Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Patstizzis and pasta to pretzels and weiner sausages

Guten Tag (yes a shameless introduction to where I am, I now)

Leaving Malta....
was a sad state of affairs. I had become quite accustomed to being spoilt, having a clean comfortable bed and not being interrupted at 2 in the morning by loud, drunk fellow travellers. Leaving Malta also made me a little nervous as it was the first time in 2.5 weeks that I was gong to be completely alone again. However, I should not have expended the extra energy (although goodness knows I had built it up with all of the food I'd eaten) on worrying. Within my first 30seconds off the plane 2 people had spoken to me offering help! Admittedly they were men and for a second there I had visions of the red headed Irish leprechauns on heat that I had encountered further north but these thoughts were quickly pushed from my head as I realised that everyone in Germany was incredibly friendly, clean and well organised.

Wombats Hostel.....
is my home of luxury for the next 3 days. It was raining when I arrived and I had sent my coat back to England with Mo so after I got over the disappointment of having to get my freshly cut and blow dried hair wet and frizzy I set off on the expedition to finds Wombats. Although Munich is very clean and organised the instructions from the train station to the hostel had obviously been written by an Aussie and not a German. Having given myself a very interesting tour of the red light district in Munich; sexy ladies, lap dances and foggy windows all featured, I found the hostel. I went to my room and read my book - very boring I know but it was appropriate for the weather. At 6pm I ventured downstairs to claim my free drink and to do my best to find some more of these free drink vouchers and ended up having a couple of pints of Bavarian beer. It was great and meant that I met other solo travellers. I think that they lied when writing in the tourist guide that Bavarian beer doesn't give you a hangover.... trust me it does.

Friday was a stunning day and my new found friend Mark from The OC (yes really), and I went to 2 amazing castles about 2.5 hours from Munich. They were incredible. As soon as I get a chance I will update my photos. The main castle was the one which all of the Disney fantasy castles have been based on. Mark & I climbed to the top of an enormous mountain (Guy this is where I was when you called) and took some great shots. Unfortunately I was wearing my less than rugged double pluggers and managed to slip down a few times - luckily not on the side of the mountain with the 70 metre drop. After retiring to bed exhausted from a 10 hour day of touring about, I was kindly woken at 3am by 3 American guys with no concept of sound, acoustics or time. The lovely gentlemen interrupted my sleep and proceeded to snore the roof down.

Slap me on the back and call me Lara Croft......
because I have just completed 2 days of adrenalin pumping physical activity. On Saturday I took myself to the Glockenspiel in the centre of Munich which was a building that looked like it was from a fairytale. I didn't see the clock chime but the building itself was fantastic. This is where I met a group for a free bike tour. Now let me just put this into perspective. I quickly realised that the bike tour had been falsely advertised as an insight into Munich when in fact it was a dress rehearsal for my audition on The Real Cancun. I found myself surrounded by 30 or so American fraternity or sorority kids. And just to reiterate that they were 'kids' not young adults, to my alarm when they asked me what age I was and I replied 25, I was met with the response 'whoa you are so old... do you have like a real job and stuff?' (cue: Matt Mortimer when first meeting me) in addition to this I suddenly have 5 teenage boys on heat following me around and telling me how beautiful I was. I quickly cut them down telling them I was a taken women and my boyfriend would not hesitate to wrap their loose tongues around their heads. They then asked me if I could teach them to speak Australian which was a little strange because last time I checked I was speaking English. When one asked me how to say 'lets go' in Australian it briefly crossed my mind to tell him the correct phrase was 'lets all go get buggered' but I decided against it when I soon realised that they were going to have enough trouble looking after themselves without me steering them in the wrong direction.

The tour itself was quite good. We cycled past all of the major sites, through the English Gardens which have a nudist meadow (luckily it was an overcast day, however after 1 beer - no that isn't a typo, 1 beer - and the kids all decided to strip and run naked through the park. We also visited a beer garden where I managed to down a stein. My favourite part of the tour was seeing the river surfers. There is an amazing wave in the river that runs through Munich and lots of people go there to surf. It was incredible. I would have loved to have given it a go but I think it must take a great deal of practise given the river is only 3 metres wide and constantly surging. All in all it was a good day.

My second performance as Lara Croft...
takes place here in St Johann, Tirol, Austria. I arrived yesterday to pretty dull weather but woke today to a stunning day. The air is incredibly clean and the town just gorgeous, it reminds me a lot of Annecy in France. All of the people are also very helpful despite not speaking a great deal of English. I managed to rouse up 6 fellow adventurers (you needed a group) to go canyoning. Canyoning is like abseiling through white water rapids. Basically the course was an abseil down a 6 metre waterfall, climb 10 minutes up a mountain into a gorge. From here we abseiled 10 metres to a platform then jumped 11 metres into a rock pool (between very narrow rock walls) at the bottom. After this we abseiled another 20 metres down a waterfall before jumping off another 3 metre and 6 metre wall. Between each big jump we slid, walked and swam through 5-8 degree water. Thank goodness for the 10mm thick wetsuit! At first I felt like Cameron Dias in Charlies Angels in my tight black wetsuit but quickly realised that I looked more like a black jelly bean - photos to come.

Well tomorrow I leave for Venice and am quite looking forward to it. I've met one girl who is doing the same Croatia trip with me so will have her to keep me company on the ferry before I meet up with Darcy Anderson who is joining me on the sailing trip.

Well once again I'm missing everyone, please keep the emails coming!

xx Loz

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