paris, france. i'm well into my fourth day here...so much to see, so much to do. i started off at napoleon's tomb, walked around the area bit, crossed over the champs elysees and headed up toward l'arc de triomphe, then down again through la place du concorde (where the guillotine executions during the french revolution took place), then to the louvre...spent three hours there, it was ridiculously large, saw the 'mona lisa' and 'venus de milo' amid the thronging masses then notre dame on l'isle de la madeleine and crossed the famous 'pont de neuf'.




spent the afternoon at the amazing georges pompidou centre galleries and the picasso museum. the next day i headed out to montmartre (where amelie was filmed) and climbed the hill to the basilica de sacre coeur, the back down to pigalle and boulevard de clichy to see the 'moulin rouge' and the museum of eroticism (yep!), next door.



The Georges Pompidou Center

today, walked around the latin quarter, fancy shops, pastry stores, the sorbonne (university of paris) and the pantheon, through the fantastic jardins du luxembourg and climbed to the top of the eiffel tower, by stairs (at least to the third level). also went to the pere lachaise cemetery and left a flower for jim morrisson.




last night, a bunch of people from the hostel got together with some red wine and sat in the park under the eiffel tower and drank well into the morning. they've added strobe lights to the outside of the tower, there's an amazing light show every night.




paris has been wonderful. the street musicians, the cafes, the high culture, the fashion, the beautiful girls everywhere, the language, the buildings, the lights. it's an amazing city...i'm here for a couple of more days and then off to tours and mont st michel.

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france...ahhh marseille. i arrived late at night with no map and had no idea what direction anything was in. i mustered up some french and found la rue canebiere, the main street. it turned out that the bus i was supposed to take to the hostel was no longer running. luckily, i found a group of high-school girls from belgium who spoke english and were going to the same hostel...i followed.



HI hostels in europe suck, period. they have a curfew of 11:30pm, you're not allowed to be inside from 10am-6pm and they're filled with teenagers on school trips and usually way out of town. unfortunately, marseille had only two hostels, both HI. the one i stayed at was a good 45 minute bus ride, followed by a 30 minute uphill walk away from downtown. needless to say, i moved asap the next morning...to a hotel, that cost me fricken 32 euros a night!!! i stayed two nights, had a shower in my room, but no toilet, i wonder how many people have peed in it? certainly, not me.



marseille is somewhat mediterranean, on the southern coast, about an hour and a half west of the italian border. i spent my first day in the 'panier' north african quarter, where the streets were small and steep, surrounded on all sides by three story apartment buildings. it was night, people were washing the dishes from dinner, the laundry hung on lines above me, i could hear babies crying and echoing through the streets, someone practicing the saxophone or playing old records, at every turn, people were crowded around their front doorsteps drinking wine and talking, children played in the parks, dogs chased cats...it was french, very french...



the main part of town, around la rue canebiere was one of the dirtiest areas of a european city i had ever seen. there were stains on the pavement, feces and piss, puddles of puke, homeless people, construction tearing up the sidewalks every few blocks, buildings were dirty and falling apart or closed and the garbage piled up out front...it was disgusting and a bit scary...



on my second day, i wandered along the coast to the beaches which were gorgeous. turquoise water, white sand and rocky cliffs, old mediterranean mansions and houses, through the alleyways, little cafes and restaurants...and breasts, i guess they love going topless in france because everyone and their dog decided to take off their shirt, no complaints...





i took an early train north, halfway between marseille and paris, to lyon. it's where i sit now, in this miniature paris, with fountains and parks, stately architecture and restaurants...




They don't all look like this...

contrary to popular belief, the french haven't been as rude as i've heard they would be. i speak the best french i can, sometimes they know, sometimes they don't. they all say 'bonjour monsieur' with a 's'il vous plait' and when i leave it's always 'aurevoir, monsieur', more than i get in canada, that's for sure...so there's to stereotypes...



and ce soir, je vais a paris...i can't wait...



oh yeah, and photos are coming...internet is just really expensive and i haven't had the time to finish them yet...give me another week...

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sorry, sorry. the internet has been ridiculously expensive (like $16 an hour) and i've been travelling pretty hard so i haven't updated in awhile. if you care, i AM still alive.



from prague, i headed westwards to a town called plzen. it's the home of the original pilsner beer, pilsner urquell, which has been copied by hundreds of breweries since and is the most commonly drunk type of beer on earth (even kokanee is a pilsner). i went on a tour of the brewery and then was off to a littl emedieval town in the south called cesky krumlov. it was gorgeous, winding streets on the bank of a river and a large castle tower.


Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

from cesky krumlov i went back into to austria, decided to skip salzburg (where 'the sound of music' was filmed) and went straight to innsbruck, a touristy, touristy, expensive, expensive city near the swiss border. i stayed in the 2nd worst and most expensive hostel of my trip, the lady who ran the place was a XXXX (fill in expletive) and i didn't enjoy my time there at all. just a waste of way too much money for nothing...pleh on you innsbruck...


Liechtenstein Castle, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

from innsbruck, i finally broke into my eurail pass and decided to go nuts with it. i cross the austrian border to the tiny country of liechenstein (basically just two streets under a castle). it's still ruled by the prince of liechenstein and the country is no more than 6 km wide at it's largest point. the capital city is vaduz and it's famous for dentures and postage stamps.


i spent the morning in vaduz, then crossed over into switzerland for lunch to zurich. a hustling-bustling city on the water, beautiful and even more expensive than austria...here's a run down of average prices in switzerland (converted from swiss francs to canadian dollars):


a big mac meal $12
a can of coke $5
luggage storage (per hour) $7
the local bus (one way) $3
internet (per hour) $16
a doner kebab $12
pizza (per slice) $9
a hostel dorm $32
a hostel shower $5
a hostel beer $7
a post card mailed to canada $3
the postcard itself $2
a cheap caesar salad $22
a cheap cheeseburger $20
espresso $6
toast and jam $9


yes...ridicuous! i don't know how anyone can afford to live there at all. from zurich, i zipped off to lucerne for the night and camped by the lake. i ran into a guy that i met in croatia on hvar island there and we had dinner in the city and a few beers at this cool 'outdoor house party bar' on the lake. the swiss alps were gorgeuous surrounding the city, but if you live in vancouver, the rockies are a lot nicer...


Lucerne Lake, Lucerne, Switzerland

after lucerne, i headed to the swizz capital of bern for the afternoon and then down through the swiss alps to zermatt on the galcier express, a train that actually climbs hills through the mountains on one of the most scenic rides i've ever taken. and there i was, at the base of the matterhorn mountain...i've climbed it before, well down it at least, at disneyland, when the matterhorn ride broke down for the first time in disneyland's history with me on it and we all had to climb down the mountain...did you know it actually has offices and elevators inside? (the secret entrance is behind the giant snow monster guy)


The Matterhorn, Zermatt, Switzerland

after the matterhorn i headed to geneva, home of the united nations, and this very cool 140m giant fountain jet spraying out of the ocean. i spent the afternoon looking in a bunch of expensive shops and wandering the streets of the old town before catching a high speed train into france and down to provence in the south. and voila here i am in marseille.


Geneva Jet Fountain, Switzerland

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prague, czech republic. this place is amazing. 90% of the buildings should be in some sort of building museum. i feel lke i'm in a city where they collected the nicest old buildings from all over the world and planted them along cooblestone streets and around wide pigeon-filled plazas, the clip clop of 19th century horse carriages, wild men with beards and capes, wearing top hats, carrying hand carved ivory canes abound...not even kidding...


my trip here from vienna was a bit wonky. i almost missed my first train by about 30 seconds...i ran like the wind. rode for about an hour or so to a czech border town, breclav, waited an hour and then caught a train on to prague (or praha as they call it).


the hostel i booked, hostel elf, told me they were a five minute walk from florenc station. it was raining and no one was particularly helpful or nice and i spent a good hour and a half wandering up and down the same streets looking for the hostel. i must've backtracked at least five or six times, several blocks with my pack, cars were splashing puddles of water on me, i didn't know where i was, it was getting late, i was starving. then by chance and after realizing the bizarre czech street numbering system, whereby one side of the street ascends odd and even numbers and the other side of the street descends odd and even numbers with the same number appearing on both sides of the street but at opposite ends...ridiculous...and i found the hostel.


from there it was downtown at night and wandering the streets for awhile and dinner of pizza at a little cafe with a big pilsner urquell beer (pilsner was invented in the czech town of plzen where i'm heading on monday).


i went to the "sex machines" museum, which was awesome, let me tell you...especially fitting in a town where prostitution is legal and they have brothels that liken to disneyland with theme rooms and "a wide selection of international muff" as the brochure states...


the "sex machines" museum is a collection of historical contraptions used either for masturbation, stimulation or for the achievement of sexual positions otherwise impossible. it included an impressive collection of dildos and odd contraptions from 19th century brothels and the first porno film featuring a threesome from 1925, and it was raw, even by today's standards. there were photos of genital piercings and mutilations, a scary sado-masochism exhibit and all kinds of hand cranked vibrators and weird foot-powered "feather wheels" for girls (guess what they do?) they even had these special pajamas where with holes in the right spots so that people could have sex without their bodies touching which was considered "the sinful way". some of them are even embroidered with the words "god wills it".


so there...now it's early morning and i'm off to see what the rest of prague holds for me...i'm meeting up with the tennessee couple, nathan and jessica, that i met in romania, later tonight and we will probably test out every one of prague's famous beers.

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when i was younger i had star wars bed sheets. i loved them, but when i used to wet the bed, i was always afraid of peeing on jabba the hut. i thought that if i did he would come and have me thrown into those evil sarlac pits in the desert...


now, i've just bought some star wars toilet paper for kate's apartment...i wonder what jabba will think about that?

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vienna, austria. palaces, statues, fountains, furs, coffee in cafes with views of old cathedrals, catacombs, beer, greasy sausages, lederhosen....the streets around stephansplatz, the center of the old town teem with tourists snapping away, mozart impersonators hawking nightly concerts, horsecarriages...yes this is vienna.




i arrived late, kate met me at the train station and we rushed back to her house to catch the last few acts of live 8 from around the world streamed over the internet. from there it was beers with some of her friends late into the night at charlie p's. i spent the next couple of days seeing the sights downtown, the hofburg palace, the kunsthauswien -- a very cool building, not a single straight line exists within its four levels, the floors undulate and curve like a living organism, the ceiling sag and creak...and it's filled with the most fantastic artwork, bright colours, gold and silver leaf, the hausdermusik -- a giant musem dedicated to sound, te first of many rooms recreates the womb environment, complete with a bass booming heartbeat, dim lights and gurgling water sounds, there are exhibits featuring a 'brain orchestra' which allows you to combine and create your own never before heard sounds and several exhibits teaching the science of sound...




i went to st. stephen's cathedral with it's gorgeous carvings and stainglass and clambored down a side staircase to the catacombs, filled with the bodies of thousands of medieval plague victims, their bones piled carefully like matchsticks by forced prison labour...they even contain the intestines of the former hapsburg emporers in large copper urns, their hearts are in another church and their bodies again, in the catacombs of yet a third church....all within vienna.


kate and i have tasted cherry flavoured beer outside the rauthhaus and blueberry beer at a funky restaurant, 1516, in a cobblestone alleyway near her workplace...there's beer, beer, beer in austria...beer and coffee and big fast sausages roasting on greasy grills at every turn...


she cooked me a fantastic curry last night!!!




then bratislava, slovakia. i took a day trip to bratislava today...it's just an hour and half by train from vienna. spent the day wandering the old town, a few nice buildings, a castle on the hill...one day was more than enough. i guess i'm just getting really used to red roof tiles, medieval sloped rooves and castles on hills, in fact, i think i'm getting bored of them. the coolest thing was actually an exhibit by austrian graphic artist that i found by accident on the way to the train station...stefan sagmeister, considered as one of the most important people in the field...




i'll be in prague on friday...

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back in ljubljana from bled. it was great. got a sweet apartment for a decent price...kitchen, big bedroom, couch and tv. saw a castle on a hill and a nice lake that was infested with millions (literally) of tiny flying bugs...at night it was like snow...beautiful, little snow flakes of flying bugs...


oh television, how i have missed you. expecially mtv, were i was treated to my first ever episodes of 'pimp my ride' and 'punkt'. the latter was great, oh ashton, you sure are funny.


and it's strange how missing a bus by one hour...for a bus ride that is only one hour long can cost you $170...yep, you read it right...a shitload of money...but that is another story.


i am waiting at the train station to go to vienna and meet kate who has been living and working there for, well, awhile now...




yep, there she is...on new years in seoul almost two years ago...and it's been at least a year since i last saw her. she is: warming the grill, cooking up the gimchi, chilling the soju and waxing the chopsticks, for my arrival.


auf weirdershicnec,samfdnsf...

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