Posted by msadmin on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 , Posted in Destinations, France , Comments Off
I was nervous heading to Paris. And it wasn’t because I had condoms stuffed with crack cocaine slowly decomposing in my stomach*.. No, it was because the French are renowned for their intolerance of the “non-French speaker” in their own country.. I knew a few words, like Croissant, and Baguette.. and Frogs Legs, but not nearly enough to get by on. So before I left, I brushed up on my skills with a French phrase book that cost a total of $1.99. It wasn’t very helpful, and neither were about 50% of the French population I approached.. The other 50% were really great people, willing to help out the non-French speaking scum to great lengths..
Still travelling with my two troublesome mates from Sydney, we eventually found our way around Paris, seeing most of the famous landmarks.. We contemplated at length on building the Ifle Tower ‘mark 2′ right next to the real Ifle Tower, only four times the size. For this venture we were going to need full financial support from a rich Arab or Texan, in exchange we were going to give them full advertising rights for both the North and South faces – so long as they named it the “The Tower of Arabia” or “The Texan Tower” or something like that.. I’m glad most of these ideas go no where fast..
We had grand schemes to help improve the country aesthetically, but there was nothing we could do about the weather. It was actually colder in Paris than London, and we were even luck enough to get hail whilst walking the streets on our first day. Again, not what I expected from summer. Anywhere.
While in Paris we made it to the Famous Moulin Rouge Show, and if you check out the Video section of this site, you might see some of what goes on there.. You’re not aloud to video or take photos during the show, so these were done kind of slyly..
Next stop was Berlin, but things had been too easy for us for too long.. For some reason, even with three reasonably intelligent people in our party, we still managed to fuck up our journey to Berlin. Somehow, we managed to get on the train a day early, and after a brief argument with the correct ticket holders (there was going to be blood), we negotiated with the conductor to let us on anyway. We didn’t need the sleeping cabin we paid extra for anyway, as we spent the entire night in the bar carriage. And after drinking the train dry, it was easy to pass out for the few minuets left of the journey in the busy corridors..
Overall, Paris was a beautiful city – still had military types roaming around with sub-machine guns in full view in certain areas, which is never cool, but after South America, I’m less shocked each and every time – we’re very lucky back in Oz to not have that.
(*oh, and it was a joke about the crack.., just in case some of you didn’t get it..)..
Posted by msadmin on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 , Posted in Destinations, Germany , Comments Off
..With a savage hang-over and about 35 minuets sleep after catching the wrong train from Paris, My two good friends and I arrived in Berlin to a beautiful sunny morning (which was short lived, before the rain set in..). The first impressions of Berlin were excellent.. Firstly, the taxi we shared from the train station was a Mercedes..! It was a luxury a backpacker doesn’t regularly have. I just hope I didn’t stain the leather with the stench of alcohol seeping from my every pore..
The Hostel we chose was fittingly named ‘Helter Skelter’, and it lived up to it’s name with crazy guests and crazier staff. We arrived a day earlier than expected due to out train mishaps, but were still greeted with breakfast beers whilst waiting for our room to be hosed out from the previous occupants.
After half a days sleep to catch up, I set out to have a look around. Berlin seemed to be in an ever changing state, with most of the landmarks covered in scaffolding. The excessive scaffolding was not great for photos, neither to get an idea of how things actually look, and with the World Cup starting in a few days time, there were messy concert stages being erected every couple of blocks. The whole place was crazy with the lead up.
We took a few walking tours around the city, including one for the history of the Nazi party.. This was particularly dull as all we saw for most of the tour was car parks and photos of what used to be in place.. The tour guide was constantly saying “Now try to imagine…” – I didn’t pay to see car parks.
Berlin bustled with interesting bars and places to drink. We found one place we named the “Crack Den” because it looked like how you would imagine a crack den would look – only much more fun. Finding the place you wandered through a dimly lit park with graffiti on the neighbouring building walls, striped down cars, and people pissing on every tree.. To get into the building, you entered via a dodgy unmarked door, which opened to a staircase of five or six flights of stairs. Every single bit of wall on the way up, the entire way, was covered in about ten layers of graffiti, fliers and various anti political propaganda. Right at the top of the derelict, abandoned looking building, a missing door revealed a bar that overlooked the dodgy park and over a good part of the area. There was a projector being shone onto an opposing building displaying weird visuals and old movie bits. The screen was probably about 40m wide..! The bar was just a bar, thankfully there was no problem with crack junkies, just chilled out people from all over, relaxing in a unique environment with cheep drinks and good music. – I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere.
Berlin was a nice city to experience in its current state, but we left the day before World Cup started to escape the craziness and the inflation related to the mass influx of people. There was no way we were going to be able to see a match live due to the demand for legitimate tickets, and I’m kind of glad i turned down the $570US Australia vs Brazil illegitimate ticket I was going to buy on the Internet as apparently tickets are matched to your ID. All throughout Europe, it was guaranteed to be World Cup fever, so it wasn’t like we were missing out..
