June in Amsterdam - Bidding Adieu Part II

This is Part II of June in Amsterdam. Part I is here.

Marken

One Friday Anissa and I headed north along the Markenmeer to Marken, a formerly isolated island that is now connected by a causeway. First inhabited by monks in the 1200s, they built dikes and began farming the tiny, flat polder land until the Dutch Count kicked them out in the 14th century. Problems with the soil and frequent flooding made farming more and more untenable, so in the 1500s and 1600s the island's inhabitant started fishing. The frequent floods often wiped out buildings and killed people, so the houses in Marken were build on top of mounds of soil or tall stilts. These traditional little wooden houses are a major tourist drawcard today.

Marken

In the 1930s, the Zuider Zee that surrounded Marken was turned into the IJsselmeer, an artificial lake, when the huge Afsluitsdijk was built, wrecking the fishing industry there, and in 1957 the dijk connecting Marken to the mainland was built. This dijks were part of the Zuider Zee Works, a plan to dam the inlet with a series of dijks and drain huge sections to develop new agricultural land. These plans have been reformed over the last century, but some sections of land were developed, including that of Almere, a new city built near Amsterdam from the 1970s onwards, now the 7th largest Dutch city. Now, about 1800 people live on Marken, most working in the tourist industry, or commuting to Amsterdam.

Volendam

We walked around for a bit, checking out the tiny village, the church and the museum, and then walked out to the lighthouse on the north-eastern corner. This is about all there is to do out there - its pretty, but the place is tiny! We then grabbed something to eat at a wee seafood stand and took the ferry across the Gouwzee to Volendam. Volendam was originally just the location of the harbour for the nearby town of Edam (unsurprizingly the home of Edam cheese) but later became a town in its own right. With a population of 20 000 people its much bigger than Marken, and is a huge tourist destination - hordes of tourists were walking along the waterfront and clogging up the entranceways to the many souviner shops, meaning I didn't enjoy it as much as I did Marken. Something about the place remind me of Akaroa - a small waterfront town not far from a big city, but not even Akaroa is so touristy!

Me dressed in a traditional dutch outfit

Anissa and I had many laughs getting our photo taken in traditional dutch dress at a studio. Apparently several people still wear traditional dress on a daily basis in both Volendam and Marken, but we never saw anyone in it! I also let Anissa talk me into spending some time dangling our feet into a Doctor Fish tank. Its a weird sensation, not one that is pleasant in the beginning, but in the end you get used to it, and it feels a bit like really mild pins and needles. We walked around a little, and checked out an amazing second hand store where I found a box full of old camera lenses that were made in the former GDR and Soviet block countries, very cool, before taking a bus back to Amsterdam.

Me and Ollie on the roof of the NEMO building

The next day we visited a couple of photography galleries in Amsterdam, they were both quite impressive and the buildings hosting them were amazing, and then Sunday I was back at Anissa and Willem's place for a roast lamb dinner with Jp (the guy whose boat we'd been out on) and another couple of their friends. I miss throwing my own dinner parties, so I really enjoyed sitting around with everyone and the chance to make a pavlova! The following weekend Anissa and I went to the Anne Frank House, an amazing museum.

Ollie in the monkey house at the zoo

I also spent a lot of time in June getting out and about with Ollie, we went back to the library again one raining day and had lunch in a cafe afterwards, went to the Zoo where giraffes and penguins were the highlights for him, but going into a monkey house where they climb on branches over your head couldn't tear his attention away from the potato chips he was eating! And finally, we went to the NEMO interactive science centre. He was too young to understand anything, but he had a lot of fun running around pressing all of the buttons and watching things work, and the view over Amsterdam from the top of the sloping roof is quite cool. Taking him places is exhausting work, by the time you drag him, the stroller, and our bags on and off buses and trams, keep him quiet and sitting still sometimes, and run around after him other times, but he's always so excited about everything, even just riding on the bus, so its a lot of fun.

Not really a conventional "bachelorette"

And then suddenly it was time to say goodbye! I'd had a pretty good stab at sorting through my stuff and packing everything up, and after a suprizingly unemotional goodbye with the kids, Rogier dropped me at Anissa's where I would stay for the weekend, leave my stuff while I was in Portugal, and return to for a couple of nights before I headed down to Munich. That night we threw a leaving party for me, themed as a bachelorette party as coming over from England to have your stag night or hens party is really common and it sounded like a good idea when it surfaced at another drinking session. 

Me with friends at my "Bachelorette" leaving party

It was a good night, although I didn't like "being engaged" and accepted all of the free drinks offered to the bride-to-be and can't remember very much of the night! I do remember we started off at the Amsterdam Hell's Angel's Bar, and finished at the Irish Pub that Jp works at, and I do remember feeling like death all Saturday and having to repack all of my stuff and try to shed more things. And then I was off to Portugal early Sunday morning, for my first child-free week in nearly a year!

More photos of Marken and Volendam are here, and photos taken in Amsterdam are here.

I've signed up for Live Below the Line, and will live off €1.40 a day for five days to change the way people think about poverty and raise money for charity. Support me here.

March in Amsterdam

Enjoying spring in Amsterdam

March was not the easiest month for me. As I've said, beginning again here in Amsterdam has been harder than it was to settle down in Luxembourg. On the one hand, I'm working a lot more and enrolled in a very time-consuming German course, so I'm much busier than I ever was in Luxembourg and spend less time sitting around broke and bored.

Picnic with the kids at the local playground

I also like the small-town feeling here in Badhoevedorp - having parks, the post office, shops, swimming pool and library within walking distance means I get out and about a lot more with the kids. However, being busy means I spend less time socialising and meeting new people, and I'm finding it harder to make friends here than I'd hoped. Luckily I have met a couple of cool people, and anyway I'm pretty set on buckling down, working hard and saving some money while here to continue my travels.

Ollie found my lipstick, so I let him do mine too!

My new work routine is - home with Ollie on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday until Pepi is home from school, then I've got both of them until Jacquie is home from work, and then I help with dinner, bath and bedtime. Wednesdays and Fridays I have Ollie for a hour or so in the morning, and I do a couple of hours one weekend morning, plus babysitting. I'm enjoying the new deal, while I'm working a lot more and am finding it hard to fit everything else (including this blog!) into my free time, I like being at home alone with the kids, as I can set the tone and organize whatever I like for the day, and I love having a big part of the day with just Ollie - we can do things that I can't while I've got both kids.

being a fireman at a playground

He's a really different kid now he's getting so much more one-on-one time than he's ever had before. Even after just a week with Pepi at school he'd already picked up so many more words and become much more talkative and attention-demanding, now its hard to be out and about with both of them trying to draw my attention to things and have conversations at the same time. We did have one eventful week here in which both parents were away, and I had all three grandparents in the house in stages throughout the week. While its nice that the kids see them more often now, I think it would be less stressful for me to just cope with the kids alone! This same week, Ollie decided that 4am would be a good time to start the day a couple of times - I was not impressed with him, and not impressed with the grandparents who didn't give me a break during the rest of the day either, it was a really long week!

He's started using the big-boy swing!

One of Ollie's cutest new words has been 'freckle'. He can spend ages just pointing at 'more freckle, more freckle, more freckle' on my arms. We've really spent a lot of time exploring Badhoevedorp. We frequent several different parks, the scariest of which is, in true dutch style, bordered on three sides by water, and we often pop down to the supermarket or the bookshop, or to feed ducks in the numerous canals around here. The neighbourhood is, like almost everywhere in the Netherlands I think, filled with flowers, both lining the streets and in people's gardens and homes, and spring has truly arrived here, so Ollie has also become obsessed with the word 'flower'. Again, I get 'more flower, more flower, more flower' as he points to each individual one when we walk past. Pepi seems to be going well at school, he's made some friends and has frequent play dates, and it tires him out, but his dutch is apparently much better (at the expense of his english) and he seems a bit more mature now.

St Patricks Day at the Tara

I've met some couchsurfers here, having attended a casual meet up of just a couple of people, and run a couple of events myself. Anissa, a german-born, singapore/canada/netherlands raised woman and Carmela, a spanish au pair have been awesome to hang out with, we went out with a bunch of other CSers for St Patricks Day, they've introduced me to a couple of bars that are starting to become favourites, and they both went out with me for my birthday. I'm getting particularly fond of the Brouwerij 't IJ bar, a small brewery and bar located in an old windmill, and the Tara, an Irish pub that differs from all other Irish pubs I've been in by having many different rooms with strikingly different decor, from ultra modern to vintage. We started a pub-crawl of irish bars here on St Patricks Day, and went on to visit a couple more before calling it a night pretty early. I have to say, St Patricks Day was a bit of a disappointment here, I guess the Dutch just don't have as much Irish in them as New Zealander's do and didn't see it as a reason to don green and down Guiness, with the exception of all of the tourists.

My birthday cupcake at Vondelpark

My birthday was about as cool as a birthday can be when you're in a new place! I had the day off work and biked into the city for the first time with Jana. Biking into the city itself is pretty easy, you just go straight until you hit the centre. It's a bit over 8km and takes maybe half an hour, so I'm definitely adding to my exercise regime! However this day, we also went on a wild-goose-chase for a town hall, and that, combined with not having a map, made things a big stressful. Most of the way in is on a decent seperate bike path, but in the city the roadway 'bike path' doesn't stop you from having to dodge car, taxi and bus drivers, along with trams and pedestrians. Luckily, bikers outnumber everyone else here and seem to get priority, and everyone else is pretty aware and considerate of bikers. Still, I got Rogier to get me a helmet and I put up with everyone elses ridicule and wear it everywhere - I've had enough near misses with idiots not to want to take my chances.

Out with Anissa on my birthday

We eventually made it to Vondelpark, a popular park in the centre of the city, and had a little picnic under the first grey skies of the month. Pepi had helped me bake cupcakes the day before, so we lit one for me to blow out, and then quickly biked home again in the freezing cold. Later that night I went and had an awesome home-cooked curry with Anissa and her flatmate Willem, and the Carmela joined us to go to one of the bars in the WesterGasfabriek, a former gas plant that is now a big park with different bars, galleries, cafes and other cultural and artistic businesses set up in the various old factory buildings. It's very cool, and we picked a bar with a kind of swing/jazz band playing to a lively crowd and had an awesome night.

Me on the famous I AMsterdam sign

As I mentioned, I'm taking a German course here. I'm studying with the Goethe Institut, a German government run centre that provides really high-quality courses. I'm hoping to get some basic german under my belt before I move there in September, but the course is hard - its only one session of 2.5 hours per week, but its really intense, so there is a lot to memorize at home and not much time to practice listening and speaking. The vocabulary we've encountered so far is overwhelming, but I'm feeling ok about the grammar - I think listening and speaking will have to wait until I get to German to perfect!

More photos are here.

Back to Madrid again - my birthday, the sun, and a bunch of Germans

Th street sign for Miguel's apartment

I arrived back to Miguel and Ricardo's apartment on Wednesday night absolutely shattered, but glad to be somewhere that felt somewhat like home. Thursday and Friday passed like a blur filled with sleeping, unpacking, and getting settled back into the city again. I had been told that the next step in the visa saga was to book an appointment back at what I call Foreigners Office number three, so I rang on Thursday morning, only to be told that the first available appointment was in the middle of June. JUNE. As in, three months away from today and six months into my year-long working visa June. I couldn't believe it, so I rang the government contact person that the NZ Embassy here had put me onto. A couple of emails and phone calls with her office later, I was told to not worry about an appointment, just go and ask for Mr So and So. On Friday night a couple of their friends came to stay for the weekend, so after a quick dinner at the local chinese place we went to Ricardo's brother's apartment for drinks with him, his flatmate, and some other friends. Eventually the SingStar came out and I had flashbacks to the time I rediscovered joy that is spanish speakers singing along to the Spicegirls. Our Czech friend Jiri announced it was time for him to leave, and I was a tad tempted to head out the door with him, but instead I decided to stick around for a couple more hours and simply inflict my poor singing on everyone else in return.




Gran Via, the main avenue in Madrid packed for Noche de los Teatros

  Saturday was the Noche de los Teatros, or Night of the Theatre, a huge celebration where every performance group under the sun either takes to the street, or for the top-level theatre companies, puts on a performance at a discounted rate. We wandered around the streets for a bit, mostly shopping and sussing out the crowds, it seemed like everyone in Spain was in Madrid for the day, and then Miguel and I got tired and sat down for a beer at a bar terrace. After another drink with everyone else we went to check out the Goethe Institut (German Culture/Language Institute) gig, readings of poetry. We scored some sweet free posters from them, kinda cool because I have posters from the Goethe Institut in Wellington too. The building here in Madrid is amazing, they have their own logo-shaped water feature out the front.

Goethe Institut water feature

Sunday and Monday were pretty straightforward, I spent the days running errands and cleaning up the house and on Monday morning I went to Foreigners Office number three. I was a bit suspicious about this 'Just ask for Mr So and So' business, as normally they have security guards and appointment reference numbers and machines that spit out a number for you to wait for even though you had an appointment, but I walked in, asked for Mr So and So, and ten minutes later he'd gotten some forms for me, told me to fill them out and sat me down in front the lady that I made a big scene bursting into tears in front of last time to try and get some actual help. When the lady next to her leaned over and said "ah, you were here before right, you're the one that cried", I thought crap, they remember me, but the first lady was quite nice and ten minutes later I walked out of there with the golden ticket in my hand, a paper temporary ID card with an NIE! An early birthday present. Then it was off to the airport to get my other early birthday present because....

Hauke, me and Miguel

.....Hauke came to visit! Him and his friend Feli came for four nights, to be there for my birthday and have a bit of a holiday after their exams. It was the first time that my two best friends, Hauke and Miguel, had ever met, so it was a huge occasion. I had to laugh because no sooner had they arrived than we had to admit to them our original plan for dinner fell through, and as Miguel can't cook for shit and I was too busy running around in excited little circles, Hauke and Feli ended up in the kitchen cooking for Miguel and I.

Me in front of the blossoms

Five people in a shoebox-sixed one-bedroom apartment is not a good fit, so we woke up on Tuesday, my birthday, after not too much sleep at all, had breakfast, and made a picnic lunch to take with us. We took the metro towards Casa de Campo and got out just before, to walk along the River Manzanares (it really isn't that impressive) a bit and check out a bunch of cherry blossom trees before we headed into Casa de Campo itself. Everyone in Madrid was raving about how cool these trees were and I couldn't understand the fuss, I guess when you grow up in a place like Canterbury cherry blossom trees aren't too special, but they were pretty cool and Hauke got some good photos of us in front of them with his flatmate's portrait lens.

Feli and Hauke at Casa de Campo

Casa de Campo is a huge park in the middle of Madrid that used to be the private hunting reserve of the royal family. And I mean huge, it's 1700 hectares. To put it in perspective, Hagley Park in Christchurch is 165 hectares. In it is the zoo, an amusement park, a lake for watersports and heaps of resturants, and probably some other stuff that I don't know about because its just too big. We walked to the lake and had our picnic lunch and a nap in the sun there, watching a bunch of kayakers in the lake, obviously putting their work siesta time to good use, and some freaky green parrots building an epic nest up in a tree. Coming from Germany, Hauke and Feli couldn't get over how hot and sunny it was, up around 25 degrees at only the very beginning of Spring.

the Teleferico over Madrid

We took the Teleferico back into the city, something I'd wanted to do since I first got to Madrid. Its the most horizontal gondala in the world, it goes for 2.5km but never higher than 40m above the ground. The view was quite cool, you could see all across the city to the snow-capped mountains. We stopped back at the Templo de Debod on the way past, and then continued walking up through the city to get to home. Seeing their awe at Madrid really made me smile.

Me and my cake

That night a whole bunch of people came around to the house for my birthday, Annabella and Jose Angel, Jiri, Alejando, Olga (who Hauke knew in NZ) and german intern Ben, two Spanish guys who I've met several times but whose names I can never remember...the tiny apartment was packed, and although I had been really stressing that Hauke and Feli couldn't speak Spanish, everyone there was really friendly and either spoke english or german with them. I was also stressed because so many people didn't know each other, but everyone made an effort and it was so great to see friends together considering I'd only been in the city for three weeks in January. I had prepared a whole lot of different tapas and apart from a minor broken-glass-landing-in-the-food incident, everything went really well. I had set myself a mission beforehand, to make a speculoos flavoured cheesecake as my birthday cake (kinda sad making your own cake, but as Miguel pointed out, probably better than him trying to make me one) but as speculoos doesn't exist in the english-speaking world, finding a recipe online proved impossible, so I kind of mixed together a couple of recipes for different things, added the speculoos myself and hoped for the best. Miguel wanted to decorate it, so I left that up to him, and both him and Hauke lit the candles and handed it to me, and I got Happy Birthday sung to me in three and a half different languages!



Olga, Hauke, me and Feli on my birthday

 After everyone had left Hauke, Feli and I headed out to check out Madrid's Tuesday nightlife. Hauke mixed a bottle of coke and whisky together (everytime I see him drinking from the bottle like that it reminds me of the night I caught him on video taking swigs from one, insulting me and then starting the 'Sorry...mate' craze) and we walked slowly along into town. Anyone who has been to Madrid will know that the streets around the centre are full of people all night, even on weird week nights, and we met a couple kicking a ball around that got quite friendly and chatted away. They invited us to drink with them somewhere, but we figured they were actually pretty boring and gave them the slip. We actually went to meet up with another German who was in town, a girl called Steffi who we'd known as a backpacker working in Wellington. It was quite cool to see her again two years later, and to hang out with some other foreigners she knew there in an Irish bar playing club music somewhere. Just one of those nights when nothing extraordinary happens, but its an awesome night. We walked home and stopped for pizza at the 24hour pizza place on the way, that place is amazing because it turns out most of Europe does not buy into the 'fast food open late for drunken revellers' like Wellington does and you cant buy late night food in many major cities, and we wound up back home at 5.30am, not bad for a Tuesday.

I can honestly say that I had the best birthday since I finished primary school, it was just an awesome day, to have Hauke (and Feli!) here in Madrid, to spend a great day out in the sun with them, and to then have a cool celebration with friends from different walks of life, just perfect.

Hauke and I in front of AFS Spain's office

Waking up a couple of hours later on Wednesday morning was less than perfect, but the night before Hauke and german intern Ben had hitched a plan for us to go out to the AFS Madrid office to have a look around, catch up with one of their workers, another Olga, who we knew from her visit to AFS NZ a couple of years ago, and to have lunch. There is something cool about me and Hauke meeting because of AFS in NZ, becoming so close, and then meeting again in Spain to years later and going to the AFS office there. We headed out there and killed some time lying in the sun on top of the dirty metro stop building, which is a good indication of the shape we were in that day, before Ben met us and led us back to the office. Its a tad different from the current AFS NZ office, in that its a lot less professional looking, a lot smaller and cramped, and a lot less tidy and organised, but the staff were really friendly and Ben showed us around. Hauke and Olga chatted away, and then I talked to her a bit about volunteering (she was very enthusiatic about it but never got back to me, but I had been warned that AFS Madrid is a bit of a nightmare) and then we met the other Olga, Olga who went on exchange to NZ, and went for lunch at a local Japanese resturant.

Feli, Miguel and I walking home after dinner in Plaza dos de Mayo

After Ben went back to work Olga came into the city with us, and we went to the Catedral de la Almudena but it was closed, so we just wandered around for ages, looking through the suburb of Latina, Plaza Mayor and back through the centre of the city to the apartment, where we crashed out for a nap. After Miguel came home we went out for dinner, sitting outside at a local bar in the Plaza de Dos de Mayo. We split a couple of typical dishes, mostly quite good but I wasn't a huge fan of the Morcilla, or blood sausage, even if Miguel didn't tell me what it was until after I ate it, it just had a weird taste and texture.

Hauke and I up Catedral de la Almudena

Thursday we were feeling much better, and we headed back to the Catedral to the Almudena, the huge cathedral next to the palace that I visited last time in Madrid. This time, I found out you actually are allowed to take photos of the view, so we got some much better shots that the ones I had surrupticiously taken on my last visit. We visited the Mercardo de San Miguel, the oldest covered market in Madrid that still has this beautiful cast iron building from a hundred years ago, now a tourist destination filled with fancy stuff. We grabbed some bits, mostly bread and cheese and sat down in Plaza Mayor again to eat in the sun, and wandered around shopping before heading back to the Plaza de Dos de Mayo.

Hauke and Feli sitting in Plaza Dos de Mayo

This plaza is a couple of blocks away from the apartment, and named after a Spanish uprising against French occupation on the 2nd of May, 1808. The plaza is now the centre of Malasana, with bars and pubs and little stalls selling second hand stuff around the outside and playgrounds for kids. The only time I've seen it empty is first thing in the morning, otherwise its filled with old men sitting around, kids playing, people letting their dogs run around, and later on in the night, hundreds of people drinking. Chinese people walk around with trolleys full of beer for sale, its like an outdoor bar that comes to you, very convinient. We sat there drinking some beer and watching the dogs, Madrid must be full of tiny little apartment-sezed dogs that all come to play together in this Plaza because theres heaps, all running after the same ball or playing the dog version of tag.

Me, Hauke and Feli in Plaza Mayor

Annabella and Jose Angel were coming again for dinner and drinks, so Hauke and Feli cooked some nachos and with Miguel and we just sat around drinking and chatting until the early hours, when everyone went to bed and Hauke and I went off clubbing again. We sat for a hour or so in the Plaza again, drinking some more beer and just talking. I had never actually gone clubbing in Madrid before, so we pulled out a handy guidebook and I let Hauke chose a club to go to. Unfortunately the Brazilian place he picked was a huge fail, so then it was my turn with the guidebook and we went to Teatro Joy Esclava, a club inside an old 1800s theatre. We had to pay 15euro (30NZD) to get in, with a free drink, and then drinks after that were 11euro (22NZD) so while it isn't cheap, its pretty much on par with the rest of Europe, and we took our revenge by stealing two glasses to replace ones that got broken that week at home. Another stop on the way home for pizza, and another 5.30am bedtime.



Me, Hauke and Feli at Retiro park

 On Friday we made another picnic lunch and took it to Parque de Buen Retiro, the park I fell in love with in January. We picked a spot, and again spent the day lying around in the sun, eating, drinking, talking and sleeping. I was a bit stressed before the two of them came about being a tour guide in a city I'd only known for three weeks, but I guess after the weather in Germany four days of lying in the sun was perfect! Then it was back to the apartment to grab our stuff before heading back to the airport.

Parque de Buen Retiro

One of the things that excited me most about Hauke coming to stay was the fact that after spending three weeks entirely relying on him to show me the way and how to do things and to speak Germany back in Austria and Germany, now it would be me knowing my way around and how to speak the language in Spain! But, after four days he had picked up quite a bit of Spanish, enough to buy his own icecream anyway, and I had to laugh when we were on the metro to the airport and I pointed out that I'd managed four days without getting us lost - two minutes later I was sitting calmly there, watching people leave at a stop when Feli asked me in alarm, but shouldn't we be getting out here, everyone else with suitcases is! Fail Claire, Fail. It's funny how empty the tiny apartment feels without the two of them here, you can actually walk around and there isn't someone sleeping n the kitchen floor when you get up, but it was great to have them here, just a really cool week.

More photos are here.

Marseille - at least the inside of the hostel and a bar!

some important Marseille building

I headed to Marseille for a couple of nights to see the sea again and to visit what is by all accounts an amazing city. I arrived after a an amazing but tiring week in Switzerland, and a really long day travelling - I was up early to catch a 7am train to Bern, a connecting train to Geneva, a bus back to Lyon in France, and then finally another train down to Marseille that got in around 5pm. By the time I caught the metro and then dragged my bags to my hostel, and then up three flights of stairs to the floor it was on, I was shattered and only the need for food and my new-found addiction to the Millenium trilogy dragged me out again!

Marseille harbour

I generally stear clear of new best-sellers, I'm not sure why but I guess I've never really been attracted by mainstream things that everyone else is into, but over here I've read anything in English I could get my hands on and in Nantes I borrowed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo from Camille and somehow managed to devour it within a couple of days, in between all of the sightseeing and nights out. In Zurich I had picked up the third in the trilogy and again, finished it within a day or so, and now I was desperate to find the second one. If you haven't read these yet then you should! I asked the girl on the reception desk where the bookstores with english sections were and headed out to have a look around. The city here reminds me slightly of a french version of Wellington in that it has hills and a harbour, things I miss after three months of flat, landlocked places. I didn't see too much though, I just walked around the main shopping streets looking in bookstores, but by the time things closed at 8pm and it became dark, I had to admit defeat as all of the stores had books one and three, but not number two, so I just grabbed another crime novel by a different Swedish author (I've since developed a real addiction to swedish crime novels, I never realised there were so many out there!picked up some food (ie a loaf of bread to accompany my speculoos) and headed back to the hostel. I walked in and was greated by the same girl, who asked if I managed to find a book - when I told her no, I was looking specificially for that one and couldn't, she laughed and told me it was sitting on the hostel bookshelf!

Just like Wellington, but with more Graffiti!

I curled up with that book until 3am, and awoke to a horrible rainy day. I convinced myself that the rain justified me staying inside to finish the book, with the hope that it would finish raining while I read, allowing me to head out and enjoy the rest of the day, but when I closed it around lunchtime it was still pouring. Nothing at all could motivate me to head outside, I could imagine mum's voice reminding me I had paid all that money to get here only to stay inside the hostel the whole time, but I think that months of travelling finally caught up with me, and I just couldn't be bothered anymore, moping around the hostel drinking coffee and talking to the other travellers seemed much more attractive than heading out into the rain to see yet another view of a European city from yet another church. Its funny to compare this "once you've seen a few you've seen them all" attitude to the wide-eyed wonder I displayed three months ago.

Ivan's friends watching the football

Finally, I did manage to force myself out into the rain to meet a friend to watch the soccer. Ivan (not surprizingly an AFS returnee from Tunisia) is over here as an english teaching assistant, same programme as Brett was doing in Mulhouse. I got harassed by a crazy man on my way there, normally I am used to annoying men calling out as you walk past, I learnt that pretty fast living in Costa Rica, and got reminded of it back in France, but Marseille has a reputation for being particularly bad, and this guy really followed me for a long way, rather than just drunkenly calling out when I was near. We watched Man U beat Marseille 2-1 with a bunch of his friends in a crowded Irish Pub, I ended up cheering for Man U just because the reactions of everyone else in the place were so funny. They say that the whole nation mourns when the All Blacks lose, but men really do cry into their drinks here!

Marseille - minus the rats running across the street!

I know there isn't much point trying to share a long running inside joke with everyone, so I guess this is more for my own record than anyone else. One of Ivan's friends is a German guy from a city called Hannover, really close to Emil's town of Celle. I had to laugh when I told him a had a friend from nearby, from Celle, and he said he had no idea where that was, because Celle was the butt of many jokes when Emil was living in NZ. Hauke loved to recount the story of how after WWII, Celle was offered the money to build either a university or a prision, with the town leaders foolishly deciding to build a prision (funnier coming from Hauke, whose hometown university boasts the most nobel prize winners in the world). When I explained to this german that I was laughing because we constantly poked fun at Celle and here was a guy from a city only 40k away that couldn't place it, he replied, "ohhhh, Celle with the prision" - Sorry Emil, one of the funniest moments in a long time!

My walk home was much more uneventful than my walk there so I took a bunch of photos of the deserted streets. The one thing that amazed me though was the rats! Marseille also has a reputation for being filthy, and I wouldn't disagree, while I was walking home I saw a huge rat every couple of blocks running between the overflowing rubbish bins everywhere. I left Marseille for Avignon the next morning, feeling a little guilty that I hadn't seen anything I came to see, but satisfied with myself for having a day off! Photo album on facebook is here.

Lyon - beer, bicycles and an irish bar

Pierre is (surprize surprize) another AFS 2009-2010 student, although one that lived in Auckland instead of Wellington. I'd only met him when he visited Wellington, but he saw on my blog that I was going to be in Lyon with no where to stay so offered for me to sleep at his.

Roman amphitheatre

The train journey here was interesting, at some point a woman asked me something, and when I replied that I didn't speak French she just shrugged her shoulders and forgot about it, but it meant that she knew I couldn't understand the announcement that the gave later on. I knew it wasn't great because everyone groaned, but normally I follow my "don't ask questions always pretend you know what you're doing and follow everyone else" policy and just do what everyone else does, so I wasn't too concerned. This lady however got all worked up and tried to explain it to me, but as my inability to speak french isn't resolved simplying by people speaking louder and slower to me, she didn't get very far! In english she said, "you come with me, 30 minutes" which I took to mean we were going to be delayed. In the end she looked in the whole carriage for someone who spoke english, and got a very unfriendly young guy with onlz slightly more english than her to tell me that there was a problem with the train, and we had to change to another at the next station. I put this together and surmised that I was going to be half an hour later and text Pierre to say so, but alas, 30 minutes later we arrived to Lyon on time and while everyone else presumably rushed off to another train (I guess the lady who said to follow her figured the english speaker had resolved all the confusion and didn't need her help anymore) I sat down to wait for Pierre, which proves that my "don't ask questions always pretend you know what you're doing and follow everyone else" policy would have worked and saved myself from waiting around in Lyon.

Me with Lyon in the background

It seems that in France people don't really share flats like we do in NZ, I know a lot of people who have left home to study who live in little one-room studios. Pierre lives in one like this, in an old building. Possibly the messiest place Ive visited so far in Europe, but that just adds to the fun of it! My time here in Lyon was really relaxed, but I needed it as a break from all of the rushing around of the couple of weeks before. Pierre heated pizza for lunch and then we sat around just drinking and chatting before going off to check out a view of the city. We took a cable car up a hill, apparently the oldest cable car line in the world but the carriages are way more moden than Wellington's. At the top there is an old roman amphitheatre from around 15BC, where they still hold music festivals, and a Basilica, and the view from there is amazing. We then went to feed a cat, and went back home. While I had a nap Pierre went out to buy food for dinner and my lunch the next day, Id been complaining about how I feel unhealthy as I dont get to eat enough vegetables in Europe, so he came back with a bag of frozen veges, very cute!

Pierre and I out in town

That night a couple of friends came around for drinks, Claire spoke perfect english so it was great to be able to talk to someone rather than just sit in the corner. After they left Pierre and I headed into town, where Pierre made a idiot out of himself talking to the bouncer in english, asking him to repeat himself, and then handing over his French ID! That bar was lame so we headed off to Pierre's local, an irish bar across the rivers. Despite Pierre's insistance that it would be a quiet night as he had a test the following morning, the evening got a bit messy there, we tried some mixture of beer and something that I think probably came from Lyon, and shots of tequila and tabasco (why did I never try that before, I love both tequila and tabasco, awesome combination!), and we chatted away to a lot of people. No one from Ireland though, although my irish accent may have made an appearance or two! We ended the night by bicycling home. In many major European cities they have bicycles that you can hire for usually 1€ for a day, and I'd always wanted to do this. Its kind of scary though because no one wears a helmet and the traffic here is so crazy. I think biking under the influence is still illegal, but taxis are far too expensive and it was too far to walk, and I figure that biking while drunk at 4am on a Wednesday night when there is no traffic anywhere is actually safer than me trying to navigate french traffic while sober during the day. Pierre teased me the next day about my claim that this was the coolest thing I'd done in Europe, probably not true but it was still heaps of fun.

biking home

Thursday was pretty much a write-off. Pierre somehow made it to class in the morning, but did manage to lock the door behind him, leaving me stuck inside all day. Luckily I had the frozen vegetables to eat for lunch! I spent the afternoon just catching up on admin stuff, emails and photos and trying (note im still failing) to keep this blog up to date! After Pierre came back from uni we just bummed around and ate, and then headed to a party at the house of some guys that study with him. Drinking with 18 year old engineering students really reminded me of how old I was! They were drunk when we arrived, none of them really spoke english, although they did delight in yelling obsencities in broken english for a rather large period of time. Luckily they gave that up, although this weird guy did follow me around trying to speak english all night and ignoring all of my hints that he should leave me alone. I'm finding that I am much more tempted to express my anger directly here, not sure if its because its frustrating not being able to calming tell people in their native language that they are being rude/annoying and should stop what they are doing, or if its because I just feel like I have nothing to lose making a scene in a foreign country. People who push in front of me in lines, disobey supermarket ettiquite and watch me struggle with my bag without offering to help are my biggest annoyances (ridiculously common here) but this guy was a few more sentances away from joining the list as well. Some of the guys were quite cool though, and I had an interesting conversation with a guy from Corsica who could understand a bit of english but couldn't speak it, he spoke in French and I replied in English and somehow we got by. There was a guy from spain too who perfectly demonstrated why I struggle with Spanish people, I made a few efforts to talk to him but he was really unfriendly.

Church in Lyon

We left the group as they wandered around the streets undecided about what club to go to and headed off to the same irish bar as the day before, with a small detour to get kebabs. I loooooove kebabs here in Europe, I really don't get what we do in NZ to make them taste so terrible in comparison to the ones here, I swear I wont be able to eat them when I return. We really did have a quite night this night, we were both too had it from the night before and after a few beers we biked home again to bed. A good couple of days just chilling out, I needed that after a lot of intense travelling!

Mainz, Würzburg, and Mainz again - catching up with the AFS German Interns

Accordian bus!

I know Hauke and Emil as they lived in NZ for a year in 2008-2009 working as interns at the AFS National Office for their German Civilian Service. I landed back at Frankfurt Hann airport on Friday afternoon and caught the bus back to Mainz. Despite Haukes offer to come and meet me at the train station, and despite it being dark and me only having taken 
this tram to the house once during daylight, I had insisted I could catch the tram and find the way myself - luckily I could! We had dinner about 7pm (I wasnt hungry and couldnt eat much) and Hauke went to sleep around 9pm (I wasnt tired and couldnt sleep). 

Roman aquaduct ruins

Around 11pm I got really, really hungry at 2am still couldnt sleep - thanks Spain! Saturday was pretty cruisy, we went for coffee and lunch with some old friends of Hauke from Göttingen who were in town, and then checked out his university - I got to ride on an accordian bus for the first time! Even Haukes embarrassment couldnt dampen my excitement. Haukes university is probably the ugliest I have ever seen, but we made up for that by walking home past some ruins of a old roman aquaduct. 

Raclette

The rest of Saturday night has become a bit of a blur. Hauke works as a bartender and is currently learning cocktails, so we trotted off to the supermarket in search of spirits and fruitjuice that we could mix. Unfortunately, I think mixed far to many spirits and not enough juice! We had dinner with his flatmates, Raclette, which is a method using a electronic thing with a heated stone on top for cooking meat, and a grill directly underneath where you put the cooked meat with cheese and potato and other stuff to melt. Quite cool, and the drinking continued with the flatmates. We played the same game that got me into trouble in Austria, with the dice and the numbers and me not knowing the rules and therefore constantly losing and having to drink, and at some point tumbled out the door with them into a tram to town. Hauke and I headed to the bar he works in again, and from then onwards the night is a bit messy. I know we got home around 6am, so when I woke up four hours later to catch my train I was still in less than perfect condition. I will spare you all of the details, except to say that I missed my train, puked in places I shouldn't have, was miserable all day, and swear that I will never drink the night before I travel to a new location ever again!





I arrived at Würzburg late and still sick but happy to see Emil! We headed back to his and spent the rest of the evening recuperating, going for a really long walk along the riverside and catching up. Monday morning we headed up to the Festung (Fortress) Marienberg, built in the 700s AD, reconstructed in the 1600s and used as a castle for Prince-Bishops and as a fort. There is a really good view of Würzburg from up there. On the way back Emil introduced me to a kind of pancake (sorry I forgot the word!) for lunch at a cafe on the riverside, and then I headed out to a small town, Bad Kissingen, to catch up with Claire, a French girl who had been in NZ on an AFS 2-month exchange in 2009 and is now doing a full-year exchange in Germany. This was an interesting train trip, as I didn't really know where I had to 

Catching up with Claire Chervin

catch connections from and the local trains don't have english translations like the bigger ones do, and it freaked me out a little to arrive in this tiny station and find Claire wasn't already there, but luckily she was just running late! It was really cool to talk about Germany and Germans with someone else who has an outsiders perspective.


Tuesday morning we headed to the Würzburg Residenz, a palace from the 1700s that is now a UNESCO heritage site. I quite like the marble used in it, and the huge stone foyer with a vaulted ceiling, but it made the place really cold! Emil went off to uni and I wandered around exploring and shopping for awhile, I found a New Zealand shop run by a German woman who hasn't lived in NZ but reckons NZers are much sunnier, upbeat and happy than Germans, 

Würzburg Residenz

and is therefore trying to bring a little of NZ into Germany. I have been hanging out for marmite, so I admit to paying 10euro, or about $20 for a jar of vegemite, the closest she had. I also ordered lunch for the first time by myself, admittedly just by pointing at something on a menu and hoping for the best, but I am still quite impressed with myself! Hand gestures also go a long way!


Wednesday morning we woke up to a little bit of snow! I checked out the Kulturspeicher museum, only the art half was open but I really liked that, all artworks done by people who had come from or lived in Würzburg. The smaller works portraying Würzburg itself impressed me more than some of the big, more famous stuff Ive seen here recently. Würzburg 

houses on the riverside in Würzburg

really is quite pretty, the buildings are different to further north, no framework on the houses, but they are all different colours and I like how the line the river. There are also a huge number of churches here that survived or were rebuilt after the war.


After another successful attempt at ordering my own lunch I said goodbye to Emil and headed back to Mainz. My first train was late, so I missed my connection, and as I was standing there searching for the next one on the board some quite scary-looking Germans actually came up to me and asked if I needed help! Made my day! I headed back to Hauke's to dump my stuff and went out to enjoy the snow some more, walking back into town. Hauke is a big patron of the Irish Pub here, and I wanted to see what he is always talking about, so I killed time waiting for him to 

Apparently 1 doesn't mean first...

finish at uni by sitting there chatting away to the owner. I find it weird now to talk to someone who has English as a first language! We finished off the night by going bowling with some friends of his, again our identical shoe sizes caused much disbelief and later a few laughs. My attempt at bowling was no laughing matter! I can't believe how poorly I did, on our third game I actually sat on 1, i.e. 1 pin for three or four rounds. Hauke reckons my arm physically isn't straight!


Tomorrow I am off to Colonge, hopefully our sobriety tonight will mean I have a much mroe succesful departure from Mainz this time around, and can enjoy my night there before I head into Belgium on Friday.


Anyone who wants to check out the video we made of Hauke skiing, its on facebook here although you might have to be friends with him to see it due to his privacy settings.

Würzburg, Festung Marienberg on the hill