Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Missis....

Waiting is boring.  I have now been in York for a week.  I have been living in a backpackers and have handed in my CV to a few places.  Now just waiting to hear back from anyone.  Once that happens I can do something again.

I have now wandered around most of the city centre of York a few times.  I have done a ghost tour (York is apparently one of the most haunted cities in the UK) and have even taken some photos.  After going to Handball training on Sunday, I spent the next two days hardly able to move.  Going almost a year between trainings, I probably should have taken things slowly on my first day back.  Instead I went all out and suffered for it afterwards.  Following all of that I then got sick.  Just a cold and it has almost gone now, but enough to be annoying.  Atleast I have had nothing to do but wait anyway.  Come on phone, ring with good news for me...

Front of York Minster

Side entrance to York Minster

Clifford's tower, York Castle

Ruins of St Mary's abbey

York city walls

Only intact Viking age building in York, Tower of St Mary's church Bishophill

The grand old Duke

So I now live in York.  Well as much as anyone can ‘live’ somewhere without having a job or accommodation.  I have been here two days so far and it is a really nice town.  Currently I am at a backpackers inside the old city walls.  However, this backpackers comes with a full kitchen attached to my room and free laundry.  They even supply tea, coffee etc.  Really it is more like a shared room in an apartment.  I should find somewhere else though.

After getting back to the UK about a week ago, I relaxed.  I applied for a couple of jobs and asked people I knew around York if they knew of anything.  For the rest of the week I relaxed, recovered and caught up with a lot of people.  It was good to see a lot of friendly faces and have time to catch up with commitments to other people (I finally uploaded some photos to Facebook for the first time since I have left NZ).  Then after a week of getting more and more restless, I decided that I had more chance of finding something in York if I was living in York.  So a quick search for a hostel and a ticket north, and I was off.  Turns out the train was about five hours faster than a bus and only slightly more expensive.  A brief stop in London, led me to York.

Since I have been here I have handed in my CV to a few places.  There seem to be a lot of places looking for waiting staff etc, so I will see what happens.  I have met some locals and drunk with them.  I have found a Handball club and am going to go along this afternoon to see what they are like.  I haven’t found somewhere to live yet though.  I am holding off on that until I have an idea of where I am going to be working, as I would like to live vaguely near where I will be working.  Other than that, I have been wandering around looking at places.  Unfortunately I do not have my camera with me and we have had good weather so far.  I wasn’t expecting that, so didn’t try to bring my camera in my pack.

So all in all, it is going pretty well at the moment.  Oh and the main point to take away is that I am in York.  Not sure how that enriches anyone else’s life, but it’s a step for me.

In Bruges

There is pretty much only one reason that I visited Bruges over any other place in Belgium.  I saw a movie when I was in Uni.  It wasn’t a massively great movie, but it was one that showed me the only view of Belgium that I have seen.  So when I was going to Belgium, I figured that I might as well go there, it looked pretty in the film.

After a change from bus to train in Brussels (which looked nice, the small part I saw) I arrived in Bruges.  I had had success using the maps and GPS on my phone in Cologne, so figured I would do the same in Bruges.  Without knowing which buses to take, I saw that the hostel I was staying at was about 2.5km from the train station.  Turns out walking that distance carrying all your gear seems further than I thought and meant that I received my share of weird looks while doing it.  I got a good initial look at the old town centre as I passed through.

After a supplied breakfast, I had a marked map and a food list.  To me food in Belgium is chocolate, beer and waffles.  So first stop in my wanderings was, when I managed to find it, a chocolate museum.  It gave the history of Belgian chocolate, from the Aztecs through to modern processing and packaging.  Also the added bonus of samples.  Needing to walk off that before lunch, I wandered the town centre crossing canals and generally just looking at stuff.  Lunch almost beat me.  I found a bakery and got a cup of soup with fresh bread and a chocolate dessert thing that had me struggling to get through it.  Tasted amazing though.  I had to walk out to the windmills before I risked going to a chocolate shop to obtain some samples to take with me.  A trip up the bell tower seemed compulsory before relaxing at the hostel bar preparing for a beer tasting.  A slightly intoxicated trip to find waffles at about 9pm showed us that apparently Bruges closes at about 6pm.

Before my bus back to the UK I had some time to kill and found the best Belgian waffles I have ever eaten.  A van in the town square cooked them in front of me and layered it with icecream, chocolate, icing sugar and strawberries.  It would have tasted great eating it without any toppings.  My bus had me wondering how to get back to Canterbury easily.  My bus was going to London, so I had a late ticket booked back down the same road to Canterbury and a bed in London sorted if something happened.  However, I met a lovely Australian couple on the bus who were renting a car in Dover and offered to drive me to Canterbury as they were heading that way too.  So got a ride there and then picked up and taken back to the farm to relax, recover and refresh before I move North.

Bruge 

Skyline silhouette

Buildings right onto the water

Canal with Bell tower in the background

On the scent, Cologne

Hmmm… how to explain Cologne?  It was ok.  For some reason I wasn’t as impressed by Cologne as other places I visited.  It was the first time on my trip that I was slowed down by rain, I had had issues with a railway driver’s strike and was still recovering from a light cold.  So there were a few things to overcome.

Although I wasn’t caught up directly in the strike, the after effects were a massive number of delays across Germany.  Overall my train to Cologne took an hour and a half longer than the four hours scheduled.  For this I was fortunately refunded 25% of my ticket price, which was a pleasant surprise.

Once I finally arrived and checked in, I was running out of daylight to see the city.  I made my way down through the old town and had a look through the cathedral.  It is a beautiful cathedral and welcoming.  The rest of the city was nice, but didn’t really make me love it.  It was actually the city I felt the most uncomfortable in.  It was just a feeling but was enough to not let me really relax into the place.  Apart from the cathedral there wasn’t much for me to see.  There was also the obligatory parade/protest.

Every city I have been to seems to have a protest or parade.  I have seen the Oktoberfest, football fans corralled by riot police, student protests, protests against the Islamic State and other protests that I have not been able to understand except to know that people weren’t happy.

Anyway, Germany done.  It has been an awesome trip and I loved most of it.  On to Belgium and the fairytale town of Bruges.

A lack of Hamburgers

First things first, although there are the normal fast-food places, I didn't find extra hamburger places. Nor was there a Hamburger Street (which I had seen in Berlin). The closest was the disappointing Hamburger bank (again with no hamburgers). Having never knowingly met anyone who had been to Hamburg I figured that it wasn't really a big player on the European tourist market. So only had a night there.

Arriving into the main train station, I found the best one so far. Big, open, clearly signed, basically a big underground shopping mall with train, bus and underground stations attached. It was also conveniently placed across the street to my hostel. After checking in and obtaining a map, I set off on my usual method of exploration, wandering aimlessly around foreign cities until I see interesting things. I walked down past the Rathaus, over canals, up to St Michael’s church, down around the harbour, before ending back where I started.

I really liked Hamburg. I wasn't really there long enough to get a real feel for the place, but the feeling I got was good. Everything was more open, fewer people (it was a Monday evening, so could be biased), next to the sea and I felt more laid back. Long term I don't know what it would be like, but the brief sample left a pleasant taste. On to Cologne.

St Michael's Church

New Berlin

I hadn't expected to be in Berlin for another week. Somehow I managed to find another hostel at late notice that didn't cost the earth and it turned out to be even better placed. My American travel buddy was already in Berlin, so we caught up, saw the lit up and closed buildings (national holiday, unification day) and grabbed some dinner.

Getting up early the next morning I had planned on doing the free walking tour that had been recommended by friends that had previously visited Berlin. I needn't have bothered, the tour started at 10:30 from my hostel, so I wandered around and found breakfast. The tour was worth it. Starting with the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag, through the Jewish holocaust memorial, past where Hitler's bunker once was and where the Luftwaffe headquarters building still stands, part of the Berlin wall and the commercial area of Checkpoint Charlie, Gendarmenmarkt square, up past the book burning memorial to Museum island. It covered alot of the key tourist points with an engaging and knowledgeable guide. To top off the tour I then went through the Pergamon museum and saw some amazing exhibits that covered Babylonian, Saracen and Islamic art, history and architecture, along with samples of Greek, Roman and Egyptian history. After most of the day sightseeing I found possibly the only bar in Berlin that was showing the All Blacks vs Springboks test. Settling in for a tense game with a group of Kiwis and a token Springbok we were joined by my travel buddy, to witness New Zealand's first loss in two years. Dinner preceded a pub crawl that ended at a nightclub and me getting to bed after 4am.

Needless to say I was left a little tired. So I extended my stay in Berlin another day to recover. Buddying up again we went to the Eastside gallery (a heavily graffitied section of the Berlin wall), ambled through a market then wandered randomly through the neighbourhood of Kreuzberg. I then gave her a highlights tour of the Brandenburg gate before we parted ways. I headed back to my hostel with the intention of booking my way somewhere or writing this. Instead I fell asleep in the common area, so put myself to bed by 7pm. An early end to an unexpected trip to Berlin.

So now I am off to Hamburg. I had thought about maybe Denmark replacing Poland, but the cost of the trip there and back at short notice and for only a couple of days made it not really feasible or sensible. Berlin was a pleasant surprise. Although lacking the old buildings of most of its neighbours (flattened during the war), it has a comfortable feel to it is welcoming of everyone and a history that must be uncomfortable for them but that they put on show. Maybe this is to show the world that it is not the place it was under Nazi control or maybe it is a method of repentance. Either way I felt more comfortable here than I thought I might, especially after the low I felt in Prague.

French cathedral

Jewish Holocaust memorial

Berlin cathedral

Eastside gallery, Berlin Wall

Brandenburg Gate

Unexpected journeys

An unforeseen change in plans. I had planned to travel from Prague to Krakow in Poland. From there I was going to spend most of a week in Poland. However that will now no longer be the case. I missed my train to Krakow. In a comedy of errors I watched it disappear without me. First I went to the wrong subway stop and found no train station, then I went to the wrong platform and found no train. When I had eventually found someone who could tell me what the problem was, I ran to my platform, up the stairs to see the doors closing as it eased out of the station. This left me in a city with no accommodation and an invalid ticket in my hand.

Finding a seat and a map I worked out that my options were another ticket to Krakow and continue as planned, or change plans completely. The next train was alot later, longer and more expensive than my last one, so I changed my plans. Basically I have cut out Poland. I would have really liked to go there, but will now have to do it another time.

Instead I found a train to Berlin, scrambled using roaming mobile internet to find accommodation on a holiday weekend for them and have penciled in the possibility of Denmark instead. Time will tell how well this plan works. Now I just have to find a use for the 900 Polish Zloty I got before leaving England.

Prague? Czech!

So it turns out that when you go to look at sights in a country that doesn't speak English, all of the signs and descriptions aren't in English either. So in Prague everything was in Czech and therefore almost incomprehensible to me.

Arriving I had the technique sorted. Off the bus, into information, grab a map and local travel pass, sorted. In spite of this I still walked past my hostel briefly. After checking in, I met up with my new American friend and we set out to explore the sights we had been told to see. We walked to the old town square, saw the show at the astronomical clock, walked the waterfront and Charles Bridge. That left us with the hill. Up past souvenir stores and cafes we rose to see Loreta and into the monastery. Here we paused to admire the view and ended up staying for dinner and a beer. It was dark by the time we left and thinking that we were heading to the castle, we wandered up a dark pathway. This is the sort of place parents warn you not to walk when they expound the dangers in travelling. It was a pathway with the street lights out, on the edge of a park, in a strange city and not marked on our maps. Needless to say, as I am writing this, nothing untoward happened. In fact it led us to an observatory. So instead of being mugged, I gazed at the stars and craters of the moon through high powered telescopes. Eventually we found our way back down to Prague Castle, our original destination. We walked past the armed guards and through what is supposedly the largest medieval castle complex in the world. From here we called it a night.

At this point I must point out that I feel that Prague has all of the makings of a Dr Who themed city. Outside Loreta is an avenue surrounded by creepy looking statues, the inside of the subway stations reminded me of daleks and the TV tower which dominates the southeastern skyline has giant black baby statues crawling up it. In general a pretty creepy place if you think about it.

Day two started with a realisation and a discovery. Discovering crepes at the hostel breakfast and realising that the previous day I had seen 90% of what I had wanted. Luckily my travel buddy had some ideas. So we met at St Nikolas church and headed up to tour the castle and see it in daylight. The tour ticket allowed us to go inside St Vitus cathedral (apparently on about 100 years old rather than the centuries old it had appeared the previous night), the old Palace, the basilica of St George and down the Golden Lane. Each of these was interesting in their own right but the selection of weapons (some of them pretty ridiculous) and window into how people lived displayed by Golden Lane made it my favourite part. All of the sightseeing made the chimney cakes on offer, just outside the exit, irresistible. From there we gazed at the displays inside the Mucha Museum (an art nouveau graphic artist) and the stalls at the open air market. Back in old town we attempted to view the old Jewish cemetery and ended up with icecream on route to an ice pub. It was very similar to the ones in Queenstown. Dinner was from some stands in the old square and chased down with mulled wine to end the night.

I have decided that Prague (apart from the creepy bits) is probably quite romantic. It would be somewhere that I would happily return to with someone special to share it with. Unfortunately it has also shown me how lonely travelling can be. I have travelled with friends, family and someone special and now on my own. It makes it clear to me how much more enjoyable this is when you have someone to share it with. It is strange that somewhere so lovely and that I have enjoyed being has left me so melancholy as I head off to Poland.

Prague

Charles bridge

Big swans in Prague

Charles bridge

View from the Monastery

Evening over the Vltava

Sleepy medieval

My stay in Nuremburg was short. Just a night's stop as I tour on. I had been told by several people that really this was all I would need. The train rolled in midafternoon and my bus rolled out mid-morning the following day. Arriving it struck me that this was the first time I had visited a new city where the language was foreign and I had no one with me or meeting me. A new type of isolation. After hitting tourist information for a map I wandered to my hostel. It was a strange mix of a town. I was walking along the old medieval city wall passing old brick buildings when every now and then it would change, an ultramodern glass building breaking up the old feel.

In the hostel I met an American girl doing the same as I was, so we teamed up to explore the town. We wandered along the walls, through the town and up through the castle. Grabbing dinner on the way home, we were suddenly surprised by the red light district as we walked the walls back to the hostel.

The next morning began the trip to the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague.

The Sound of Music

The sound of music seems to be a combination of many contradictory sounds.  It is the sound of a bustling city and the quiet noises of the hills, it is the tune of traditions combined with the boisterousness of foreign tourists, it is a powerful history mixed up with an eye to future progress. But overall, everywhere you go and in everything you do, there is always the chance of a beer.

Following my farewell from Crundale, a quick and not entirely sober stop in London, a short flight to Frankfurt and the final leg, I arrived in Munich, capital of Bavaria. Travelling to Munich during the Oktoberfest can be a recipe for disaster and a lack of accommodation. However, I was lucky enough to be met at the airport by my German sister and given a place to stay. After dropping my gear at her apartment we did a self-guided local's tour through the city, stopping for enormous pizzas and Belgian hot chocolate.

The following day we travelled about an hour south of Munich along the autobahn to the hills around Bad Weissee for an afternoon hiking through the hills on the Austria-Germany border. We climbed a couple of peaks, saw amazing views over lakes, into Austria, the main body of the alps rising in front of us and little holiday huts hidden away. On the way home we stopped at the lake for a quick paddle. That night everyone was too sore and tired to do much, so we watched a movie and hit the hay. Preparation for the big day to come.

Day dawned with a little high cloud that promised to burn off later. This was the day of heading to the Oktoberfest with a group of locals (all of whom thankfully spoke very good English). We started with a traditional Bavarian breakfast of weiss wuerste (veal sausages), pretzels, radishes, tomatoes, sweet mustard and of course, beer. The girls dressed in dirndls and the guys in lederhosen, except me. Although I would have liked to wear the traditional leather trousers as well, spending upwards of €100 on a pair of pants that I would wear once didn't seem like a sensible use of my money. Especially with a beer at the festival costing €11 each! I can now confirm that it is impossible to look bad in a dirndl. Oktoberfest is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. The closest I can think of is the Fielddays. It is a similar size, but half the space is taken up by giant pavilions for the big breweries. These beer tents and beer gardens can hold several thousand people each. The rest of the space is taken up with food stalls or theme park rides. After looking around the entire place, we sat out in the Hacker-Pschorr beer garden for several hours. In this time I managed to drink a few steins of helles and eat a half hendl (roast chicken). Around 6pm we moved inside to where the party was. With the band playing English songs I knew the words to and German songs that people were happy to help teach me, the rest of the evening passed in blaze of dancing nonstop on benches and meeting people from all over the world (not that I could hear or understand most of them). It was definitely something that is incomparable and leaves a lasting impression. It is not even all about the beer.

Yet another day with the “Himmel der Bayern” (heavens of Bavaria, blue skies and a few fluffy white clouds). I joined an organised tour with Discover Bavaria, heading to the fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein. This castle was designed by King Ludwig II, based around the works and operas of Wagner, it is also the inspiration for the Disney castle. As one of the top 10 things to do in Germany I felt I should visit while I was so close. It was a pleasant experience to be surrounded by people speaking English again after hearing so much German. We took a bus to Tegelburg, arriving for lunch that included the best wheat beer in the world. After lunch I took a bike ride down to Swan Lake with a girl who it turns out I had met in Austria during Contiki. Then we had the main event. We were taken to various lookouts with amazing views of Hohenschwangau castle and Neuschwanstein castle, before doing a tour of the inside. Grabbing an icecream on the way to the bus rounded out a day that was even better than I thought it would be.

Finally it was time to move on from Munich. Packing in the morning, I was given an informal food tour of Munich that ended with lunch at a small Barvarian restaurant in the centre of the city off the normal tourist lines. It was a good way to end a great stay in this amazing place. With farewells at the train station and Nuremburg in my sights, it was time to move on.

Piano player next to a fountain

Top of Saint Lucas's church

Breakfast

Hiking through the forest

Looking over to Austria

Sculpture of the german version of a taniwha

Hohenschwangau castle

Hohenschwangau and surroundings

Neuschwanstein castle

Earning a Crust

So my last couple of months have somewhere between busy and hectic.  At the farm I was offered a job up until harvest (about a month), then just before I was told that there was no way I was finishing until the end of harvest, and then after harvest the job kept going for a couple more weeks until I said that I was going to travel again.

The job was great.  Being back on a farm reminded me how much I had missed it.  Living with a family here I was just another son and was looked after like it.  If they were doing something then I was too, if they were invited somewhere then I was automatically part of the invite.  And they have a dog.  The actual work part was general farm work and harvesting.  So there was stock work, farm maintenance, hay and silage making, grain haulage, storehouse work, cultivation and the everyday little jobs that pop up.  Everything from delivering calves to emptying grain bins to days spent in a tractor cab.  Long hours meant that I got paid well and limited options for spending it.  During harvest I was doing 80+ hour weeks with one week I did 95 hours.  It was good and I worked hard enough that they have tentatively offered me the same gig next year.  So might end up back this way in the future.

Aside from working for the last 3-4 months, I have tried to throw myself at any opportunity with the family, farm and community.  I have attended weddings, a 90^th birthday, agricultural shows, plowing matches, parties, Pilates, sports events, stag dos, regular locals evenings at the pub and the Kent only game of “Bat and Trap”.  Turns out bat and trap is a sport that I am not very good at.  However I have played a few times when the team has been short of players.  It is a game that is a cross of cricket, lawn bowls and tennis, with a health amount of drinking taking place.  I can’t explain it more than that.  It is more of a social thing than a competitive one, and fun.

I have made a lot of friends here and will hopefully return to see them all again.  It has been a good way to see this part of the country.  I feel that people who travel all of the way over here and live in London tend to get stuck there and not really see the real country.  By living in a little village I feel that I have had no choice but to see the real England, or atleast the real Southeast.  Now I have an urge to travel again.  I am going to see more of Germany and surrounding areas.  Seemed a good opportunity to see the Oktoberfest and the largest country in Europe.  Afterwards I think I will move north towards York and try to find something up there.  Who knows.  Time will tell how it all works out.

"Home", Huntstreet Cottage

Puppy

Ready for harvest

Westgate, Canterbury