Stockholm Syndrome

Touring really is hard work but I am having so much fun I don't really mind. I've walked more ks in the last few days than I probably have in the last six months, but I'm no longer getting blisters, my back has stopped hurting, and I'm not (as) exhausted. I think I'm on the traveller's equivalent of a runner's high. What's especially keeping me going is the thought that in a few days I will finally get to see Russia. I am so excited about it and to add to that all my tour mates are really mad about it too, so it rubs off.

I'll try and describe some of the stuff I've seen, it'll be a cheap knockoff of the real thing, but here goes. The coolest things in Copenhagen were the Rosenborg Palace and the Church of our Saviour. The Rosenberg Palace has four floors and a basement (where the crown jewels are kept). As you go up the stairs, each of the four floors was more lavish than the last, with intricate tapestries on the walls, gilded everything, rooms of glass things and porcelain things, big long halls, and of course, thrones. The crown jewels were really impressive, much better than the English ones (I reckon anyway).

The church was awesome not only because it was really beautiful, but also because once you'd climbed up the more than 400 steps to the top of the spire, the view of Copenhagen was pretty amazing.

There's also a street called Nyhaven, which is like a sort of Danish Lygon street, only with really picturesque buildings, and a canal, and well, really not like Lygon street at all. But everyone was out eating on the street and sitting by the canal, and it was all very atmospheric, probably due to the fact that it was a Sunday afternoon and the only sunny day we had seen in Copenhagen. There's a lot more to tell, but not much time to tell it in.

Stockholm I think is almost as pretty as Copenhagen, but a bit more "city-like". We had a guided tour of the town hall where the Nobel prizes are awarded, and it was totally cool, a really beautiful building. One of the rooms had mosaic walls made mainly out of real gold. There were other, nicer rooms too, one with tapestries, heaps with really high ceilings (I love cathedral ceilings) and beautiful furniture. The tour guide was really cute too, which always helps the concentration span.

The Gamla Stan (old town) in Stockholm is just gorgeous, and it doesn't cost anything just to look at the picturesque old buildings. Just don't decide you're hungry, thirsty, or want to get a souvenir. Today we went to the Icebar, as the name suggests it's a bar made entirely out of ice. It has an airlock, and they give you big silver eskimo coats to wear, and the bar, walls, lampshades, decorations and even the glasses are made of ice. It was so cool (boom ch!). I'll post pictures of all this when I get to Dublin and can get them off my camera.

The tour has been great so far, my roomates are fun, but not too crazy, so we all have fun but get to bed at a reasonable time!

I probably won't be able to access the internet much for a couple of weeks, so don't freak out if I don't update this so much till I get back from my tour, or at least till I get out of Russia. At the moment I'm in the central station in Stockholm, and I'm actually stealing this internet time and not paying for it (naughty naughty) so I keep looking over my shoulder expecting the Swedish police to jump out and arrest me any second. Take care all!

Mmmm, Danish....

Copenhagen is absolutely quaint and old and totally lovely. I did a walking tour this morning in the pouring rain, and of course now I'm headed off to the hostel it's lovely and sunny outside. I can't wait till I can post all the pictures I took. It's very different here - I wasn't prepared for how Danish it would be. So many people told me "You'll be fine, everyone there speaks English" that I think I started to believe it would be just like being in England. Although everyone I have spoken to so far speaks perfect English, I feel so rude asking them to speak a foreign language in their own country. But this is what happens when you realise at Copenhagen airport that the European guidebook you have does not include Danish (though it does, bizzarely, have Scottish Gaelic).

I kind of wasted the afternoon (and a lot of money) by going to lunch with two girls (Kate and Fiona) I met on the walking tour. Tell you what, I won't be buying lunch anymore! I am freaking out about how much money I am spending, so I am going to be totally frugal from now on. The upside was I had a traditional Danish meal - pickled herring and rye bread, and a danish. It was absolutely delicious.

Also, I wanted to let you all know not to call me (except of course in an emergency) in the next three weeks or so, it costs me a lot of money to receive calls when I'm not in England. You can message me if you like! Anyway, better go find the hostel! Wish me luck!

I'm in London still

I fulfilled two lifelong dreams today. First I took a tour of Lord's Cricket Ground, then walked down the street to Abbey Road studios. The tour of Lord's was fantastic - not only did I stand on the hallowed turf, but also went inside the press box and the member's pavilion (including the Long Room, Committee room, and players' dressing room). Then we of course saw the urn in which the famous (or indeed infamous) Ashes are kept. I learned from where we get the names gully and silly mid on, and saw the first known record of the Laws of Cricket. I could barely suppress my excitement. The whole place is covered in memorabilia, and of course all the places where the MCC members hang out are totally opulent, so everything we saw was interesting and exciting. Our tour guide was a member, a typical moneyed English establishment type, but nice enough.

Abbey Rd wasn't quite so exciting, because they don't let you in to have a look around, but I got a big kick out of taking my picture next to the sign, and imagining how many times John, Paul, George and Ringo would have traced the same steps I was taking. I took a picture of the outside of the studio, but as the snooty receptionist in the lobby told me, "This is a private recording studio", so no looking inside. Makes sense really, or the place would be crawling with tourists and nobody would get any work done.

More typical English weather today - but as I was on cloud nine I didn't care at all - it could have been raining spiders and I would still have been skipping along singing "Strawberry Fields".

These last few days have been so exhausting I think I might actually be kind of relieved when the time comes to settle down for a while and work. While sightseeing is fun, it takes a lot of energy to keep going and going all day, and frustration mounts as you find that you don't have time to see anything properly. One hour in the Tate Modern Art Gallery is a travesty really. I just got to see enough to really want to explore the place, and I had to leave. I was just as surprised as anyone to find out I liked modern art though. It's a far cry from that yellow mattress sculpture there was such fuss about in the Nillumbik Leader! But I feel I got as much as humanly possible out of these last five days, and that makes me happy.

Tomorrow I leave for Copenhagen. Again I feel the same fear that plagued me before I left for Europe, since from now on I won't have Bianca's friendly face to keep me company. But I know I'll make many new friends - as well as Klaars, the doctor from the plane, I got talking to a bus conductor from Yorkshire today, she was a lot of fun, and had a totally cool accent.

Oooh, I almost forgot! Yesterday I hung out in Greenwich, which I have wanted to see for ages because the Royal Observatory there stands at the Prime Meridian, the longitudinal line from which all the world's time starts. But what I didn't know was they have a planetarium there! I've always wanted to go to a planetarium, and now I've been to one. It meant hanging around in Greenwich all day, since the show was at 3:00, but Greenwich is a pretty place, and they have a cool maritime museum and of course the Royal Observatory, which were both free (yay!) so I didn't mind. Planetariums rock.

Tonight B and I are having a quiet drink at her local typical English pub, to say goodbye to London. I know I'll be back though, since it's only a hop, skip and jump from Ireland. Not to mention I still have to go to Liverpool. So I won't really be saying goodbye to London, but, as the French would have it, "Au revoir"!

"Please mind the gap between the train and the platform"

Wow. Sightseeing has to be up there with the marathon and boot camp as one of the most gruelling things you can put your body through. London should come with a warning label - "Caution: Do not attempt to cover the entire city in five days. Doing so could be harmful or fatal." Despite the blisters and aching back, I have seen some amazing things over the past days. Highlights have been: the Houses of Parliament, the Science museum, the Cabinet War Chambers (underground rooms from which Churchill and his cabinet planned and fought the war. Totally not to be missed), and the Tower of London, which was beyond words in how totally awesome it is. I have been pleasantly surprised by the museums and galleries here. I thought the Tate Modern Art Gallery and the Victoria and Albert museum would be totally boring, but they were awesome.

Other cool things in London I have seen/heard: A 41 gun salute (very British and pompous);the antiques and silver departments at Harrods; looking down at the floor in Harrods and realising I was standing on a £21,000 rug (about $63,000); pidgeons everywhere; French schoolchildren at the Tate; red double decker buses and black cabs; one girl saying "innit" (only took 10 hours after touching down at Heathrow to hear my first "innit"); and magic mushrooms being sold quite openly and legally at Camden market. Weird. If I was to relate in any sort of detail everything I've done over the past few days, I'd be here all night, so you'll have to make do with this small taste.

For the zillion people that have asked, the flight was similarly gruelling but fun. Dad warned me not to, under any circumstances, get talking to the person sitting next to me, because if they were boring, I'd have to talk to them for 23 hours. I got on the plane quite intent on following that advice, but my neighbour struck up a conversation and that was the end of it. Luckily he was a doctor from Amsterdam, so we chatted quite happily all the way to London, covering politics, religion, family values, medicine, geography, and probably anything else you can think of. It was one of the types of conversations I came to Europe to have. The weather when I got to London was lovely and sunny - that didn't last long. All in all I'm exhausted but contented. Tomorrow is Greenwich, Tate Britain and 10 Downing Street...

D-Day

In a little over three hours I'll be on a plane to Heathrow. Everything feels so normal: soccer on the telly; Miro gaming up a storm on his computer; Mum organising everything in sight. it doesn't feel at all like this is the last time I'm going to see my home and family in at least a year, maybe two. I imagine this is due to either:

a) I'm giving this going-away moment an importance it doesn't really have, or
b) I haven't realised fully yet exactly what I'm getting myself into.

I'm putting my money on the latter. Either way, I can't back out now. And I don't want to. I think finally all my fears are starting to give way to excitement. This morning, I put my U2 CD on the stereo, pressed random, and said to myself,
"Please be 'Angel of Harlem'. Please be 'Angel of Harlem'."
'Angel of Harlem' came on, and I couldn't suppress my squeals and giggles of delight. I'm taking that as a good omen. It's time to set off for the airport now - see you on the other side!

Edging ever closer to the end of the diving board

Who knew things would get this far? For so many years Europe was an impossible dream - something to occupy my mind during an interminable bus ride or an Algorithms and Data Structures lecture. Now I can hold the aeroplane ticket in my hand, I have all the correct visas (I hope) and the entire affair is paid for. All I have to do is get on the plane in five days. Do I want to? I don't know. Here I am the conductor of my life; I know where everything is and how to work it. Everything is comfortable, safe, decadent. Across the seas is Europe: cultural mecca; historical treasure chest; diverse as a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. There lies the unknown, the threatening, the difficult. But in Europe lies also the invigorating, the thrilling, the amusing. This trip will not be easy, but it will be an adventure. Nothing of real value is ever easy. So I will get on the aeoplane, and I will have my adventures, and hopefully return a richer person. In experience of course - I have a strong feeling my new richness will not be reflected in my bank account.

Since this trip has taken more planning than the invasion of Normandy (and you all know how good I am at organisation, right?), sometimes I find myself thinking, "Why am I going to all this trouble?" So I've been diving into my trusty Lonely Planets, and let me tell you, nothing is more exhilarating than reading travel guides. Is that just me? It's definitely a case here of the anticipation being as good as the actual event. The only problem seems to be I cannot draw a line anywhere, since I'm just as excited by the prospect of doing the 9 day Kerry Walk along the Irish coast as I am about exploring Budapest or seeing the Tate Gallery. Somewhere in my mind I know it's physically impossible to cover the entire continent of Europe in 2 years, but for some reason most of my brain refuses to believe it. It will be interesting to see how much of Europe I am able to see by the time I have to come home. If Phileas Fogg can go around the world in 80 days, imagine what I can do in two years! At this moment the future is brimming with possibilities - I cannot wait to explore them!

There's not much left to do now except wait for Saturday to roll around, then jump off the diving board and hope I don't belly flop!