Catch up #2

Ok so yesterday I left you with my exciting adventures in Spain. I could talk about them all day really but, in an attempt to avoid gloating about how awesome it was - imma move on. (Note what a good person I am - I didn't even whip out the 10,000 photos of all the sights and people from my travels that you've never seen or met to show you....)

We're now in Zurich in Early-November 2012....

1. I went to visit a friend there after a loose invititation along the lines of  'feel free to come visit if you want' was given. In retrospect, I think it was kind of like those invitations I give to people when I have a big bag of chips or something - 'would you like one?' - I'll ask them, but of course their answer should be no, because if I only wanted three-quarters of my chips then I would have bought a smaller bag - get your own... And so with a half-hearted invite, offered very late one night two weeks before in mind, I found myself standing under a really fat and ugly thing/piece of art, that was supposed to represent the guardian angel of Zurich, waiting for his tardy ass to turn up (admittedly I was also running 2 hours late by that point too...) It was a pretty great weekend actually, I went to museums, spent a lot of money, went to museums, spent more money...I have privately-renamed Switzerland 'little-Australia', because only Australians would look at Swiss prices and think 'well, I've seen worse.' 10 francs for a beer? That's only $10 or so and we are out on the town after all....Germans though...Germans freak out.

And so they should, here the cheapest beer is something like 20 cents...

2. And Budapest. I went to Budapest to visit an awesome girl I met in Valencia and spend a week with the boyfriend I had abandoned for five weeks to go Spain. Budapest is my favourite. It is the magical fairyland of cake on a stick, thermal baths and lots of other stuff - but frankly you had me at cake on a spit. (Germans also have their own version of this...Baumkuchen...I love Germans). God I loved Budapest; it is magnificent, it is beautiful and it is super cheap. I will be going back. I can't pinpoint exactly what it is I loved about Budapest so much...maybe the giant castle on the river or the food or the Parliament building...but it's just...

Go there.

And that will be all for now. From then (a.k.a. now) on the simple story is that I had to quit travelling and get a job (or three as it turned out) to fund my studies and now spend my time either working or arguing with fools at the Rathaus over Visas, tax file numbers or...yeah, don't get me started.

Hope all is well.

Catching up #1

Ok so it's been a while - a very long while.

Here's post #1 catching you up on my life in-between...

1. I went to Amsterdam, it was off to a good start when somehow in ridiculously unlikely circumstances it turned out that my boyfriend's sister just happened to be catching the same train half way with me...at 5am in the morning. That would have been ok if not for the fact that I had a) been avoiding meeting his family for weeks beforehand - knowing that I'd get all awkward and make a terrible impression and b) been on the lush for about 5 hours by then. By that time my trusty friends Russian Standard and Jose Cuevo were joining the party and I found myself teary-eyed and saying goodbye to Pascal at the train station (note the tears...) Then his sister appeared out of no where - having recognised him - and probably regretting it, was forced to sit next to me, trying to make conversation in whatever language I felt my emotions would best be expressed for about an hour before I fell asleep on her for the rest of the way...

I'll admit it wasn't the my best impression I could have made...

2. I was in Amsterdam. Not my favourite place in the world, mostly because the whole place smells like weed and the few places that don't smell like weed smell like hookers. Ok ok - maybe that's a little harsh. It was actually pretty great -  I went with Ash and we rode bikes around and ran over tourists, ate burgers from vending machines and stared at windmills and hookers in windows (I can't even begin to describe how weird the whole thing is)

3. I was in Spain for a month wearing sun dresses and working on my tan (Well, not really - I need only think of the sun in order to score a hefty burn), trying to learn Spanish whilst my fellow Aussies and Germs were freezing their butts off and being useful to society by working or studying.

I regret nothing.


I tried to learn Spanish in Valencia - failed, but found that my terrible Spanish was often more than most Spaniards spoke. That's not to say my friends and I were efficient or always got what we wanted - with one of many requests lost in translation leaving my friend with a whole peach on a plate after ordering what she thought was peaches in cream..the peach was brought to her in a haze of confusion on every one's part of course...

I became a share bear (kind of), living with three other people in a small cabin and living through more than one storm that nearly blew our whole cabin away After Spanish classes and storms were over I went to Barcelona and stared at Gaudi's work (not my style Imma admit) and Madrid to...I don't know, be in Madrid?

And then I went to Montserrat and saw the famous mountain monastery and Toledo with it's ancient city on top of a mountain (both day trips from Barcelona and Madrid respectively and both better than the main cities) but I don't have anything amusing to say about either and I wanted to try to keep this brief - so with that, I bid you adieu -



Hope all is well.