Venice - Day Fifty

Okay, I've fallen a little behind on the blogging in the last week through a combination of busy, action-packed days and stone age internet connection speeds. As a result, the following are a couple of extracts from my personal journal, written shortly after my arrival in Venice:

I remember being at school (I'm not sure when, but I was definitely quite young) and learning that the city is gradually sinking and will one day be lost. I felt a real shock that this might happen before I got the chance to visit, and promised my young self that I'd get there before it did! Now I suppose it's a race between the rotting foundations and the risk of rising sea levels for what gets to finish the place off first.

I disembarked the night train (good word that), and strolled sleepily through Santa Lucia train station. I don't think there's a station in the world that can rival Santa Lucia for a first breathtaking look at a city.

Without warning, the concrete blah blah funcionality of the station drops away to reveal the Grand Canal sloshing merrily in front of you; gondolas, vaporetti, barges and speedboats weaving in amongst each other, and the graceful arch of the Ponte degli Scalzi spanning the water like an elegant alabaster bracelet.

Immediately you know that you can be nowhere in the world but Venice. It was yet another one of those moment where my natural, unbidden reaction was to smile and let out a gentle laugh of delight. I must be starting to look like a nutter.

The next morning, after I had spent my first day exploring the city in a fine light drizzle, I sat down in a sunny piazza and wrote the following:

Here are the first impressions of Venice that I scribbled down on a scrap of paper in a cafe where I stopped to grab a revitalising breakfast of croissants and cappucinos along the way:

• Too many tourists! Even on a rainy day in April.
• The city is very, very beautiful. Intoxicatingly, perspective-shiftingly beautiful. It's so familiar, and yet every side street and stumbled-upon piazza brings something new and intriguing.
• Venice is probably just as knackered (if not more) as Budapest, but it somehow turns its dishevellment to its advantage, like a frustratingly beautiful person who can roll out of bed with a hangover and still look like a movie star. The exposed brickwork, crumbling plaster, tumbledown ivy and lopsided church towers all just add to the charm of the place, in the same way that it is often the slight imperfections in a person that you end up becoming the most attracted to or affectionate about.
• I could stand and watch the traffic on the Canal Grande for hours. I stood on the Rialto and watched the hustle and flow of gondolas, barges, police boats, ambulances, vaporetti and so on and on for ages, a sea of tourists shifting around me like the coloured grains of a kaleidoscope for so long that I lost track of time as I simply stood spellbound and absorbed by the lifeblood that flowed before me down the city's main artery.
• Piazza San Marco is smaller than I imagined, and has less pigeons.
• There are barrow boys (well, men) everywhere. I hadn't really considered the logistics of supplying businesses in a city without tarmac roads until I watched the supply barges full of beer and food and a hundred other products, and seen guys sweating to get barrows up Rennaissance era stairways. This is not a good city to be in a wheelchair.
• I really can't decide who's louder; American tourists or the animated locals. They all bellow away like a herd of elephants after a wasabi enema. Italian is definitely a better language for swearing in though - I watched a wide-bottomed American lady clobber a guy in the face with her umbrella and nearly gave him a round of applause for the operatic volley of abuse he unleashed on her. I didn't understand a word of it but it sounded bloody good.
• I'm a coffee freak, and I've been saving my first authentic Italian cappucino for a city worthy of that honour (i.e. not Milan), and so there was a certain amount of expectation as the waiter brought it over to my table. I sipped it gingerly, only to discover... it was absolutely outstanding! Ordered another one immediately afterwards.

Vienna - Day Forty Eight

Saturday the 20th was a great day. I had been invited to a birthday barbeque, and ended up borrowing a mountain bike and cycling the width of Vienna to reach Donnauinsel - an island in the middle of the Danube that has been turned into a gigantic park. It took the best part of an hour to cycle there, but it was a beautiful sunny day, and after about ten minutes I stopped freaking out about cycling on the wrong side of the road (which is really off-putting by the way) and started to enjoy myself.

When we arrived at Donnauinsel we found a group of about fifteen to twenty people milling around a big circular public barbecue, and a huge feast laid out on two large picnic tables. Gabrielle, an Argentinian guy, had taken charge of the cooking, so I decided to get on with the important job of drinking beer in the sunshine and occaisionally throwing a stick for a yappy, happy and incredibly persistant sausage dog.

If you've never let an Argentinian cook you barbecue food, you're really missing out. Normally my manly pride would have had me poking coals and skewering sausages with the best of them, but I know when I'm outclassed. As if to emphasise his proficiency, Gabrielle pulled out the largest cut of steak I've ever seen (about the size of a small child) and started hacking portions off willy-nilly. He slathered them with a bit of secret recipe marinade and chucked them on the grill alongside the kasekrainer, wurst, halloumi and other assorted treats, and in no time everyone was chewing away happily.

As darkness began to fall, someone suggested we play some games. I got halfway through a drunken but passionate explanation of the rules of British Bulldog (a playground classic), when everybody suddenly broke into a game that was very clearly identical to British Bulldog. I didn't ask, but I'm assuming it was called Austrian Dachshund or something similar.

Missed the last metro home by exactly one minute, and had to repeat the epic bike ride in the dark whilst still slightly tipsy from all the beers. That seemed like a mini disaster at first, but the moon was nearly full and impossibly bright in the sky, the roads were quiet, and Vienna is even more beautiful at night. Various churches and public buildings became more dramatic than ever now they were suddenly backlit by a silver moon and wispy clouds - by the time I got home it wasn't just the cycling that left me breathless.

Vienna - Day Forty Six

So, Vienna again...

I was sitting in The Loft Hostel in Budapest the other day trying to decide on the next location, and after about 30 minutes of my mind wandering to other things I managed to whittle it down to two possible destinations; Bucharest or Zagreb.

This was quite an achievement, because (yet again) I was a little hungover. So, with two potential candidates to choose from, I did a little research. Here are two extracts from the Lonely Planet's Shoestring Guide to Europe,

"Stray dogs, rip off taxis, lack of tourist information and communist smears aren't great press agents for Bucharest..."

and,

"Bucharest's stray dogs number 100,000 and, on rare occasion, bite. If bitten, go to a hospital for anti-rabies injections within 36 hours"

I think it was probably the anti-rabies injections (plural, I hope you'll notice) that didn't sit so well with my delicate, alcohol-soaked frame of mind, but I had a strong feeling that the 16 hour train journey to a city full of red-eyed, foam-lipped, blood thirsty slathering hell hounds could safely be postponed for a month or two.

Zagreb actually sounded lovely, but a quick inspection of the Hungarian railway network's website showed that the only trains available got me into the city late at night, and to be honest I just wasn't in the mood for that. I've arrived late in strange cities on quite a few occaisions now and it's always a bit stressful, no matter how safe or beautiful the city.

That left me in a bit of a pickle; where to go? Where to go...?

Of course, Vienna is only three pleasant hours away by train...

And it's a major transport hub...

And it's now officially my favourite city in Europe...

So here I am. And a good decision it was too. The journey was beautiful; a deep red sunset lending a warm glow to wide green fields, with frequently snatched glimpses of solitary deer and long-legged hares. Loads of hares for some reason. Definitely hares - not rabbits. I'm from the countryside you see, we know about these things.

As if to confirm what a good choice it was, I bumped into Chad (my fellow zombie bather from Budapest) almost immediately after arriving, and we had a few beers.

The next day I saw a man in a big flashy 4x4 (a real Chelsea tractor) cut across the road and get hit by a tram. Amazing. I love this city.

Budapest - Day Forty Three

The baths were so good I had no choice but to go back there for the second day in a row, and I'm so glad I did, because it gave me one of my most memorable travelling experiences yet.

I traversed the metro system (the oldest in mainland Europe apparently fact fans) and headed back to Széchenyi Baths with the unerring accuracy of a homing pigeon, leading a procession of three English girls from the Loft who wanted to see what all the fuss was about. We spent about three hours soaking up all the goodness of the baths, whirlpools, jacuzzis, plunge pools, saunas and steam rooms (and gawping at fatties - a key part of the experience). I was more or less ready to call it a day, but decided to have one last dip in the hottest of the outdoor pools.

I had been wallowing happily for a couple of minutes, skin pruning up nicely, when the memorable thing happened: a thunderstorm suddenly broke out of a sky that had been blue and sunny a few minutes earlier. I was submerged in lovely warmth from the neck down, peeping over the water which now seemed to boil with the force of the icy rain drops pounding its surface, while deafening peals of thunder rang out across the sky. Then the sheet lightning kicked in.

It was a truly amazing few minutes. I felt a long way from home, in the best way possible. The baths are actually underneath the flight path of Budapest airport, so there was the added entertainment value of watching the occaisional plane fly past and wondering if it was suddenly going get frazzled by a stray lightning bolt.

That night a group of us went to a nearby student bar, which seemed quite quiet until a band struck up some traditional Hungarian tunes and a group of students started doing some folk dancing. I don't recall folk dancing being as popular with students back in the UK, but it looks like it's probably our loss because those guys really started going at it - whirling around in what was basically a souped up version of the hokey-cokey. I wish I'd given it a go actually.

Budapest - Day Forty Two

I'm glad I picked The Loft Hostel for my stay in Budapest. It's a spacious, chilled out place and its small scale (there are only 18 beds in total) keeps things feeling friendly and homey. I've passed the last few days in classic backpacker style - beery drinking games in the evenings and lots of pavement pounding when I walk the hangover off the next day, and this hostel has been a great base - somewhere to relax amidst the chaos.

I've been feasting on Hungarian classics; goulash, paprika chicken and mixed fruit strudels have given me the energy required to get from one place of interest to another (it's a bigger city than the maps make it seem), and I've been soaking up the palpable Eastern European feel to this region, which is quite striking after my previous destinations. It's a bit of a driftwood city - everything feels a little battered and frayed. There are some beautiful old buildings here, but most of them look as if they've had a few layers of polish worn off them over the years, and could now do with some serious TLC. After all the pomp and splendor of Vienna, Budapest feels a little grubby and tired - most places would though I suppose.

I had a fantastic day today - so good that the city will always have a special place in my heart. I woke up after a mere three hours of sleep (more drinking games at The Loft I'm afraid) and there was a very real possibility that I would have ended up wasting the day. Luckily Chad, a Londoner I'd been drinking with the previous night, managed to kick some life into me when he reminded me I'd agreed to visit the baths with him.

Budapest is renowned as a city of spas, and we headed to it's grandest old bath house in a park behind Heroes Square. I'm not entirely sure how we made it across town, as we were both shuffling about like extras in a zombie film, but somehow we bumbled our way in there, avoided the more horrific big fat hairy naked guys in the changing room (although not before I saw some things that will plague my nightmares for a few sleepless weeks) and made it out into the intermittent sunshine of the outdoor pools.

The next few hours proved to be the best hangover cure I've ever found. We wallowed in the hot pools (38C...) like drunken zombie hippos, we whirled around in a kind of giant spinning whirlpool that made me laugh like a giddy schoolgirl, and we sweated it up in the saunas and steam rooms. If there was one of these back home i would visit every day, without exception, eventually getting thrown out at closing time looking like a giant pink prune. A happy one.

After what could well have been several hours (I lost track of time pretty comprehensively), I was ready to leave, but Chad talked me into getting a thai massage...

I have never had a thai massage before. I've never had any type of professional massage before. Sweet beard of Odin it was good though . I floated out of the place! The woman who gave me the massage was about a third of my size, but she had the vicelike grip of Chuck Norris. The last five minutes or so were finished off with a head massage that left me burbling and just as zombielike as when I arrived at the baths a few hours before. Worth every bloody forint.

I'm probably going to stay here for an extra night now, in the hope that tomorrow will be another sunny day and I can go back to the baths one last time. If you only see one thing in Budapest, make it that place.

Budapest - Day Thirty Nine

The sun just won't stop shining in Vienna, and the place seems to get lovelier by the day. I spent Thursday wandering around the city just basking in the goodness of it all.

Until now I really didn't think I was going to find a city that I liked more than Barcelona, but after a fantastic week Vienna has just about stolen the title. In the same way that I was planning to move back to Barcelona for a month or two to pick up some work and get to know the place better, I'm now considering doing the same here, and I'll definitely find it hard to leave.

On Thursday evening (after yet another coffee in Phil), I met up with Bernadette and we went to the State Opera house, where we bumped into Matt and Paige, a really nice Australian couple I'd met at my hostel. There was no opera on that night, but we picked up standing tickets to see a ballet for a ridiculously reasonable three and a half euros. I've never been to the ballet before - and never much wanted to either to be honest - but I ended up quite enjoying it. I even managed to follow the storyline which was an unexpected bonus. I did feel like a bit of a bum watching it in baggy jeans and a t-shirt though.

When it was over the four of us went to Naschmarkt (the outdoor farmer's market). As it was about 10pm the stalls were obviously closed, but there are a string of cafes and restaurants alongside the market, and the whole place had a surprisingly buzzing atmosphere. We picked up a tasty and reasonably priced dinner over a nice conversation - a good end to another great day in Austria.

By Friday I had put off leaving town so many times that I felt it was finally time to move on. It feels like summertime already here, and the city has never looked so beautiful, but I think it's probably time to hit the road again.

I jumped on a train to Budapest and had a compartment to myself all the way there, the window open as far as it would go to ease the baking temperature in the unseasonable heat. I bumped into Cameron, an American guy from one of my dorms in Wombats in Vienna, on the train - I'm starting to encounter a few familiar faces the longer I travel now - so it was nice to have a brief conversation before returning to my solitary compartment.

First impressions of Budapest are that it seems... interesting. Caught a bus across town in surprisingly humid heat that left me a bit of a sweaty mess by the time I made it to my hostel, which is on the fourth floor of an old residential building. It was worth it though - The Loft where I'm staying seems friendly and well thought out, a real traveller's place. I had a beer and snack in town but kept it quiet tonight. Apparently there's a DJ night in one of the traditional Turkish bath houses tomorrow, with everyone getting hammered in the saunas and baths whilst wearing swimming costumes. Sounds worth a try...

Vienna - Day Thirty Eight

I am an idiot.

Last night I went out to Flex - the legendary nightclub with the legendary club night, London Calling. I had an amazing night, I danced like a fool and drank too much alcohol, but spoiled the whole thing a little by somehow managing to lose my digital camera in the back of a taxi on the way home.

This is even more spectacularly inept than it sounds. My expensive, all-singing all-dancing camera has been broken since Milan and apparently needs to be sent back to Nikon to be fixed, which will take a few weeks. With that in mind, and frustrated at being in beautiful cities and unable to take any pictures, I had just blown about 150 euros on a compact digital camera and then spent the last two days making up for lost time. This is the camera I managed to lose, a mere 48 hours or so after buying it.

I had about 100 photos on there already, and some of them were really nice. Yesterday, with time on my hands and the sun hot in a blue, blue sky, I visited the impressive palace and gardens at Schönbrunn, on the edge of the city. Completely on the spur of the moment I bought a ticket for the zoo that they have there - the oldest in Europe, founded sometime in the 1700s. I sometimes get depressed at zoos - there's nothing worse than seeing animals cooped up in bad enclosures - and I was a little worried that Europe's oldest zoo might be a bit basic, but it turned out to be fantastic. The enclosures are pretty imaginative, and they have some cool animals. I would have paid the entrance fee just to see the three jaguars they have there (especially when one of them snarled at a teenage girl who tried to poke it - she nearly passed out with fear), but they also have a baby panda, some energetic sea lions, sleepy hippos and a really well designed rainforest house. I had more fun than a solitary zoo visitor should probably expect to have, and enjoyed walking round the palace gardens and getting lost in the deceptively tricky maze.

I know I only have myself to blame for losing the camera. It's another beautiful day in Vienna today though, and it's hard to get too depressed in this town. I'm off to sit in the park and maybe grab another coffee in the excellent Phil. I think I'll put off moving on for another day...

Vienna - Day Thirty Five

I was right about this town; it definitely deserves more than a few days of exploration. After a hectic month of dashing from city to city it has been really nice to slow things down a little and get the feel of Vienna at a more civilised pace.

I checked into my hostel on Thursday and almost immediately bumped into someone I knew. I had met Will - a British guy on a one man cycling odyssey - in Munich about a week before. In the time it had taken me to interRail between Munich, Amsterdam, Berlin and Vienna, he had cut a swathe through the Bavarian countryside on his bike and trailer, sweating it up and braving the elements as I reclined in sleeper carriages and quaffed beer in hostel bars - that sort of behaviour takes the wind out of your sails a bit when you imagine yourself to be roughing it around Europe.

About ten minutes later I also bumped into Jenna and Isaac, a couple from San Fransisco I had spent an evening in the laundry room with in Munich as I tried desperately to keep myself out of the bar for a night. They ended up drifting away after a brief chat, but I've spent most of the last few nights with Will, eating like kings in the excellent (and affordable) restaurants of Vienna, and hustling drunken Americans at pool. We´ve sampled traditional Austrian (two cannonball-sized dumplings of stodgy potato, encasing a cricket ball-sized mass of sausage meat, on a bed of sauerkraut... yummy), Italian, Vietnamese and Turkish. Admittedly though, the Turkish was a kebab.

I've passed the days lazily wandering the streets of this beautiful city. You can almost smell the history that wafts from every grand public building, elegant museum or extravagant statue that you pass, and when it all gets a bit too much you simply duck into the nearest kaffeehaus for a comfortable sitdown and an invigorating caffeine hit. My favourite of these by far is the excellent Phil on Gumpendorfer Straße. I'm not taking the credit for discovering it (it was recommended by the same girl who told me to check out Monsieur Vuongs in Berlin), but I've already spent several happy hours in there. It's a combination of cafe, furniture store, bookshop and music store. If you can find a seat (it always seems to be packed with all the cool kids of Vienna), you can kick back, sink a few excellent coffees and get chatting to friendly locals while a DJ plays the sort of background music that has you planning significant additions to your record collection. I had a great conversation with a Viennese guy called Matthias in there the other day - he's a graphic designer and proved to be extremely chatty whilst also wearing the coolest hoody I have ever laid eyes on. I felt significantly more fashionable just being in its presence, bathing in its reflected wonder. No one that cool is usually so friendly. Got a few more insider tips for the city which I'll hopefully check out over the next few days...

Today I was shown around Naschmarkt - a farmer´s market that´s been running since 1780 - by Bernadette, my informative local guide to the city. We assembled an extremely tasty (and uncharacteristically healthy) lunch from various market stalls which we ate with her flatmate Lizzy, then we walked to the top of a hill that overlooks the city. It´s only when you look down on Vienna like this that you realise how flat the surrounding landscape is for miles and miles around. This lack of geographical impediment also explains the fact that it gets really bloody windy. I wandered around at a 45° angle to the ground as frequent icy blasts painted my cheeks rosy red and threatened to carry me off into the distant Danube, but the view made up for the frostbite.

If all goes to plan tomorrow I might make a little day trip to Bratislava, which is only an hour away by train. I have decided to stay at least until Wednesday night so that I can take in a legendary club night at Flex - a place described in my hostel as "best club in civilisation". About five people now have told me to go on a Wednesday for a night called London Calling. With a name like that (my favourite album of all time) I´d turn up even if they played non-stop James Blunt, but apparently it´s the defining night out here. Time will tell.

Vienna - Day Thirty One

Ok, I yesterday I overslept again. This time it's because a couple of people were having sex in my dorm that night and it's hard to get your beauty sleep when your head's buried under the pillow and you're waiting for the fleshy panting noises to stop.

So, because of the bedroom athletics I missed the walking tour for the second day in a row. I'm not too gutted about that though, because the cold, rainy weather would probably have taken the edge off things. I caught the U-Bahn across the damp grey city to the Zoologischer Garten, which I would have checked out if the rain hadn't started coming in sideways at that point.

I ran through the downpour for a couple of blocks, nearly getting run over at an intersection where the green man turned red a bit quicker than I anticipated, and made it into the warm, dry sanctuary of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche. This once grand cathedral was bombed to ruins by the RAF in WWII. Today it's broken tower and shattered body stand as a powerful anti-war memorial - the gilt-mosaic ceiling of the only remaining original section arcs gracefully above an interesting and moving museum exhibit that aims to convey the futility of war and the importance of understanding and dialogue between different nations and cultures.

Beside the ruins of the original church there is a new church. It's a simple tower from the outside, but as you enter through its heavy doors it is illuminated by thousands of blue glass windows - it was impressive even on the dark, rainy day that I visited. These two churches are well worth a visit if you are in the city. I found the ruined, bullet-strafed old cathedral profoundly moving, despite the thirty or so noisy English schoolkids who were bustling around when I was there.

Just before 9pm I borded a sleeper train for Vienna. This one was a lot more comfortable than the one from Barcelona to San Sebastian - I actually fitted in the couchette bed for a start. Like the previous train I had one of six beds in a private compartment, but there was only one other woman to share the cabin with this time (and she got off the train at about 5am) so I had a lot more privacy.

When she had left I opened the blind for a while as I tried to get back to sleep in the empty carriage, and the journey became surreal and cinematic. The train was quiet, except for the soothing background hum of the carriage sliding over the sleepers and cruising around long lazy corners, and my cabin was almost dark; illuminated only by the stars and the occaisional light from a farm in the sleeping countryside outside.

I was woken at about 8am this morning by the conductor as she brought me a cup of tea, some bread rolls and some tasty peach jam. As I had the cabin to myself I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast as the Austrian countryside rolled casually past my window. My interRail ticket is valid until the 5th of April, but I have a feeling this might be the last journey I make on it. I arrived this morning in a sunny, welcoming Vienna, and I have a strong suspicion that this city deserves more attention than a couple of short days.

Berlin - Day Twenty Nine

I woke up a few minutes too late to take the free walking tour of the city that left from my hostel, but I wasn't too bothered about that. Headed out to town on my own for a bit of an explore.

Berlin is clearly the sort of city that needs a bit of time, but I think I'll probably have to push on tomorrow to get the most out of my last few days of interRailing. With that in mind, I took the advice of a German friend who knows and loves Berlin, and went to the one place she told me I couldn't miss; a Vietnamese restaurant on Alte Shönhauser Straße called Monsieur Vuongs. I got in there a little before the lunchtime rush, but it was still packed with people. There are only about three dishes on menu, and I went for a kind of green curried chicken with stir-fried vegetables which was probably the best meal of my trip so far, and only cost me nine euros with a drink as well. That girl knows her stuff; if you're ever in Berlin ignore all the sights and head straight to this place...

Satisfied after my meal, I created my own walking tour of the city; past Alexanderpatz's enormous tv tower, past the impressive buildings that line Karl Liebnecht Straße (unfortunately I didn't really know what I was looking at, but they look nice all the same), and through the Brandenburg Gate. I walked around the Reichstag - the German parliament building - which has an impressive glass dome designed by Norman Foster, through the moving new holocaust memorial, which took me by surprise when I finally realised it's deceiving scale, and then ended up in Potsdamer Platz - Berlin's Time Square; a futuristic and expensive expanse.

By the time I'd got through that lot I was feeling a little pooped. Chilled out at the hostel for a couple of hours, and then met up with Grace for a drink. She's just arrived here to start a three month placement as part of her music degree, and it was really nice to spend a couple of hours with her and her friends. They all seem a little wide-eyed, having just arrived and still needing to sort out apartments and so on, so we didn't have a late one. I did something I've never done before and ate a 'fake' cheeseburger in a vegetarian restaurant that seemed to offer nothing but poor imitations of popular meaty fast food. Never again...

Berlin - Day Twenty Eight

Twenty eight days later...

The past month seems a bit of a blur when I think back on it now. A very good blur though. I've managed to cover a lot of ground on my interRail ticket, but I still have a few days left to sqeeze a little more value out of it.

We said our goodbyes at Centraal Station in Amsterdam a little after midday, after Rusty and I had been the only ones capable of making it down to the incredible Hilton breakfast - I ate enough free food to keep me going for a few weeks. Even though the weekend hadn't gone entirely according to plan, it is always a pleasure to see these guys, and I'm always sorry to say goodbye. With Avvon, Byron and Rusty, it was a fairly standard deal - I'll probably bump into them again in a few months when I'm back in the UK (if I ever come back that is...), but Ryan is supposed to go back to Australia - it's not certain for how long - and Dan is going to India, and then emigrating to Australia himself for anything up to five years. It's hard to say goodbye when that sort of time scale is involved.

I waited an hour or so for my own train, then borded a comfortable German ICE (inter city express) to Berlin.

It was another long trip - 10 hours or so - and was the first time I have been asked for my passport as we crossed the border into Germany. I was shaken awake by a German policeman, gun at his belt and two partners in the aisle behind him, who told me to take my feet off the seat and show him some ID. Not the most relaxing way to wake up.

Got into Berlin Hauptbahnhof at about 10pm, with no hostel reservation, and had to politely but firmly decline the offer of staying at the house of an old man who started chatting to me on the platform. He seemed a nice enough old guy, but told me he had spent the 1960s living in a cave in Crete, that George Harrison used to stay at his house in India, and that his house was in the countryside beyond the city "surrounded by fields". Creeped me out a little. In the countryside no one can hear you scream...

I was booked into a hostel by 10.30, but everyone in my eight bed dorm was already fast asleep by then. I was a little wired from the trip, so went down for a beer in the hostel bar, where the bored bar staff seemed grateful for the company and gave me some free drinks. It's been a long day.

Amsterdam - Day Twenty Seven

We left the Airport Hilton a little bit after check-out time and caught a train back to Centraal Station. When we got there we once again demonstrated our complete inability to learn from past mistakes, and so headed off on foot to the main Amsterdam Hilton, despite none of us having a clear idea of where it was, or being prepared to ask for directions.

I try to pack light, but my bags get a little heavy when I have to walk aimlessly around a city for an hour or two, so I was a little bit touchy by the time we eventually asked for directions and found we were a thirty minute walk away. We jumped on a tram (which, of course, we should have done in the first place) and had our first bit of good luck in not paying for it, as none of us could work out how to get tickets.

Our rooms weren't ready when we arrived, so we were shown to some leatherbound armchairs next to a log fire in the hotel bar and given a couple of rounds of free drinks (the fools!). Predictably the guys ordered five of the most expensive cocktails on the menu, the Caribbean Gold, which at 21 euros cost more than most hostels I've been staying in. I went for a gin and tonic...

When we finally did get our rooms they seemed unspeakably lovely to me. After a month of smelly travellers in crowded dorms and and long walks down cold corridors to get to the bathroom, the en suite seemed like a palace of luxury, and my bed was so comfortable I almost considered just getting an early night and making the most of it.

We walked into town, stopping at an Irish bar on the way for some food, booze and pool, and then finding a couple of bars that had live music. The first place was a little cheesy (middle of the road rock with the guitarists getting a bit too into their solos), but the second was a funky little jazz bar, with a tight band lead by a girl on the trumpet. Things seemed to be going well, but then - with an impeccable ability to create chaos out of harmony - Ryan and Byron decided that they wanted to go to a casino. They had left their passports at the hotel, and their plan was to run back and get them, then come back to us in the bar. We gave them a deadline of an hour to do that, and waited in the bar until 12.10am, but there was no sign of them.

It was a shame to get seperated on a night like that, but by this point the jazz was sounding a little samey and we were sick of waiting around on our last night in town. We all wanted a big night out, and that wasn't what we were getting. We walked out into the rain and headed for the centre.

The night was probably doomed from that point on. All the bars closed at 1am as it was a sunday night, so we had less than an hour anyway. When we did find a decent place, we somehow managed to get thrown out it when the angry Dutch barman misunderstood Avvon and took offence at us. We bought a dodgy takeaway which we ate in the rain, then caught a cab back to the hotel, where there was still no sign of Byron and Ryan. So much for things going to plan.

Amsterdam - Day Twenty Six

It takes a while to get from Munich to Amsterdam by rail, but it was worth it because I was heading there to meet some mates from my Cardiff days. Avvon, Dan, Byron and Rusty were flying to the Dam as a farewell weekend for Ryan, who's heading back to Australia soon, and it seemed silly not to join them when I've got an interRail ticket burning a hole in my pocket.

Arrived in Amsterdam's Centraal Station at about 6.30pm, and headed straight for a payphone. Bizarrely though, all I got from all five of their mobiles was answerphones, and a huge connection fee for each attempted call. I blew nearly ten euros, then gave up and found some internet access.

No emails from the boys. Not a sausage. 'This is strange', I thought to myself, stranded in a busy city on a saturday night, with no accommodation booked (I was going to crash with the guys at the airport Hilton, where Avvon had sorted staff rates for our rooms) and my bags weighing me down. I tried calling all five phones again: nothing. I hadn't travelled for ten hours for this.

After an hour or so, there seemed to be nothing for it but to check into a hostel and dump my stuff. 7.30pm on a saturday night isn't the optimum time for finding a room though, and three full hostels later I jumped at the chance to pay twice my normal hostel rate for the smelliest, most minging 30 bed dorm I have ever seen. I nodded a hello to a collection of crusty hippies in the corner, threw on a clean t-shirt and put Plan B into action.

Plan B will not go down in history as one of the finest examples of strategy. It basically consisted of me power-walking around the centre of Amsterdam, looking in the windows of bars and coffeeshops in the hope I might spot one of the guys. Astonishingly, it didn't work.

I had forgotten how seedy Amsterdam can feel on a saturday night; with crowds of drunken Englishmen leering sleazily at the girls in their neon bikinis in narrow UV lit windows, and dodgy characters sidling up to you from dark alleyways to offer you harder stuff than they sell in the coffeeshops.

I gave the call centre one final, desperate try, and found - against the odds - a new email from Byron. They had all left their phones switched off in the hotel, apart from Rusty, who had a new number. Sheesh.

Ten minutes later we were reunited in Dam square with lots of hugs and backslapping. We ended up having a relatively tame night on the town - a few beers and a space cake shared mainly by me and Dan which had no effect on me whatsoever, despite the fact that I ignored the instructions and ate about three times more than it advised.

Avvon was feeling unwell, so Dan and I went back with him to the Hilton (having gratefully retrieved my stuff from the hostel of doom). We had rooms in the main Hilton for sunday night, but had to catch a train to the airport for tonight's stay.

Two sets of guards told us to go to the wrong platform, from where we watched our train pull away without us. In the hour wait for the next train, the space cake finally kicked in (with a vengeance) and Dan and I became giggling idiots. Eventually made it back to the Hilton where we collapsed gratefully into bed - hopefully sunday night would go a little more according to plan.

Munich - Day Twenty Five

Bit of a random one today. I was in the bar of my hostel, playing some pool and drinking a few beers, when I got chatting to Danny, a sharp suited, blinged up guy from Miami who told me he worked for Nike. He was a litle bit overdressed for a hostel bar, but he told me he liked meeting people in places like this. He also told me he was guestlisted and VIP'd at a club in town, and asked if I wanted to come along. I did.

We jumped in a cab with his friend D'mon (I have no idea how to spell his name, but that's how it sounded), went across town to the club, then breezed to the front of the queue. We were ushered inside to the VIP area overlooking the dancefloor, and handed an ice bucket with a bottle of Hennessy and a bottle of vodka, then partied away on all the free booze.

I got home after sunrise. I have no recollection of how I made my way back across town, where I bought all the sausages in buns that I devoured, or whether I even said goodbye to the guys in the end. I hope I did.

Some time later, I woke up and wandered around my hostel room in my boxers, wondering why the group of Americans who had just checked in were giving me such startled looks. I got back into bed, checked my watch and discovered I had slept until 5pm... That'd explain the startled yanks then.

I had wasted a day, but I think the night was worth it. I probably won't manage too many more VIP nights on this trip though.