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Europe &Middle |
East |
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France
– Chris and I picked up a cool hire car and headed off in search of Europe. The world's most amazing
round-a-bout, Arc de triomphe, Paris - France. |
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Venice - Piazza San Marco looking towards the water. |
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Museu d'Hisṭria de la Catalan, Barcelona - Spain. In the Catalan
region. I thought I made quite a good knight. A little akward to move though. Gaudi's master piece in Barcelona - Spain. |
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My journey is nearly over. In two days I will be in London looking for work. Its a shame in a way to stop travelling yet winter is coming and I need to work. Yesterday I went to outdoor markets and spent (AUS) $30 on a full work outfit. So I should be able to go looking for work as soon as I get my hostel room organised in London. |
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London 30 May 2001 After a fun and exciting
time living in London for 8 months it is finally time to leave to travel
again. First stop – Frankfurt for a couple of days to get used to traveling. Well I've finally left the good old UK for phase 2 of my travels. I arrived
in Frankfurt a couple of days ago. I realised when I arrived that I don't
speak any German. It doesn't seem to be a problem, only when old ladies start
talking to me for long period of time while I try to remember the words
"I don't speak German". But that's not all that often. Everytimes
when I start thinking of words I start thinking in Italian which is strange.
I fly tonight to Egypt, arriving about 1am in the morning. Nice time to
arrive, I get to stay in airport for a night before taking the bus to the
city. I'm a little worried about visas as it took a long time to get my
Indian visas and it didn't leave any time for any of the others. But I'm just
going to suck it and see. Frankfurt is a really boring place. The hostel is really close to the bar district. So I've sampled quite a lot of pilsen in the last couple of days. I met a New Zealander and a couple of people from the UK who have been good drinking partners. But apart from drinking the city doesn't have much to offer. I walked around the city in about an hour and got used to being a traveller again. Looking for cheap food and things to do for free. I didn't find much. The funniest thing about getting on the road again is meeting Australian and New Zealanders that are doing "busabout". They always start with the same story. "G'day, were here for 3 - 4 months to see all of Europe". And finish with "I've run out of money after 2 months so I'm going home". Europe for them is a never ending drinking festival! |
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Egypt
Well I've made it through Egypt in one peice and tomorrow I'm heading off
to Jordon and then on the road North. I'll be out of email contact for a week
so I thought I'd give a run down on the low down in Egypt. When I first arrived the things that amazed me the most were guys walking
down the street arm in arm (which doesn't mean that their gay there just good
friends) and that everyones your friend. Man I didn't know that I knew this many people in Egypt. When the first person came up to me and said the now well know lines
"Welcome my friend, where are you from, ah, lovely country my uncle,
brother, mother, lives there. Ah, come and have a cup of tea, ah, but first
come to my brother, uncle, son's fine perfume shop, you know he supplies the
Body Shop with perfume" I was taken in. The thrill of having so many new friends only lastest a day. Then it
started to wear a little thin. The main thing that didn't amaze me was that my slack ass bag stayed in
Athens for another day. I think it had an idea of what Egypt was like. From Cairo to Luxor
I stayed in Cairo for the first couple of days adjusting to the culture
shock and trying to work out where I should go. I desided on Luxor to see all
those great ancient things. And great and ancient they were. I travelled
throught the valley of the kings in style, on a cool old bike that you would
be seen dead on in any modern country. But it was fun, specially watching all
my friends realising I wasn't from Egypt and noticing that they had missed their
chance to catch up and show me they uncles, brothers, fathers bazzar, after a
tea of course.
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On the way back to Egypt waiting to catch the train I meet another long
lost friend. Although I missed the shopping experience he did teach me the
numbers in arabic which was quite handy. He helped me onto the train, which
was supposed to be leaving at 8.50, and helped me practise. I was a little
alarmed though when the at 8.30 the train started moving and he jumped up and
ran of the train. At that moment I thought back to a book I glanced at in London with a
section "how to jump from a moving train". You never know when the
slightest bit of knowledge will come in handy. Anyway I quickly grabbed my
bag and ran to the exit. I made the jump successfully and the correct train
to Cairo.
After arranging my visa for Siria I did the Cairo thing. Visiting
museums, suburbs, pyramids, and my favourite which I call "getting on
some form of transport and closing your eyes for a while and then getting off
and see where you are". I found lots of long lost friends all over the
city. And I found that I could premempt the strike with a quick " la
shakran" (no thank you) before they got within 2 metres of me. Ah,
getting back into travellers mode. I left Cairo after meeting many long lost friends and heps of new ones in
the Dahab hotel (nice crew) and arrived in Dahab. Dahab has been called the
Divers/Hippy paradise cos its full of divers and hippys. All doing similar
things. Mainly consisting of hanging out and ah the divers go diving as well.
It's been a nice place to relax and do nothing. Its amazing getting used to doing nothing. I takes time and skill. I
managed to take 45 minutes contemplating whether I would open my Lovely
Planet or not. It took alot of concentration. Tomorrow I'm going for 1 hour. Last night I took a trip to Mt Sinia and
St Katherines Monistary the famed place where Moses spoke to the burning bus
and received the Ten Commandments. Our english speaking guide could say a few
words really well. I'm sure he new well over 20 words which is similar to my
Italian. Although he didn't know the name of the mountain and when I asked
him about Moses he said "ah, 2 km" which our small group was most
excited about. To our dismay Moses must have been on holiday but we did catch
a spectacular sunset and sunrise on the Mountain. Tomorrow I'm heading to Jordon by ferry with I guy I met from Canada, if all goes well!! I'll say ma salama to Egypt and all my long lost friends. |
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The wonderful Petra in Jordon To my amazement I found that I had not as many long lost friends in
Jordon. I met up with a English couple who had been living in Cairo for a year
teaching and shared a taxi through the desert to Petra. Another ancient
thingy. As ancient thingys go this one was quite nice. The hostel owner
thought I was quite edgy and said "ah, have you come from Egypt, we're
different here you know" and proceeded to charge me 1JD more for my bed
than the others in the room. I think he wanted to try and adjust me to Jordon
life. |
Jordon Petra was lovely though. Walking down a steep, narrow sulk and popping out into a city carved into the sides of rock. Quite spectacular. After narrowly dodging platoons of American tourists I escaped back to the hostel to watch Indian Jones and the Last Crusade with the rest of the people from the hostel and at the appropriate moment we all said "ah, I've been there" in unison. The biggest star of Jordon is King Hussan. There are posters everywhere.
I don't know if you can get King Hussan dolls but you can definantly get
playing cards. I kept thinking "they should do this in England". I
can imagine it now, huge posters of the Queens, Charliey and the boys on
every street corner. Maybe they could get hold of all the royalty from around
the world and form like a boy band or something. I think it would be a big
hit in Jordon anyway, and popstars seemed to work well in England. After a couple of days of wows I caught a bus north to Amman. Amman is
their capital city and like all cities, its a city. |
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So I left. I think I used one of the most novel way of crossing a border. I hired a taxi and to my surprise the car had all modern conveniences. Doors, windows, and yes seat belts. Nice to travel in style sometimes.As I further north the country side changed from desert to lush green farm land. Nice change because I was over the desert thing. Arriving in Damascus in Syria I was pleasantly surprised. No tourists. Or maybe they were in doors because of the heat. Damascus claims to be the longest habitated city in the world. But it was still a city that looked like all the rest. So I didn't stay long. Heading east I caught a bus to Palmyra in the desert again to another ancient thingy. This ancient thingy was about a 5 on the amazing scale but there was this cool Islamic castle on a mountain overlooking the site which gave it a bit of a boost.
To my amazement I found some fellow travelers and my long lost friends
were back (I think they were all on vacation from Egypt but I didn't ask). So
Palmyra was the travelers town of Syria. Or so the three of use in the
town thought. I think the locals would have preferred there was a few more of
us and that we weren't backpackers haggling over the last 10c. But it was
amazing anyway. Due to my new status as a student I managed to save of 3000%
on the local museum. Both my status as a student (with card to prove it) and
the museum claim of being a museum were completely bogus but we both agreed
not to be to open about it. Back on the road again I spent up big (nearly $4US) and made my way through various cities and towns to Aleppo on the boarder of Turkey. Aleppo is an interesting city as it has equal parts gardens and historic european looking buildings to dirty rubbish areas. A nicer mix I thought. I met a cool Palestinian on the bus who said a friend of his was a human bomb. He also thought Backstreet Boys was the best band in the world. So I decided to turn down his offer of a big night out with the boys in Aleppo. |
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Fetheya –
south coast of Turkey |
Well I made it to Turkey without a scratch, ah well a little sun
burn but no scratches. Traveling from Aleppo I crossed the boarder and make my way up to Capadocia
in Turkey in a marathon bus journey that should have been included in
the Olympics. To my surprise the hostel has a pool and is run by Australians.
It was a little bit of a shock when a walked in and heard the unfamiliar
"g'day mate, need a bed". I had to asked her to repeat her self so
I could fully grasp the situation. Capadocia is just beautiful - lots of houses and stuff carved into the rock that reminds me allot of Petra in Jordon but the beer is allot cheaper. The hostel has loads of travelers who seem to look around in the morning and relax by the pool in the afternoon. I've been practicing this for a couple of days now and I think I'm getting pretty good at it. I've managed to pass the hour mark for picking up the lonely planet after the first thought of reading it. |
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You know everyday of travelling brings
new sources of amazement for me. I like why the hell do Germans clap when the
plane lands? And how did I end up in the
Greece Islands and completely miss
going to Istambul? Well I can kind of answer the latter! I arrived in Olympus in Turkey after
staying with Fred and Barney in Flinstone Land (Cappodocia) for a
couple of days. And well I moved from cave dwelling to
living in a tree house! Is that evolution or what? I shared my tree house with 2 Canadians and a family of
miscitos. They kind of hijact me cos of my laugh and took me up the coast to Fetheya
(not the miscitos the Canadians). I
basically spent a week of going to the beach, drinking beer, dancing, hanging out with these Californian
chicks and cliff jumping. By the time we got to Bodrum
and I helped the Canadians out in sampling the Turkish delights (lovely) - they kind of persuaded me
to go to Ios in the Greek Islands. I didn't really need much
persuasion though! So I've spend the last week at the beack (again), in the bars, dancing til dawn, and
meeting lots of lovely people.
Although I did fell kind of old. The Islands full of young people, but the're old enough... Now the
Canadians are all gone and I leave tomorrow for India - back to serious travelling! I was kind of thinking I
was just on holiday. |
Dave and
T-bone in Bodrum
Eos,
Greece – the beach was amazing |
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