View of the city from the castle above; and a church in the afternoon sun.
Neil's house, and the chicken farm next door. :)
View of the sun through the trees in the long way back to their house.
sábado, enero 20, 2007
Without Neil: Ich habe mich verirrt
Do-Rae-Me-Fa-So-La-Ti-Doh
Since my weekend in Stuttgart much has happened, so here is just a brief summary until I have time to write more detailed stories (if my pace remains the same these will likely be told from Canada).
Last Monday I went to school with Dara, and she showed me around her campus. After lunch in the cafeteria I grabbed my things and left Stuttgart by train. My second destination, only 40 minutes away, was another university town called Heidelberg. This town is home to the first university in all of Germany, which is still one of the best to this day; It is even more famously known for its world reknowned Heidelberg castle ruins, an example of gothic/renaissance architecture. My host in this town was Barbara Weekes, my Uncle Bob's niece (his brother's daughter). After growing up in Geneva and around Europe, she now lives in Heidelberg with her husband, Werner, and two kids, Lucas (who's in grade 1) and Olivia (kindergarden). These Olivia and Lucas speak german with dad and english with mum, and everyone jumps back and forth so often that it made it very interesting to follow the conversation :) This family welcomed me into their beautiful home right in the heart of the town; I didn't want to leave, and would love to return and work as an aupair,... someday.
Upon arriving Werner had just returned from work and took me on a bike tour of his city. Having grown up and lived all of his life here, he had many entertaining stories to go along with every place that we passed. We eventually made our way up to the castle to take in the view of the city at night. There is a pub within the castle famous for it's huge keg of beer that when full can hold up to 221,726 litres. After the castle Werner and I went for a drink and then picked up some Thai food for dinner (I had been missing my curry). That night after the movie 'watching 4 weddings & a funeral' with Barb I slept very well in their guest room up on the 3rd floor.
The next morning I went for back into the old city on my own and went up to the castle to see it for myself. After lunch in the city I grabbed my things from Barbara's house and she dropped me off at the train station. I began my first trip on my newly purchased Eurail pass. This trip would land me in Salzburg, Austria at 8pm that night. I found my way to the Yoho youth hostel very easily, checked in, and was asleep before I knew it.
Wednesday morning I was up pretty early, showered, had breakfast at the hostel, and left to explore the city by foot. A 5 minute walk brought me to the Mirabell Gardens (where the Doh-Ray-Mi song from the Sound of Music was filmed). I crossed the Nectar river which runs through the center of the city, and over to the old part of the city. Here the streets are familiarly narrow having been built long before there were cars to accomodate. I made my way through to the cathedral, then to the katacombs (a relatively beautiful graveyard as cemetaries go), and finally to the pathway which would lead me up a steep hill to the magnificant white castle that overlooks the city, the Festung Hohensalzburg. I toured the rooms of the castle, and the museums they have within the walls, getting a feel for what it would have been like to live within this fortress (which by the way was never forcefully captured,... but was given over to Napoleon during his invasion). Before returning back down to the city I walked some of the paths up on the castle hill providing some amazing lookout points to the panoramic mountain ranges surrounding this city.
That night I went and heard some Mozart (who was once a local of Salzburg) in a stunning room in the Schloss Mirabell (schloss ='s palace). The piano concert was performed by a woman from Vienna on a white grand piano (how glamerous). :)
Thursday was a day of tours. My first one was called 'The Original Sound of Music' tour. The tourguide was a bit annoying with too many horrible jokes, but the trip was entertaining enough, and we saw many of the different sets of where this hollywood production was filmed.
In the afternoon, my second tour was through the Bavarian mountains and down into the Salzburg Salt Mine. Again, annoying tourguide, but very cool to see.
This meant that as of Friday morning Germany's train system was completely shut down, and no trains were leaving from Salzburg in the morning. Although it wouldn't have been the end of the world to be stuck in the city of Maria von Trapp and Mozart another night I was happy to be on the move again. By mid afternoon they were pretty much up and running and I was able to catch a train to Graz (with 2 Aussie girls that I'd met at the hostel). Of course, as we should have expected, our trip South wasn't nearly as easy as we'd anticipated. After 2 hours through the mountains we were switched onto a bus, driven for about 30minutes to some other train station, and then another trip of 2 hours. All of this meant that I arrived in Gray 1 hour late, but thankfully my host was patient enough to wait for me. Neil Bird (a Canadian from Belfountain), and his girlfriend, Uschi, and her younger daughter, Katia, were all there to great me and wisk me off to a Greek restaurant for dinner. Yum :)
Last Monday I went to school with Dara, and she showed me around her campus. After lunch in the cafeteria I grabbed my things and left Stuttgart by train. My second destination, only 40 minutes away, was another university town called Heidelberg. This town is home to the first university in all of Germany, which is still one of the best to this day; It is even more famously known for its world reknowned Heidelberg castle ruins, an example of gothic/renaissance architecture. My host in this town was Barbara Weekes, my Uncle Bob's niece (his brother's daughter). After growing up in Geneva and around Europe, she now lives in Heidelberg with her husband, Werner, and two kids, Lucas (who's in grade 1) and Olivia (kindergarden). These Olivia and Lucas speak german with dad and english with mum, and everyone jumps back and forth so often that it made it very interesting to follow the conversation :) This family welcomed me into their beautiful home right in the heart of the town; I didn't want to leave, and would love to return and work as an aupair,... someday.
Upon arriving Werner had just returned from work and took me on a bike tour of his city. Having grown up and lived all of his life here, he had many entertaining stories to go along with every place that we passed. We eventually made our way up to the castle to take in the view of the city at night. There is a pub within the castle famous for it's huge keg of beer that when full can hold up to 221,726 litres. After the castle Werner and I went for a drink and then picked up some Thai food for dinner (I had been missing my curry). That night after the movie 'watching 4 weddings & a funeral' with Barb I slept very well in their guest room up on the 3rd floor.
The next morning I went for back into the old city on my own and went up to the castle to see it for myself. After lunch in the city I grabbed my things from Barbara's house and she dropped me off at the train station. I began my first trip on my newly purchased Eurail pass. This trip would land me in Salzburg, Austria at 8pm that night. I found my way to the Yoho youth hostel very easily, checked in, and was asleep before I knew it.
Wednesday morning I was up pretty early, showered, had breakfast at the hostel, and left to explore the city by foot. A 5 minute walk brought me to the Mirabell Gardens (where the Doh-Ray-Mi song from the Sound of Music was filmed). I crossed the Nectar river which runs through the center of the city, and over to the old part of the city. Here the streets are familiarly narrow having been built long before there were cars to accomodate. I made my way through to the cathedral, then to the katacombs (a relatively beautiful graveyard as cemetaries go), and finally to the pathway which would lead me up a steep hill to the magnificant white castle that overlooks the city, the Festung Hohensalzburg. I toured the rooms of the castle, and the museums they have within the walls, getting a feel for what it would have been like to live within this fortress (which by the way was never forcefully captured,... but was given over to Napoleon during his invasion). Before returning back down to the city I walked some of the paths up on the castle hill providing some amazing lookout points to the panoramic mountain ranges surrounding this city.
That night I went and heard some Mozart (who was once a local of Salzburg) in a stunning room in the Schloss Mirabell (schloss ='s palace). The piano concert was performed by a woman from Vienna on a white grand piano (how glamerous). :)Thursday was a day of tours. My first one was called 'The Original Sound of Music' tour. The tourguide was a bit annoying with too many horrible jokes, but the trip was entertaining enough, and we saw many of the different sets of where this hollywood production was filmed.
In the afternoon, my second tour was through the Bavarian mountains and down into the Salzburg Salt Mine. Again, annoying tourguide, but very cool to see.
This meant that as of Friday morning Germany's train system was completely shut down, and no trains were leaving from Salzburg in the morning. Although it wouldn't have been the end of the world to be stuck in the city of Maria von Trapp and Mozart another night I was happy to be on the move again. By mid afternoon they were pretty much up and running and I was able to catch a train to Graz (with 2 Aussie girls that I'd met at the hostel). Of course, as we should have expected, our trip South wasn't nearly as easy as we'd anticipated. After 2 hours through the mountains we were switched onto a bus, driven for about 30minutes to some other train station, and then another trip of 2 hours. All of this meant that I arrived in Gray 1 hour late, but thankfully my host was patient enough to wait for me. Neil Bird (a Canadian from Belfountain), and his girlfriend, Uschi, and her younger daughter, Katia, were all there to great me and wisk me off to a Greek restaurant for dinner. Yum :)
Neil has just recently moved in with Uschi and they live in a house just North of Graz (about 20 minutes from the city). After my adventure of a trip I just collapsed into bed last night and, as always, slept very well.
Today (Saturday), Neil took me on a tour of the city of Graz. Just beautiful!!! Here are some picture of our day.
(more pictures of Stuttgart, Heidelberg, and Salzburg to come; they are just on a cd in my backpack at the moment,...)
I'll leave you with a picture of Uschi's cat, Joey :)
domingo, enero 14, 2007
On the road in Stuttgart
Well my final farewell party (/Bartec's 24th Birthday party) Friday night was a good time, but it was very sad to say goodbye to those people I've spent all of my time with for almost 8 months now. I hope I will someday visit them in their home countries (Australia, Poland and Brazil), and that they will also come to Canada.
I am currently in Stuttgart, Germany, on a giant blowup mattress in Dara Geffen's apartment (which by the way is very nice and new!!! It feels like I'm in an IKEA catalog).
This is a picture of everyone at the party, and what the alps looked like as I flew over them Saturday afternoon.
Dara has been a great host so far and has been feeding me tons of german food. Last night, after walking through the beautiful city park and wandering around the downtown part of the city we met up with a bunch of her work colleagues and flatmates for some traditional eats and beer. When we couldn't eat anymore spetzl, we went for some caparinhas to finish off the night.
Today was a busy day once we got started,... first we were off to the tv tower (built in 1956) to take in the view of Stuttgart and surrounding areas from 150m up. Very windy up there.
After that we took the S-Bahn to a smaller town just outside of Stuttgart called Esslingen. This quaint little German village was very beautiful and had alot of interesting German architecture.
Tomorrow I'm off to Heidelberg to visit with Barbra Weekes (my uncle Bob's neice) who lives there. From there I will take the train to Salzburg on Tuesday.
More pictures to come...
jueves, enero 11, 2007
Ready to Roll
Peter asked me yesterday if I was now ready to go home. He wasn’t the first person this week to pose that question to me, and just like the previous times, I was lost for an answer. On some level I was ready to return to the familiarity of Canada, and my family, a couple of months ago. However, at the same time, I don’t think I’d actually be fully ready to go home for yet a couple of years, and couple more countries.With one day of work left here in Barcelona, I have spent this week psyching myself up for leaving this catalan world that has been my home for the past 7 months. Packing up all of the crap I’ve managed to accumulate in just over half a year is incredible. I’ve been attempting to prioritize what is and is not important enough to haul back to Canada, but almost every scrap of paper seems too sentimental to leave behind, and without it I’m afraid I might forget the attached memory. Essentially I’m a bit of a packrat, and this is a problem when the weight limit of my luggage is only 50kg.
This is my final posting from Barcelona. Adventures in Eastern Europe now await me beginning this Saturday in Stuttgart. It will be interesting to see how much I can do in only 3 weeks, because my current itinerary is maxed out, and would rival that of any Japanese tourbus company. If all goes as planned I will land in Toronto in the evening of February 3rd. I expect that the biggest adjustment will once again be the switch in languages. To be surrounded by English will be so strange; I’m sure I will eavesdrop on conversations that I don’t mean to, just because I can. Slowly I will begin to take day-to-day interactions, as well as the media and television, for granted. I am used to being surrounded by the loud noise of a big city, but it is just noise, and I’m in my own thoughts too much of the time. I will have to re-Canadianize myself, but that shouldn't take long with hockey on tv, snow on the ground, bbq'd food, pasturized milk in the fridge, and a trip to Georgain Bay.
Anyway, enough contemplation about home; I have to concentrate on the upcoming trip, and the rest will just come.
Let the rain falling on Eastern Europe turn to snow asap!
jueves, enero 04, 2007
First Stop of 2007: Madrid
Life is never dull with Dixon and Howorun in my life.
While our Barcelona new years wasn't quite as crazy as anticipated, the trip to Madrid this past Monday was fabulous! Three days in this amazing city is obviously not enough. The day before we were a little hesitant about going, as the Basque Country terrorist organization, ETA (which has been fighting for independance from Spain for the last 30 years) had reportedly set off a car bomb in the parking lot of the Madrid airport on December 30th. Thankfully we are now safe and sound back in Barcelona, and our trip was uneventful in that respect.
I really like the B&W setting on my camera, so to start here are some typical shots of the city.
We stayed at a hostel right downtown and spent the majority of our time just wandering the streets, window shopping, and getting a feeling for the city. For lunch each day we bought sandwhiches and ate them in the very beautiful Retiro park.
On Tuesday we went to one of the world's most famous fine art museums, El Prado. There is so much in this building that after 2 and a half hours we were feeling a little overwhelmed and exhausted. Without the audioguide I wouldn't have had much of an idea of what I was looking at; the number of masterpieces was phenomenal.
Also, this city is in full Christmas shopping swing (which they will celebrate this Saturday) and thus the streets were almost impossible to walk as of 4:30 in the afternoon,... this is one thing I did not miss about the holiday season this year. However, the streets were beautifully decorated in the downtown quarter later at night.
We returned late last night, and tonight I will have my last evening with these two best friends. We have had as many good talks as we've had hilarious laughs. Seeing them has reminded me why I respect these two women so much. Not only are they elite athletes, and university scholars, but even though they are constantly under the public eye, they manage to stay grounded, and in the real world (at least most of the time, haha). :) They really do inspire me, and remind me of what is important in life,... apparently I am too serious and responsible. Who knows if this will change over the next couple of years... They give me so much to think about.
Carino ~ Steph, Stef, and Sarah.
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)