DAY 36-37 - Newcastle

We had great expectations of Newcastle - this may have been due to some remnants of “down underness” where we expect it to get hotter the further North we go and the fact that pigs only sleep on their left side...thanks Kath for the second fact!

Newcastle is located on the East coast of England, although in our time there we didn’t make it as far as the beach.

Our home for the next two days was in a former stately house that has been transformed into a maze of passages and rooms resembling a hostel.

The man at reception was exceptionally keen to show us where everything was and explain to us the rules of the hostel , this coupled with the fact we only saw 4 other people while we were there made us wonder if perhaps new guests were a bit of a novelty.

Upon setting out for the day we asked our ever helpful reception-man what was good to see in Newcastle to which he replied not a lot but the nightlife is great! However we managed to fill in our time with checking out the city centre, including the oldest arcade in Europe where there is a 3 storey music shop which had many pianos begging to be played, hunting out supermarkets as we had a kitchen to cook in finally-hooray! and watching the All Whites (without out having to get up at a ridiculous time of the morning...muhaha!)

We also discovered that Newcastle is in fact a fib as there is no new castle but instead an old one, so we had some fun poking around there for the afternoon after checking out St Nicholas church where there was a school choir practicing.

Day 34-35 - York

The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.

Sad but true I abby kerr just sat through a rousing rendition of this nursery song. I think these ladies are pretty special...

How to get to York from Cambridge weeeeellllll after carefully researching it on the internet, we planned to backtrack to the Kings Cross Station and try for a cheap last minute ticket. Oh how we learnt a lesson. Let’s just say we got to know in intimate detail the transit lounge at Kings Cross.

York is a rambling picturesque city (it has a cathedral) with a small town feel.

After our small hiccup and late arrival the night before we set out to explore what York had to offer starting with breakfast horray for supermarkets and 2 for 1 deals! We ate our lunch on the medieval city wall that surrounds the city centre. According to our informative taxi driver from the night before it is 2.5 miles long and you could walk most the way around on it if you were so inclined. We were not inclined to do so instead we delved into small alleyways containing a myriad of shops. Big ones, small ones and some some big as our head? Lots of pretty and crafty things to buy and overload our bags with so they had to stay on the self. Ultimately the plan was to locate the Shambles, as we were advised by “lovely old couple” from St Pauls to find.

Eventually we found the area with very claustrophobic streets, the upper storeys on either side of the street closing and leaning in on each other leaving a small glimpse of the summer sky between them.

We left too soon I think but we were booked to head to Newcastle, so there we headed.

Day 31-33 - Cambridge

Where does one go after tripping around Europe for a month...Cambridge! We booked ourselves into Abbeyfield Guesthouse and looked forward to a weekend off catching up after the busyness of being on tour. Luckily for you all Abbeyfield had free, fast wi-fi, so the blogs were finally all updated for your enjoyment (we hope!). Lucky for us we had George Pippas the Greek, owner of fore mentioned Guesthouse.

Cambridge turned on some not so pleasant weather for the weekend which sent us delving into the corners of our bags for some warmer clothes, which was a bit of a shock to the system. Retail therapy was indulged in along with checking out some of the weekend markets. A nice young man cut us a deal we couldn’t refuse to go punting on the river so an idyllic Sunday afternoon was spent learning about the various colleges in Cambridge and having poetry quoted to us as we weaved between the rest of the Cambridge population trying their hand at punting down the river.

Josh our punter is trying to be a philosopher...currently studying philosophy at a Canadian university but due to a ‘miscalculation of student finances’ has had to come home to punt on the river for the summer break.

He was full of uselessly interesting facts such as – the ugliest building that we punted past was designed by the same man who designed the Beehive, check out the photo... and it is no surprise! There is also a replica of the Bridge of Sighs which is in Venice. This is one of 3 replicas with the others located in Oxford and most recently Las Vegas. We also went past the Wren Library which was designed by the same man who designed St Pauls and this is where a lot of original and first editions of books are found including A.A Milne, Shakespeare and Isaac Newton.

The books are housed on the first floor, the ground floor empty with wrought iron openings to allow flooding to go through without concern for the books. Another fact about Cambridge is that it is not classed as a city as its Kings college chapel was not deemed grand enough to be a Cathedral. Therefore due to English tradition Cambridge is rendered on a town with a very impressive chapel.

Church proved to be elusive on Sunday morning with the one we had searched out on the net unable to be found. So we headed down the street with the plan being to go to which ever church we struck first. St Paul’s had the honour of our presence and by just sitting down we changed the age ratio significantly...to be fair most of their parish was away on its parish weekend. Here we meet a lovely old couple who told of some sights worth seeing in York and the man jokingly warned us of the Scots, much to his wife’s embarrassment as she later told us that whenever her husband fills out forms he always makes a point of crossing out British and replacing it with English when asked of his ethnicity.

DAY 30 - Amsterdam to London

Four countries in one day. Final Top deck drive day, soon we will be on our own drive days, scary. It was an early start in Amsterdam and we were not too sad to see the hostel in our dust!

Final lunch stop was in Bruges, Belgium. Belgium is of course famous for Belgian chocolate, waffles and beer. Which Whitey and Kath proudly managed to consume all three. It was a short stop only 45mins as there was a car accident slowing traffic. It wasn’t a very exciting accident unfortunately (but fortunately for those involved), particularly when you inch towards it for 45mins.

On we go on our epic journey into France - country number three. Here we met with British customs. How is it that custom officers manage to make you feel like you are smuggling a backpack full of counterfeit watches, plan to stay illegally in the country for ten years and that you are going to steal their pen just with a look? They were interested how we got so much time off, were we getting paid, when were we going home, what were we doing, where were we going? We felt interrogated and relieved when they finally let us into the country. Back on the docks at Calais and it hardly seemed like 24 days ago we were boarding the bus ready for our Spirit of Europe adventure.

Another ferry ride to Dover and back to “the Clink” with its tiny rooms, in country number four England.

DAY 29 - Amsterdam

This city was always going to be exciting, with its toppling buildings (from the Dutch reclaiming land), through to the low crime rate because there are few laws to break anyway… Amsterdam was exciting.

Our hostel was sweet smelling, and by the state of the shower, it was the worst conditions we’d stayed in.

Amsterdam “tolerates” Marijuana. Thus our hostel hallways was always sweet smelling. Just breathing while getting in and out of the hostel was the closest we got to “trying weed”, and Jess and Whitey were oblivious to the smell, as both had blocked noses.

The previous night on arriving into Amsterdam a lot of our tour group wanted to experience the unique things Amsterdam offered that a lot of other countries generally wouldn’t. So when we got off the bus most of the tour got changed, grabbed a bite for tea, and promptly made their way to watch a Sex show.

None of us girls (the pack) went.

So we hung out with, two other girls from the tour and got some dinner (and heard the amazing Dutch accent, sounding its best when speaking English).

After tea Whitey and Jess went back to the hostel to bed, and Abby, myself (Kath) and another tour girl, went to see what the red light district of Amsterdam was like. We felt that not seeing it would be missing out on major part of the culture.

We didn’t have too much trouble finding it, just followed the crowed (mainly a lot of men – but one guy had his wife and baby in a stroller with him?!). It was funny because they actually had little red traffic lights on the footpath letting tourists know they were entering the red light district.

Prostitution is rather professional over there, with streets and alleyways lined with glass windows where prostitutes of all sorts beckoned men up to their window and into their doors. Some places had queues.

There were many neon lights and red ones, and all the while its treated as any other business.

The next morning we learnt from the other tour members that we were very wise to not have gone to the show, they were completely disgusted to see some middle aged couple doing it on stage even though they were warned that this was the case. So most of them had gone to try some weed after (probably hoping to erase their memories).

Our fellow tour members mainly took weed that was mixed into baking aka “space cakes”. This left the majority of them very ill for 7hrs++, did not erase their memories from the show, and they unfortunately missed the morning’s bicycle tour that was really fun.

Our bicycle tour guide, Gusbert was an avid cyclist. He used his bike to get everywhere, even to France sometimes! The Netherlands can take 2hr to bike across sideways and a day at the most going from top to bottom. The city of Amsterdam is in a circular layout and in 20mins bike time you can be out of the city, so we spent our time biking in circles.

Lucky for us cycling is the main mode of transport in the city and always have right of way. I was glad for this since out tour guide explained how he failed to hold a drivers licence. He is colour blind and when going for his licence didn’t see the compulsory red stop sign and crashed the driving test vehicle whilst the instructor was beside him!!! So biking is his main form of transport, which is fantastic since cyclists always get right of way J

His sense of humour was odd. But he claimed that Dutch humour usually is.

Our cycle tour stopped by a big archway with a saying engraved in Latin “ Homo sapiens non urinat in ventum” our tour guide said this is a Dutch saying, meaning “A wise man doesn’t piss into the wind”. This affirmed the odd Dutch sense of humour, especially since it cost a few million dollars to put up… somehow they see that as a worthy expense?

The bike ride was awesome and defiantly the fastest way to see the city. Afterwards was a free afternoon so we checked out the Vincent Van Gogh art museum and the house that Anne Frank and her family hid in throughout most of the war. Both were very interesting and worthwhile.

Before dinner we tried to hunt out some internet so we could book accommodation after the tour. We found a hotel that had pay Internet, but since I (Kath) had my laptop I wanted to get free WIFI. Across the road was the infamous Dolphin coffee shop.

It claiming to be the purest in town, and also claimed it had free WIFI. I could get the WIFI from where I was with the girls but I just needed the access password.

NB: “Coffee shops” are where Coffee is and various ways of taking marijuana (in baking/joints/bongs) can also be bought, while “Cafes” are like normal in NZ.

I told the girls I was going to get a cappuccino “to go” from the dolphin coffee shop so I could get the internet password, and be back in the clean aired room they were in and use WIFI from there.

I entered the Dolphin Coffee Shop. It was thick with smoke and had two kids hunched over a bong, which bore a sign stating: “vaporisation is the safest way”.

I made my way to the counter and quickly asked for “a cappuccino to go and the Internet password thanks”.

Unfortunately the shop assistant told me WIFI access was only for customers using weed.

I asked how much a joint was.

“10 Euros. You get it in a bag to roll your own” was her reply.

The cost of weed for free WIFI didn’t undercut the cost of internet where the other girls were.

So I said “no thanks”, and hastily left through the smoky haze, and went back to where the pack was, across the road and paid for internet there.

DAY 2 - Hong Kong

After a much needed sleep and a crazy busy first day we decided to slow the pace and enjoy some of HK culture. Which is lucky as we have been able to avoid the thunder and lightning storm and torrential rain.

We enjoyed the arts museum (geeky aye!) but the space museum was a bit B grade. Starbucks has been a regular food stop after being lead by Kaths need to be feed and mission like tendencies. Other than the benefits of Wifi access I think Abby will be pleased if we never go to a Starbucks for the rest of the trip!

(Nicole, Jess and Kath getting up close and personal to artist Wu Guanzhong, after enjoying his exhibit. Thinking about it afterwards we should have stolen his umbrella and taken it with us.)

That evening we caught up with Jenny who took us to the "ladies market" and the gold fish market. On the way we grabbed tea at a “conveyor belt” sushi restaurant, which was all very exciting. We tried eel, egg sushi as well as some salmon and other delicacies. Whitey was the first into the shopping picking up a mini and Kath got the token rip off handbag – Dolce and Gabana…genuine fake surprisingly! By now we had mastered the MTR (train) and managed to get our way home.

DAY 26 - Prague to Berlin

Did we mention that we are on a bus alot? AAh well we are sometimes we even get off it. Abby loves the bus so much that her ankles swell with excitement everytime she gets on. Mmm love those cankles.

Unusually today we had a good stop in Dresden, Germany for a couple of hours. As we looked at the impressive restored historic buildings it dawned on us that the bells were ringing for an awfully long time. Jess eventually made the connection that it was Sunday. We are so out of touch with reality that this was a big surprise to us. So to fill our time we thought we would attend a church service.

Frauen Kirhe Dresden is church with a magnificently restored building. During the WW2 Dresden controversially was bombed by the Allies. They destroyed approximately 70% of the central city including the church which was filled with over 200 hundred people seeking refuge. The city of Dresden has paid over 200 million euros to accurately restore it plus some useful extras such as mics and amps etc.

The service started promptly with a Bach prelude on the organ, then a whole lot of german, a baptism, more german, music by a chamber music group, sermon in german then fugue on the organ to finish. An hour start to finish. We reflected on this experience, the language barrier gave us a fresh view on the Christian culture, perhaps this is what it is like for non Christian looking in not understanding the Christian jargon. Trying to say the responses on the service sheet without knowing the meaning seemed empty. However it for us it was still a spiritual experience.

On wards we travelled to Berlin. Stopping for a service stop outside of Berlin our eyes were drawn to the sky where we saw an European Fighter plane doing acrobatic stunts which was very impressive and noisy.

Upon arriving at Berlin we set out to find a bar to watch the football, Germany vs. Australia. With so many Australians on the tour and with our good kiwi upbringing “we support New Zealand and anyone playing Australia” we cheered for Germany which proved to be quite appropriate due to Germany’s thrashing of Australia 4-0.

DAY 28 - Berlin to Amsterdam

Our second last tour drive day – Hoorah!! Today was one of the most uneventful drive days we have had. The day pretty much just involved sitting on a bus with two 15 minute service stops and a half an hour lunch break.

Before reaching Amsterdam we called in at a place which produced their own cheese and wooden clogs. As we drove into the showroom I think I saw a slight tear in Jess’ eyes as there, in a wintering shed, were some very cute Friesian cows and calves. The husband and wife combo split and gave us different presentations. The wife’s blurb on cheese was brief and informative whereas the crazy-dutch husband complete with lipstick marks on his cheek gave us a taste of the dutch humour and an interesting explanation and demonstration of the construction of clogs.

Factoid: There are five shoemakers that make clogs by hand, these take can take up to five hours to shape with hand tools, with the use of machinery this process is now done in 3 minutes.

Yellow for working, red for dancing, the fancypants painted for the tourists and the pretty carved ones for weddings, (Sorry Esther but we could fit in a red pair in for Peter).

For tea we were charmed by a young dutch gentleman in an Irish bar who Kath was fairly sure had an Irish accent. Kath has now decided that Dutch men can be added to the list of hot accents.

DAY 27 - Berlin

The day started with a walking tour guided by an ex-topdeck leader Arja who was German but had an accent like a liquorice allsort. (Irish-American-Australian). We walked to historic buildings that marked the Nazi’s story, unfortunately a portion of these are just bare land as no one wants to be associated with buildings that were part of the Nazi regime.

Seeing as we were in the birth place of Birkenstocks we decided it was only fair to go and at least try on these amazing shoes. Half an hour later and a very relieved shop assistant we exited the shop with three pairs of birks.

We decided to change tactics for the afternoon, considering we had our history fix in the morning we went to the Berlin Zoo. Monkeys, giraffes, big cats and bears were all there to be viewed and caused us much amusement. Although the most fun we had was riding a hippo...

An european version of starbucks:

Wild Life:

DAY 25 - Prague

Having had our fill of old buildings, museums and general historicalness really retail therapy was the only answer. Prague provided this remedy. Armed with comfortable shoes, roomy bags and loaded gold plated diamond incrusted visa (not) we set out.

We love markets. Jess loves markets. Set the scene. Jess peering at the creepy witch puppets hanging at the corner stall. Enter Abby and whitey and small group large men lounging in store behind. All is calm. Enter stall owner sneakily claps hands, stall transforms in to cackling, red eyed jiggling puppets. Whitey: surprised, Abby: taken aback, lounging men: no reaction, Jess: JUMPS, SCREAMS grabs Whitey then Abby, more screaming, lounging men: laugh loudly. Store owner: priceless.

Not that we felt bad about being in this beautiful medieval city and only shopping but decided to hike to the Palace and Basilica on the hill. Picture tells a thousand words.

Shopping experience rated by items purchased:

4th: abby with 3, 3rd kath with 5, 2^nd whitey with 6, making jess the big spender with a grand total of 7 items.

Success. Cured. maybe.

DAY 24 – Krakow to Prague (via Auschwitz)

The wakeup call came at 5am and we were off bright and early, first stop Auschwitz. We meet our guide Simon who took us on a 3 hour tour full of history, heartache and hardship.

Auschwitz was a very understated museum, it is definitely not a tourist attraction and those that work hard to keep it open to the public do it in honour of the memory of those who suffered during this time and as a way of ensuring that the lessons learned from history will hopefully not be repeated.

We spent 2 hours in Auschwitz 1 where the barracks have exhibitions of photographs, drawings and documentation from the period of terror 1940-45. These were simple yet very effective at helping us to understand what happened at Auschwitz which was originally set up as a concentration camp with an initial goal of degradation not death. However this changed in the later years and to the Germans it wasn’t about the number of Jews killed but the efficiency of how it was done – to them it was simply ‘beauracratic task’.

The average life expectancy once admitted into Auschwitz was 3-4 months. Jews from all over Europe were brought via cattle carriages which could take up to 2 weeks, with little food or water, many didn’t survive. Upon arrival at the station they were sorted with some marching straight to the gas chambers and those that were considered of worth for slave labour or medical testing (this was mainly targeted at children) were registered and given a number.

One of the more hard hitting exhibitions was that of the belongings of the Jewish people. We walked through rooms that contained 50 ton of Human hair that the Germans collected off their victims and on sold for textile purposes – little was wasted from the extermination of the Jews. Another room had a pile of suitcases; over a thousand from just one of the many trains that brought people to Auschwitz. People’s names and birth dates were written on them, just one of the many things that were done to give the Jews a false hope that they would be returned to them. This was sobering reading actual people’s names – they were no longer just names from History books they became real people to us.

Another of the barracks had been preserved in its original setting with the bunkrooms, undressing areas and rooms where the prisoners fates were decided. Underneath the barracks was some of the types of cells – these included starvation cells and torture cells with just a small window barely letting in any light. The most horrendous was the other form of torture cell which was only 1m² and the prisoner had to crawl into them like a dog house and remain there until he was let out again to work. We also visited a model of the gas chambers and crematorium.

There is so much more we could tell you about, but this will do for now.

There is something incomprehensible as to what happened at Aschwitz and to understand the circumstances that lead people to do what they did. Simon put it well in that you can’t put yourselves in their shoes so therefore you cannot judge the decisions that were made. The other thing was all our travels so far we have looked at and talked about events in History that happened hundreds of years ago. The liberation of Auschwitz was only 65 years ago...while we were visiting the camps a survivor of the Holocaust was also there. Simon had earlier been telling us this man’s escape story of how he and 3 other men managed to get a car, uniform and guns to be able to drive straight out the front gate of the camp and escape to freedom. Unfortunately for this man he ended up in a Polish prison for another 10 years before he actually was free. Just seeing this elderly man standing talking to some men by the ruins of the gas chamber made you realise again how recent and real everything was.

The writing on the gates translates into something like – In work there is freedom, but as Simon explained to us the reality for people entering through these gates was that their only freedom would come from death.

Day 23 – Krakow

Krakow was a lovely city to visit, here the Pole’s noticeably understood English better than the Hungarian’s in Budapest – which made life so much easier. Just outside of Krakow is a salt mine that has been mined for over 700 years, is rather famous, and holds temperatures of 14-15 degs in its lower shafts. This seemed like an exciting idea, especially with average outdoor temps around 35 deg.

We bussed out to the mine and went in tour group through it – starting by descending 340-ish stairs covering 64 metres (thank goodness there was a lift out at the end!). Salt mines were very valuable and back in the day salt was used as a form of currency, and it was not uncommon for people to get payed in salt. The shafts and chambers in the mine were impressive, especially since they were all dug out by hand! Eventually horses were used to power the pullies, and they were kept in the underground stables chamber in good conditions. Needless to say these horses wouldn’t be short of salt licks!

All the walls were carved into salt rock and we all had fun licking the walls to test. The miners were very skilled and there were statues carved out of salt (which we couldn’t lick or it’d disappear eventually!), a chapel (where the woodwork of Jesus and Mary is immaculately kept from the preserving nature of salt), and… A CATHEDRAL

this was a very impressive part of the mine, with carvings into the walls of the story of the New Testament, using clever perspective that gave an impression of depth.

After the salt mine we stepped outside into the raging heat. We had a lot of trouble finding a bus stop to return to Krakow. After much dehydration and an extra dose of Vitamin D we found it, got back to town, and into the air-conditioned mall.

For dinner we went to some Cowboy styled restaurant. The inside was air-conditioned… excellent, the people next to us started smoking… not so good… but the waiter (dressed as a cowboy) was pulling out all the smooth moves to get our orders!!! So we loved it. Food was good, but the waiter really made it fantastic…. Go him, he even pulled out some Demetri Martin styles and kept adding “ladies” to the end of his sentences (youtube: Demetri Martin jokes with the guitar for “ladies” joke).

Krakow has been good.

DAY 22 – Budapest to Krakow

On the road again, oh I just can’t wait to get back on the road again...

Today’s drive took a little longer than usual due to flooding affecting the roads. A bonus of this was being able to see more farmland with people raking the cut grass by hand into stooks or onto tractor trailers to be carted to nearby sheds for conserving for winter(?) Seeing the long line of grass in front of the workers out in the hot sun with their small garden rake definitely made me appreciate V-rakes and tractors with Air con!

We also wound our way through small villages and felt like we were stepping back in time with the quaint houses and basic farming styles.

Arriving into Krakow we checked into the Hotel after battling our way in through the continual traffic build ups we seem to strike at most cities...maybe the problem is we just aren’t used to city traffic!

After dinner we jumped on the bus and headed into the centre of Krakow (pronounced Krakov) where Emma took us round some of the famous buildings so we could gain our bearings for our free day in Krakow the next day. Wawel Castle was the seat of Poland’s Kings from the 11^th-17^th century, underneath the castle is the Dragon’s Den (no, not the TV show) where it is believed a dragon was once kept. We then went to the Market square the hub of Krakow, at 10 acres square it is the largest of all Europe’s medieval cities. The square is also where the Cloth Hall is located, this is thought to be the first marketplace in Eastern Europe. St Mary’s church perches on the edge of the square, the facade of the church is characteristic for its 2 towers of not equal height. According to legend it was the result of the competition between 2 brothers. Every hour of every day for the last 600 years a bugle is played from St Mary’s tower which you can still hear today.

Heading back to the hotel at 10pm the temperature was still 30 degrees Celsius. The absence of air con in our room wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience with 4 girls in a small room - especially for those on the top of the sky high bunks!

Day 21 – Budapest

Today we had the privilege of sleeping in. The McDonalds offices underneath us provided us with free wifi, (thanks Ronald). After catching up with people on the internet we ventured outside to explore the city in 31 degree heat.

We took the metro to the markets, the markets were in a large triple-levelled building with the top story full of tacky souvenirs. The first level called our names more as there were so many different stalls of fruit, butchers and patisseries and the underground level was a supermarket. We grabbed lunch at a patisserie before heading back out in the heat to explore Pest.

Factoid:

Budapest is actually two cities Buda and Pest which are separated by the Danube River. Which while we were there was incredibly high. Some of the guide boats have been unable to take tours due to the fact that the river is too high and they can’t go under the various bridges that cross the river.

Our search for shops on the Pest side was quickly abandoned due to our lack of shop tracking skills, the heat and the calling of the much-rated Turkish Baths. After some problems with the whole language barrier thing we paid the entry fee for the pools and ordered a foot massage. Unbeknown to us the so-called foot massage was anything but a foot massage. So here we were four conservative Kiwi girls getting a 30-minute full-body massage...our feet weren’t even touched! Although this was a little surprising to some, in hindsight it was probably what we all needed.

With our fingers looking more like prunes than normal fingers and our stomachs rumbling we grabbed tea at a Hungarian restaurant then took the metro back to the hotel.