Goodbye England

September 16-23 & 30-31, 2007

We have left England so many times in the last 12 months that we felt that our last departure was just another one of those and it felt like we`d be back in a flash. I guess we were in a way because we returned from our travels in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece and Turkey for a week, while Davo worked away to earn a few more pounds to spend in South America, and Fi played house mum.

We tried our hardest to visit our favourite pubs for some fine English cuisine. We went to the White Hart for the biggest and best cod and chips in the country, the Swan for the famous Felsted burger and we had to go back to the Cricketers in Clavering (Jamie Oliver´s mum and dad´s pub) where we had... (quote menu?).

We had a fitting farewell to the English countryside by doing a 10 mile walk for charity, organised by the vet clinic in Essex where Davo has been working. We have definitely lived in one of the most under-rated and secretly beautiful parts of the UK in our opinion.

So Davo spent a week drinking beer at Oktoberfest with some vet mates and Fi lived it up in Barcelona taking part in one of their biggest fiestas for the year, before we both returned to England for one final weekend.

We spent a bit of time packing, a lot of time unsuccessfully trying to watch the Aussie Rules grand final and the rest of the time enjoying the company of many of our friends whom we may not see again for a long time.

W spent the day in the local pub in Felsted, watching a bit of rugby and a bit of bloody Manchester United (has to be played in every pub in town, instead of the Aussie Rules grand final replay), and dined at the marvellous Raj for our last quintessentially English meal, curry!

We´ll miss Felsted a lot, maybe not the pub so much, but definitely the punters who frequent there. It feels like we`ll be seeing them again just around the corner, but in reality, who know`s when we`ll be in the UK next or when they`ll visit Australia. Good thing we`ve got the internet to keep in touch.

Next stop... South America!

Johnnie aka Rev

Jaz

Tom

Heather

Denise and Jerry

Davo in Oktoberfest

September 24-28, 2007

My last horrah in Europe involved another dose of Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany. This time with a bunch of vet mates, Doggers, Pete, The Stoff all Aussies but living in England and Cam who came all the way from Australia for a short holiday.

We ate lots of chickens, bratwurst (sausages), pretzels and pork. We were intrigued by the Lowenbrau lion, a big talking, moving plastic lion on the top of one of the beer tents. We were also intrigued by a bunch of German air hostesses who graced us with their company on our first day in the festival. We ate more chickens. Oh yeah, and we drank our fair share of beer.

We tried all 6 of the famous local beers which are brewed in special batches for Oktoberfest and come out at varying strengths around 8%. They are also preservative free, only yeast, barley, hops, sugar and water so they don´t give ´bad´ hangovers.

Unfortunately, we didn´t just wet our insides, it rained almost the entire time we were in Munich. And we were staying in tents! Somehow I managed to be sharing a tent with Pete again, don´t know how that happened! The opening weekend had been glorious weather and we arrived on the Tuesday which was when it all started to go grey and wet. But it didn´t matter too much because the beer tents were all undercover and that´s where we spent most of our time.

It was a fun way to spend my last few days in Europe and it was great to spend it with those blokes. It was just a shame I couldn´t stay with them on their way to Amsterdam, Berlin and the Greek Islands. But then again, Brazil doesn´t sound too bad, does it?

The boys hit Oktoberfest and it´s pretty wet.

Inside one of the famous beer tents.

The Lowenbrau Lion that intriegued us so.

Horses who bring the beer to the festival.

Prost!

Turkey - Lest We Forget

September 11-15, 2007

Turkey was awesome! We went primarily to visit Gallipoli and to spend a few days in Istanbul. After meeting a handful of locals and travellers, we realised there was so much more of Turkey that would be great to see. The locals were all so friendly and generous and they made you feel more like another local than a tourist.

One of the first things that intriegued both of us about Turkey was the muslim culture, including the call for prayer that belted out of all the mosques in Istanbul 5 times a day over loud speakers. The mosques themselves were very grand and unique structures. This was the first time either of us had visited a predominantly muslim country so it was all new to us.

Of course, at the first available opportunity, we began our study into the difference between doner kebabs and souvlakis. The doner kebabs we got were made from meat from a rotating spit (similar to a gyros in Greece) either wrapped in a pita or in a bread roll. Shish kebabs on the other hand were made with meat cooked on a scewer (like a souvlaki in Greece). And they are all yummy! The doner kebabs weren't served with any sauce, but the meat was well flavoured and they included basic salad like tomato, lettuce and onion. In Greece they usually included the meat, tomato, lettuce, onion, hot chips and lots of tzaziki sauce. There it is. The myths of souvlakis, gyros and kebabs all figured out!

So we spent a day in Istanbul before our Gallipoli tour and we saw some unique buildings including the Aya Sofya (pictured above) which was built in the 6th century as a church. It was the biggest cathedral in the world for almost a thousand years and has a massive Byzantine dome. In 1453, when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, it was converted into a mosque and a lot of the interior was covered up or removed. It is now a museum.

The Blue Mosque is just across the park and is just as grand but in other ways. It was built with 6 minarets which prompted them to add a 7th minaret to Mecca. Another very interesting building was the Basilica Cistern, an underground and partly underwater basilica which was built in the 7th century.

Anyway, enough of the boring stuff... the Spice Bazaar is apparently the second biggest undercover market in the world, behind the Grand Bazaar, also in Istanbul which we were saving for later. If only you could attach smells to a blog because that was the best thing about this place. The dried apricots and turkish delight were also pretty good! When we returned from our Gallipoli tour we had a whole day devoted to wandering around and shopping in the Grand Bazaar. We didn't come close to looking at everything but we let a few local shop owners try and sell us exorbitant persian carpets and big, heavy bowls and plates that were impossible for us to send home. It was fun looking though! And of course we didn't leave completely empty handed.

Our Gallipoli tour started early in the morning, jumping in a little van with about 10 others for a 5 hour trip. Our local guide, Zaf, was a legend. He was a new grad archaeologist/tour guide on his third gallipoli tour, but he'd graduated from comedy school a long time ago. His side-kick Murat the bus driver was funny also, but not so much when he was being pulled over by the police for hooning past them on the motorway at about 130km/h!?

It is hard to describe the feelings we had on our way to Gallipoli. It felt like we were going to see on of the most important sites on our trip, a site that we might not visit again. For a couple of non-religious Aussies it felt maybe like we were going to see something like what the Vatican is to Roman Catholics? It just felt very important and spiritual in a way. The Gallipoli peninsula itself was a bit different to what we expected as well. There are 31 cemeteries and a number of memorials including theAustralian Lone Pine Memorial all spread out over a vast area amongst the cliffs, beaches and hilltops. We saw John Simpson Kirkpatrick's grave of Simpson and his donkey fame, but I found myself feeling for Private G Bowerman who was buried next to him. There were thousands of headstones and no way that you could even look at all of them in the time we had. The trenches dug by the soldiers in the early stages of the Gallipoli campaign are still there today, overgrown and filled in by wind and erosion in places, but reconstructed and preserved in other places. You could walk down onto the beach at Anzac Cove, the exact place where the Anzac troops landed. Standing with my feet in the water trying to comprehend what those blokes would have been thinking when they were in the same place 93 years ago.

The Gallipoli museum was home to some pretty incredible and moving items. Including just a few of the shells and remains of shrapnel found in the years after the war, items the soldiers would have used in everyday life, the picks and spades they used to dig the trenches, boots that were found with toe bones still in them and a soldier's skull with a lead bullet lodged in the cranium. There were moving photos also including one of 2 Aussie soldiers, father and son in the trenches together, one of the Allies playing a game of cricket and another of an Aussie soldier feeding water to an injured Turkish soldier (pictured).

One of the most beneficial things about the tour for us was learning more about the Turkish involvement and how the friendship between Turks and Anzacs has developed since WWI. It was a very important time in history for both of our national identities. A moving quotation from Ataturk is remembered at a monument near Anzac Cove (pictured).

We had a breif visit to the ruins of the ancient city of Troy on the second day of our tour. Glad we had a guide here because the site today has archaeological remains of 9 cities that were built on top of each other over the centuries, the first city was built over 4000 years ago! Without a guide you could easily miss the key archaeological features and spend half your time climbing the replica of the Trojan horse (we did this too)!

The real adventure of our tour started on the way home when we heard a high-pitched squealing as we where hurling along the motorway at over 130km/h then a few seconds later we were fish-tailing with a blown out tyre. We all piled out of the bus as Murat the driver and Zaf chatted about what to do. Moments later we realised that we weren't carrying a spare.

Next thing Zaf was sitting on the back of a tractor, getting a lift from the guys who worked in the brick factory across the road where we pulled over, in the middle of no where in Turkey! He got a lift to the nearby petrol station to pick up a spare tyre. When they returned about 30 mins later, they came back not with a spare wheel, just the tyre.

So they jacked the bus up, took the blown tyre off. Turns out the replacement tyre was too small. Didn't matter, we put that on to get us to the petrol station to get a better fit. Once we got the the petrol station, the best they could give us was an old, worn out tyre of the right size. So we settled for that to get to the next petrol station where we hoped to find a new tyre.

Upon arrival, we had to wait 20 minutes to find out that they didn't have a new tyre to fit so we had to settle for the one we had. We washed the bus and decided to drive back to Istanbul (a bit slower than 130km/h) with the dodgy tyre we had. We all joked (Murat and Zaf included) about re-naming the tour company to 'Bad Tyre Tours' or instead of touring Gallipoli and Troy, doing hop-on-hop-off tours of petrol stations! It was an adventure and we got home safely, but much later than expected.

Our Big Fat Greek Holiday

August 31 - September 11, 2007

Our first taste of Greece was Athens. After arriving from Prague at 3.00am and spending a few hours under an escalator at the airport trying to sleep, we got on a bus into town.

It was bloody hot! Ignoring the warnings in the guide books telling us not to climb the Acropolis during the energy sapping midday heat, after checking into our hostel that's what we did. This was followed by a visit to the Ancient Temple of Olympian Zeus and over the next day and a half we wandered through the Roman Forum and other sites of ancient ruins as well as a couple of museums.

Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the unfortunate abrupt and unhelpful nature of many of the public servants, waiters and tourism officers, but we failed to be completely inspired by what we were seeing. We appreciated it for its age, it is all very old! Maybe it also has something to do with our lack of education in Ancient Greek history and also because we've been to Rome and have been blown away by the ruins there and the experience is very similar.

Luckily we had other reasons for coming to Greece. The food. We found our first proper souvlakis on day 1 and they ony cost 1.60 euros each, so we had a few! It took us more than a day however, to learn that a souvlaki is made from meat on a scewer and a gyros from meat on a rotating spit. Aparently we get them a it confused back home in Australia. Turkey is next for us where we'll learn about the doner kebab... more on this soon! The Greek salads were also going down a treat.

After 2 days in Athens, we boarded an early morning ferry to Santorini, one of the Greek islands in the southern Cyclades. It is famous for its postcard white and blue churches and cliffside buildings, it's sunsets and enormous volcanic erruptions.

We stayed for 3 nights and spent our time either cruising around taking photos or sittin gon the beach taking advantage of the free umbrellas and sunbeds to elevate us from the scorching hot, black volcanic sand. We hired a scooter which we nicknamed Speedos Poppaloppados and he took us everywhere we wanted to go. Yes Mums, we wore helmets!

One highlight was wine tasting (they are very proud of their wine on Santorini). We were given a tray with 6 wines (3/4 full glasses rather than tastings0 and cheese, olives, bread and tomato spread and a little description of each of the wines, and sat on our table overlooking the islands.

Our second highlight was having dinner watching the sunset in the town of Oia (pronounced ee-ah). On our first night we rocked up shortly before sunset and were amazed by the hundreds of people lining the streets waiting for the sun to set. We were hungry and somehow managed to find a table in the best positioned restaurant on the cliff face. It was reasonably priced given the tourist trap it was and the food was also above the standard of what they could get away with. It was so good we reserved a (front row) table for 2 nights time and came back. We were treated with an even better sunset the second night. The first time the smokey haze from the recent fires in northen Greece meant the sun faded away before it reached the horizon. This night it set over the horizon and received a round of applause and a cheer from the crowd! Surreal?

From Santorini we sailed to the neighbour-ing island of Ios. It is known as a party island and attracts a lot of Aussies and other young tourists. Our plan was to stay here for a night but that turned into 4. We fell in love with our bungalow which had a real double bed, sheets, pillows and a fan which hasn't stopped. Also the 4 pools, the beach over the road, the restaurant which serves good cheap food and plays new release movies every night. And its all so cheap!

So it is that we've spent 5 days sitting by the pool or the beach, enjoying the sun, having a swim every now and again and just relaxing. Right now as we pen this entry, we are sitting by the pool, chiled music is playing in the background and about the hardest thing I've done today is picu up this pen. Tomorrow we'll be back in Athens to catch a flight to Istanbul in Turkey.

Czech This Out!

August 26-30, 2007

After sailing in Croatia our plan was to head to Greece. We found one of the cheapest ways of getting to Greece from Croatia was via another place we were keen to visit, Prague and the Czech Republic.

We were in the Czech Republic for 4 days and we could easily have stayed longer, it was stunning. And the beer was brilliant. The Czechs are the biggest beer drinkers in the world per capita (156.9L per person per year) and we can see why. Their beer is brilliant, Pilsner Urquell, Budwar, yummy. You could buy beer from a little cart in the park and sit in a public place and drink it. And it was cheap! We joined the them in their tradition of having a beer in the morning before work... except for the work bit.

In Prague we wondered around their castle, the largest ancient castle in the world. It's not like the castles we were used to seeing in England though. It was more like a village. The architecture was brilliant and the changing of the guards ceremony as fun to watch.

We battled the crowds of tourists, artists, beggars and pick-pocketers on the famous Charles Bridge and then returned one morning before dawn to get some amazing photos. We pretty much had the whole bridge to ourselves and it as definitely worth it. Don't think we'll do it again though... we got up bloody early!




We also had a guided tour of the Jewish quarter, saw the oldest active synagogue in the world and a cemetary in which over 12,000 Jews have been buried over the centuries. The cemetery is 12 layers deep and is raised abouve the street level. One of the most memorable things we saw on the tour was an exhibition of artwork done by children at a concentration camp near Prague during WWII.

Our highlight in Prague as one afternoon seeking out a roof top terrace restaurant that overlooked the city square. We sat up there for over an hour drinking massive cocktails, chewing on a cheese platter and enjoying the sunshine and the view of the City of Spires. It was very cool. For anyone going to Prague it was called Hotel U Prince. Do it.

We escaped the city on two occasions, we are of course country people and can only handle even beautiful cities like Prague in small doses! The first trip we did was 3 hours south of Prague to the town of Cesky Krumlov. Fi kept calling it Crusty Krumlov but it definitely wasn't crusty. It has been one of our faviourite places that we've visited together on our travels so far.

They had a great hostel called Krumlov House, very cruisy and home like and great travellers tips. We only stayed for one night but desperately wanted to stay longer. You just have to look at some of the pictures to see how beautiful the town is. The Vltava River winds around through the town and you can ride on a bike tube (which Davo did) and stop for a mojito at a pirate bar. The castle is brilliant, very colourful and unique. They also have bears in the mote! We found some of the best traditional Czech food here too including a massive mixed grill, a Bohemian feast and fried cheese, SO GOOD! And it only cost on average about 4 pound each for a main meal and a beer and sometimes outside Prague about 2 pound each!

Our other trip from Prague was to Kutna Hora, 1 hour bus trip east of the city. Our reason for going to this old silver mining town was to vist the Sedlec Ossuary. It is a church that has been decorated with the bones of 40,000 people.

The gothic style catholic church was built around the year 1400, and was built with two levels. The lower level chapel was used to house the bones that were dug up from the popular burial ground which the church was built on. After this time, they started exhuming human skeletons and storing their bones in the church. In 1870 a woodcarver called Frantisek Rint was employed to put the bones in order, which he did in a very unique and imaginitive way! The show piece is a chandelier which contains at least one of every bone in the human body.

It's an eery place but breath-taking as well. We were allowed to take photos but couldn't bring ourselves to smile in any of them. It just seemed the right thing to do. On reflection and from flicking back through the photos, it's actually quite funny!

Next stop... Greece!