pants.
Last night I lost my phone in Krakow, just in time for going to Poznan where it would have been pretty handy to have....
Im a numpty. Anyway - I dont have anybody`s number now, but Linsey still has her phone if you want to contact us. Its a bit shitty cos I cant phone up Neil and Debbie to say good luck to them on their travels, and can`t phone up Claire and Phil to congratulate them on their wedding reception. I dont have back ups of most of the numbers either, so Id appreciate it if you can email me yours at markproctor(remove this bit)@email.com please!
Wont post Linseys phone number on the internet obviously, but Brent has it if anybody wants to get in touch.
What a pain in the arse!
Bye!
Mark
Blah de blah de blah
tum te tum, Linsey's still writing up Prague, and we're in a cavernous internet cafe, deep in Krakow somewhere... so Ill just write about some extra stuff I suppose. How about things Ive learned recently on the trip? Such as "Night trains may sound romantic, but whatever illusion you have of being lulled asleep by the gentle clickety clack of the train travelling from the Czech Republic to Poland will be very quickly thumped out your head by the screeching brakes as the train stops every 30 minutes and the people in the compartment next to you have a the funniest ever Czech stand-up comedy night which leaves them laughing and jumping in their seats all night."
Or - try not to sneak out a particularly stinky fart on the night train when you think everybody is asleep, just 30 seconds before the Polish conductor opens the compartment and switches the light on to check your tickets. Poor woman, I wouldnt have wished that one on my worst enemy, and Linseys face was a picture as she woke up to the realisation too!
There's the "try to get up before the night train arrives in Krakow" tip, removing the need fro you to rapidly stuff all your belongings into a sleeping bag the moment you wake up and realise you have 1 minute to get your stuff off, then cart it all off the train into the station to sort them out on a bench.
I am never going on an Eastern European night train again. Ever. You should have seen the bed/seats, and the first compartment we got into had a light fixture that made a sound like an anfry bee in a marmalade jar every time it was switched on. The curtains in our compartment werent wide enough to cover the windows so I had to construct a towel hanging system to block out the light from the corridor, which was effective until a train guard or passport inspector ruined it by barging in and switching the light on every hour.
Anyway! Poland is great, so Im very glad we finally got here, in fact, Im very surprised that we finally got here. But it looks great so far, will diarise it all soon..... hope everybody is well and will forgive my night train rantings!
Cheers,
Mark.
Vienna
We're in
Bohemia Bagel in Prague, last day here and we're braving the night train tonight to get to Krakow, 9.20pm from Prague staion, arriving at 5.55am. Yippee! I am seriously abusing their "bottomless coffee" policy and now have energy to update the blog again, yay for caffeine! Linsey is adding titles to as many of the photos as she can just now so some explanations for some of the more obscure ones should be on there shortly!
Anyway more on Prague later- Vienna! Beloved of Midge Ure, and also good place for the lovers of coffee. We got there on the train at about 3pm, it was sunny and nice and after 4 or 5 days of sogginess and rain it fel good to pack away the umbrella. We went to tourist info in the station and got a map fom the friendly lady, found the "Happy Hostel" where we were booked in, and it was just round the corner, so we walked round and checked in to our room which had a kitchen and eclectic Viennese decor. We headed out and jumped on the metro to the centre of town, popping out at St. Stephens Cathedral. We went to the first place we found to get somehing to eat, and it was very good, very rich Austrian meaty stuff. Yum.
So we came out, armed with the guidebook and headed for the area known as the bermuda triangle, os so many people disappear into the collecion of bars and clubs packed into it. We went to a low key style bar place first, all red and reasonably dimly lit, where we had a couple of drinks and I almost fell asleep. Linsey woke me up, and we went to the next bar - Cactus Bar, I think it was called, the bar was about 3 people deep and full of the local 16 year olds, so we had one drink and moved on to a low key bar with minimalist black and white decor for a drink, and then on to a place called Kitsch. It was the most dimly lit bar Ive ever been into in my life, only a few little candles in red jars, the barman talked us into doubles and we managed to find our way back to the bar a couple more times before we headed out to find the next place - an Austrian karaoke bar! We got another couple of drinks, and by that time we were full of dutch courage, the locals were doing the Michael Jackson Karaoke Marathon, so we enjoyed renditions of "Earth Song" and "We are the world" whilst singing along drunkenly at the bar.... it was beautiful!
Anyway, we thought we'd keep the British side up, and entered ourselves for the Beatles "I saw her standing there". It came up on the screen much sooner than we had expected and we hauled ourselves up on to the stage for a fantastic rendition of the song, complete with air guitar over the instrumentals. It ended far too soon and we headed back to our seats at the bar to rapturous applause from all(possible exaggeration). The reception boistered us a bit and so we decided to put ourselves up for "rock and roll music" too, but before we performed we enjoyed Flashdance and "Wind of Change" by the scorpions, which went down a storm with the locals - lighters waving in the air and us singing along at the bar yet again. Amazing. Rock and Roll music didnt quite get the reception it deserved, but we were happy and went back to finish off our drinks before heading out for more adventure.
The next bar we went into (we werent at our best by that point) looked strangely full of scantily clad women as we walked in, and it was only when a lady told us that Linsey wasnt allowed in that we realised it was a lapdancing place. Anyway, we exited pretty quickly and headed homewards, grabbing a hotdog on the way (hotdog sausage had cheese and mustard built in! fantastic!) but we seriously underestimated the distance and ended up walking a good couple of miles back, although the walk was broken up a bit by the opera toilet, where you can listen to Mozart whilst relieving yourself, and the number of stars on the pavement with famous Austrians hand and footprints in them. We took a photo of Linz with the Gerhard Berger one, and to be honest, we didnt recognise any of the others we saw.
Next morning, Linsey went out to get some breakfast while I woke up breifly and went back to sleep. She bought bread, jam, oranje juice, harobo sweets and some sort of after eight mints. She also had a sneaky milkshake from the local McDonalds that she told me about later out of guilt for not getting me one!
We ate the brekky of minty chocolate and Linsey fell asleep for a bit. Then we got up and organised getting some laundry done. Ive never appreciated clean clothes as much as I do now. You dont want to know how many days Ive had to wear the same underwear, seriously, you dont.
So that was organised, and we headed off to the Reisenrad, a historic big wheel with an accompanying historic exhibition on a pointlessly revolving floor which just served to disorient us in our mildly hungover states. We went on the wheel and took a few pictures that you can see on the photo site, it was quite cool, you could see all of Vienna from the top. After we rotated back down to ground level we decided to head off to the museum quarter, which we found and had a sandwich at. We both wanted to go to the museum that houses Klimt's "The Kiss" and so we got on a tram towards it. Unfortunately it was the wrong tram, we noticed after we realised we were heading into the suburbs of Vienna - possibly towards Salzburg, and so we got off and took the opposite tram back to where we started. Then we got on another tram and were reasonably confident until we started to see street names that werent on our map. A kindly Austrian bloke must have recognised our expressions and told us we were on the wrong tram. We love the trams we do. So we got off and went back past everything we had just seen (lots of big impressive buildings including the Vienna opera house) and finally managed to get of at the right stop outside the museum. It was a beautiful building set in fantastic gardens and we headed inside to find a brilliant exhibition on the history of Austria and in particular, its wartime history. It was fascinating and included the bloodstained shirt of Franz Ferdinand next to the two guns his assassin had used. It was great, had a long Austrian flag along which the timeline of the exhibition was based, running from room to room. We sat and looked at "The Kiss" for quite a while, its much wider than I expected, and fantastic to see up close.
Then we walked out into the gardens and had a stroll about, where we saw some jackdaws dropping snails off the top of the building in order to crack their shells so they could munch on the snaily goodness. yum!
So.....we got on the right tram back into town and jumped off it when we saw a stand at the side of the road selling pizza slices. We ordered a couple and a drink then realised we didnt have enough money, so I had to run around looking for a bank for a while, then we stood and ate them whilst watching the world go by.
We headed back up the main street - to the Museum of Music, we found a flier for it in our hostel and it looked quite interesting..... it had loads of crazy "make your own Bjork" sort of sound effect machines which involved waving your hands around or running back and forward pressing buttons. It also had a cool bit where you could be the virtual conductor of the Vienna philharmonic, so we both had a shot (pictures of Linsey doing that in the photo bit too!) It didnt give you long enough to do the entire piece though, so my conductor fantasies were cut a bit short.
There was a room with the ultimate sound system in it, playing the best sounding recorded music I've ever heard, it was some sort of high end 7.1 surround system with big subwoofers and we promised each other that when we become millionaires we're getting one just like it!
A few of the "bang this or slide it to make a weird noise" thingummys didnt work which was a bit dissapointing, and some of the stuff was so far onto the obscure side of avant-garde that even Bjork would have got a headache, but all in all it was great fun.
After that we wandered aimlessly for a while around Vienna, went to an internet cafe to book a place to stay in Prague, then got the tube home, but ended up getting off at the wrong station. We walked the rest of the way back to the hostel and watched an Austrian puppet sponge music show before falling asleep. Got up in the morning, packed our bags and got to the wrong railway station with an hour or so to spare. We realised we were at the wrong station, ran out to get a tram , and managed to get to the right station with about 15 minutes to go, we used that time to buy a couple of subway sandwiches from a man who had relatives in Newcastle and had visited Edinburgh once. He gave us free crisps which I ate on the train whilst Linsey was asleep! cheese flavour they were..... yum.
Prague next, Linseys writing it up as I type......see you all soon!
Zagreb
The rain had started while we were waiting on our train from Ljubljana, and it wasnt going to stop just because we had arrived in Zagreb, we hadnt booked accomodation as the other places weve been to either had reps at the stations or a tourist info place that would help you out, so we pulled the rucksacks on our backs ad wandered down to the tourist information office that was marked on the map in the lonely planet guide, but it was shut. Turns out everything shuts at lunchtime on a Saturday in Zagreb, so we were a bit peeved and soggy and it wasnt a great start to our visit to the Croatian capital, especially after the toilet attendant in the train station had grunted at both of us to welcome us to the city. So we had a look in the guide book and it recommended a hotel that was about four streets away, we were wet and miserable but we decided to walk it (didnt really have many other options). We headed off and the street it was on was about a mile long and kind of like a bigger version of Kirkcaldy high street, the fecking hotel/hostel place was at the very end of it and we got there exhausted, only to be told by the less than friendly receptionist that it was full. Pants.
We stood about for a bit outside the place while we waited on a particulalry heavy rain storm to pass over and then went back along the street searching for various places on the way, all of them were full or didnt exist where the guidebook said they should. Those big rucksacks are heavy at the best of times and combining them with rain and very long walks isnt a recipe for happy Mark and Linseys. We eventually saw an internet cafe and went in to see if we could find accomodation on the lonely planet website which has been pretty handy so far on this trip. If we couldnt get anywhere we decided we would just jump on a night train to the next destination (Budapest) instead. There wasnt much available online, but a Canadian guy who worked in Zagreb who was in the cafe overheard us and recommended a hotel which was about 40 metres from the station, we went and managed to get a room there, and we were very very very relieved.
We dropped our stuff of in the room and had a rest for ten minutes, got the giggles and checked out some of the local tv, which was mainly about farms.
Right, so we tried to put our first impressions of Zagreb behind us, mainly because they were caused by our failing to book a place in advance and we headed out in to the town to have a look around and get some food. It was still lashing down though, and after the 4 weeks of perfect sunny weather we had already enjoyed, it was hard to appreciate the place much. We walked down past a massive square with impressive gardens and fountains and then into town where we decided to use the guidebook to find a restaurant. It actually existed and we headed in straight away cos we were starved and knackered and in need of good feeding. We went through to the main restaurant bit and there was some sort of Croatian function going on next door which involved lots of people dancing to the birdy song and Zorba the Greek`s theme. We could see them a bit through one of the windows and it looked like they were having a great time... meanwhile we were browsing the menu, taking care not to order anything that might contain horse. They like their horsemeat in Croatia, there was foal on offer and full grown Mr.Ed steak if you fancied it, but I wasnt feeling that adventurous. We had some food, it was beef I think, and then wandered back through the centre of town which was surprisingly dead for a Saturday night, albeit a rainy one. We decided to go back to the hotel.
Anyway, next day we got up, and went to the local supermarket, which reminded me of Presto`s in Glenrothes c.1985. The whole place seemed a good 20 years behind the rest of the world actually, save a couple of internet cafes. The trams that are the main public transportation are ancient rickety old things too.
We took our food back to the room and made up some sandwhiches with weird cheese and random sausage things, then Linsey fell asleep and I read for a couple of hours. It was still raining and raining and raining, and we were feeling soaked to the bone.
There wasnt much we could do, so we went to the internet cafe and checked emails etc, then went for some food in another cafe place, downstairs in a caverny little room, where we avoided horses again.
We bought a bottle of vodka, some coke, and then went back to the hotel where we got considerably drunk and watched Goodfellas in English with Croatian subtitles.
Next morning we woke up and complained about sore heads for a while, checked out of the hotel and then (because our mobile phones werent working properly) we went to the local post office which has a telephone room where the Zagreb folks go to make their phone calls. We were phoning ahead to get accomodation in Budapest, and it was a bizarre place. Just a room full of telephone booths with all of the local telephone call makers there. So we got a booth and tried to make a call to one of the places in the book from the manky old telephone in the corner. It didnt work, no matter what combination of area and country codes we used, and so Linsey went to ask for help, and it turned out we had to use the international phone call booth. Of course! The international phone call booth. number 20 if I recall. The phone booth with the magic international call abilities. It didnt fecking work either. I like my technology and so it was all getting a bit much for me not being able to make a phone call, so we left it (after Linsey calmed me down) and headed off to sort out our train journey onwards.
Think its safe to say that Zagreb isnt high on our favourite places list, but then it was rainy all the time we were there, the tourist information place closed for the weekend at 12pm on Saturday, the toilet attendant was grumpy and they decided to send a mailbomb to the uk embassy while we were staying there, so it doesnt really deserve the two thumbs up on the Linsey and Mark enyoyometer. Nice. Budapest was pretty amazing though and Linsey made us new friends on the journey there, read about that soon, only on magneticsandals!
Cheers,
Mark.
PS Big congratulations to Claire and Phil who got married in Cyprus since I last wrote. CONGRATULATIONS!
Zagreb fun.....
Hi!
Just a quick note to let everybody know that we`re both fine and dandy and about to head off to Budapest after
this nasty incident in Zagreb.(about 100metres from the internet cafe we`re in now)
Just read about it, so we`re fairly happy to be travelling on soon, will give proper updates on Slovenia and Zagreb soon...
Love,
Linsey and Mark.
Venice...
Sitting in an internet cafe in Zagreb now, but wrote this on the train from Venice to Slovenia in the "Captain Futuro" notebook Linsey got me for my birthday: I`ll just transcribe it onto here, but this Croatian keyboard has a Z where the Y should be, so I apologise in advance for dodgy typos....
I`m sitting in a compartment on an Italian train (TRENITALIA) on our way to the capital of Slovenia which is called Ljubljana. Yestaerday I lost our European guidebook "Rough Guide to Europe" in Venice, and Im going to have to get another one somehow (edit:managed to get one!) No accomodation booked in Slovenia yet, so we have to sort that out as soon as we get there.
This train leaves Venice at 9am and arrives about 1.30pm.
Here are the things we got up to in Venice:
Got lost for a long time going to the hotel from the train station, Venice is a maze of thousands of tiny little alleys and sidestreets and the map we had only decided to tell us about a quarter of the street names...the numbering system for the houses is incomprehensible too.
Linsey got chatted up by a seedy Italian bloke at the staion while I tried to buy tickets for the water bus, but I scared him away when I went back!
We eventually got on two water busses without paying and finally got to our hotel with the aid of a couple of local Venetians who were standing on a bridge just round the corner from our hotel (which we had walked past twice already).
The hotel had a "beautiful" glass flower lightshade thingy in our room and was decorated "eclecticly". It was a pretty big room compared to the others we`ve been staying in so far, but there were shared toilets and showers which meant quick dashes in pants for pees late at night...
Reception people were very friendly - the guy waited until we managed to find the place on arrival and checked us in at around midnight (after we went out to local cafe blue for some food) and when we had breakfast the owner came over to shake our hands and sat us next to a German couple with whom we made awkward polite conversation such as "yes" when they asked if they could have a roll....
German girl laughed when Linsey bumped her knee on the table - Linz wasnt too happy about that, but if German girl had hit her knee, Linsey would still be laughing now!
On our first full day we got up and went wandering through the streets towards St. Mark`s square, we jumped on a traghetti gondola to cross the grand canal and finally got there, where a million pigeons were out looking for corn... I had promised my mum that I would get pictures taken with some pigeons, as when we came here when I was a kid, we took loads of pictures of me covered in them but they didnt come out. Anyway, they looked a bit more intimidating than I remembered, but we went and bought some corn anyway and I held it in my hand while the crazy pigeons landed on me and munched away. Linsey didnt enjoy being with a million pigeons at all, but showed great bravery and took a lot of pictures of me wich are on the photo page now. I made a friend of one pigeon who sat on my shoulder and was so happy that he wouldnt leave - I took his picture a few times and eventually had to politely ask him to leave as he seemed to want to spend the entire afternoon on my shoulder. nice pigeon though. (PS Linsey says to thank her mum for instilling a fear of pigeons and any other flying thingys into her!)
I also tried to take pictures of Sesame Street Ernie with the pigeons, but they werent having any of it, so the best one I got was a pigeon pecking his head after Id put corn on him. Ernie has earned me a thousand strange looks so far on this holiday, and wandering around St. Marks square putting corn on his head and shaking him at pigeons is probably the pinnacle in terms of the sheer number of astonished onlookers I managed to accrue. Cheers Gordon!
We went to a "Scotland and Venice" art exhibition and were surprised by the contemporary ruler-dinosaurs and trays full of effluvia that we saw. I filled in a questionnaire but wrote a load of bumf in it as I really had no idea what to make of what we`d just seen...
We had a pizza slice and a mini calzone for lunch and walked around a bit more - visitng a mask shop and admiring all the Venetian masks (although we couldnt buy any as theyd probably crumble immediately in our backpacks).
In the evening we decided to go out and sample the nightlife in Venice, we were in the ST. Tomas area and found a guide in Cafe Blue then visited some places on it, Chet bar and Orange bar amongst others. We drank a fair amount really and stood on romantic bridges looking at Venice in the moonlight while swaying slightly. It really is an amazing place. The next morning we both woke up with Venetian hangovers that were like having your head pecked by a million pigeons to a Led Zep soundtrack.
We werent able to anything other than lie in bed and complain for a couple of hours, after which we ventured out for some food. In the restaurant/cafe place we went to I ordered some spaghetti al ragu and Linz chose a salad. She didnt manage to eat much of it though, and the frequency of her trips to the bathroom to be unwell caused an old man in the cafe to ask her if she was pregnant, to which she replied "yes" rather than attempting to convey the fact that she was about as hungover as you get. I was pretty unwell after the spaghetti, but you dont want to hear about that, trust me.
We visited the bridge of sighs in the afternoon after some miracle hangover curing ice cream - Linz had banana, me raspberry!
Walked around a fair bit, Linsey bought me some birthday presents and then we had a romantic meal in a tiny backstreet with a very cheery, friendly waiter who really wanted us to have some wine although we wouldnt have been able to look at it.
The food was great and we took a picture of Linsey and the waiter afterwards. We then walked round in circles for about an hour and a half as we tried to get back to our hotel - finally got there and then had a quick look around for an internet cafe that was still open - there werent any so we went to cafe blue in the hope of using their free computery machine to book Slovenian accomodation, but somebody was hogging the machine so we had a drink and a panini and then headed back to the hotel and to bed (after eating loads of pick and mix that Linsey had bought me for my birthday).
Its my birthday!
yay!
Ive been unable to pronounce names on previous birthdays, but thats usually been for a different reason than this time.... Ljubljana?
anyway, this place is great and refreshingly cheap after Venice!
Thanks to Mum, Dad, Lisa, Callum and Brent for the e-card, it was ace, and thanks to Bridget and John for the card and the money which I promise to spend on Slovenian alchohol of some sort tonight!
Linsey got me some great presents from Venice, Ill take a photo of them and put it up next time im online! Hope youre all well, we are heading out to sample the nightlife of Ljubljana soon..... just waiting on the photos from Rome and Venice to upload, go and have a look, my favourite is the pigeon posing for me in St Marks square, he was great! I miss him already!
Miss you all too, will try to call soon - cheers!
Mark.
Florence
We stepped off the train into Florence station after getting on at Carrarra just up the road from Massa and went to look for a phone so we could find a place to stay, then a bloke called Pesce came up to us and asked us if we were looking for somewhere, we said no, and then we chaned our minds and said yes. He had a sort of hostel place where we could share a room with a couple of Americans, but after all the camping fun we were looking forward to a bit of relaxation so he said he had a private double room which was pretty cheap, so we decided to go and have a look (Pesce looked a bit like an older Woody Allen which made him trustworthy).
Anyway, he took us on the bus through Florence and we went to his place which was up 4 flights of stairs and was about as basic as you get, but decent enough, and almost smack bang in the centre of Florence.
We got our stuff in, relaxed for a bit and then went wandering.
The Piazza Della Signoria was our first stop, big gigantic fortress like town hall building and a massive plaza in front of it with people sitting chilling out everywhere, there are massive gardens behind it, which we didnt have time to go and see. Then we walked along Via Dei Calzalouli to the Duomo, which is jaw droppingly impressive, although we didnt go in at that point cos we were starving and went hunting for a restaurant where we both had a beer and a calzone(I am liking those). There was a picture of ol' Bobby De Niro on the wall, standing in the restaurant with its owner, so we started singing the Adam and Joe show Bobby De Niro song, which impressed everybody in the street next to the table.
We have lapsed into the accents many times now and I am starting to worry that when we get back to Scotland we will be unable to speak without comedy Italian or Spanish lilts..........
Anyway, Dont have much time at the moment in the internet cafe in Rome, so Ill stick down some of the things we did in Florence and try to elaborate on them later on:
Saw copy of David in the first square and went to have a look at the galleria Academia where the real sculpture is, but the queue stretched round 2 street corners so we decided to see it next time....
Went up the Duomo and walked round the perimeter outside, saw the hall inside from up in the rooftop balcony area, great, but not for vertigo sufferers.
Walked for a bit to find a nightclub that wasnt open on the last night, and then looking for another place to have a drink, we stumbled across the William, a British theme pub in Florence, so we went in for a drink, I asked for a pint of Tennents and a Jack Daniels and coke, I was pretty excited about a pint of Tennents, just for the prospect of a wee reminder of home, but the barman gave me a funny look and said "its not normally permissable" which I didnt understand, he then poured me a pint and proceeded to top it up with Jack Daniels. I almost screamed like a girly and he stopped, but not before he had added a fair amount. So Linsey had a Jack Daniels and coke and I had a Tennents and Jack Daniels, I dont recommend Tennents Lager with Jack Daniels.
We got lucky while looking around on the second night and found an open air jazz concert in a little square packed with people, it was the 10th anniversary celebration of a local Florentine Jazz musicians accomplishment that I didnt understand, anyway it was good and we did our best to look cool and jazzed out, snapping our fingers and drinking the beer and coke in the square, really good time, big band, celebrity musicians and a compere who talked for more time than music was played. In the morning I awoke with a jazz goatee that had grown itself overnight! Crazy! be-bop doooo daaaa.
pow!
We went back to that square the next night and had some food in the restuarant in the square, it was the best pasta Ive ever tasted, and Linsey was loving her giant flat ravioli thing full of fresh herbs. (Thats not what it said on the menu, but it was all in Italian so it was a stab in the dark ordering process, doing our best to avoid anything with nuts. Or tripe, they love their tripe here.)
Hopefully Linsey will add some more Florence stuff here soon, shes got a memory like a sponge, mine seems to be more like a sieve.... just uploaded a bunch of new pictures too, but the monitor im using in this cafe is rubbish, so couldnt see them all properly, they might be good though!
Arrividerci!
Mark and Linz!
PS the tent was excellent so ta very much Maw and Paw Proctor...
