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Merry Christmas to all!

Phew! Back in Melbourne after 3 months!

Since leaving Perth on September 22 my backpacking itinerary has included:

Melbourne (week with parents, AFL GF)
Sydney (transit)
Kuala Lumpur (transit)
Vienna (transit)

Barcelona
Bilbao (transit)
San Sebastian (language course - Hi Fabio!)
Madrid (language course)
Toledo (day trip)
El Escorial (day trip)
Barcelona (again)
Figueres (day trip - Dali)
Tarragona (day trip - roman ruins)
Girona (transit)
Pisa (transit - sleeping in the cold!)

Sandefjord (day trip - whaling museum)
Bergen (overnight stay - thanks Hanne!)
Stord (Saturday night on the town)
Bømlo (Thanks Tom & Lise and your families!)
Haugesand (transit)
Oslo (transit expensive night in hostel)

Hamburg (thanks Kira & Stefan!)
Frankfurt (transit day trip)

Seoul (transit, day trip)

Sydney
Melbourne (home at last!)

Sydney

My flight from Korea arrived in Sydney on Tuesday, 6 days before Christmas. I decided to spent a couple of nights in Sydney and fly back on Thursday. I had hoped to visit my friend Jess but she was in her native Thailand at the time.

I stayed in a hostel in Glebe in the inner west, walking everywhere. The weather was bleak - so much for Sydney's great climate they love to tell Melburnians about!

So, these photos are mainly for Kira and friends from Hamburg , yet to see Sydney. There's a bridge, an opera house and a home for the governor.

Rubber Seoul

From Germany, I searched on the internet for the cheapest available flights to Melbourne. In the week before Christmas I settled on flying to Sydney and catching a domestic flight home.

The cheapest available flight was through Asiana airlines, a carrier of South Korea.

It turns out distance and time wise Seoul is about half way between Frankfurt and Sydney, so a good way to avoid jet lag I keep hearing about. The trip from Germany to Korea is almost due east; from Korea to eastern Australia almost due south.

So, my first time in Asia - albeit for 7 hours. The flight got in around 12:30pm and the flight to Australia left around 8pm.

I spoke to a couple of people in Sydney who said they'd also been through Korea and spent the time in the transfer lounge at the airport. I had spent 6 hours in Vienna airport once (5am-11am), so I wasn't keen to repeat the boredom of waiting.

My face had been cold in Germany and Norway but I hadn't needed gloves. My hands were still frozen about an hour after I returned to the airport!

The photos are of a reconstructed imperial palace complex, close to the heart of the modern city. Korea was an independent kingdom until the turn of the 20th century when the Japanese invaded, destroying and pillaging many sites of Korean identity,

Frankfurt

Having spent a week and a half with Kira and Stefan (thank you for letting me stay on your couch!) I decided to go home for Christmas.

The major international airport is in Frankfurt, a 6.5 hour bus trip from Hamburg. Leaving at 11:30pm on a Saturday, I arrived at 6am on the Sunday. My flight wasn't scheduled until 6pm that night, so I had 12 hours... I managed to fill in my time by visiting the christmas market and yet another art gallery which too had Picasso. This exhibit focussed on his period during the 20s as a producer of avant-garde plays. The plays themselves were a bit arty for me and the costumes suitably Picasso...

Frankfurt was bombed to smithereens in the Second World War (go the allies!) The city has been rebuilt as a modern expanse of skyscrapers. It has a nice river too, which you can see from the photos.

Hamburg part 2

Some more photos. The church is Sant Nikolai which was destroyed during WWII. The waterway is the lake Alster, with the the beach on the shores of the Elbe near the port.

Hamburg part 1

Two nights in the hostel while Kira and Stephan, her boyfriend, were cramming for exams.

Met a nice couple from QLD who were touring Europe. So hi to Carmen and Bruce if you get to emailing me! They taught me a card game, 'shithead'. Sorry Mum but that's what they called it!

The first morning I did my washing at a laundromat where I spoke to an Ecuadorean woman and her young daughter. Funny where you can converse in Spanish.

Since staying at Kira's we've been out to a football match, featuring St Pauli - they drew 1 all. A couple of photos, with me looking confused. It's a suburban venue where the crowd sing wildly to pop tunes such as the Beatles in German. They have inherited chants from visiting British hooligans, so a few in English too. Quite a different world from the MCG. I got rained on with beer when the home team scored a goal and fell on my backside with all the commotion!

We also visited the Reeperbahn, supposedly a world famous district of the night. Stephan's a table soccer nut and got a bit frustrated by my ineptitude.

Bought some socks, jeans and a scarf.

Today I explore solo while Kira and Stephan are studying.

From Norway to Germany.

Monday morning, I've been here for a nearly a week.

Lise's father graciously gave me a lift to the bus stop last Monday at 6:30 in the morning. I didn't have any change. Fortunately a guy named Hans, now a police officer in Haugesund, knew her dad from army training and loaned me the money.

Then a 9 hour bus ride from Haugesund to Oslo - the scenic route. Lots of landscapes similar to the ones in earlier photos plus snow. I shut my eyes for a second to find that, on exiting a tunnel, the entire countryside was blanketed in white! The bus didn't stop, so no snowmen for me. :-(

So, on to Oslo... One night in a hostel, the cheapest I could book. Bastards charged me 50NOK for sheets! The city itself is a pleasing metropolis of clean streets, shopping and TRAMS! Probably a nice place to live, assuming one has a salary to pay for it. I like Norway but the $AUS dollar doesn't stretch very far.

The next day I had my first, and only, Spanish conversation in Norway. Unfortunately it was with two South American Jehovah's Witnesses who stopped me at the train station because they thought I looked Spanish - flattering I guess. The dark hair isn't such a factor but most Norwegians I met have blue eyes.

Just a tip for the airport train. There is an express train and a stopping all stations. The latter only takes 40 minutes and is half the price.

The flight and passage to my hostel were uneventful.

Bømlo part 6.

A final walk in the countryside.

Bømlo part 5.

More photos of nature.

Bømlo part 4.

Tomas and I borrowed a canoe.

Bømlo part 3.

The forest.

Bømlo part 2.

A rainbow...

Bømlo Part 1

After Bergen Lise and I caught a bus to Stord where Tom picked us up. I went on my first ferry!

I've spent 2 weeks here visiting the sights of Bømlo and eaten reindeer.

Again I'll let the photos do the talking. Apologies for blurriness, I was quite windy in parts. Note the Norwegian 'beach'!

A day in Bergen

Following on from my previous post, Lise met me at the luggage carousel in Bergen. She had arranged for us to stay a night at her friend Hanne's house but by the time we reached the town it was 11pm and she'd gone to bed.

So, Lise and I went out for a drink. She and Tom left Perth in early September, so I hadn't seen them for 2 months.

Unlike Spain, everyone know's English to some degree. Which is good because after 2 weeks I only know a handful of Norsk expressions such as "Takk" - thank you. Still, everyone out that night seemed bemused that here was a fellow talking English from the other side of the world.
Lise and I entered a Scottish bar where a local was trying to convince me in a strange accent that he was Canadian!

The next morning Hanne, the blonde girl in the photo, showed us around her city. She took us up the top of the hill via a steep cable car. (I think it's called a funicular?) From here you can views of the city. I tried to convince the girls that someone should build a giant waterslide from the top into the bay!