Nice to be back :)

Already it's been a few days since I returned home.

And it seems like just a few minutes ago that I was sitting on Maria's couch in Dresden, typing the previous post.

And now I'm in my house. In Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

And it's not weird, really. Being back. I'd already imagined being here, while I was still in Europe, and I could already see myself sitting in this house, and it didn't seem like it was going to be strange.

Then I flew home, and it wasn't.

Getting to Frankfurt Airport went off without a hitch, without the need to take the next train or the one after that.

Then the flights were easy. Like reeeeally easy. Frankfurt to Singapore was 12 hours, half of which I killed by watching two stand-up shows and two movies, and the other half of which I slept through. Singapore to Melbourne was 7 hours, the first 2 of which I killed by watching a movie and the other 5 of which I slept through. I even took my guitar (bought in Dresden) with me on the Qantas planes, even though they wouldn't usually allow such a thing as carry-on baggage - the guy at the check-in desk told me I could give it a try and the first officer might stop me, but nobody did.

In Melbourne, I changed to a Virgin Blue flight to Hobart, where they didn't allow the guitar as carry-on but I was able to check it in and as a bonus, it wasn't broken!

I arrived in Hobart "International" Airport at 1pm on Saturday the 16th of January.

I was in Europe for 400 days exactly, so the trip took 403 in total.

After being greeted by my mother, father, brother, grandmother, aunt and cousin, I soon found myself in my house. Some things have changed, and many stayed just how they were for the entire time I was away. And still, it wasn't too weird being home. I suppose that's probably a good thing - why should one year away mess up my impressions of my house where I've lived for eighteen other years?

After arriving home that afternoon, I was expecting to be messed up sleep-wise, probably going to bed at 4pm or so. But I didn't feel tired, and Luke asked if I wanted to go out with him and others. My first time driving in over 400 days was a drive to Fran's house to pick her up, then later we headed to Luke's place, where I saw many old friends as well as a few new ones, had a few drinks, then we headed into town. I ended up staying out until around 1:30 when sleep finally attempted to kick in and I was taken home by a friendly taxi driver.

Will I keep typing anything into this blog now that I'm home?
In a way, it would be nice to continue, and a shame to stop,

but in another way, it would be nice to leave the existing 67 posts as the blog record of my trip to Europe without adding more that are written just about my life or thoughts.

What do you people think??

Anyway,

like the title says,

it sure is nice to be back.

See you later :)

Patrick

Time to go home.

I'm on my own now. I've said goodbye to everybody I know in Dresden, and everybody I know in Europe at some stage before that.

I'm in the Dresden library because I wanted to print out my boarding pass for my flight. First, my login wouldn't work, then the lady at the desk tried to tell me it was because my 12-month membership had expired in November and I told her that was impossible because I only came to Dresden on this exact day, 1 year ago, and didn't register for the library for a while after that. After telling her about how I was right and she was wrong, she fixed the problem and I went on the internet and printed my boarding pass.

Now it's 12:11, and the train I'd like to take to Frankfurt Airport should be departing at 12:54. I can't say it will depart at that time because it's Deutsche Bahn (see previous post) but just to make sure, I've left myself a few extra hours, just in case anything should go wrong. I could even miss this train, and the next one an hour later, and get the next one after that, and still make it on time.

This evening, I will hopefully be allowed to bring my guitar with me, either as check-in or as carry-on. In any case, I'll be boarding my QANTAS flight from Frankfurt to Singapore, as long as it's still flying. It should be, I checked earlier.

It has not sunk in yet - how it's all coming to an end. And I don't think it will even sink in when I am sitting in the plane. I'm just gonna get back to Hobart on Saturday afternoon, and after a few minutes it will be as if I'd never left. It will not have been a trip, as such, more like a continuation of my life that happened to have a different location for a while. But the past 400 days sure did rush past, especially the last four and a half month period of travel.

So.
Goodbye, Europe.
Goodbye, all the wonderful friends I made here, but we shall see each other again yes?
Goodbye, spontaneous fun? Hell no. If there's one thing I learned from this year, it's that the party does not have to stop when I get home. I'll bring it with me. And you guys at home are all invited.
It begins at 1pm on Saturday in the Virgin Blue arrivals terminal of Hobart Airport.

I can't describe how I'm feeling right now. Not particularly happy, not depressed, not anything, really. Probably just an uneasy feeling that anybody is bound to get when they have an entire day's worth of sitting in planes ahead of them.
But hey, on the plus side, I didn't lose my passport this time!! (see my second or third post from waaaay back).

It's nice that I spent my last few days in Dresden, my European home.
Ok, time to go.

Home, I'll see you soon.

Patrick Neasey

I take it back!!

I wrote in that last post that I used to pay out Deutsche Bahn (German railways) for being late, then changed my mind and decided they were awesome having had much, much worse experiences with the SNCF of France and Renfe of Spain.

But now,
my hatred is once again directed at the Germans.

I just had a nice time in Hamburg visiting my friend Nele (first time since September, possibly in a previous post from that time) and her friend and now room-mate Kristina and a few others.
I then went to Frelsdorf, my favourite small village in Germany, to see my family friends who I've visited twice already in my trip, this being my very last chance to see them before I go home.

Today,
the plan was to go to Dresden, and my family friends drove me this afternoon to Bremerhaven station where I had a 3-train plan to Dresden. The first of these trains took me to Bremen on time, then I got to the platform for my train to Hamburg and saw that this train was expecting a 35 minute delay.
With this 35 minute delay it was going to be impossible to get the third train from Hamburg to Dresden, and this just happened to be the last train of the day. I went to the service desk to ask what I could do and the woman's only suggestion was to go to Hamburg anyway and stay the night in a hotel which Deutsche Bahn might reimburse.

So I did take the train to Hamburg and instead of going to some hotel I went back to Nele and Kristina's apartment, although Nele isn't here tonight, but when I rang Kristina from Bremen she said I could definitely come and for this reason I am very glad there are such nice people in the world as her!

I did want to make it to Dresden tonight but now my plan is to take a different train early tomorrow morning.

Long explanation for such a simple problem but yeah, for this reason, I do not like Deutsche Bahn in this moment.

I only ask that one train, just one, is able to take me from Dresden to Frankfurt Airport this Thursday...

hopeful.
Patrick

Christmas and new year and railways

Hey.I know it’s a bit late, but I wish everybody a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

So...My trip with Luke has gone very well indeed.

After London, Paris and a Guitar Hero-filled night in Luxembourg, we spent Christmas in Basel, a city in Switzerland that’s right next to the borders with Germany and France. We couchsurfed with a French lady who threw a party on Christmas eve that turned out to be a lot of fun, plus we went out on the town after that! After somehow finding our way back to our host’s apartment, Luke and I had a long sleep-in on Christmas Day itself, before cleaning the apartment of our host for her (admittedly after we’d made most of the mess), then finally seeing something of the city we were in. We even walked all the way to France and back that day.

We then headed through Munich, where we did a walking tour and went for a swim, and Rosenheim, which is a city between Munich and Austria. We went to Rosenheim because a potential CouchSurfing host in Munich had told us she wouldn’t be at home when we wanted to couchsurf with her, but she invited us to her hometown instead. It was nice to have some time in a family home in a town more authentically German than the tourist-populated Munich. After Rosenheim came Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia that’s really transformed into quite a nice place that I recommend to anybody out there!

Definitely the craziest time of my year, and of anybody else’s year, even for those who weren’t there, was the Budapest Winter Camp. This six-day event organised by CouchSurfing members for CouchSurfing members takes place every year around new year, and this time around the location was Budapest, Hungary. Each day, there were activities you could do such as walking tours of both Buda and Pest, ice skating, laser tag, visiting the largest thermal bath complex in Europe, participating in a free hugs campain, cooking goulash and hot wine, or learning some Hungarian dances, as well as a couple of day trips to other places nearby. But as time went on, the camp began to focus entirely on the nights, and with each night came a new party. It began with a pub crawl night that turned into a party, then an international night that turned into a party, then the new year’s eve party was the biggest of them all – it took place inside the Citadella, the massive castle-like citadel on top of Gellert Hill that overlooks Budapest. I don’t know how they did it, but the organisers booked our party for in there. Then we had two more parties in the new year before everybody finally farewelled each other and headed back to their everyday life, definitely far less exciting by comparison. By the end of the Budapest Winter Camp, Luke and I had spent 7 days in a row going out and getting drunk, and I really don’t think that was good for us! But... it was so much fun!

From Budapest, Luke and I flew to Madrid, where we spent a couple of days couch surfing with an American woman who plays guitar and sings, then a few days in Barcelona couch surfing with a Polish woman with an 11-month old baby. Luke and I even spent yesterday looking after this baby while our host tried to get some work done. He’s got a whole lot of toys, so it wasn’t too hard to keep him entertained, and it was a lot of fun! Also in Barcelona, I managed to catch up with Camilla – you know, that New Zealander who lived in Dresden at the same time as me earlier this year? She happened to be in Barcelona at the same time as us and we spent some time with her and her friend Bridget. Our Spanish experience turned out not to be extremely authentically Spanish, but I’m glad I made it to Spain while I was over here.

Barcelona marked the end of my trip with Luke. He’s flying home from Paris on the 10th, so he booked a night train from Barcelona to Paris that gets in tomorrow. I’m flying home from Frankfurt on the 14th, and before I go, I have a couple of people to see and I have to go to Dresden to get my suitcase. I left Barcelona last night on a different night train that’s seen me end up back in Basel, and tomorrow I’ll be on my way up through Germany!

A fore-warning to anybody hoping to travel with a Eurail pass:

FRANCE AND SPAIN SUCK.

Clarification:When you travel with a Eurail pass, you can take unlimited trains on your chosen days in the countries where your pass is valid. The Eurail pass does not guarantee a seat reservation, which is fine for most people, but when it comes to useful trains in France and Spain, a reservation is compulsory. They won’t let you on the train unless you’ve reserved a seat.This is all well and good, but unfortunately, the websites of these countries’ rail services do not allow you to book a reservation on its own. You have to go to a train station to do it.

Furthermore, the French railway does not allow Eurail pass holders to book reservations for trains less than 3 days in advance. This means that if you are Luke and Patrick, turning up in Paris on the 21st of December and wishing to leave Paris by train on the 23rd of December, TOUGH LUCK. The user-unfriendliness of the SNCF’s website, plus this 3-day rule, makes it impossible to do so. That’s what led to Luke and me being stuck with no way out of Paris until our CouchSurfing host found a ride share for us that took us to Luxembourg.

Spain, on the other hand, isn’t quite as bad because it doesn’t have this 3-day rule. However, in addition to not selling reservations online on its even more user-unfriendly website, it’s extremely difficult to get the reservation even after turning up at a train station itself. Luke’s and my story goes like this: We went to a big Madrid station to try and reserve our night trains. After finding the international section, we went to the “advance tickets” area and took a paper number to get in line, pressing the button for an “international” paper number. When our number flashed up, we went to the counter, the girl ignored us for a while then looked at us and asked us something in Spanish. We asked if she spoke English and she said she didn’t, instead she got her English speaking colleague who looked at our paper number and seemed to think it was useless, even though it was one of two options on the paper number machine. She told us to take a ticket of the other type, so we pressed the button for the Spanish term for advance ticket. When our number came up on screen, we went to the desk, and this guy didn’t speak English either. We didn’t understand what he was saying, but his gestures suggested we should go out of the ticket area, go to the information desk, find somebody who speaks English who can write down the train reservations we want to book, then we can bring this piece of paper back to the guy who will sell us the reservations.There’s nothing particularly wrong with how we were treated, but,as I told Luke afterwards,Spain is a Eurail country. Therefore, they know that people with Eurail passes are going to travel on their trains.Therefore,they should either make it possible for Eurail pass holders to book reservations online,or,they should supply their international ticket desks with English speaking staff so that the Eurail pass holders who they know are going to come (because they can’t do it online) can actually get the reservations they require without being directed to desk after desk after desk.

Oh and France’s railway service tricked me in December 2008, detailed in a blog post from that time.

I always used to bag out the German railway a lot because everybody thinks their trains run on time when they actually don’t, but having now tried to deal with the French and Spanish railways, I am extremely excited to be able to get on a German train tomorrow. I don’t have to worry about any compulsory reservations, I’ll find a seat that hasn’t been reserved, plug my laptop into one of the powerpoints because there’s a powerpoint between every single pair of seats, and watch Skins until I arrive in Hamburg several hours later.

Now...It’s the 8th of January.

And my flight leaves on the 14th,

Arriving on the 16th which is the 15th in European time.

So I arrive home in one week.

Scary?

Yep.

Exciting?

Yep.

We love your blog, are you going to post another blog post before you leave Europe?

Yep. Probably.

Not long now.

Patrick

One year already??

Yep. It's been one year. One year since I lost my passport, followed by one year since I left home, and one year since I arrived in Europe.

I celebrated the latter two anniversaries whilst in the Faroe Islands. For those of you who don't know, the Faroes are a group of 18 islands situated in the North Atlantic, sort of in the middle of the sea between Scotland, Iceland and Norway.

I went there for a week to break up my time in the UK, to visit two Germans I know through CouchSurfing - Eleonora and Hannes. They're originally from Dresden but during this year they spontaneously decided to move to the Faroe Islands. Crazy, but I was intrigued by this new home they'd chosen and decided to make my way there.

It's right up near the Arctic Circle so daylight is limited to about 9:30-15:30, but that didn't stop Eleonora, Hannes and me seeing as much of the islands as we could in a week. Although there are 18 islands, with a car you can reach all the central ones, which are the biggest and most important, using undersea tunnels and bridges. Over the first few days I was there, I saw Vágar, Streymoy, Eysturoy, Borðoy, Kunoy and Viðoy.

We also took one car ferry to Kalsoy, and spent a night on a farm at the top of the island, which I really enjoyed because it really felt like a genuine Faroese experience. Thanks to CouchSurfing (the people on the farm are relatives of a CS friend of ours), I've seen so much more than a normal hotel-staying tourist will ever see. Anyway, the week I spent in the Faroes went by too quickly, and before I knew it I was back in London, this time for the last time.

Luke joined me. He's going to appear in all my blogs from now until further notice, because we're travelling together for three weeks. Luke's just finished his bus tour around the continent and took the Eurostar to London, where he joined me in staying with Sharna for the next three nights. I've just searched back through my blogs and have not even mentioned Sharna's name, which is misleadingly unfair because I've been staying with her for many weeks now, she's an Australian who decided to move to the UK for an adventure and the most open friendly person you'll ever meet. For the latter two nights at Sharna's, we also had Emma with us - another friend I have not yet mentioned, who I met through Alexandra, she's also German and is working as an au-pair in the south of England, coming to London most weekends because it's so much more exciting.

However, as I knew it would, my last time in London flew by and before I knew it, I was saying goodbye to Sharna and Emma as Luke and I made our way to Paris on the night bus. This bus was scheduled to travel from 22:30 on Sunday until 7:30 on Monday, but because the Eurostar service is being halted, there's a lot more traffic attempting to take the transport trains through the Eurotunnel and our bus had a mega five-hour delay just before the Eurotunnel and ended up not arriving in Paris until more like 14:00 on Monday! This successfully took up half a day of our short stay in Paris, but we still managed to make something of the day and checked out the Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Élysées and the Louvre Pyramid, before dining expensively with our CouchSurfing host, who's a 60-year-old concert pianist called David.

Today, Luke and I had even more ups and downs. The biggest downside of the day was that we found out all the trains to various places in the next few days are full, meaning our plans to go to Luxembourg tomorrow were seemingly dead and buried. We scoured the internet for other options, most of them using ride-sharing websites, but had no luck until very late in the afternoon when David found a ride for us that will take us to Luxembourg (we hope!) tomorrow morning. So that's one of the upsides of the day. Another upside was that we visited the Eiffel Tower, one year since I was there with my family, which is a pretty weird feeling. Another downside of the day was that today, there was heavy fog and you really couldn't see anything from the top of the tower. It wasn't so bad though. We enjoyed skipping the long queues to go up the tower because we'd bought our tickets online already.

I hope to be able to write my next blog, not having had some awful experience to further complicate travel plans!

All I can say for now is my impression of the French train service has not been improved from the 0/10 rating it got from me in January! (see posts from one year ago)

from Patrick in Paris next to Luke

Eeeetaly.

That's how you say Italy if you're speaking English with an Italian accent.

I went there.

It was a mixture of emotions.

But mostly good ones!

One week ago.

I flew to Trieste.

That's in the extreme north-east.

I saw a friend again - Aleksandra from Lithuania, mentioned as the "best friend" of my CS host in Slovenia in a previous post.

We CouchSurfed with a nice Italian couple and saw the city and ate great food.

We had the best time, and it hurt a lot to say goodbye to Aleksandra just two days later. I will not see her again before I leave Europe.

I took a train to Rome.

I slept the entire way.

I saw Luke.

Luke is my best friend.

And it had been almost one year since we'd seen each other.

Within seconds, it was as if we were never apart. Me making a fool of myself and Luke feeling humiliated about that for no good reason :D

We were planning for me to secretly stay in Luke's hotel room. But they discovered us, almost.

I switched to CouchSurfing. I stayed with an American girl called Mae.

She and her room-mate took Luke and me to get half-price gelati.

Luke and I saw:

The Pope sing. Seriously.

The Vatican.

The Colosseum.

Tourists.

Ruins.

Tourists.

Hello did you read that first thing? We were in the courtyard of Vatican City watching the Pope address the masses and he sang!!!

Luke tried to enter Vatican City with a full bottle of alcohol in his bag. Hahahaha. It was taken off him.

Dot dot dot.

And now that I've reached the end of this post I realised I never mentioned that Frances (another best friend) was in London for a while and we met up and hung out tooooooo. She is far too interested in fashion and we must have browsed every £500 pair of shoes in London. We also saw a movie, had a sleepover, ate ice-cream, and ran down the up-escalator.

Back in London, another exciting week-long trip coming up!

Ciao!!

Patrick

Ireland

I HATE blogging.

Not really, but it's just getting to be a bit of a chore to keep up with all the things I'm doing by writing a blog about it every so often.

However, in this case, I have a bit of a solution - I can summarise the first two weeks of November in one simple sentence!

Here goes:

I spent most of the first two weeks of November being incredibly lazy in Alex's apartment.

There, wasn't that quick and painless?

Right, since those two weeks have finished, I've been in Ireland. I realised that, in my schedule of goings-on in the UK, I only had a maximum of around 6 days to get away and discover this country, where I suspect my ancestors might come from.

In my incredibly last-minute realisation, I searched for flights on Ryanair and, despite booking only three days in advance, still got cheap fares, although the condition was that I fly at odd hours. The flight from London to Dublin was at 6:30am, which involved getting an airport bus at 3:30am, and on that night I simply stayed up all night, then said goodbye to Jack for the last time in Europe, headed to Victoria, got said airport bus, slept the whole way, got the plane to Dublin and slept the whole way through that too. And then I slept through the whole train to Galway.

This all happened on Sunday. Since then, I've been absoutely taken by this country - it's expensive, and the weather is awful half the time, but this is all put to one side the minute you turn your eyes to the scenery outside the cities and your brain takes in what you're looking at. It's just magical! I'm no travel author, but what I saw during my travels through the west of Ireland was a stark contrast of red earth with green grass, blue water and grey sky. I've taken a lot of photos, some of which look like they were painted.

It seems that Ireland is a truly international country (well, most countries are these days). In Galway, I was hosted by a Hungarian man who's married to a French woman. In Athlone, I was hosted by an American girl, and right now I'm in Dublin, being hosted by a German girl who lives with Italians. I did manage to squeeze in one Irish host, well three of them - three students who live in a small picturesque town called Letterfrack.

And I hitch-hiked there from Clifden, and hitch-hiking in Ireland really is easy.

So basically, I highly recommend to everybody to come to Ireland at least once in your life. I haven't actually done anything typically touristy, but what I have seen and done while here is enough to leave me convinced that it's really quite a nice country.

And I just know that as soon as I get back to noisy dirty London, this joyful feeling I have will soon disappear. But no matter. I'll only be there for another week before heading off to Italy!

Going shopping,

Patrick