End of Maroc - Enter Paris

Morocco is over, we’re currently flying to Paris in our smallest group thus far; Brett, Jacko and I. Won’t last long as we meet up with Martin and La in Paris and will stay with them until Amsterdam. As for the rest of Marrakech I think Morocco really grew on me.

Once you get over the sickness and get used to the sometimes frustrating cultural differences it was a pretty enjoyable co

untry; though I wouldn’t choose to spend extended time there. It was really good to see Crissy and Byron but we didn’t really end up spending all that much time together as all us lads went on a little expedition to the Sahara. With our limited time we decided on two days, one night.

We started early with breakfast at 6:30; trey early for holiday mode. Fortunately our van was the same Hyundai we’d had in Fes; we would need this comfort for the 10 hours of driving each day. It was the five of us and one couple whom appeared roughly 30; very nice people, the guy Jess was American and his girlfriend Celia was Spanish. Celia is however living in Paris at the moment and we’re hoping to meet up with them whilst we’re here. The drive was glorious, passed through such a wide variety of incredible scenery it was phenomenal

.

I’m not sure there would be too many if any other places in the world where you can go from snow topped mountains (and it did snow abit when we were driving through) too desert landscape in a matter of hours. Interestingly we only covered about 400km, but the roads are winding and not always that good condition, mix this with a pretty slow (careful which we were grateful for at points) driver and lorries using these same roads and it becomes more understandable.

So at the end of this days driving we trek the final two hours ever so ungracefully via camel. It was a fun experience and a necessity of course, visiting the Sahara desert you’ve got to include a camel ride in the package; gladly this means I can skip this in the future. They seem like great animals but they really prefer lying down and are rather uncomfortable after about half an hour. Crissy and Byron had shown me pictures from their trip into the desert which they’d done before meeting us in Marrakech, this really got my hopes up for what our campsite would be like at night. They were surrounded by sand dunes all around, this appealed. So as we were plodding along for longer and longer and less and less comfortably on our camels it was seeming very unlikely we would make it too such a remote destination. Suspicions were confirmed but care was lost once presented with a great big Tagine for dinner. In actual fact we were quite isolated at the campsite, surrounded by dunes of up to 3 metres in size! (sarcasm present) It was a very nice night as only one other couple joined our tight unit making for an intimate performance from the local guides looking after us. They played the bongo’s and sang in Arabic and it was all very pleasant. And we slept.

As the sun rose Martins birthday (21^st) and Australia day came with it. We were able to treat him somewhat by shouting him a quad bike ride. Brett, Dean, Baranovic and I did the ride but due to time restraints we could only fit in half an hour. It was still awesome fun to be in control of a transport machine. Was pretty funny sight to drive past camels and donkeys on the road, then once we got onto the dirt it was sick trying to get the back out. With more time you can go to the proper big dunes, up to 300m the guy said. This got us all very excited and I want to cover desert on a quad bike or motorbike pretend Dakar rally style; we had a revelation when we were discussing the Sahara desert the whole time that perhaps we could do something similar in the Simpson Desert and see Australia for once.

The rest of the time in Marrakech was spent either eating or searching for bargains in the Souks (narrow and overcrowded shopping alleys). We had lots of great finds with the food, I was over the moon just being able to eat and not feel sick.

Now in Paris, currently sitting in a KFC using the free wifi so i might take the opportunity to put this up..

Some Spain and Morocco on the cards then

Last entry was coming back from the dream land of Strbske Pleso, so before we ventured off to Granada we had a couple more days left in Bratislava. The most memorable part of this was when we stumbled upon a fantastic little cocktail lounge internet cafe. We could not resist the amazing cocktails and some rounds of shots which had up to 72% alcohol meant things were quite blurry indeed once we finally left. Babitchka went above and beyond again cooking up some seriously enjoyable food including crepes with homemade apricot jam for breakfast and some massive pots of stew.

We then had quite a hefty transit day, Martins uncle Lubo drove us to the Bratislava airport in the morning where we took a ryan air flight to London, had a few hours wait, then back south to Granada in Spain.

Granada was a spectacular city offering up more beautiful European architecture and probably the best idea in the world; a plate of food when you purchase a beverage, tapas. Oh how I do enjoy this phenomenon. It wasn’t all heavy drinking though, our visit to the Alhambra was really grand. Reminded me of Angkor Wat where Phill must be somewhere near at present. On the final night in Granada we really did exploit the tapas, it’s just so good; buy a beer or wine which is usually less than 2€ and get a tasty plate of food to go with. In one bar which had all seafood we got talking to a couple who offered us accommodation, Jacko and Martin joined a 50^th birthday celebration where they even received cake in another, there was a classical singer and guitarist who sounded fantastic in a different small bar. Many great times to be had, and the cost of this was a horrific next day; mainly for myself but Baranovic wasn’t fairing too well either. This was a real shame as we were catching a train-bus combo down to Algeciras not a good mix with hangover. But even my bout of self inflicted illness couldn’t waver from the staggering beauty that is southern Spain. It made me immensely happy in fact as we weaved our way through the mountains winding roads in a bus; because I now know that in the future i will return to that glorious driving road with a motorbike and no hangover.

In Algeciras we met up with Dean who has been in London on exchange for six months. Reunited we found our way to the boat which took us to Tangier in the north of Morocco. Again this wasn’t pleasant for myself; in fact it was extremely lousy. Nevertheless Africa!!

We spent a few days in Tangier and are now in Fes. In this time Jacko, Martin and I have all suffered from sickness in some way. I highly doubt the other two will last much longer before they get their turn. It’s not pleasant but at least its only lasted around 24 hours and there’s some peace of mind knowing it’s not self inflicted. - Two day interim –

Frustrating times; although the sickness was never extremely bad it had a crippling effect on the amount of sight-seeing I felt comfortable attempting ie. None more than 500m from the bathroom. Missed two days of exploration in Fes and from the lads photo’s it was a real loss; walks through Fes’ old Medina which has 14km of alleyways to get lost in, the tanneries where you can see the whole process where cows are transformed into good leather goods and hillsides overlooking the city (always a big favourite of mine). On the day of my return we’d organised a van which ended up being extremely comfortable and we felt very ritzy with our large, new, clean vehicle (a Hyundai shh) with personal driver; only we were missing Jacko... can we ever be complete in Morocco.

Our first stop on this day tour was the Roman Ruins at Volubilis which is the best preserved archaeological site in Morocco and a Unesco World Heritage site. The monuments were built in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries; I’m thinking that makes them the oldest man made buildings I’ve ever seen. It was a beautiful picture with the near two thousand yr old ruins resisting gravity defiantly amid the green fields, finished off with a perfect days blue sky. After this we stopped in a small bustling town before heading to Meknes for our late lunch. One of the tourist sites in Meknes is an old jail which was ironically designed by a prisoner from Portugal I believe.

Anyhow I’d best try jump back to highlights from Tangier or they mightn’t get in.

Done.

No there were definitely some worthy mentions from there, our arrival to our accommodation for instance. We got a taxi straight from the boat whom we thought could find us our place; we did have the address after all. Apparently this isn’t always enough and even after asking many other fellow locals along the way we eventually decided we’d risk trying to find it ourselves. We had some directions to go by, which began at the Mosque in this particular suburb, only there are three Mosques in that suburb. After a small amount of time we were requesting the locals help and within no time we had enough numbers to form a small army, us with our big packs looked the part as well. Tangier seems to be less popular as a tourist destination and the area of our accommodation was far enough from town that the locals found our presence a bit of a novelty. Ended up being quite a walk before we did get to the right place and we really must thank the three guys who stuck it out till the end, felt like we might’ve been on the streets without them. Our place in Tangier was amazing, appeared to be a locals place and it was all very decorative design.

Since that initial generosity every other person who’s offered help or perhaps even a useless fact has been doing so hoping they’ll get something for it. I like to think those guys were actually trying to help, or perhaps our naivety and genuinely thankful handshakes satisfied them as much as our Dirham could have.

I’m not even sure what i’ve written as it’s mostly been late at nights. But we’re currently at an cyber park in Marrakech so i might as well put this up! Have joined up with Crissy and Byron also which is awesome but i’ll get into that some other time hopefully.

Found a little place called heaven.

Actually its called Strbske Pleso but i can't pronounce that. It's in northern slovakia and towards the east i believe. It's a very small snow town which is of course why i love it, too say i've been thoroughly enjoying snowboarding is a bit of an understatement. I could go on for a long time but the jist is it excites me greatly and I am going to miss it the moment we leave.

Anyhow back to where i left off from last time, somewhere shortly after the new year. We

decided to go visit Vienna in case we didn't get the opportunity later on, unfortunately this means we might not fit in a stint in Budapest. I guess we were being a bit optimistic with the number of cities we planned to visit. I was leaning more

towards Budapest as Martin told me he thought it was probably the most beautiful city he visited last year, but even he was saying we should go Vienna as it's also very beautiful and holds

more history. It was not a bad choice at all.

In fact I found Vienna to be the most beautiful city i've ever been too, endless amazing buildings; couldn't possibly figure out what each of them was meant to represent. We caught the train from Bratislava which was convinient and went without a hitch. Only an hour train ride and we had gone from one capital city to another, Europe's proportions are far more convinient than Australia; I guess you can get from Brisbane to Ipswich in one hour...

Soon after we first arrived in Vienna we stumbled across the Belvedere palace. We didn't go

inside for the museum as the grounds and the buildings were staggering enough. Then we continued on through the city in the general direction of our hostel; we didn't actually know where this was and had no maps of the city. Eventually with some help from Jacko's iphone we arrived late in the afternoon having passed many amazing buildings and going into the incredible St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Our accommodation was pretty good, very reasonable price and we even had a computer with free internet in our room. That night Brett, Martin and I went out too search for a pub. Amazingly we couldn't find one place where we thought we might be able too afford more than one drink. Also it was incredibly cold with the help of a strong wind. So after wandering the streets for a while and getting hotdogs and kebabs off the street (not literally, not too far off though) we headed back to Jacko who was feeling a bit ginger and had stayed in.

Next day we visited the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History) which housed thousands of incredible pieces. The building itself is immaculate, it was completed in 1891 and unlike De Louvre and some of the other impressive museums it was purpose built for its task of Museum rather than turned into one after peasants grew sick of Monarchs living in such incredible places. This means the rooms were designed around the contents. Very commendable, still I think the old Musee de Louvre was more spectacular and will be able to compare again soon.

As the day wore on we were tossing up whether to head back to Bratislava or to make a visit to the Schonbrunn Palace; this might sound like a no brainer but we were tired and thought we

surely must have seen every beautiful building in Vienna as there had been so many. Very fortunately we decided to go and it was possibly the most spectacular that we saw. Again we didn't go for any tours throughout the Palace, the grounds were definately spectacular enough and we were short on time. This is one of Jacko's photos and its of the Gloriette, I don't think it has any purpose other than being very aesthetically pleasing; offering a nicer view to wake up to in the morning?

By the time we left it was getting quite dark and getting off the underground a stop early made us really pushed for time too catch the train back to Bratislava. Alas the heroes got there in the nick of time, it would only have been one miserable hours wait at the station if we'd missed that one though.

It feels good to go back to Babitchka's house in Bratislava, definately has a homely feel too it and we know we are going to get a good meal; always excites me.

The next day we met up with Martins uncle Lubo at his work. He took us for a fantastic lunch at the Architects Resteraunt i believe it was called; funnily enough Lubo is an architect. After this delightful but at times (such as the entree of Liver soup) interesting meal we went to see Martin's Auntie and Lubo's wife Jana at her art shop she runs, only five minutes walk away. All of Martin's relatives have been incredibly hospitable too us. At the shop we were offered snacks and mineral water even though we were there for under twenty minutes. Then later that night we went to these spoken auntie and uncles house which we thought would be a quick stop over before hitting the pubs. Ended up staying there for a few hours as Lubo and Jana were good conversation and offered us snacks and beverages we simply could not refuse. This peaked at the 60 year old moonshine which was passed onto Lubo from Martin's Grandma (the aforementioned Babitchka we've been staying with) from his dad's side of the family. It was a real treat to have such blissful alcohol when we usually opt for the most affordable. Later in the night Lubo showed us a game on his iphone which Brett and I took particular interest in and really wanted to beat Lubo's highscore of 90 something thousand.He is definatley practiced at it as the best score we managed was 19 thousand, I now even more badly want an phone though. Jacko won't let us download this particular app on his phone; basterd.

From then we split up for a whlie as Martin went to visit various other relatives and we went straight to Strbske Pleso. Our train ride there (which we're currently on the return route) took around 5 hours. From soon after leaving Bratislava most of the scenery was simlar; snow covered everything with quaint houses and lovely hills and lakes. Once we arrived in Stbske Pleso it didn't take too long to find our accomodation which turned out to be very delightful once again. There was a bit of difficulty with the language barrier as the woman who ran the Villa Emma accomodation spoke no english and without Martin we were very limited ourselves. We managed alright though and organised our snowboard hire and lift passes as well on our own. It was good to reunite the whole group once more when Martin arrived a few days later and we'd had a small chance to learn how to ride on the snowboards. Again I shan't go into too much detail for worry that i won't be able to stop, I did love the snowboarding greatly and was very happy with the progress I was making. Must make another trip to the snow soon; hopefully with Phill again so we can push eachother with a limitless excitment.

A New Adventure

Well its currently 5.30 in the morning and i feel i should start up the old blog. Jet lag has been wreaking some real havoc, but glad to say we all fought through the new year and actually stayed up until very early the next morning considering we'd been up since 3.30am the previous day.

Lets get this in order now, chronological if you will.

I experienced my new longest ever transit period, as the time it took from arriving at the Brisbane airport until we got to Martin's Grandma's house in Bratislava was at least 30 hours! Fortunately it all went very smoothly, the worst part was probably the stop over in Taipei which was only for three hours. We were stuck in the old terminal, a very bland and uncomfortable place where there weren't even any chairs let alone lounges. Still we did have a nice meal their, Jacko and I had a beef noodle soup and Martin and Brett both got a pickled cabbage variety. Our spirits were raised immensely when entering the plane it was evident that many spare seats would be on offer. This was very fortunate as the flight from Taipei to Vienna is an anticipated 14 hours, fortunately again, ours was only a touch over 12.

China Airways lacked nothing major, nothing to write home about but also not too bad. To be critical i guess it had some of the worst meals i've had in the sky, i managed to acquire both of the breakfast main options (Chinese option consisting of rice in lots of water and a packet of meat fibre you just pour in & the western equivelant was a very ordinary omelette) neither of which satisfied my cravings. Also the entertainment system lacked variety in a big way; really hoping they've got some different options for the return flights in a couple of months time.

Arriving in Vienna it was exciting to once again be amidst a very cold climate. Once we got to Babitchka's (Grandma in Slovak) home we had some breakfast then ate all her snack food Zahy Couske (most likely spelt incorrectly) that was left out. Martin assured us it makes her happy if we eat alot, some of the greatest news i've ever heard. Then it was out to explore Bratislava.

For the first couple of days it was very foggy and overcast with rather limited visibility. This wasn't all bad though, made the woods in particular look rather majestical. But as we saw yesterday, the first of the new year, with a clear sky Bratislava is far more beautiful; when you can actually see it. When we visited the Bratislava Castle for the first time I found it underwhelming, not very exciting or impressive. Going back to it yesterday though and i was hugely impressed, it's a beautiful Castle that can be seen watching over the town with a dominant stance. It was built in the year 907 AD and understandably has had to have major reconstruction.

As with everything i associate to be European Bratislava is very beautiful, it does however have a lot of communist Russia influence particularly in the outer suburbs. These are buildings which appear to have been thrown up as quickly and cost efficiently as possible. So they greatly lack the usual quaintness and appeal of european design, in fact they have not one ounce. But not too worry, there is far more beauty in the midst.

Our routine for the first couple of days was explore the city, and when it came to food we would accompany it with beer and a shot of spirits at the end of the meal. On the first day Martin took us to a little restaurant that is a well kept secret i'm sure. I doubt many tourists would ever usually find it on their own, it was very nice and apparently during the wars it used to be used to store gunpowder. We all had the same dish; a national favourite called Bryndzove halusky. It is boiled lumps of potato dough similar to gnocchi (the halusky) and Bryndza which is a soft sheep cheese, and finished off with a heavy sprinkling of bacon. Quite simple and very effective. We all enjoyed it thoroughly but due to the richness of the meal I was the only one who managed to finish it. When we ordered our round of shots i was frightened when the glasses were twice the size than back home. The shot actually went down really well though; a lot of the spirits we've had are flavoured with fruits; or herbs even such as the one we were drinking on new years eve that smelt and tasted quite alot like chai tea. I'll follow with that segway and jump to New Years Eve now.

We had stocked up well on fireworks which can be purchased from vendors who set up at supermarkets in the lead up to New Years. Martin loved to abuse these and when different people were asleep he would light them outside the rooms of the sleeping people making for a rather amusing practical joke. Unfortunately i was always a member of the sleeping party and am very much looking forward to getting him back. He never goes to bed first though and i feel it's a bit of a faux-pas to wake the whole neighbourhood up at 4am with an extremely loud firecracker. Anyhow on the eve of new years there was one group of young Australian lads who thoroughly enjoyed lighting off a huge number of fireworks. Mainly due to money restrictions most of these were just explosions that made a huge noise rather than a pretty sight. We had a couple of really good ones though, long ones that shot about 20 into the air and lasted at least a minute. For the actual changing of calendar years we met up with Martin's cousin and a couple of her friends and viewed the professionals efforts at lighting the sky. It was better i must admit; less rewarding though. We then went back to one of the friends apartment in the city and it was very nice indeed. Then having fought off the desire to sleep for so long we went to a nightclub. It was rather perculiar; as Martin said in Brisbane if you pay for entry to a club there's always a nice decor at the very least, this one was pretty shocking. An interesting experience anyhow.

Well i'm getting quite tired again now, its almost 7am and still no real sign of the sun coming up, but it does rise by about 8 so it's not so bad.

A quick note on the cars here, have only seen a couple of nice ones, there's a ferrari california thats been parked outside the Crown Hotel everyday, and on the street just adjacent to this one there is a nice Volkswagen Scirroco; a truely beautiful car in the flesh, i'm angry that Australia doesn't get them because they're by far the best looking car for around the 40 or 50k dollars they would cost.