"the kindness of strangers" ... :D

Soo ... a little while back I bought this book in London at a super cool travel book store I found near Covent Garden - I bought it just to read while I was travelling on trains and planes ... it's called The Kindness of Strangers, written by Lonely Planet guide book authors and it's about all the travel experiences that the authors had while travelling .. but with a twist .. instead it's about complete random acts of kindness by absolute strangers they experienced while travelling.

The book has a preface by the Dalai Lama which reads:
If we really think about it, our very survival, even today, depends upon the acts and kindness of so many people. Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents; later in life, when facing the sufferings of disease and old age, we are again dependant on the kindness of others. If at the beginning and end of our lives we depend upon others' kindness, why then in the middle should we not act kindly towards others?

There's 26 different experiences written about ... they are really really such cool and inspirational stories.

Honestly, as soon as I started reading this book, it made me realize of how many random acts of kindness from complete strangers I have gotten through all of my travels .. but I really never want to forget about them, so I wanted to write about them on here ....

Cairo, Egypt: I think I wrote about this previously, but it was honestly one of the moments of my time in Egypt I will definitely never forget ... I was by myself and had taken a taxi back to our hotel from a park in Cairo I was at with friends. However, the taxi man didn't speak very good, if any, english, but he had seemed to understand on a map where the hotel was. Firstly, the man made me quite uncomfortable sitting in his car while he repeatedly told me how beautiful I was. Secondly, I felt as though the car was going to break down any second and it was filthy with dirt and sand inside (but this was the standard of all taxis in Cairo). So anyways, after about 10 min in the car, he comes to this street and says "ok, here you are" ... so I look out the window and think - I don't recognize anything here? .. maybe the hotel is just down the street a little, I'm sure I can find it - so I pay the man, and get out and start walking. Sure enough, I have no idea where I am, I don't see any building with the name Victoria Hotel on it, and of course I'm dressed in shorts and a t-shirt because it's about 42deg so I'm getting a thousand stares and glares from men and women. I'm so lost at this point but I see about 10 national guards, dressed in white uniforms. So I come up to them and ask them if they are aloud to speak to me while on duty, they say yes. I ask them if they know where the Victoria Hotel is, and they all chat amongst each other and say no, but one walks away and goes into some building just down the street, and comes back with this little book. He hands it to me and tells me to find the name of the hotel in this book - it was some sort of old travel guide book. I point at the hotel name in the book, and underneath is it written in Arabic. The guard then takes a piece of paper, writes down the name and address and translates it into Arabic... he even walks with me to the street and waves down another taxi for me and tells the driver in Arabic where I want to go and negotiates a price of 5pounds (about $1) to go there. The driver agrees, and I takes me straight to my hotel. :D

Salzburg, Austria: This was back just before new years, and I had taken Ryanair from London to Linz, Austria, and from there was taking a train to Salzburg. While I was waiting for the train, I made friends with a British man who lived just outside of Salzburg. We caught the same train, and chatted the whole train ride. He had asked me where I was staying in Salzburg and I said a hostel, but that I hadn't booked it yet. So he offered me his Blackberry to search for a hostel online to go to ... I looked at a site and saw that actually all hostels in Salzburg were completely booked ... I really didn't expect this. I told the man I'm sure that there will be an opening at a hostel somewhere, and he actually seemed quite worried about me and gave me his cell number and name in case I couldn't find anywhere to stay ... he said he had friends directly in Salzburg center that I could probably stay with if I wanted to or couldn't find anywhere else. I eventually did find somewhere, but later sent the man a text thanking him for his generosity. :)

Zurich, Switzerland: I also did some CouchSurfing (staying on complete strangers couches) while I travelled ... I was in Lucerne at the time and had sent this one girl an email asking if I could stay with her for 1 night while I was in Zurich. She replied back to me saying yes, however at the time my train got into Zurich she would already be at her work - a hotel, and would be there until 11pm, but if I was still interested despite this, that I could come pick up her house key from her at the hotel, and let myself into her house. I told her that if that is alright with her, than I don't mind at all. So the girl gave me the address to her work, I took a tram there from the train station, came up to the front desk and met her, she gave me a map on how to get to her house, told me how to open the door, and gave me the keys! How trusting right? Crazy! So I toured around Zurich for a few hours and around 10pm went to her house. When I opened the door I had seen she set out a little mattress with blankets and a pillow for me already in the living room :) ... I was pretty tired from travelling all day so I went right to bed. I heard her come home at about 1130pm, and she just closed the door to living room trying to not wake me. So the next morning I was leaving Zurich and had to be at the airport by 1pm. She knew I had to be gone by noon and we had planned to go for breakfast that morning, but by 10am, she was still sleeping. I didn't want to wake her, so instead I left a note on the bed saying "Hey, I'm going to the center to grab some breakfast, I know you're probably pretty tired from work yesterday so don't worry about it. If you wake up before noon, give me a text and we can meet up - Brittany" .... I never heard from her! Literally I had never even had an actual conversation with this girl, and I slept in her house overnight. So crazy eh?! But it really showed me that there are really trusting nice people out there.

These really are just a few of the acts of kindness people have shown me during my travels. More so than the destinations themselves, what I remember of my travels are the people I met. :)

the royal wedding + uk ...

I was really debating whether to go to London or not for the wedding, and at last minute (12am haha) I decided to book a ticket .. but if I was gonna go down, I was gonna go to see something .. so I left Bournemouth at 3am, got to London at 5 and went straight to Buckingham Palace.

I know a lot of people think "what's the big deal, who cares" .. but for me personally it's pretty cool to think that there is a monarch here. On the news the night before, BBC was interviewing people waiting along the routes from the palace and abbey, and almost every second person they interviewed was an American or Canadian. They kept saying "why are there so many Americans here??" ... and the Americans were like "For us, we don't really have anyone as big or known as the queen, yea we have Obama, but he's a political figure not an iconic image of our country, when you think of the UK you think of a crown or the Queen." This is so true though, for me - the fact that there is a Queen here is really a fairy-tale, Cinderella storybook thing ... weird to believe. I think a lot of Europeans don't really find it as cool to us because there are monarchs all over here - Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Spain - they all have there own so it's not really a big deal like it is to us.

When I came to England, I really thought like - wow, it's so cool there is a Queen reigning here .. but never did I think I'd ever have the chance to see her in person. Well now, I can say I have :D

So I waited at Buckingham from 530am, at that time there weren't actually too many people, and I was in about the 4th row of people from the fence, so a pretty good spot :) - at 1030 I saw the Queen leave in her Rolls Royce with Prince Phillip - at 1050 I saw Kate drive by with her father going to the abbey - at 11, along with 1 million other people in the streets of London I listened to Kate and William exchange vows ... as soon as they were pronounced husband and wife there was literally a roar throughout London of screaming and clapping, crying, and thousands of flags waving ... it was actually so so cool to see such patriotism and people so proud of their culture having a royal family. Finally, I saw the couple, Queen, and families arrive back from the abbey to the palace in the royal horse-drawn carriages. Very cool :)

After everyone returned to the palace, all of us waiting outside constrained behind gates and police were aloud to run up to the gates and on the street to get into place to take pictures of them when they came out onto the balcony. OMG!! It was no joke, like a HERD of mad cows booking it to try to get the best spots ... people just left all their bags, sleeping gear, coolers, everything and ran as fast they could ... people got pushed over and trampled on, falling on the ground, one old lady got pushed down on the ground and was crying her ankle was broken and had 6 police around her ... it was insane!

I was one of the first that got to go so I got a pretty good view to the balcony ... finally they came out at 130 ... I got some awesome shots of them, the royal family, and of course the million dollar shot - the kiss :P

I'm really really glad I went down honestly, I bet never again in my life will I have the opportunity to see any of them ever again ... and it was really awesome to celebrate amongst 500,000 other people at the palace, everyone it such good moods, so excited, and so proud.

xx

I AMsterdam!

Just got back from Amsterdam a couple days ago ... it was awesome!

I took the Eurostar from London to Brussels, then transferred trains to go to Amsterdam...

So... nobody in Amsterdam drives... EVERYBODY bikes :D ! Seriously, the bike has replaced the car in The Netherlands. People get road rage, but on their bikes instead, it's quite intense haha. When I told my friends there that I have a car, they looked at me like I was crazy! I had to explain that in Canada everything is so much bigger and if I tried to bike from one end of my city to the other, it would take hours! haha ... One day it took me 2 hours to cycle all around amsterdam from one side and back!

The first day I got there, the friend I was staying with brought her bike to come pick me up from the train station and she was like "well hop on, we got a 20 min bike ride" and i was like "what? but i have my suitcase?" (prob 20 lbs) and she was like "just roll it behind us" hahaha ... this was one of the funniest things i've ever done in my life - sitting on the back of this bike sideways and rolling my suitcase behind us while she peddled! As if she was my personal bike/taxi driver haha ... The rest of the time I was there, either I rode or she rode n one of us sat on the back... I felt like I was back in the 60's or something, where in movies you see teens riding their bikes with friends sitting in the baskets! It was so funny n will definitely be a memory I'll have of Amsterdam :)

I didn't really have any expectations of Amsterdam ... I didn't really know what to expect. After 2 days there, I actually still felt like I hadn't really seen anything, but then I realized that Amsterdam - even though it's as well known and famous as say London or Paris, it doesn't really have the history like they do. I didn't see any buildings or monuments (like Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower), statues, or anything associated to the history or culture of the Netherlands. Instead I realized that Amsterdam's "culture" is more about the people - riding the bikes, the easy-ness and laid back-ness of the people chilling out along the canals and in the squares, the different architecture of the houses and buildings ... this is the culture of Amsterdam ... and of course there's the red light district and the "coffeeshops".

The only things I learnt about Amsterdam otherwise culturally were that Van Gogh was from The Netherlands, and in Amsterdam there is the famous house of Anne Frank - a 13 year old (German born) girl, who wrote 2 years of diaries of the nazi invasions, and how her family hid in hiding rooms from them. From what I understand, the family was later caught and sentenced to a concentration camp... but one of her family members later found her diaries still in the house in Amsterdam and published them on her behalf .. the public can go into the house and see the hiding rooms and original diaries - which I was quite interested in doing, however the ques were about 3 hours long, before the house had even opened. Clearly it is was a significant and interesting site.

It actually felt more like a holiday, because rather than running around expecting to see a bunch of stuff I just chilled out each day eating dellllicious food, biking around, hanging out in some really amazing parks, and just soaked in the sunshine :)

Amsterdam was a different kind of holiday but definitely a good one! :)

scotland

Edinburgh is the 2nd most beautiful city in Europe according to Lonely Planet authors ... and I understand why now. It has an almost rich medieval feel to it because of there is a castle overlooking the entire city and the architecture of the black/charcoal brick buildings throughout the city is really elaborate. It makes they city look mystifying almost and quite spooky at night.

Just north of the city is the North Sea, and surrounding the city are these super lush green rolling hills, of which one that is towering over the others - called Arthur's Seat - it's an extinct volcano (also the hill the castle is built on is another inactive volcano) ... so the 2nd day I was there, I hiked up to the top of Arthur's Seat, where I got some ammmazing views of the city on one side and the smaller villages along the sea on the other.

Also in Edinburgh is the Palace of Holyroodhouse - the Queen's official residence when she's in Scotland. It is directly across the street from the Scottish Parliament- which doesn't really fit into the rest of the UK - it's this very distinct modern building that just looks so out of place (fairly new - built in 1999) .. I even asked the officers guarding outside if it was actually parliament because it just didn't seem like a parliament building. The public can tour inside as well which is pretty cool .. inside I saw some of the acts and commissions that have formed the laws in Scotland today and also the debating chamber where all assemblies take place. I have a picture of one of the acts which in 1457 banned golf and football (soccer haha) because King James II wanted people to practice archery instead so they could more useful in defence for the country.

.. From Edinburgh I went to Inverness to visit a friend I worked with at Starbucks in Canada like 3 years ago. Inverness is right at the tip of Loch Ness .. we ended up going to a "Loch Ness Experience" exhibition thing and basically the whole time they just kept saying that Nessie ain't real, all these claims of sightings we're people seeing sticks in the water or editing photos to make up a story haha .. too bad eh?

Scotland was really beautiful - a bit like Canada - lots of greenery, hills n mountains, snow, and a whole lot of free space!

swisss land ... land of cheese and chocolate !

So since Slovenia, I haven't really done any travels except London and around Bournemouth ... so I haven't bothered to post anything on here.

A few days ago I flew from London to Basel, Switzerland - I have some friends who live there but studied with me last year in Canada. Basel is a super artsy city ... tons of 'modern art' sculptures everywhere, n murals n paintings on almost every building. The couple days I was there it was like 25 deg! I even got tan lines! haha ... The first night I got there my friends had already bought me tickets to this music festival in the city with all local Basel/Swiss bands, and all different styles. It was so cool, 'cause the festival was in a bunch of different venues, and the wristbands got you into all them .. we just hopped on different trams and went from one to the next. Also, on a side note - at one of the concerts, I was talking to someone n they were like where are you from? I was like BC, Canada ... and they were like so is that guy over there I was just talking to ... so I went and asked that guy where he was from, and he was from Fort St. John!! How crazyy eh!? 2 BC'ers meeting in Basel, Switzerland! :D

From Basel I caught the train to Lucerne, which is absolutely stunnnning! It really looks similar to Austria, but I think it's a bit prettier over here... Lucerne is amazing, the lake is huge n then there's like 3 major mountains around it - Mt. Pilatus, Mt. Stanserhorn, n Mt. Rigi ... it's really picturesque here, incredible actually! I think Lucerne has officially topped my list as the most beautiful in Europe! Of course, I tried some true swiss cheese and chocolate - delicious! Not like our orange processed plastic 'american cheddar' or chocolate that tastes and looks like wax!

From Lucerne I took a train about an hour to the top of Mt. Rigi on the opposite side of Lake Lucerne from Lucerne (the city) ...
It's in the north-eastern alps with the summit at 1,797m. On one side of the mountain you see a flat switzerland overlooking little cities and villages... and on the other all the major peaks of the alps - no life - just mountains ... such an incredible view.

I finished my swiss trip with Zurich. It's very urban... tons of people everywhere - cars, trams, bicyclers, n walkers. There's the typical 'old town' of Zurich - with churches/monuments/historic buildings .. and then it ends when Lake Zurich starts and splits the city along the 2 banks. I walked about half hour past the 'old town' along the lake and got some gorgeous pictures of the lake and city with just the tips of the alps as the backdrop. Zurich has a bit of everything - culture, accessibility, beauty, and it seems very multi-cultural.

I didn't expect Switzerland to be that beautiful or to love it as much as I did .. but i actually was really sad to leave! It was way more than I expected ... :D

slovenia: ljubljana

How many people do you know that have gone to Slovenia? I know, not many... but I had different reasons for wanting to come to Slovenia, my grandpa was born in the capital Ljubljana. I'd never met him, he passed away before I was born... but still I wanted to come here to just see it.

So I took a train from Flachau, Austria to Ljubljana... a very very beautiful train ride through the Julian Alps may I add... and arrived around 6pm and checked into a hostel.

When I was checking in the girl at the front desk needed my passport - so I gave it to her, she looked at it and said "Klanchar (the actual pronunciation), you are Slovenian!? Do you speak Slovenian?" I was like "Yeah, my grandpa was born here... and umm no, I don't speak anything but English!" haha. She was curious as to how we pronounce it in Canada since we don't have the little accent over the "c" and then I had to explain that everyone in my family actually pronounces it a different way - so confusing...

Later on I went out to start seeing the city but it was kinda hard since there was a lot of heavy fog so I couldn't see much... but I read that Ljubljana is actually known for its fog, apparently they have fog 121 days a year!

So the next day I picked up a map and toured the city :) ... everything's really accessible as it's in the center of the city, including the Ljubljana Castle! When you look at an ariel view of the city, the castle is on a hill right in the middle.

I toured pretty much all the major sites - the castle, town square, famous bridges (like the Dragon Bridge and the Triple Bridge), some cathedrals, the Ljubljana university, markets, town hall, and the Slovenian parliament building.

some random things i learnt:
- the Dragon is the symbol of Ljubljana, because it represents power and courage... it's on many things around the city
- Ljubljana is on the south part of the Eurasian Plate and therefore has had several earthquakes as well as floods in the past, 2 of them were quite severe
- After the devastation of the earthquakes and a flood, Ljubljana was re-built in similar style to Graz and Salzburg in Austria

The city is quite old and you can actually see the damage on a lot of buildings from the earthquakes/floods.. the infrastructure of the city is in quite poor condition because of it.

Slovenia is a very beautiful country... actually when I was on the train and buses around the country, at times I felt like I was on the drive from Kamloops to Merrit/Vancouver :) On the Slovenian tourist website it even states that it is the 3rd most forested country in Europe (after Sweden and Finland) so no wonder it reminds me a bit like home.

Alright, that's all :)
xx

New Years '11

I have just over a month off from school for the holidays, so of course what am I gonna do?? Travel obviously!

A friend from uni back home was coming to Austria for the holidays to go skiing, so a bunch of us who studied at TRU planned to celebrate New Years together - there was about 15 of us from Switzerland, England, Germany, Austria, Canada, and Italy!

I flew from London to Linz, Austria and took a train to Salzburg to meet up with everyone in Flachau, Austria.... haha, it was a bit of a trek...

So anywhos, for New Years we went to this restaurant atop a mountain which we hiked up 45 minutes to get to. It was a typical old fashioned Austrian restaurant - all wood, like a ski chalet :) ....

At New Years we had fireworks and champagne! It was amazing - we were at the very top of the mountain so we could oversee the little villages below and fireworks going off all around through the clouds :)

The night went on till about 2/3am at which point, we still needed to get back down the mountain... so what better way to go down than to toboggan (the restaurant lent us toboggans) haha! Unfortunately for us though it was so late that the lights on the mountain we're turned off by that time and it was literally pitch-black... so there were a few crashes into trees and off cliffs - but we're all still alive :)

Happy New Years!
xx

year end ... twentyten

2010 has been a pretty crazy year for me...

Started university in another country not knowing anyone. Met literally hundreds of new friends. Travelled to 10 different countries... rode a camel, and ate snails.

Since being to so many new places, here's a list of my favourite ones...

1. London

2. Salzburg

3. Stockholm

4. Rome

5. Barcelona

London will never ever bore me. There's always something to see and do. Endless (free) museums, endless restaurants, endless attractions, endless shows, endless shopping, endless parks. It's a beautiful city, and always awake.

Salzburg - but really Austria in general. I love Vienna, but Salzburg just a little bit more. It's more quaint and has more character. It is one beautiful city on a sunny day! I think every single time I've come to Salzburg I say "you couldn't find anywhere in Canada like this" and I still believe it. All the buildings are pastel pinks, greens, and yellows. There's cobblestone streets. The entire city is walkable, and with long narrow pedestrian only shopping streets. To top it off (literally), there's the mystical fortress that overlooks the entire city. No wonder it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I don't know what it is, but Salzburg is "true" europe to me (the food, the architecture, the people), it's exactly what I imagined Europe to be like before I got here.

Stockholm was absolutely amazing. I think I had an advantage going there during winter because it was so so incredibly beautiful, I'm sure it's just as beautiful in summer, but it looked so sweet in the winter. Everything blended into dark purples, reds, yellows, and blues. It was not the typical "holiday" location... I can still picture in my head the first day there - it looked like a frozen-in-time wonderland.

Rome... hmmm - tons of really cool historical sites (Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Pantheon, Colosseum, ancient ruins, bla bla bla). I honestly remember being there and saying to myself "where am I?" because it was unlike anywhere I'd seen so far, and even though I sort of knew what to expect it to look like from books and pictures, once I was there all my expectations went out the window. Rome - a city built on stories.

Barcelona - what do I remember of Barcelona? Amazing shopping, amazing weather, beautiful people, and delicious food! :D

2010 - best year yet, and hopefully many more!

Happy New Years everyone.

xx

england has snow!

So we got our first snow fall the other day!

.... just a short post ....

We've gotten about 5cm of snow and literally the entire country is practically shutdown.... I find it really funny actually... Railways, airports, buses, mail, everything. It's all they talk about on the news! Even the universities have cancelled classes and closed the schools! I had an assignment due tomorrow, and the teacher e-mailed us saying "due to the weather conditions, the assignment is now due on mon" and it hasn't even snowed in the last 24 hrs, hahahaha... I've never seen or heard such a thing in my life! No joke, the roads are melted and in fine condition people... it's just the fact that there's snow! It's beyond exaggeration. I think they've been pampered juuust a little - it was +5 last week and people we practically dressed in parkas!!

Kinda funny... Makes me wonder how we cope in Canada eh!? haha.

Anywhos, that's all. :)

xx

stockholm!

Just got back today from Stockholm - went with a friend from uni for the weekend :)

I think it's become one of my favourites... so so beautiful! Although it was a chilly -12 during the day, so it was difficult to spend the whole day being outside touring. With fresh snow sprinkled and ice cold blue water, it gave Stockholm a super cool look unlike anywhere else I'd been. Especially since Stockholm is made of 14 islands!

We went first to watch the 'changing of the guard' at the king of Sweden's Royal Palace, which is on 'Gamla Stan' island - known also as 'old town' island. It's right across from the Swedish parliament, which is on its own separate island. The ceremony was pretty cool, but the guards are nothing like the ones at the Buckingham in London - a lot of them had beards and they didn't seem to take it very seriously like they were talking to each other and looking around, whereas the guards at Buckingham cannot have any facial hair, and they are extremely hmmm "structured".

After the ceremony, we took a tour inside the Royal Guest Apartments - normally you can tour the actual Royal Apartments (basically the palace), because the king's main home is Drottningholm Palace (just outside of Stockholm), but that weekend the monarch family was actually in Stockholm, so we could only do the Guest ones, but still it was kind of cool they were there.

We also toured the Treasury where all the (princesses, princes, queens and kings) crowns, swords, and jewels were kept. That was really cool - some of the things dated back all the way to the 1500's ...so insane!

Last at the palace, we toured an exhibition that showed the wedding gifts to the Princess as she got married earlier this year in June... Kind of strange though, she married her personal trainer! They showcased tons of stuff - drawings from local elementary schools, hand quilted blankets, paintings, hand carved tables, tons of things!

And yes!! We made sure to eat some Swedish meatballs and smoked salmon! hahaha

We also made sure to make a reservation to go to the Absolut Ice Bar! The entire bar is made out of water from the River Torne and it's -5 inside all year round. Every year they do a different theme apparently - this year was an underwater/aquatic theme! There were marine life carved into ice blocks and the walls, and the drink menu had "aquatic" names. Everything possible was ice - the glasses, seats, bar... so cool! Definitely an experience - one of the best yet.

The people were some of the friendliest I've met... and evvveryone speaks english, I didn't come across one that didn't understand me.

Overall... Stockholm's food, culture, and people were amazing and on top of that it was incredibly beautiful. I absolutely loved Stockholm!

remember remember, the fifth of november!

Last weekend I headed up to Manchester and met up with some friends who studied back home with me last year. Not really sure what to say about Manchester, because besides for Manchester United stadium – there wasn’t much to see. Like I walked around the city center one day and it didn’t even feel like it was the “downtown” of such a huge city. It’s a really strange mix of a lot of really old industrial buildings and some modern new buildings.

Manchester was another option I had in the UK for my exchange, but after being there I can say I’m really happy I chose Bournemouth instead. My uni is a lot nicer, and the city has so much more character… and of course there’s the ocean! But still, was really good to see friends.

So last night was my first super “British” cultural event. They call it Bonfire Night, and “Remember, remember, the fifth of November!” …. It’s a night where every city in the UK puts on fireworks and parades and it’s suppose to be in anniversary of the “Gunpowder Plot” where some guy years ago tried to blow up the House of Lords in Parliament and assassinate King James I … It never went through though, the guy was found guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder and was arrested, and was to be hung, drawn, and quartered.

My flat mate and I went to a neighboring city called Poole to watch one of Britain’s biggest firework shows for the event. It was super cool …. It almost felt like a Canada Day celebration or something. Everyone comes out for it (took us over an hour to even get out of the parkade afterwards), bands were playing in the streets, just tons of people everywhere…

It’s stuff like this that I like, ‘cause next year when I’m back home I’m gonna be sad that I’m not here celebrating and remembering the fifth of November!

Anywhos, I’m actually on the bus to London right now (greyhound back home really needs to get Wi-Fi on the buses like they have here) … suppose to be sunny today so I figured why not come down to London? :D

Take care!

xx

l o n d o n !

So I went to London on the weekend - it was a cheap trip the uni offered to international students... So far, I've only been to London via going through Heathrow so this was my first actual time in London.

We toured around all the major sites

- Big Ben

- Parliament

- Westminster Abbey

- Trafalgar Square

- Covent Garden

- Buckingham Palace

- London & Tower Bridge

- London Eye

- St. James & Hyde Parks

There are so many things to see and do, my strategy was to go and "see" all these places to take pictures, and then I'll come back another weekend or multiple and take my time going through.

I now understand why London gets put in comparison with New York. At times when I was there, I felt like I was in NY. Especially in the parks, they're HUGE (like 1/3 the size of all of London) they look exactly like pictures I've seen of Central Park. Lots of people running, playing soccer, horseback riding...

To hear Big Ben was really cool, you can tell who are the tourists because they all stop, look up, and stare when the clock rings.

Parliament has a nice view of protesters across the street.. tons of tents and signs saying to bring their troops home and out of Afghanistan.

Trafalgar Square was really cool 'cause guess whos embassy is there. . . . the Canadian embassy! The nicest Canadian embassy I've seen abroad yet! .... and strangely, there is a building on the adjacent block with a bunch of coffee shops at the bottom and at the top in big letters it says "Canadian Pacific" ... I know that's our railway, but was a little confused what purpose that building had for it. I looked to find an entrance for it, but nothing was really labeled clearly.

- so as of ten seconds ago I just decided to google it - it turns out it use to be the London office for the Canadian Pacific Railway but is now the Canadian Tourism Commission office! Cool! :)

Buckingham Palace was really cool to see.... the flag was up, so that means the queen was there!

I want to go back and spend some more time in the parks, museums, do the London Eye, do a guide of the palace, and shop! There's far too much to do, if you rush everything you might as well not even bother doing it. My school schedule is perfect for a weekend trip too - Thursdays I have a class till 3, and then I have the whole weekend free! So I can do lots of Thursday night - Sunday trips and be back Monday for class... :D

Overall...

a great first experience to London

bournemouth!

Well for the last 2 weeks I've been back in Rohrmoos, Austria... and on Wednesday I flew to London and finally arrived in Bournemouth. I'm staying pretty much in the center of town so I checked into my room and then went out and ventured around immediately!

It's really really really different here than home, like all of the buildings and architecture - it's almost antique/victorian, and lots of pedestrian only streets, and everything here is so little - like all the shops and houses.

I was walking around aimlessly for a few hours until I saw a row of like 5 flags in front of this big restaurant.. and in the middle of all these flags was . . . . a Canadian flag! There wasn't even the U.S. flag! hahaha.. I'm pretty sure the others were only European flags, and then just 1 Canadian flag :D ... so sweet. I was looking at them for a couple minutes and then all of a sudden I looked behind them in the distance and then I saw it ............... the ocean!! :D :D

Oh my goodness gracious me.... so so so so nice. You can see the whole coastline wrapped all around these little towns. Super light green/blue water, lots of surfers, and miles of extremely soft white sand - love it! The weather may not be tanning suitable (although the last two days it's only rained once and it's been sunny! :) ) but it's so nice to be near the ocean.

Yesterday I came to my new uni campus for the first time, met my international exchange coordinator and everything. It's about the same size campus as TRU.... everything inside all the buildings is really modern and new - real nice. So far, I like. :)

Next week I get enrolled into my courses and get my student cards, etc... and the week of Oct 3rd I start classes.

Alrighty wellll...

That is all.

:) bye!

vienna !

After Prague, our next stop was Vienna! Vienna was the first city I came to in Europe back in 2006. I really really love the city. Very "old European" architecture, and a lot of history. Also the people are quite like Canadians - very friendly! haha, it only took seconds for 2 different people at the train station to ask me if I needed help or directions. Not once in another city at an airport or train station did anyone stop and ask if ever I needed directions. :) I like that, 'cause I always stop and ask people if they need help finding their way when I can tell they are tourists in Kamloops.

It was really cool because the first night we got there we all ventured out to do our own things, so some friends and I went walking around the city center of Vienna... and as we were walking down a street I saw a cafe on the other side that seemed familiar, and then I remembered it was the exact cafe I went to with friends back in 2006, and then something in my mind triggered that across the street was a bistro I had lunch at... sure enough, it was still there :) It's so cool to think that 4 years ago I was in the exact same spot, half way around the world from home. so crazy

From Vienna, I left my Contiki group and took a train from Vienna back to Peter's in Schladming... about a 3.5 hr train ride. The day after I arrived it was my 20th birthday, so we went to Dachstein Skywalk. Super incredible views atop all the snow-capped mountain peaks and valleys... with a glass platform where you look down 250 meters of the mountain. You can even see the mountain tops all the way to the coast of Venice, Italy. It's absolutely stunning.

Hmmm ... don't know what else to update on, so that's all for now I guess...

bye!

xx

berlin :)

Hello Berlin!

So I arrived at the airport and took the train to near my hotel. As soon as I got off the train and while walking to the hotel I kinda had a strange feeling... It took me a couple minutes and then I realized - I wasn't in Egypt anymore! I know it sounds stupid, of course I knew I was in Germany, but it was so so so strange because it was at that point that it hit me how different Egypt really was. Like when I was in Egypt - I didn't really want to go into any stores or restaurants (at least not alone) because 1) they didn't look safe 2) there were hardly any that looked clean 3)the shop people were extremely pushy, so I wouldn't even browse.... but when I was walking from the train station to my hotel, practically the first restaurant I saw I was like - I wanna go in there, it looks good. To be walking around in such a clean environment (meaning less than a million pieces of garbage on one block), with nobody starring at me because of my clothing, felt kinda strange.

Germany isn't a foreign country to me .... Egypt is a foreign country.

Anywhos... While we were in Berlin for 3 days, we went to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, imprisoning 20,000 people which were mainly political people. Inside the camp you can still see sites like the gallows, barracks, prison, kitchen, watch-towers, and at the back of the camp through a gate is a mass grave site for the victims. It's definitely an emotional site - a lot of people in there had tears as they walked around. It's the only "tourist" site I've ever been to where there were lots of people but everyone was so quiet it was like there was nobody at all.

There was a quote on one of the walls near a statue as a memorial for the victims that I took a picture of - "And I know one thing more - that the Europe of the future cannot exist without commemorating all those, regardless of their nationality, who were killed at that time with complete contempt and hate, who were tortured to death, starved, gassed, incinerated, and hanged..." - Andrzej Szczypiorski, Prisoner of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, 1995.

True to that.

.......

We also did a walking tour throughout Berlin, seeing a few museums, parts still left of the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate, and the Holocaust Memorial.

Overall, I really liked Berlin. It reminds me almost a little of Vancouver, just because it's so metropolitan and everything's very accessible!

After Berlin, we started driving to the Czech Republic, stopping in a smaller German town called Dresden. Not too much to see there, but some more churches (I've literally seen about 500 in the last month so now they all look identical) .... however, I just want to note that in the town square there was a "canadian steakhouse" called Ontario!! hahahaha.... well of courrrse I had to eat there, and apparently so did everyone else 'cause it was the busiest restaurant! I had a buffalo burger, although there was quite a nice variety of meats including Moose and Elk! haha.

I'm now in Prague ... very very beautiful city! Lots of pastel coloured buildings, golden roof-top churches, and a huge river running through the city lined with amazing bridges! Everything is soooo beautiful at night time here because everything's "daintily" lit up - I was just imagining how beautiful the city would be in winter - breathtaking I bet.

wellll... that's all for now, gotta run.

have a good one :)

xxo