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Once again, it has been quite a while since I wrote a blog.
London turned out to be quite busy. On Sunday I caught up with Kati who is German and did an internship in OH&S at Melbourne Health a couple of years ago and has recently moved to London and had dinner with Victoria again. On Monday I pretty much lounged around and went in search of fireworks to celebrate Guy Fawkes day. I also cooked up a storm for the first time in a long time - ricotta and spinach cannoloni. Tuesday, I decided to be cultural again and ventured to the British museum. Turns out the Poms are just as good at stealing things as Napolean was. Once again, I spent much of my time in the Ancient Greco-Roman stuff. I did also look at the Rosetta Stone (Ancient Egyptian) which was also very cool. I continued my museum tour on Wednesday, going to the Natural History Museum, which was excellent. I was somewhat put-off, however, by the large pack of teenage boys counting the number of animal penises they could see and by accidently walking into a mother giving her son a sex education lesson in the human biology section. She wasn't speaking in english but she was talking animately and pointing at the pictures a lot. The child looked increasingly concerned. Wednesday evening was Guy Fawkes night and we had a pot luck dinner at Tim & Di's. Someone pointed out before the pot luck that we may end up with 10 desserts and nothing else. We didn't. But we did end up with 5 varieties of pizza! And then we played with fireworks which felt very illegal but wasn't.
It was very late on Wednesday evening, either that or early Thursday morning, before I realised that I should perhaps leave if I wanted to get to the airport that night. I got to the airport at about 2:30am for my 5:50am check-in and, once again, had an airport sleep. Despite being on a very cold, very hard floor, I actually had a better sleep than in Madrid because I found a corner where there were no flurescent lights shining on me and no strange women staring at me when I woke up. I did almost get my name called out over the loud speaker though cause I feel asleep at the gate and didn't wake up until the last 10 or so people were boarding. The plane was delayed in London for an hour or so, which didn't bother me at the time as I was asleep on the plane but annoyed me when I got to Munich and had missed the walking tour for that day. I took a short walk around the city and then spent the evening in the hostel bar with hostel people.
On Thursday I did a tour out to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp and the one on which all the others are modelled. This was not an experience that I would describe as fun. It was very intensive, particularly at the end where we actually went through a gas chamber, but I'm glad that I went, since I passed up the opportunity to go to a concentration camp in Berlin.
On Friday, I left Munich early and went to Nuremburg to see the museum there that documents the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. It was very interesting and I had intended on spending about an hour there and accidently spent more than two. I was unfortunently out of time to go to Albert Durer's house / museum. He was a painter in the 16th century and did some witchcraft properganda. He also taught Hans Baldung Grien who is my favourite painter of the time (also did a lot of witchcraft stuff). I did look at some of the Albert Durer stuff in the bookshop, however, and they didn't seem to have much witch-y stuff in them. I also missed out on the medieval dungeons (Nuremburg was big into witchhunting in the 16th century. They were part of the Holy Roman Empire and the worst stuff mostly happened in Bavaria). But according to the information pamplet I had, they were closed in November anyway. I had to leave just after lunch to get my train to Prague. I had tried to get a later train but all the later ones involved changing at least twice and that didn't appeal. I was also glad when I got there as it was already pitch-black when I arrived. It's pretty depressing that everywhere I go, it gets dark at 4pm. Luckily I only have 4 more weeks in Europe and I'm heading a bit more south after this. Anyway, I had managed to fall asleep on this train as well (I've managed to train myself into thinking that sleeping on planes and trains is a really good idea) and woke up as the last person on the train, being yelled at in Czech by some railway guy.
On Sunday I did a massive walk around Prague, including walking all the way up a massive hill to get to a little Eiffel Tower. It's pretty much exactly the same as the Eiffel Tower but 10 X smaller. Why? I have no idea. There is a funicular railway up this hill but I declined and walked instead, which I was beginning to regret when I was climbing up the baby Eiffel. I then climbed down the hill, looked at a church and climbed back up another hill to see the Prague castle. Apparently there is a crypt inside the church inside the castle but there was a M-A-S-S-I-V-E queue and I was getting tired so I passed. Plus, I have seen many bones on this trip (and there are more to come). I saw the astronomical clock which has an apostle parade and a bell-ringing skeleton (whom I liked very much) every hour. When I got back to the hostel that night, I overheard some Australians talking about the Presets playing in Prague that night so a whole bunch of Australians and I went out to that. It was great and they played in a much smaller venue than they would back home. Plus we were right up the front and there were no barriers between us and the stage.
On Monday I had a very macabe day, first going out to a massive (and very pretty) cemetary in search of Franz Kafka's grave. I knew he was in the Jewish section (him being Jewish and all) so I located the Jewish section and was just thinking 'How on earth am I going to find his grave?' when I walked about 10m in and there was a large sign saying 'Franz Kafka' and an arrow. You can pretty much just follow the arrows through the cemetary. Very helpful. And I found him. After that I caught a train to a town about an hour outside Prague called Kutna Hora. It has a church that is extensively decorated in bones (I told you there were more bones) including a bone chandelier and bone coat of arms. I also accidently set off an alarm for getting too close to the bones but noone seemed to care very much. Annoyingly, as soon as I walked into the church, my camera battery decided to die and the spare was back at the hostel. So I only have camera phone pictures of the awesome bone church.
Yesterday (Tuesday) I caught the train to Vienna and, once again, it was quite late and dark but the time that I got here.
Today I went to the Sigmund Freud museum which is located in his original apartment and consulting rooms and I enjoyed that very much. I then went to Kunst Haus (Art House) which was kinda weird. Quite Gaudi-esque but not as impressive. I had intented on going to the opera so I came home early and had a shower and changed into my (one and only) nice dress and heels and went off to the opera which is supposed to be on daily. But not tonight. Epic fail. So that annoyed me and I went for a walk up to the city hall where they are setting up for the Christmas market which opens on Saturday. Lots of people were setting up their stalls and there were lots of twinkly lights, a giant Advent wreth (and by giant, I mean the candles about twice my height) and an Advent calendar where the doors were the windows of city hall. It would be pretty cool at Christmas time.
Anyway, now I'm just bumming around the hostel in leiu of opera. I have quite a few things to see in Vienna tomorrow before I catch the night train to Bucharest (which I'm very excited about).
Love hugs etc.
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