anyone who could be considered "poor". The local authorities obviously do a good job of keeping this place for the people it is intended.

Barthelona

Getting from Monaco to Barcelona turned out to be a little more troublesome than we ever imagined. We caught a train to Nice and lo and behold, there were the seesters! Marilynd just about bolted down the length of the station screaming out "Greig! Glen!" as loud as her outrageous accent would let her (which was pretty loud). We travelled with them to Montpellier where we had to spend a couple of hours waiting for a connection. The weather had turned very nasty so we couldn't explore.

Then it was back on the train to Barcelona. We made it to the Spanish border and the train stopped. It just stopped. It failed to move. It went nowhere. It continued to do this for several hours.

There were no announcements. There was no conductor wandering through the train explaining the delay. The only "railway" person we had access to was the girl in the bar car and she knew as much as the rest of us.

It seems that Barcelona has just had a bit of rain. By that, I mean floods. All the rail lines into the city were covered in water and no trains were getting through. We needed to wait until the water level went down before we could continue our journey.

Actually, it was a good thing that we ran into the seesters. The two of them kept the two of us from going insane. Marilynd was certainly entertaining and Patricia and I launched drinks raids on the bar car.

Now the delay had caused a second problem for us. We had no accommodation booked in Barcelona. We normally find a hotel once we arrive in a city as our plans are somewhat flexible. We were due to arrive in Barcelona at about 9pm, which was already pushing things a bit. We actually arrived at about 1am, which probably meant sleeping in the gutter.

Luckily Marilynd came to our rescue and used Greig's phone to ~~bully~~ nicely ask her hotel to find a room for us as well. This they did so all we had to do was find a cab in Barcelona at 1am outside a train station that had locked its doors behind us as we left.

Eventually a cab did turn up and we ended up with a chatty cab driver. Luckily Marilynd speaks fluent Spanish and has been known to be chatty herself. The cab driver asked about the two non-Spanish speaking guys she was travelling with. "They're Australian", she told him.

"Australian!" exclaimed the cab driver and immediately broke into a Spanish rendition of the theme from "Skeepy, the boosh kangaroo."

He continued to sing it most of the way to the hotel.

Barthelona (no, really this time)

We were staying in the heart of Barcelona, just around the corner from the famed Casa Milŕ, one of the amazing Gaudí buildings that can be found in the city.

The Gaudí buildings are even
more surreal at night.

Once again, much of our time was spend wandering the streets, taking in the atmosphere. We walked the length of La Rambla, crowded with tourists, pet vendors, flower vendors, food vendors and vendors selling crap. We explored the waterfront area, and generally made tourists of ourselves.

The seesters put us on to a great Spanish restaurant where we enjoyed a wonderful meal served to us by a waiter who was obviously John Cleese's inspiration for Manuel. Actually, I'm sure he was just using our obvious lack of Spanish as a way of selling us more food. Despite this, the food was excellent.

The seesters were actually supposed to join us for dinner (or rather I think, we were supposed to join them) but because of poor communication between our hotels this didn't actually happen. A shame really, they would have been great guides at the restaurant.

Our final train trip on mainland Europe was from Barcelona to nearby Girona to catch our four quid Ryan-air flight to Bournemouth. We were blessed on that trip to have a pair of buskers on guitar and accordion as well as a girl (unsuccessfully) selling cigarette lighters. It didn't take a great deal of knowledge of the Spanish language to work out that she wasn't impressed that no-one on the train wanted any lighters. She made those views public as she exited the carriage.