All aboard the crazy train...

Most interesting train ride...ever.

First off - we're all in Istanbul, all in one piece, and with all of our stuff. But it sure wasn't a breeze.

The girls and Rob decided to get a couchette for this night train for the ability to lock the door from the inside and not do shifts staying awake watching luggage in a normal cabin. This cost us about $4CAD. The other two boys decided they weren't shelling out any extra money and that they'd just chance it with a normal cabin (two bench seats facing each other seating 6 total).

Our cabin was great. We fell asleep pretty quickly, woke up at the Bulgarian border for a painfully long passport check, then back asleep until we were woken up and herded off at the Turkish side for their immigration. We knew we had to buy our visas, and that we (the Canadians) would be paying $20USD each for the priviledge. Rob (Brit) pays $10 pounds, and the Irish boys got off cheap with $10Euros. I had $100US with me, so we were more than set.

However, when the Canadians get to the front of the line we discover things have changed. The boys are being charged exactly what the guide book said, but we were told we have to pay $60USD each.... which we clearly don't have. I initially thought he was pulling our leg, so I roll with it for about 30 seconds until it's clear he is not. Panic sets in. We play the gesture game, attempt to barter (advice - customs officials don't take well to barter attemps), and even try the puppy dog "you cant leave us stranded at the border" eyes. Eventually he agrees to let us pay the remaining in Euros, and we scrape together the remainder, and get our stickers letting us in the country.

Meanwhile, Alan and Jeff have been hearded on and off crowded cabins, and are fearing for their lives as well as their luggage. They're offered a sleeping car in first class and they both decided to cough up the ~$11CAD to be able to lock out the crazies on the train. Lock means both a deadbolt type contraption as well as a chain that would let you open it partway.

However, somewhere between the Turkey border and Istanbul, they wake up to see two gypsies in their car (they got in through the double locked door with wrenches). The gypsies have no interest in the wallet, money belt, etc. that the boys have left out. They're too busy literally pulling apart the walls of their cabin, pulling out these black wrapped packages from behind the walls. After a minute of complete confusion, the boys try and hunt down a train attendant, with worries that they've now become accomplices in a drug smuggling operation. But then one of the packages comes out in a clear bag - and is full of eye glasses!!!! Regardless, the gypsies are taken by the train attendant (who seemed to not really care about what the gypsies were doing), and eventually literally thrown off the moving train a little while later.

******************

We're in Istanbul now, and safe. This city is amazing... we've visited the Blue Mosque, St. Sophia's church, and a cool pedestrian walking street in the evening (where we had a few beers, and even went bowling). Today we're going to visit the Grand Bazaar and try our hand at some haggling. Should be interesting considering we're all pretty timid and polite when dealing with other people.

When 'yes' means 'no'

Sitting and sweating like a pig in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. It's a beautiful small town with some great hiking and great ruins. We ended up scrapping the camping idea because we couldn't find any campgrounds close to the towns that would rent us a tent. Instead we're in a hostel with the best view you could ever imagine. We kind of ended up 'camping', because the temperature has been so hot at night that the 10 bed dorm rooms were a sauna driving me to sleep outside on the cement floor of the terrace. There's an insane amount of bugs both inside and out (understandable considering the only thing seperating inside from outside is a beaded curtain), I've seen the biggest beetle ever.

Did a great hike today for about 4 hours to some waterfalls where the 6 of us ate lunch. It was so hot that we ended up just hiking in our bathing suits. The waterfalls were so refreshing to stand under!!!

We've managed to become regulars at this local restaurant, about to go for our fourth meal there in 2.5 days. You can't imagine how amazing the food is for how cheap. A huge salad, giant pizza, side of potatoes cost about $5 canadian altogether. I left each time with a stomach ache from so much food.

Tonight is a night train to Istanbul. Apparently we'll all have to file out in the middle of the night when we get to the Turkey border to buy our visas in the closest major currency to where we're from - We get ours in American (thanks for the emergency US dollars, dad...), the Irish get theirs in Euros, and the Brit gets his in pounds. It's quite odd that they wouldn't just use either the Turkish currency or Euros... ah well, we'll see how it goes.

If anyone has a second, could they use the power of google and see if they can find any pubs in Istanbul that would celebrate Canada Day???? I bought a red shirt at a street stand specifically for the occasion :)

Where the streets have no name...

We're now in C-O-Owithalinethroughit-upsidedownN-backwardsR, known in the Roman alphabet as Sofia, in Bulgaria. This switch to the syrillic alphabet has been a tough one. They give tourists maps with the streets labelled with the Roman alphabet pronounciation, which means it doesn't match with the street names we actually see. It's rendered maps essentially useless for finding specific locations, so we have done a lot of wandering the past two days.

To backtrack super quick - we spent a fourth night in Brasov in order to meet up with the boys (see Carolyn's blog for a picture of the Romanian bbq feast we were treated to). From there we decided to skip Bucharest due to lack of accomodation, stopping only in the train station to switch trains, and headed on an especially sleepless and cramped night train to Sofia. Lesson learned = it's always worth spending the extra 10ish Euro to get a couchette rather than a just a seat in a cabin for a 10 hour train.

Sofia itself is a bit of a dump compared to other places we've visited, but our amazing hostel set-up had us easily convinced to stay a second night. We've been put up in an apartment shared with only one other bedroom. The 6 of us are on mattresses in one room. We have a computer with free internet, a huge living room, full kitchen, bathoom with an amazing shower, and even a balcony! The place itself is quite nice/new too. Then we head to the main hostel for free breakfast, free pasta dinner w/ beer, and free laundry. All of this for 10Euros a night - roughly $13Canadian. Top off the day with 1.5litre jugs of beer costing about $2Canadian, and our budget is doing quite well. :)

The group of us are getting along great - with our own apartment, we joke that we're just like the tv show Friends. Looks like we'll all be sticking together for another week until Istanbul, where we lose one, but the Irish boys may be with us for a few weeks yet. The next plan is really undecided. Once everyone wakes up we have to decide where we want to head today, and where to sleep. Everyone is really antsy to do some camping, so we've been hunting for campgrounds around Bulgaria, or may just head to the Black Sea Coast to sleep on the beach.

Okay. Time for some pictures!

Sadly the only tacky Dracula thing we found during our wanderings through Transylvania.

After hiking up the mountain beside Brasov, we were treated to a georgous view!

Jeff, Rob and Carolyn are chilling on the patio of our Brasov hostel.

The girls with Maria - the amazing, eccentric and hilarious woman running our hostel that was a good part of the reason we stayed in Brasov, Romania longer than any other city other than London.



The Bulgarian changing of the guards. They do a hilarious Ministry of Silly Walks-style march, with their straight legs going fully parallel to the ground with each stomp. Carolyn and I silly-walked around for the rest of the day in their honour.

Rocking in Romania

Hello all,

Today is day 3 in Brasov, Romania, but our first day sticking around and exploring the town.

First, a Budapest recap:
We were there three nights, and didn't get to bed before 4am any night. Three cheers for great new friends and the outdoor nightlife!

On our last day there, a group of six of us went caving. We spent about two hours underground in coveralls, helmets and headlamps (pictures to come sometime hopefully). We had a guide, and three others in our group, and shimmied through spaces so tiny that our helmets were getting stuck. It was unbelievable. And I'm happy to report that I think I'm now over my small fear of enclosed spaces. Definitely one of the most amazing experiences I've had in my life - I think I may quit school and become a caver.

We got into Brasov on noon the next day. Thanks to help from a bunch of (non English speaking) Romanian locals we found our hostel finally. Maria, the woman running our hostel is completely eccentric, but such a fun person to have as our temporary 'mom'. She sat us down and taught us about the currency. Romania is in the process of changing from ROL (old) to RON (new), so there are bills labelled 10,000Lei and some labelled 1Lei which mean the same thing = equivalent to roughly 25 cents Canadian. We have to be exceptionally careful, because most people would say something costs "10" when they mean "10,000". It's all quite confusing, so we were really lucky to have the help.

While in Transylvania (the region) we've done trips to Sinaia (visiting a pretty but over-the-top castle that used to belong to the monarchy before they were overthrown), Bran (home of the touristy but rather unimpressive Dracula's Castle - not actually where Vlad the Impaler lived, but where the author of Dracula based his book on), and to Rashov (to some really neat ruins of a fortress that protected Transylvania from a tonne of Turkish sieges).

We may be going bear watching tonight - which basically means wander to the edge of town and watch the bears come out of the hills and root through dumpsters. I think it's pretty hilarious, and Maria's husband might give us a ride after the big bbq-ed Romanian feast she has planned for us and some of our hostel-mates.

Now it looks like some of our friends from Budapest (Al and Jeff from Ireland, and Rob from Britain) are arriving in Brasov to meet us tomorrow. We're kind of antsy to get out of here, so we are likely to head to either Bucharest (capital of Romania) or more hopefully Sofia in Budapest.

Hopefully we'll have some pictures in the next stop!

Check out Carolyn's blog... she posted tons o' pictures, and did a good update of what we've been up to in Vienna/Budapest.

Were staying an extra night in Budapest cause it's so awesome (rivaling Munich for number of cool people we've met and hung out with), and so we can do some cave exploring tomorrow. We get to dress in big cool blue suits and have helmets and headlamps.... should be a good time. Then a night train to Brasov, Romania. Wahoo!

Also- Its getting hot here. I think we each need to invest in a knee-length skirt because it's only going to get hotter, but we're heading into some more conservative countries.

I'm about to go explain the game of Ultimate to some hostel-mates so more later!!!

More pictures ahead

Update: We are in Budapest now, which is great so far. With a bunch of people in our hostel we hiked up to the Citadel on the Buda side of the Danube River, which gave the most amazing views you could imagine. Then to a late night Turkish bath from 11:30-2am or so which was amazing in itself. Couple more days in Budapest, so I'll probably post more later..... in the mean time, here's a couple of pictures....

Carolyn is surfing with the river-surfers in the English Gardens in Munich.
















The family crest of the region was made by human bones at the Ossuary in Kutna Hora (a day trip outside Prague)
















Danielle and Carolyn on our super extreme-sport rafting trip in Cesky Krumlov.

Still in the same country? Woah.

Killing a bit of time before today's train, so I thought I'd just tell you how AWESOME Cesky Krumlov is. I highly recommend anyone goes there. It's quite a tourist spot, but the tiny-ness of the town and the amazing relaxing atmosphere has been such a nice change for us. As I mentioned before, our big expenditure of the day yesterday was the 900Kc rafting trip (About $45 total), that lasted 3 hours down a beautiful river surrounded by forest, and included a bottle of rum. (I think there is some rule in Canada about drinking while boating? Apparently not in effect here... Dev, I think you'd have a heart attack).

Food has significantly dropped in price, so we've started going to cafes to eat some meals for the first time. A huge Czech dinner full of bread dumplings and goulash cost about $4 Canadian. The amount of carbs this country consumes is unreal. But so, so delicious.

Vienna tonight, and more stories will most certainly come...

(and maybe eventually pictures too... we couldn't get the computer to load them).

Still rocking the Czech Republic

We're done Prague, and now in a super cute midieval town called Cesky Krumlov. Prague was beautiful, old, and cobblestone-y (which is a killer on the feet after full days of walking), but a bit of a let down after the insane amount of hype.

I'll let the girls tell more Prague stories (check out both blogs linked on the side now).

Cesky Krumlov is pretty much the best town ever for relaxing (which is exactly what we need after our whirlwind first week and a half). There is a river that literally snakes through town, with grassy banks to just chill on. After lunch, we're grabbing a raft, and taking a 3ish hour trip down the river and see if we can only flip over a few times. :)

I may try and get some more pictures up here before we leave here (headed for Vienna) tomorrow, because the hostel has free internet. But Carolyn might beat me to it, so be sure to check hers out!!!

Czech out these pictures!

Hey! We're on day 2 in Prague now, but instead of telling you about it, I'm going to backtrack and give you some pictures of the first 9 days of the trip. (If it works....)

Yes. We found platform 9 3/4, but we didn't see Harry Potter.... until we sucessfully got to the other side.












This is the Tower of London - even though I'd seen it before, it was still insane to see such a awesome castle in the middle of busy London. It was a perfect day for the hop on-hop off bus tour!

Danielle and Matty didn't get along so well.....

We're in one of the beer gardens (in Munich now) enjoying our tiny half-litre beers. This was apparently just a warm up for the litre beers at the Hofbrauhaus later on.....



Some of the folks from our free Munich bike tour.

This is taking painfully long, so that's all for now!

Carolyn is a weinerschnitzel!!

First off, its been weird getting used to keyboards in every country. The symbols are always in different places, and in Germany, the Z and Y keys are switched. Makes typing much much slower.

Anyways, were just about to go off and spend our last day in Munich before catching our first overnight train to Prague late tonight. Luckily our hostel is leting us keep our big bags in storage so that we dont have to pay for lockers at the train station. Im kind of excited about the sleeper train, but I dont actually anticipate that I will sleep very well. But its a new adventure!!

The last couple of days have been awesome. The running joke is that every city we visit becomes our new favourite and place we want to move to. On our first day in Munich, we hooked up with a free bike tour of the city. It was a group of about 20 of us, run by a hilarious 35ish year old guy origianlly from Maine, and with a super cute Brit as his side-kick. It lasted about 3 hours, including an hour long stop for lunch in one of the biggest beer gardens in the city. We met some great people on the tour, and ended up spending the night with a few of them (possibly having a little too much wine/beer), and connecting with two others yesterday for a day trip to Fussen. (We learned that groups of 5 get discounts on the train fares so it worked out great)

Fussen is home to Castle Neuschwanstein (butchered the spelling of that one), which all of you would surely recognize to see as it inspired all the Disneyland castles, and was used as Hogwarts in some scenes of Harry Potter. It was a cloudless day so the outside and view of the Alps and cute town of Fussen was the best part. We missed a train so spent an extra couple hours in Fussen which was great because it was prettz much the cutest town youve ever seen, and it was great to walk through and explore.

Today our plan is to visit the Deutche museum (one of the worlds biggest apparently) and maybe head to Dachau (the first Nazi concentration camp) if we have time.

More from Prague!!

Crisis Averted!

We're leaving our hostel in Brussels shortly, making a quick visit at the Palace, then heading back to the train station for our 8ish hour trip to Munich.

Brussels itself was much smaller, but much awesomer than we expected considering we had only heard bad things about it. We were perpetually lost, but found a bustling market (where all the people in the city apparently were - the rest of the city was dead), and stumbled upon the most beautiful square (Grand Place) by accident due to our exceptionally poor map-reading skills. Pictures still to come.

We potentially had no place to sleep tonight because I screwed up our hostel bookings for Munich, but have sorted that out. We're also going to unfortunately be spending our train trip in a smoking car because it's a religious holiday in Germany today, so there were no reservations left in the non-smoking cars. Ah well, I'll have my puffer handy :)

More later! Having a blast overall!!!

Mind the Gap!

We're finishing up our super-fun stay in London tonight, heading out tomorrow morning on the Chunnel to Brussels for a day. Here's a quick highlight reel (because I don't have too much time left on the internet after reading emails), without pictures for now because the internet at our hostel doesnt give us access to a USB port.

Saw a million things, and had a great time with great people!

-Spent our first night wandering around the River Thames, met up with EC in the hostel bar that evening. I managed to stay up until about 11pm. I'm proud of myself
-Next morning, us girls did a Tower of London tour. Hung out with some ravens and a Beefeater.
-Back at the hostel we met up with EC, and with Matty who had just come in on a bus from Wales. We eventually also met with EC's friend Terry. Terry and Matty took us around to a bunch of cool places. We had wine in a super cute little nook close to Covent Gardens, then went to a neat/cheap Bangladeshi restaurant in East London somewhere. Hit up a couple bars/beer gardens and had a great evening.
-This morning we said goodbye to Terry and EC (who are off to Ireland), and then got on a hop-on/hop-off bus tour. Caught a practice parade in front of Buckingham Palace for the Queen's bday in 2 weeks. Lots of fanfare and regalness. Very fun. We went to the biggest toy store ever (7 floors!), and to a lot more typical touristy stops. Had dinner in the hostel, visited the Clink Prison, then said goodbye to Matty. (Eep we're on our own now!!!)
-Went to the Tate modern art museum for a short visit, and I got to see some Dali and PIcasso paintings.


AHH. TIMES UP SO ILL REPORT MORE LATER!¬!!! BYE!

Cheerio!!

I'm in London... hurrah!! Tons of delayed flights, as per usual, but nothing too tragic yet. Danielle and Carolyn have met and don't seem to hate each other, so I consider this a success!! We're at the hostel now, each doing a quick check-in on our shared internet time, then it's off to explore the city! London Bridge is a super close walk from our hostel, so we'll probably go there now.

More soon!!