All I Want For Christmas Is You...

Firstly, Merry Christmas to all my family and friends who read this. I hope you all had a great day and I hope the day brought you lots of joy and love!

After Poland I made my way to Larvik in Norway to spend Christmas with my friend Kasper who I lived with in Norway:

This was us in Hawaii, with a freakin big Volcano behind us spewing out gas and stuff... Awesome...

Anyway, Kasper invited me into his home with his family for Christmas which was really nice of him and the entire Landmark family <3  Below is a few photo's from Christmas Eve (the day pressies are opened) and Christmas Day:

The Landmark's Christmas Tree! 

Very excited for dinner!  

Probably the BEST fruit salad... EVER

The Presents arrived! 

Santa found me in Larvik! (Thanks Landmarks!)

The dream of having snow and a wood fire heater on Christmas came true!

Kasper's Dad- Ståle

Kasper's Mum Elin and Sister Hanna-Sine

Supper which included Australian Wine :oD and gingerbread and lots of other goodies!

Christmas lasted from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and then we also celebrated Hanna's 30th birthday on Boxing Day as well. So it was a great few days surrounded by Kasper's family and friends and they all made me feel very welcome! So a big thank-you to them all! Although I couldn't be with and see the people in my life back in Australia that make me really happy, it was nice to still be with lovely people who opened their home to me! 

After Christmas in Larvik I have now headed a bit North-West to visit my other friend from Hawaii, Birte. I'm now at her house in Stavanger and loving it. The scenery is amazing and I've made sure to take plenty of photo's so check back here in a little while! I'm heading back to Larvik to spend New Years with Kasper and his lovely friends which I'm really looking forward to! 

Happy New Year kids! Talk to you all in 2011!! 

<3

Toruń, Poland

So, classes have finished for the year! Hooray!!! I had organised a few months ago to visit a friend I lived with in Hawaii to visit him in Norway and spend Christmas with him (look forward to my next post on Norway- that's where I'm writing this and it's amazing!)... Anyway, I had a few days up my sleeve between classes finishing and Norway beginning so I thought I'd check out a little bit of Poland! 

I chose Toruń because it was super cheap and I'd heard really good things about it. I was thinking os going to Krakow but friends and I who I went to Prague with are going to go in January and visit Auschwitz so I didn't want to go twice. Also, Toruń was a few hours closer...

Anyway, after a full day of traveling consisting of 5 trains with snow delays of at least 30 mins between train in about -10 to -15 degree temperatures, I was glad to finally get to the hostel. For the next three days I basically got up, put on my 100 layers of clothing and headed out to look around. Toruń is a pretty small town and with -10 degrees it makes you check things out pretty quickly! But here are a few photos (some you may have seen on Facey already):

Border of a fort built in the 14th Century (the next few pics)

Ice on the Vistula River!  

Copernicus! Champion of everything!! 

He was first person to suggest that the Sun was the centre of the Universe, not Earth. Pretty much shaped the way for the Scientific Revolution...Also, in his spare time he was a mathematician, astronomer, physician, quadrilingual polyglot (spoke four languages), classical scholar, translator, artist, Catholic cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist. Yeah...

Lots of churches here! 

Haha, I went to the "Living Gingerbread Museum" which I was hoping would be a place full of Gingerbread men from Shrek... I was disappointed. Although instead I got to MAKE Gingerbread! it didn't come to life- but still pretty fun! 

Night-time! 

So, yup. there ya go. I definitely didn't need 3 full days there, especially in winter and by myself but was still nice- and super cheap (7 Euro per night in the hostel and 0.75 Euro for 0.5L of Beer) :oD

but now I'm in Larvik, Norway and it is Christmas Eve which is the main day Christmas is celebrated and definitely is better then Poland haha. I'll be here until after New Years so wait a week or two and there will be a nice long post full of amazing photo's! 

Merry Christmas everyone!! xoxoxox

Schnee und Dresden Weihnachtmarkt!!!!

Thought I'd give you all a bit of an update on the cold, snowy winter that I am facing in Dresden! It started snowing around the 20th or so of November and since then there has been snow (schnee) all over the ground in Dresden. It's been wonderful!!

This is my bus stop and currently where I spend most of my day- waiting for the number 62...

As I'm sure you've all seen on the T.V this has caused havoc on trains and flights. It's also affected my schedule to get to uni because the trams and buses are always delayed, this has made going to uni not fun lately... add in the fact that the sun doesn't wake up until about 8am now and sets around 4pm and temperatures have been in the negatives since November... This makes Eb not very enthused for Uni. It makes me wanna do this instead:

Also a fun part about all this wintery, snowy goodness at Christmas time is the Weihnachtmarkt (Christmas Market) that is held in pretty much every town in Europe. Dresden's claim to fame (alongside dental floss and mouthwash) is starting the Weihnachtmarkt in 1434... Yup- this is the 576th one..Yeah, impressive I know. Dresden-1, Rest of the World- 0. The Weihnachtmarkt is super fun and so pretty with all the snow. It's been a great place to pass the time with friends whilst drinking Glühwein (warm, spiced wine) and looking at all the marvelous stalls. See exhibits A,B,C,D and E:

The Frauenkirche in the background... pretty neat.  

Weihnachtmarkt crafty goodness... 

 Yes, I did go on the Ferris Wheel... It was awesome... 

I like this with the Full Moon in the background... 

My Weihnachtmarkt, Glühwein drinking buddies:

Alice, Emily and Me at the front, and Matthias and Richard at the back :o)

It'll be sad to know that when I come back from my Christmas Holiday travels (see next post) the entire square will be back to being boring. It packs up on the 24th of December and apparently brings 2 million tourists to Dresden.. which I believe cos there was always soooo many people about. 

Good Job Dresden Weihnachtmarkt :o)

And also well done snow- you've provided us all with much fun including unexpected snowball fights on the way to parties, and making it take 10 times longer to get home after parties because its soooo much fun to play in :oD

... Although by February I'm sure I'll be pretty sick of it :oP

2 Girls, 1 Trip To Amsterdam and Brussels.

Firstly, apologies for this being 4 weeks late. No excuses really... Just slack. I guess i can say that Uni has been pretty intense lately with organising courses and has been a bit stressful and so blogging has gone down a bit on my list of priorites (also been getting addicted to Gossip Girl). Whoops.

BUT, here I am finally. Reporting on a 6 day adventure which I'm still undecided whether overall was a good time or not... You can judge for yourself...

So, after a pretty crappy week or two of boy dramas (yes...plural) back in Aus, I decided what better way to try and forget about everything then to go and write myself off in Amsterdam! (Sorry Mum). I found my buddy Alice who came to Prague with me (who was in a similar boat as me) and we set off for an adventure which would include 2 nights in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and 2 nights in Brussels, Belgium and 1 night each way on the City Night Line Trains.

As mentioned in my last post, my good friend Stephen who I lived with in Hawaii now lived in Amsterdam with his beautiful gf Wieteke. We arrived in A/dam around midday and met Stephen at his, dumped our stuff and headed out on an awesome boat "cruise"! I use the word "cruise" lightly, but basically it was a wooden boat built in the 1940's that seats about 10 people. On this "cruise" which lasts about an hour, you can bring whatever food and drink you like...So we stocked up with copious bottles of wine and set off... The views of the city through the canals was beautiful...

 Our boat was similar to one of these small ones...

Alice, me, Wieteke

Love it...

Me and Stephen

aaaaand I'm drunk...

We had lots of fun on the boat :o) It was only about 4pm and we were well on our way to being pretty far gone... Then we drank some more... went to the red light district and then it was morning :o)

On the Saturday we went on a walking tour of the city where we explored the cute houses and went through the red light district again. I was being a really bad tourist and took hardly any photos. For me this trip was more about just relaxing so you'll have to use your imagination a little bit. But the Red Light District certainly isn't as crazy at it seems. It's basically just cobblestone alleys with glass doors and women in lingerie behind the door standing there... If you wanna get a bit of action, you walk in, pay a minimum of 50 Euro (depending what you want) and Bob's your Uncle.

Saturday night was a lot of fun though. It was Museum Night which is this massive once a year do with all the museums (about 40 of them) opening their doors until 2am and having DJ's and drinks whilst checking out painting and the like. We had heaps of fun checking out original Monet painting whilst hearing Black Eyed Peas "Tonights gonna be a good night" at the same time lol. A cool museum was the NEMO which is similar to Scienceworks except probably 100 times better. Heaps of interactive stuff to do and the building looks like the Titanic kind of and is on the water! Can't get much cooler then that! I forgot, earlier that evening we went to a "Boom Chicago" show which is like "Who's line is it anyway" and includes some actors from the Drew Carey version. One of the funniest things I've ever seen and if you go to Amsterdam I highly recommend checking it out! 

We bailed Amsterdam on Sunday and headed for Brussels. Very happy with our efforts so far and looking forward to our snacks on the 3 hr train trip:

NOTE: Germany does NOT have salt and vinegar flavoured chips or Pringles... Mine and Alice's favorite flavour so we were very excited to eat these!! 

And then it all came tumbling down....

We went to get off the train in Brussles when I hear from Alice "Eb, do you have my backpack?" "Ummmm, No..Why? Where is it?" 

STOLEN! THATS WHERE!!! LAAAAAAAME! 

So we spent the next 2 and a half hours in a Belgian Police Station which was super lame and defs put a dampener on the entire Brussels experience. It was also wet and cold which didn't help the situation.

Alice was obviously pretty upset, but then we got to the hostel and she said "Lets go get drunk!" 

Being the awesome friend that I am... We came, We Drank, and We Conquered! We had dudes buying us drinks left, right and centre and had a great night out drinking Cherry Flavoured Beer! 

Saying I woke up worse for wear the next day is probably the biggest understatement of my life... Alice had no clothes cos they got stolen, I felt like my brain was soaking in cherries and we pretty much did nothing all day. It was pouring with rain... I think we had Pizza Hut for dinner and went to the movies to see "The American" with George Cloooooooney.. Please don't go see it. Waste. Of. Money. 

The..uhh...I think we are up to Monday?? Was a better day... Still raining but we felt bad about the lack of photos we were taking and so went on a quick trip around the square and took some snaps for you all to see... Forgive me for not knowing what ANY of them are... but I do know the Police Station is about 50 metres away

Our food choices on this day were a lot better then the day before... We found this amazing, beautiful Crepe place where we indulged...

Nutella and Banana! Yummmm!

As I said earlier, weather was horrendous, for the most part of our last day we tried to grunt the weather and make the most of Brussels. but then we found this cool, WARM, old restaurant and had a few drinks and authentic Belgian food... I had 1/4 chicken with an apple puree and vegies. It was delicious! 

Then we left... And most likely never to see Brussels again. No really, it didn't grab me as a city. There really isn't much to do but eat some chocolate and drink beer. And the famous chocolatiers you can find in all major EU cities so it's not like its exclusive...

So I rate Amsterdam as a 9 outta 10. Great company, beautiful city, ability to let your hair down when most needed. Only thing letting it down was the weather.. Would be great to come back in Summer.

Brussels, honestly, like a 5. Only good things were the food and beer. Although that is sometimes a great reason to go somewhere! Although not enough of a reason for me...

BUT, I has great company with Alice and was good to have a girls weekend and forget about silly stuff that was getting to both of us! 

So there you have it... Pretty dull post too I know (It IS 2:30am). My next one I do believe will be about the Christmas Markets and all the snow we are having here at the moment in Dresden!! I think I will wait until the weekend though because there are a few more times I'm going to the markets and there is more snow so I'll wait! And it will be a nice, joyful, christmassy Blog... yay!! 

I should have one about my good buddy Stu spending about 4 days with me in Dresden and we went to Prague and Berlin but I didn't really use my camera, Stu used his so that'll have to wait till he gets home later this month and sends them to me!

Happy First Day of Eating Advent Chocolates! 

xx