Training Wheels

Christmas Presents (Greece)

This year for Christmas, I was gifted socks; a most practical present as, by dire chance and fateful cock up would have it, I managed to pack only one pair of socks for my entire 14 months away.

I was given a lovely book entitled ‘The Olympic Spirit;’ beautiful thick book with a hard cover. Unfortunately, my excitement about the book was somewhat diminished when I tried to lift it up. My thoughts transformed from:

'What a nice book!'

to:

'Oh my goodness, could it get any heavier?' 

My third and final present was a triangle. Like, the instrument.

A different Christmas scene

A familiar Christmas scene

Fog white, not snow white.

My white Christmas

Beautiful eerie Greek mountains

Van Gogh Museum: More challenging than it sounds (The Netherlands)

I have a limited appreciation for art, as I have mentioned previously. However, I can understand that Van Gogh is famous (I have heard of him), and probably for a reason. So, we decided that the Van Gogh Museum was probably worth a visit (the line was too long for Anne Frank’s house and the Rijksmuseum was too large).

 We found the Van Gogh Museum fine. We waited in line (for a solid 45 mins). We got our tickets. We entered the museum. We had a look around. We were a little perplexed when we arrived at the Van Gogh section and found only two Van Gogh paintings. We came to leave. Sitting on the stairs, we retrieved our tickets from our bags and pockets. My friend, looking at her ticket, said:

'I don’t think that this is the Van Gogh Museum.'

Looking at the ticket, I noted for the first time the nice bold writing at the very top of the ticket ‘Stedelijk Museum’. A modern art museum.

As we left the museum, we looked at the building that we had patiently waited outside for such a long time and saw, in big, clear writing ‘Stedelijk Musuem.’ We then looked to the building we had noted earlier as the Van Gogh Museum. It was still there. With the same label. About 30 meters away.

Amsterdam

I don't understand art #1

I don't understand art #2

I don't understand art #3

It was an easy mistake to make...

Perhaps not our finest moment. But now she has left. Gone home. She was my training wheels . My training wheels went flying off quite literally. I find this concerning - goodness only knows that dumb stuff I'll be doing now...

Enjoy your New Year!

Easily Confused

Rome

The Colosseum

The Trevi Fountain has long been a destination for many people in search of love. My friend and I, too, thought this an appropriate tourist attraction to visit, a worthwhile cause. However, of course, to be in pursuit of love, one must first find the fountain. This proved more difficult that we had originally thought.

We reached a fountain that we believed was the Trevi Fountain. Our thoughts were:

‘Where are the coins?’

We suggested, maybe they clean the fountain during the winter.

‘Why doesn’t it look like the one in the movies?’

We suggested that perhaps it was the angle, or the light.

‘How come there are no tourists?’

It was winter after all.

It took us perhaps 5 minutes for the coin to drop (pun intended), but I’m sure that you can appreciate our - well, my – (I think I found this much funnier than my friend) amusement when we figured out that this was not the Trevi Fountain. It was high fives all round when we finally made it.

When we found the real fountain, we tossed our coins, and sat there, eating gelatos, waiting for true love to come our way. It did – I fell in love with my gelato, and a love more pure you never saw.

The Pretend Trevi Fountain

The Real Trevi Fountain 

(you can see how easy it is to get them confused)

Greece

Greek youths are incredible people. Full of bright and intelligent questions. Just to give you a taste for their conversation and way of life, my favourite conversation starter this week was:

‘Are you a Belieber?’

‘Am I a what?’

‘Belieber? Selenator? Lovatic? Smiler?’

Oh. Oh, I see. Right. Such is the life of a Greek youth.

Zumba at a night-club (I was confused too)

The beautiful Pelio Peninsula

Random monastery on a hill

Greece

Out for lunch (but we sat inside)

Have a great Christmas! 

Slightly Strange

My mother amuses me. This week, when I told her I was going to Prague, her response was:

“Prague is supposed to be a very beautiful city.”

Without doubt the world’s most generic statement about the vast majority of European cities. But then I thought ‘she probably doesn’t even know where Prague is.’ Turns out she doesn’t.

Prague Old Town Square

The Vtlava

Charles Bridge

Prague is fun, albeit a little strange. On my first night in Prague, I saw a man dressed in a roulette table poncho (was going to snap it but then thought it may have been a little inappropriate). I wasn’t so lenient about the man in a elephant costume, or the bear costume, or the guard costume or the shark costume (although, I will admit I am a bit of a pansy when it comes to taking photos of slightly un-P.C. things, so I took them from behind or a distance).

Elephant

Bear

Guard

Shark

On my second day in Prague, I went to the very logical clock that goes backward. I don’t have any historical knowledge about the reason why it goes backward or any of that, so I went, saw it and said, ‘cool.’

Clock that goes backward

Then I started to run out of fun things to do, so my personal tour guide and I decided it would be appropriate to go the wax museum. I took inappropriate snaps of Adolf Hitler and me beside him smiling.

Adolf

In addition to this, we also obtained entry to a Medieval Torture Museum because 'what better way to spend my one day in Prague?’ My father validated my experience of this rather strange museum, telling me that this was one thing that I could not have done in New Zealand. This made me feel much better about my excursion to the Torture Museum.

Museum Torture (Priorities = sorted)

Different torture methods #1

Different torture methods #2

Different torture methods #3

My pleasant Saturday

Oh and there are funny yellow penguins in Prague, because the Czech Republic is near the coast (if you don't know where it is - that is sarcasm; it doesn't have a sea coast and I have no idea why there are penguins there). 

Penguins, all in a row

 Also, I think that I need to buy a thesaurus. My enthusiastic response to everything that I see is, ‘cool,’ followed by a nod of the head. If I get really excited about something, my response might become, ‘oh, awesome!’ This week, I was called out on this. Expressing my enthusiasm has never been my forte, but now that people are starting to notice, I think now might be time to do something about this. It can be my homework for next week (but I’m on holiday so I won’t do it, but I will get more and more self-conscious about it until I finally decide that I am afflicted badly enough to actually do something about it).

Until next week, catch you later, Alligators! 

Pre-Christmas

If any country does pre-Christmas well, it’s Germany. Fairytale-like. Twinkling lights. Ice-skating rinks. Beautiful markets. People dressed up as Santa-Pope chimeras (I actually had no idea which one it was…).

Christmas market #1

Christmas market #2

Twinkling lights #1

Twinkling lights #2

Ice-skating

Pre-Christmas in Germany in a wonder to behold.

Tübingen

All good things come in chocolate sized packages. By happy coincidence, the dates of my stay in Tübingen coincided perfectly with the Tübingen Schokoladenmarkt. Everything that you can possible imagine was made of chocolate or doused in chocolate or had a component of chocolate that would, under normal circumstances, be a little weird - chocolate shoes, chocolate artwork, chocolate alcohol, chocolate fruit, chocolate, salami, chocolate tools.

Chocolate art

Chocolate deliciousness

Chocolate tools and shoes etc etc etc

Apparently, the testers are taken away during the weekends because the tourists come and eat them all. Jokes on them. I didn’t take many snaps as I was too busy eating. They clearly didn’t plan on tourists attending during the week. But this could also arguably be a joke on me as I ate so many tasters that I felt ill.

I also went to a pre-Christmas market in Roetlingen, and while it was really nice, nothing amusing enough happened to warrant a detailed mention in my blog.

Roetlingen Christmas Market

Cologne (Köln)

Cologne reaches “Super City” status, with the population being just over the one million mark. However, the markets, on a relatively warm Sunday evening, were indicative of a higher population. We literally had trouble moving (because of the crowds – not because we had eaten too much, although this is also a plausible explanation).

Business at the pre-Christmas

Due to the larger size of the city, there were many Christmas markets, each too big and too densely populated explore fully. While each market is definitely a variation on a theme, each has its own distinct flavour. In one market, I was thoroughly entertained by the animated Santa-Pope Chimera who was providing musical entertainment (not just for me). I didn’t even know the songs that were supposedly English in origin. At another, I was delighted to learn that each market has unique (take-home) cups for their mulled wine, to mark which market it originated from.

Santa-Pope music playing entertaining chimeras

In summary, everything about Germany is beautiful and the pre-Christmas markets are no exception.

I’ve got the munchies.

The Edge of Reason

It’s always a bad sign when people start talking about the weather – it usually means that the quality of the chat has dropped, markedly. However, this particular topic has come to mind is because I’m sick of seeing pictures of people on beaches and enjoying sunshine.

Avignon

The first experience of snow in Europe took place this week in Avignon, in the south of France. It was not planned. I had been banking on the south of France being warmer. It was not. My seven merinos were not enough to ward of the cold. I had to buy more clothes and was still cold. I was pissed. 

Snow covered legumes 

Snow covered tables

Snow covered flowers

Val d’Iseres

My second experience of snow in Europe was planned. And this time it wasn’t a light dusting… I had decided that I deserved my own skiing mini-break. This reminded me of the scene from Bridget Jones’s Diary: The Edge of Reason – in which I played Bridget…

The original scene monologue is as follows:

Bridget: Told a tiny lie about being an extremely experienced skier – but honestly – how hard can it be?

My own version of this played out as follows:

Team leader: So, everyone has an avalanche pack and tracker* apart from Steph?

Me (internal monologue): Oh. oh. Alright. So it's like that is it? (The real version was only slightly more explicit)

Needless to say, I effectively fell down the avalanche prone off-piste, and managed got nice and friendly with a rather large boulder that I thought was looking lonely (when I finally saw it…). 

Nonetheless, I have lived to die another day.

A cold first day in paradise

A beautiful second day in paradise

Powder hunting: part i.

Powder hunting: part ii

A blue bird through and through for the third and final day of skiing

And now, I am happy again.

This is 007, signing out (like a boss… kind of… actually, really not at all).

*for those of you who don't know, avalanche packs and trackers are survival gear used to find your aid ones personal survival and to enable others to find you, should you be covered by an avalanche whilst skiing on fractured powder.