Topdeck Trip 2008

I know it is really overdue but now I have arrived at Uni and I have reliable internet access and the blog page is not in German I can start posting more regulary.
Below is a copy of the two emails I have sent out todate which outline what I have been up to for the last month and a half. Enjoy...

Well I arrived into England on Saturday afternoon (the 16th) and then added a 6 hour train ride to my 24 hour plane flight which allowed me to stay the night with my sister Lucy up in Botton Village. This village was amazing with about 30 houses each comprising a set of host parents, one or two gap students like Lucy and 3 or 4 people with disabilities like autism which means they have trouble integrating successfully into mainstream society. The town works remarkably well and Lucy is enjoying her time there although it comes to an end very soon when she begins to travel around.

I left Botton on Monday and travelled back to London to spend one night in a backpacker’s hostel before my Topdeck tour began. I was a little worried about the shared nature of the accommodation – my room had six people sleeping in it, and I only met one of them – but there were not problems and I managed to have a chat with a few people at the bar downstairs who were also on their own.

Our Topdeck tour left on Tuesday morning and we began by travelling for a full day, leaving from London, getting the ferry across the channel and then driving onto Paris. Our group is pretty cool and everyone mingled pretty easily despite the fact that only a few people knew each other prior to the tour. The day concluded with a look at the Sacre Coeur church which sits on an enormous hill and then had a night tour of Paris in the bus. As we were walking around we were approached by ‘string men’ who come up to you with pieces of string which they prepose to tie around your finger. Curious tourists will find that once their finger is tied, a large sum of Euro’s are demanded for its removal. No-one on our tour was caught out as we were pre-warned.

Our full day in Paris saw us climb the Eiffel Tower, check out the Notre-Dame and spend a couple of hours in the Louvre which was amazing. We caught a glimpse of the most overrated painting in the world (Mona Lisa) among other things. Later in the day we went on a bike tour or Paris which allowed us to see the sights up close and hear the stories behind all of the ancient buildings.
Paris is amazing, there is only one high-rise building in the main city but most of the buildings are 3 or 4 stories high. The effect is amazing and sets it apart from any other city I have ever been to. You can almost feel the history.
We had a champagne dinner by the Eiffel Tower (which included snails) and finished the day with a boat cruise.

Our next stop was the tiny village of Lauterbrubrunnen nestled in the Swiss Alps and a full day there saw us catching the train up the mountain to Jungfraujoch the highest point in Europe. There was an ice-palace at the top and they allowed you outside to play in the snow, a fact that seems amazing to me because only 24 hours later we were cruising through Italy in 30 degree heat!

Our trip took us through the city of Pisa where we stopped to check out a certain leaning tower they have there and take all sorts of silly photos in front of the leaning bell tower. We didn’t have the time to climb it but this activity has been re-allowed after a number of years of closure. The tower is constantly getting worse, moving about 1 millimetre each year. It is expected to fall over some time this century despite a number of attempts to correct the lean.

Our second stop in Italy was the ancient city of Florence where we partook in a walking tour around the city, Florence was the birthplace of the renaissance period was Michangelo, Donnatelo, Gallallo among others residing there during the sixteenth century. Their influence is still present in the cobblestone city streets today.

On the same day we travelled to Rome and did a walking tour around the streets. We took a few photos and enjoyed some pasta for dinner directly in front of the Pantheon and caught our first glimpses of the Colosseum.
Our second day in Rome saw us visit the Vatican City, the smallest country on earth. The place is simply incredible with intact artworks dating back as far as 300BC, the Sistine Chapel painted by Michangelo at the demands of the Pope at the time is incredible especially since restoration works in recent years have brightened the colours back to their original glory. Our guide for the tour was young and enthusiastic which made the tour incredibly interesting. Our final stop was St Peters Basilica which is enormous and, rumour has it, contains enough solid gold in the ceiling to bring India out of poverty! I touched this cross which absolves all your sins so I am back to a clean slate (until that evening where 9 members of the tour left us and we had a large number of celebratory beverages!).
We walked around the Colosseum and looked inside the ancient amphitheatre and checked out the Forum before heading back to the campsite for a swim in the pool.

Email2:
As I write this, we are speeding through Belgium where we will make our last stop before jumping on the ferry and returning to London tonight.
I think my last email saw me in Rome, so many countries ago!
Since then we travelled to Venice, stopping at the ancient city of Verona, the home of the renaissance artistic period. Venice is and incredible city, you see pictures but there is something surreal about travelling on a gondola in a cannel with house and shop fronts facing you directly into the water!

On the evening before we left Venice we had an opportunity to bust our stuff at a toga party. I was quite impressed at some of the outfits people were able to create with just a single sheet (although my cape with my superman boxer shorts was not all that impressive!).
From Venice we travelled to Vienna in Austria. I would have to say Vienna was my favourite city in terms of liveability that I have been to. It is clean, easy to get around, very beautiful and has an effective public transport.

We began our day here with a walking tour through the city then had a coffee just off the central square. The waiter was quite friendly and upon departure encouraged us to “Enjoy Vienna, and your life…” which I sure plan on doing. We rented bikes and I caught up with Reece and Dee, my friends from Uni who are over here doing Education Abroad like me. The Hofburg palace in particular was breathtaking. This palace has the most amazing gardens and boasts its own zoo! We also visited a schnapps factory and received free shots on departure and a fun park where we spent hours riding rollercoaster’s!

Our next stop was Budapest in Hungary. This was easily the worst hostel we stayed in, bunk beds that swayed, showers with no curtain which allowed you to make friends with the person brushing their teeth while you soaped yourself up! (Needless to say I didn’t wash here!) Breakfast too only consisted of two bread rolls with lettuce and ham in them.
While I am speaking about breakfast actually let me say that I am so sick of ham and cheese. A European breakfast consists of bread, butter, ham and cheese! It’s crazy. Some of the places we stayed at, especially the more Australianised places like the Wombats hostel in Vienna did offer cereal which was a refreshing change!

Budapest itself however was a very picturesque city; we headed up to the labyrinth which is a series of caves which you can enter through a house which looks like an ordinary house in the middle of a street. This is where the Germans were hiding during World War 2. We also indulged in the spring fed baths which was an interesting experience to say the least (if I see one more old man in a loin cloth!)

The city of Krakow was our next stop and here we took a walking tour through the Jewish quarter of the city which was excellent but confronting. We walked through an ancient Jewish graveyard which had been turned into a tip during the Nazi occupation and the gravestones used to pave a path to a concentration camp. We also saw a series of empty chairs situated in a square which was were Jews were told to wait before being taken out to concentration camps and in most cases gassed. The empty chairs represent the waiting period and the fact that they are empty is representative of the fact that almost all of those who waited there were killed.
Our afternoon saw us heading to the salt mine which was pretty amazing. They have a whole church underground entirely carved out of salt as well as many other salt statues.

We visited Auschwitz the following morning, a truly sobering experience. Auschwitz was the worst of all concentration camps set up by the Nazi’s during World War 2. Over a one million Jews were sent to this camp and the majority were gassed on arrival. Those that survived the original inspection could expect a lifespan of only 3 – 4 months due to the brutal conditions to which they were subjected.

That night we did a walking tour through Prague which is a beautiful city by night and then hit up the beer factory. This is a bar with tabs on the tables and you pour you own beer. At the end of the night you add the tab up for the table and pay it based on how many litres you have drunk. Throughout the night they have running tallies showing which table has drunk the most in order to encourage consumption. A pretty cool place.

Our full day in Prague was a little slow to begin but we walked the width of the city and jumped on a boat cruise where we were shown the effects of terrible floods in the city about 10 years ago. That night a few people were leaving so we hit the town, heading out to possibly the worst nightclub I have ever been in! My free drink which I received upon entry turned out to be a shot of vodka in a glass with ice (you had to pay for the lemonade!) and there were people openly doing drugs on the table behind me! Needless to say we didn’t stay long.

Berlin was our next stop via Dresden. It is amazing to think that less than 20 years ago there was a wall surrounding the entire east side of the city and people were shot for attempting to cross from the east to the west. Today the city of Berlin is a really happening unified city as we discovered in our free day walking around. A city with so much history!
The pub crawl that night was massive and most people had a tough time getting up the next morning for our trip to Amsterdam.

Upon arriving in Amsterdam we headed off to one of the cities world famous sex shows. All of the males in our group were targeted to get on stage with some being drawn on and others pulling strings. I was lucky enough to have a dance on stage with the stripper in front of about 60 people!

The following day we visited Anne Franks house, a little girl who wrote diaries while in hiding from the Nazi’s during the war. The house was a bit larger than I expected, I had visualised only a single room but actually there were about 5 rooms although Anne and her family had to be completely silent to avoid being heard by the factory workers just one floor below. We also cycled around the city and visited a sex museum which was quite unusual!

Our stop in Bruges was short but sweet, what a beautiful city! The tour is now over and I am a little sad. It’s amazing how close you get to people when you live with them over short periods of time. I caught up with a couple of the guys yesterday when we went to a soccer match and hoping to catch up again tomorrow when we head out to Bath.
I am currently staying with my cousin Andrew and his girlfriend Nat who have been fantastic and their house in Brixton is really close to London’s excellent public transport grid which makes getting around very easy!

That brings you up to date as of 2 weeks ago. Will post the rest soon!
Micahel.