I made it out of Paris! For a while there I did not know if I would, I got trapped in a cycle of alcohol, sight seeing and partying that was very difficult to break. In fact I attempted to leave Paris on Wednesday and failed, ended up spending the night in a budget hotel in the burbs with an awesome Australian chick from Redfern, Hannah who came for an adventure with me. I had an amazing time, that was more because of meeting some seriously awesome people then Paris itself.

Paris is very beautiful and elegant, but also; rude, sleazy and arrogant. I would like it more without the French in it, and less if I had not met Katie, Bree, Bliss, Hannah and Lochie amongst others. We had so much fun drinking at the Eiffel tower (repeatedly) smuggling contraband booze into our room to play circle of death, going to open mike night at the Beaver (yes the Beaver, it is a Canadian bar near Notre Dame) and generally having a wild time and consuming revolting amounts of alcohol. I had 2 very interesting nights in the luggage room at the hostel.

I did the tourist thing; went to the Louvre, Sacre Couer, Catacombs, Notre Dame, Musee D'Orsee, Montmattre, saw Gallo Roman ruins. All very cool and interesting, but maybe better if you hvae slept more then 3 hours a night.

I have been living on the most phenomenomally fantastic cheese in the world, drinking lovely cheap wine and watching my money vanish like water out of a cotton pocket.

My French has improved hugely (which is not hard considering how crap it was before), I can do pretty much all the basics about directions, purchasing things, small talk and more. Unbelievably I actually needed to know 'window' in French which was great because it is the only thing I remembered from school (oh and how to say 'I am a black and white dog' which is yet to prove at all useful).

Last night Hannah and I stayed in Troyes which was singularly the most bizzare experience of this trip by far. Troyes is south of Paris and full of stupidly well dressed people (who make me look and smell filthier then hobos sleeping at train stations, which I am still a rung above at least) it is lovely and pretty and the former capital of Champagne, but dont bother going.

The youth hostel in Troyes is inhabited by what appears to be a family of bogans who are renovating the place. Hannah and I were the only ones under 55, apart from Cody the cockhead from America. There was a tonne of cats and it was officially bucolic. Very weird, many stories to tell.

Hannah and I parted company in Beaune today, and now I am in Lyon, which is very pretty and seems infinitely cooler then Paris. And it appears that I can eat without selling my remaining, slightly used kidney, hooray! I am here for 2 nights, which hopefully will give me time to wash every item of clothing I own, since that should have been done 10 days ago, and organise my life, or at least getting to Barcelona.

So from Lyon for now au revoir, bon soir and bientot to all.

So I have climbed 900 steps of the Eiffel Tower, drunk a lot of red wine and eaten bread and cheese. Welcome to Paris! I have a lot to do, there are things to be peered at, lifestyles to voyeur, more cheese to be eaten, museums to peruse. I am tired just thinking about it.

I have managed to do something really clever. After spending the last day in Amsterdam with Attila the Hun(garian no really) I discovered somewhere I have lost my Eurail pass... And thanks to my recent birthday I am now too old to get the one I had before. Pissed. Need to figure out travel insurance dealie. But I did not lose my phone, thought I did, but no still with me, oh and on phones; hasn't worked since Poland so I only just got messages recently and I have no credit so thanks everyone who sent me birthday messages.

On the plus side I have acquired a fabulous hat, another toothbrush, 2 deoderants, socks and a romance novel. I only purchased the hat. The rest is a mystery...

My birthday in Amsterdam was really fun. Here are some key words; bar, beer, malibu, beer, balloons, spliffs, nightclubs, mushrooms, whiskey, beer, dehydration, space cake, spliffs, bar, coffee shop, head shop, spliffs, cake, free doobies, repeat.

Love Amsterdam.  It is the best place to have a birthday party. I want to live here one day. Apart from the liberal drug laws this is an awesome city, many reasons.

I zm changing my plans. I will be back later. Going to live and work in Amsterdam for a while.. Univerze has conspired to make this the most appealing way to keep travelling.

Yesterday was just one of those days methinks and it is over now! I did end having an awesome night at Club Prozak, I met some very cool Polish girls and we hung out and danced up a storm and talked crap, lots of fun, day redeemed.

I have loved Krakow, it is beautiful and not crawling with 4.2 million tourists, very lovely. It is not a big town but it has 600 bars/clubs and half the population are students. This all adds up to a very cool place to hang out, sight see, meet people and party, which is pretty

much the aim of this trip so, I have been very happy here.

It is another city that was not bombed during World War 2. This is mainly because it was occupied by Germany from the start. Auschwitz is 80kms away from here. So it has the 10th century onwards buildings and history as well as being an important site for modern history. 

Polish people are seriously good looking, it is eye candy city, very impressed, if only the men were a little bit taller, but no complaints. so many beautiful boys - and girls but I am looking at the boys. Public displays of affection are a lot more acceptable here. All of this and some other factors means I leave thinking of Krakow as a very romantic city. Fantastic, if you get a chance come see you should, but do it quick, I predict in 5 years this place will be a major tourist destination/bucks night hang out.

Since my next stop is Amsterdam it may be a while before I post again. Fear not I will write again eventually, and will have excellent tales to share, or not! So the next post may be after the 19th from Paris... We will see.

My Krakow post is unfinished but has been published instead of being saved as a draft, I may expand further later. For now I need to vent.

The last 24 hours have sucked. Last night all I wanted to do was go out and not be be myself. It was always going to be a tough day, and it was made harder by the fact that I sat around waiting for someone to show up for an hour before discovering they were not coming. Then when I went to meet people they were gone, phones switched off. Hard day, not fun and very emotional. All I wanted was to have a fun evening and some company, instead I sat in the hostel on my own. Yesterday was not the day for this to happen, any other day and I would not have cared.

I woke up this morning and I have broken out in the itchiest rash in the world, which is apparently an allergic reaction to something... What nobody knows. The rash is commonly reffered to as 'nettle rash' so anyone who has encountered a stinging nettle at close quarters should be able to sympathise with how f@#king itchy I am. It is taking all of my powers to ease the itchiness and avoid scratching.

This afternoon I wandered up to the very beautiful castle to distract myself from my misery. I attempted to get cash out of an ATM and it ate my card. So now I have no access to my money, the ichiest rash in the world and an over-burdened psyche. Jebus today sucks, a lot. I should have stayed in bed. I now have to go and use my emergecny stash to tide me over. I suppose that is why I have an emergency stash... but I did not want to have to use it.

Crap crap crap and other more offensive expletives.

Amsterdam in 2 days. Can't wait, anythng else goes wrong and Iam crwaling into bed and never getting out again.

I am in love.

Faded grandeur

Gruff police demand passport

Polish station dawn

So your train leaves the main station at Prague at 21:18 on a Saturday night, the most logical thing to do is to go out and enjoy a meal and some drinks before boarding the train. Especially after learning about a fantastic micro-brewery around the corner from your hostel that brews flavoured beer. 

The extremely cool Australian couple from Canberra, JP and Sharon met me for the best cheapest coffee in Prague then onto aforementioned brewery. The food turned out to be very cheap and tasty -  breaded beer battered mushrooms... drool and the sour cherry beer was divine. Then we discovered the giraffe, which is a 4 litre beer in a kind of dispenser thing with its own tap all for your very own consumption (split between 3 it is actually not that much beer to drink over a long meal). Needless to say it did not take much to talk me into acquiring one for our table.

Everything was running according to plan, only somewhere along the way I got it into my head that the train was leaving at 21:28. Which meant I was cutting things fine, but it should have all worked out. I made it to my platform at 21:16, should have still been fine, but the train was rolling very slowly away. I resisted the urge to try out my superhero powers and jump on the languidly escaping train and instead, did the sensible thing and missed the damn thing.

It left so early it was 21:19 when I rocked up at the ticket office, sheepish grin on my face and my now void ticket in hand. The phenomenonally unhelpful dude at the ticket desk returned half my fare (which was no problem at all since the ticket was $20 to start with for a 9 hour train journey) and then sighed and carried on when I enquired about other trains to Krakow but eventaully gave me a new ticket.

I ended up on a train to Moscow that left an hour later yet would have gotten me there at the same time, if I had not missed my train in Karocawice. the soviet train was something unto itself, it has to be experienced I think and was worth the hassle. It was very functional and must have been the height of luxury before 1973. it had carpets and these nifty bed things that folded out of the walls and not a single soul spoke English. It was actually very cool and took care of my fears of being robbed on the overnight from Prague to Krakow.

In my defense I would like to note here that it was not my fault I missed the connection in Poland, the Soviet train arrived a good hour late to the station, which well and truly blew my 40 minute buffer between trains. And now I can say I have watched the sun come up over a Polish train station, which was bizarre, surreal and all veery foreign, it is the furthest away I have felt so far on this trip. I am still mystified as to why the Russian train Stewardess person thought it neccessary to come and wake me up to get ready to get off a good 70 minutes before we arrived.

I have also discovered an incredibly handy skill to add to my repetoire; mime. I mimed things that I previously would have thought impossible. I managed to communicate; "I need that ticket to get on the next train, can I have it back?" the answer was no, but they did return it when I got off the train. "Sorry my alarm clock will wake you up early." and "That bag will fall down when the train starts moving." I did draw the line at attempting the to mime "the toilet paper has fallen in the toilet, can I have another roll please?" and resorted to the always handy packet of tissues in my pocket.

All in all an eye-opening night. I did not even panic once despite the eventful evening and failure to catch 2 trains in strange Eastern European countries. Very interesting travelling.

Prague is fantsatic, but it is time to go our seperate ways. I am off to Pland tonight to spend some time in Krakow, I have no idea what to expect, but I hear it is beautiful. I have had so much fun in Prague and met some seriously cool people, it has been every bit as wonderful as I hoped for, and some.

The most traumatic experience I had here is a toss up between being woken up by an air raid siren, which was extraodinarily confusing, shocking and unpleasant, or the train trip to Kutna Hora to see the bone church. Each was difficult for it own reasons. The air raid siren occured when I was comfortable warm and contented, being rudely awoken into a world of fear and ear pain was not so much fun. The train journey was longer, smelt like BO, I could not sit down and I had an ongoing fight with my stomach about whether or not I should vomit after staying up in the hostel drinking absinthe with the Australian crew. Both turned out to be great days where much fun was had and much merriment made, neither were good ways to start the day.

The Czechs have the best hangover vegetarian food in the world. In Kutna Hora I had potato pancakes and cheese, which was an enormous mound of potato with like half a block of cammebert in the middle of it deep fried. Divine, it was the best greasy offering I could have made to my poor ravaged stomach. It is also a heart attack in a meal, but worth every gram of arterial plaque, fanstastic. And fixed me completely, allowed a reconciliation with my innards, for the princely sum of $5.

Ok let me just say first up that the following in no way lessens how much I love Prague, but some things need to be shared.

Before the hostel became totally over run by boring Australians who are in bed at 8:30, there was one night of relatively cool people, the first night. So three American students studying in Spain, one Spanish student studying in Prague, three Argentians and I went out for a night on the town. We started out at a really cool pub -  which I have since failed to find again - met some Scottish boys, one of whom was wearing  a kilt, sunglasses and a Russian hat, needless to say we got on like a house on fire. After drinking some extremely cheap and lovely beer we moved on to a nightclub. If I could find the damn quotation marks on this crazy Czech keyboard I would have used them around nightclub.

This nightclub everyone was a bit excited about, it was five floors, erm actually I think that is the only reason they were excited... Anyway I was expecting something pretty cool. So we pay our 100 kroner, go in and check the place out. The basment was playing something akin to Kraftwerk being reinterpreted by stoned pre-schoolers on keyboards missing several notes, we did not stay there long and it was empty. The first floor was playing, I suppose you would call it house, but it was like slow house from 1997. The second floor, which was packed to the ceiling with people going off, was the soundtrack from my year 3 disco, resplendent with such gems as the Final Countdown, Michel Jackson MC Hammer and 

these tragic and almost offensive remixes of things like U2 New Years Day, REM etc.

The dance floor was writhing. It was the most blatant meat market I have ever seen in my life. People would meet each others eyes and then next thing you know genitals grinding, tongue placed firmly in each others mouths, hands everywhere. I avoided eye contact as much as I could. It did not stop 1457 men who looked like ABBA cover bands complete with white open collared shirts with embroidery and 5689 men in white suit jackets and stone wash denim jeans from attempting to make friends.´

I never did find out for myself what the last two floors had, but I learned from those who did not leave with me, that the next floor was more primary school disco but slower, I'm assuming this is where the couples went to slow dance, and the final floor held nothing at all.

Now I don't know it may have been a revival night or something but amongst the poorly dressed men were many outfits that would not seem out of place in a Sydney club today.

I got home at 5am after walking back with the extremely cool Argentian girl pissing ourselves laughing the whole way. It was a memorable night and I have video footage as proof that this not fiction or a dream.