My First (Cold) Birthday - Berlin

Somewhere between moving to London, finding my feet, starting the a new job, making friends, exploring london & some of europe, I found a best friend - Steph(boy). We met on July 1st (my first day @ Bloomberg), and 2 weeks later he took over training me when our other colleague was away. He took pity on me, we got along, and became really good friends.

After my trip to Oktoberfest/Prague/Bamberg/Dusseldorf, I came home to London to hear from Steph that he was interested in me. Long story short, after a bit of confusion, some hesitations, and a LOT of talking.. a first date led to a 2nd, and a 3rd, and nek minnit - we're together. 

Before any of the above happened, I'd booked to take Steph to Budapest for his birthday the following February. So with my birthday in November, he stole my idea and booked a trip for us to Berlin. Given the new-found romance,  Berlin was definitely going to be a bit of a test...

One of the perks of being a Valentines Day baby (born late Nov) means (in Europe) the start of the Christmas Markets. And aside from a few other countries, Germany's are supposed to be the best. So we jetted off to (FREEZING but not snowing) Berlin for my first EVER cold birthday.

What we didn't realise when booking the hotel was that we'd booked in the Financial District, which meant there wasn't a lot buzzing around us on a weekend. Although we were a close to our first stop - the meeting point for the free walking tour - Brandenberg Gates.

Don't bother asking me what we learned on that 3 hour tour, but trust me it was bloody interesting. I know we went to the Jewish Memorial (weirdly intense), the Book Burning Memorial, the parking lot ontop of the bunker where Hitler shot himself, checkpoint Charlie, some of the remains of the Berlin Wall, and more.

This place was the COLDEST I'd ever been. I remember I couldn't feel my feet (I was wearing boots) after about an hour, and my hands were so cold numb and yellow, that one of the guys on our tour gave me his ski-gloves to wear for the rest of the tour. C-O-L-D. Definitely not the 30something degree birthday that I'm used to.

We bought a bottle of red wine from the supermarket and drank that in our hotel room before dinner. The wine out there is surprisingly good! We picked a random restaurant for my birthday dinner; ate a lot, and drank a lot.

The Xmas markets were amazing. So beautifully decorated, the little pop-up bars are heating with indoor seating, SO MUCH FOOD. I love LOVE a good currywurst. And the melted cheese on baguettes, and all the roasted nuts, and fudge. I was in HEAVEN. It's so easy to spend half the day just wandering through the different markets :)

Rule #6: Find the local markets!

I should preface this this by saying that Steph calls me Chip - mainly because I have chubby cheeks like a Chipmunk, and now also because I chipped my front tooth on the pavement when I fell during a run. Anyway - looking for a breakfast place on our last day and we came across a place called 'Chipps'. SOLD. And my god, a good choice. I dont even remember what we had, but pancakes and a big breakky sounds about right - I can remember being extremely full and satisfied on the way home.. 

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Marathon des Alpes-Maritimes Nice-Cannes

I made my first friend in London at a running club on my 2nd or 3rd day in London. Her name's Chanti, and 1.5 years later we're still friends :D (Funnily enough, I met another really close friend Steph at a different running club a few weeks later - I think running clubs are the way to go for meeting new people!)

We (Chanti & I) registered to run the Nice-Cannes Marathon together in a team. So, I would run from Nice to Antibe (21km), and tag Chanti who would run from Antibes to Cannes. 

 The run was BEAUTIFUL. Majority of my half was along the French Riviera, mostly flat (mind, VERY strong headwinds), but definitely the most breathtaking view (and best distraction) when running for 2 hours. 

We both finished in a total of about 4hrs 15mins. The best part - the medals! If you ran as a team, you got these click-clack medals that fit into each-other and make 1 big medal. Clever frenchies!

Nice is nice (ha), but my god - full of people with SO much money! And prices are adjusted accordingly - 2 coffees (tiny) cost us €10! We met up with some of the other guys from the run club after the run, and then again later that eve after dinner, for more drinks. Another very drunk (and expensive) night out, which meant a cheap grocery shop stop in the morning for breakky instead of a cafe. We sat at the beach soaking up the rays (and the scenery) before heading home.

Escaping the cold/wet of London for mid 20's sun and a run along the riviera was definitely a good idea. We're planning it again for 2015... Mainly for the medals :P

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Thirsty Swagman

Prague/Bamberg/Dusseldorf

So I get off my bus in Prague - one of myunexpected favourite cities from 2012 - and head to the hotel,  give my name at reception, and I'm shown to my room. 

All I can say is that coming from a scummy hostel in Munich that I shared with 7 others, to my twin room in a 4* hotel - Wow wow wow. The sheets were clean, the room was flashy, complete with TV and those little complimentary shampoo/conditioners. I don't know what I'd expected, but I definitely didn't expect this from a tour called 'Thirsty Swagman'. 

I chilled until Shoogs and the rest of the tour showed up. Shoogs was staying for one overlapping night and then flying out the following eve. I was roomed with a Kiwi girl and Shoogs. We got ready, headed downstairs and met the rest of the group. To be honest, only a few of them were my kinda people, but that's all I needed because I bonded with Shoogs, Chi, and Zuza pretty quickly! The rest of the guys were mainly RAAF guys from Australia, which meant mutual Facebook friends. They were friendly enough, and one of them seemed to have a weirdly aggressive relationship with an American chic on the tour. Easier to steer clear.

Anyway, I guess the whole point of the 'Thirsty Swagman' tours is that you go out on the piss every night, and spend the next day recovering. So the first night out was a pub-crawl, as was the next, and the next.. I think you get where I'm going. The 3 cities kind-of blur into one. So here comes some more dot-points on what I do remember:

Prague

- We went on a hunt for the John Lennon Wall (a must-see, as I missed it last time!) and you can never take too many pictures

- The bridges in are beautiful - but don't stand too close to the edge or you might lose your camera (as Shoogs did)

- Lunch @ 'School Restaurant' on the river was uber relaxing.

- The astronomical-clock is gorgeous, as is the rest of the city. Do not visit Prague without a camera.

- Massages are cheap!

- Zuza's name is always fun to say

Bamberg

- Not a lot to see/do here, but dancing down the street along the Canals with Zuza and Chi was definitely a highlight.

- Never underestimate female bonding. I had a long-distance romance called off via email at a pub in Bamberg (fun!), and although I'd known them for 2 days - those girls treated me like I was their best friend.

- €15 for fake timberlands is a bargain 

Dusseldorf

- Some people have too much money. The hotel we stayed in, was INSANELY flashy.

- 260 ish bars & clubs, within 1sq km = Dangerous.

- Germans really are eclectic with their music taste - there were literally hiphop clubs next to heavy metal bars, and burlesque clubs next to a jazz cafe. Something for everyone.

- Don't get drunk and try to order €80 of room service at your hotel unless you've got someone there to stop you (Thanks Chi).

- I realised I'm running out of money, drinking doesn't help a sad heart, a bit happy to be going back to London, and in massive need of a detox!

Nothing like a drunken week away to cleanse the soul...
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Oktoberfest

Another thing on my Europe bucket-list: not just the largest beer festival in the world, but the largest fair altogether - OKTOBERFEST. Allana and I booked to go for Munich's 2013 Closing Weekend. Held since 1810, around 6 MILLION people visit over the 16/17 day festival each year, 6 main breweries and over 7 million litres of beer poured - with one little issue for me: I don't drink beer.

So I booked with the tour company Fanatics - for a 3 night hostel stay - and Allana booked for the same but with Top Deck. Basically we needed the accommodation that the tour companies were offering, because we left it too late to book and everywhere had either sold out, or was extortionate pricing. So £300 for 3nights in a hostel (although a COMPLETE ripoff) was what we had to fork out. 

But, about 1 month before our Oktoberfest trip - I got an unexpected email..

The 'Thirsty Swagman' himself - Kenneth - had emailed me to advise that I had won the Thirsty Swagman facebook competition, for a 12 night, €2500, 4-5* Europe trip. What-the-f*ck. I didn't believe it - so I had a quick google of the tour company, and true enough, Thirsty Swagman was owned and run by a guy called Kenneth, and the tour I'd won looked AMAZING. Oktoberfest, Maria Alm (Austria), Prague, Bamberg, and Dusseldorf. One catch though - the trip INCLUDED Oktoberfest, but on different dates to what I'd already booked and paid for (the tour started IN Munich on the Wednesday before the closing weekend).. Luckily - Ken was a gem, and told me that if I could find another FEMALE to take the first half of the tour, I could meet them in Prague (missing out on Maria Alm) after my Oktoberfest weekend. Otherwise, I'd have to give up my €2500 spot on the tour. My issue - I'd only been in London for like 3 months, and didn't know any ladies that could take it. Long story short, through a friend - I met Sam, aka Shoogs. This lady was a blessing in disguise in more ways than one, and is now one of my close friends. Shoogs was stoked, and flew out to Munich on the Wednesday. I was to fly out on the Friday eve, when the Thirsty Swagman tour was headed for Maria Alm. 

Lans and I landed late on the Friday so we went straight to bed in our bunkbedded dorms.. All we knew was that we had to be ready and downstairs by 7am, to walk over to the Oktoberfest tents. They open at 9am, and if you're not one of the first in the tent, goodluck getting a table. I met the other girls from the Fanatics tour, all Aussie or Kiwi - great bunch! Most living in London, others on the usual Aussie trip around Europe. We figured we'd team up and get a table as close to the stage as possible (because the centre of the tent usually hosts a stage platform where the band for the day will perform). The tent doors opened, and OH MY... Everyone gushes in like it's the Boxing Day sales and there's only 1 x 50inch TV left.. It was unreal.

We got a table, and started getting our first order ready for the Kellner/Kellnerin (waiter/waitress) - we'd been told to ALWAYS TIP the first round. So each stein (1litre) of beer is officially something like €9.10, which means you will always pay a flat €10 at the least. BUT, if you want good service throughout the day, pay at LEAST €20 for your first stein, and he/she will be loyal to your table. Otherwise, you might find yourself waiting a while for each round of beer. These guys & gals work off tips only, and they work HARD (carrying 7 FULL steins in one arm is standard). Anyway, after ordering my first (and only) full stein, and shouting 'Prost' (cheers) about 6 times, it all began - and I managed to finish that stein. Not actually bad at all! but the beer is STRONG, so it'll be Radlers for me (half beer / half lemonade) for the rest of the weekend.

I don't really know how to put into words the atmosphere inside the tents. When you think about it, it's a bunch of strangers sitting in giant tents drinking beer and singing songs -for about 12 hours - could get boring right? WRONG. It's so much more than that. Everyone's trading stories, trying to learn words in eachother's languages and songs in german, yelling 'prost' a thousand times, cheers-ing as hard as possible each time.. And the Band - incredible. Kept us entertained throughout the day with their german songs, oldies like 'Country Road' or 'Heyyyyyyy, hey baby, ooh, ahh, I wanna knowwww, if you'll be my girl'. Then - out of nowhere, late afternoon, the last thing you expected out of the traditional german band that could be easily made up of retired old men - starts busting out songs like 'Avicii - Wake me up' - a huge crowd pleaser - which ends up being our anthem for the weekend. 

The bouncers/security guards had one rule - no skulling/downing your steins. If you do, they throw you out. I only saw a few people try it, and they were both thrown out. As the day goes on, you understand why - because people get messier and messier, a few scuffles and arguments here and there - but for majority of the day, it's an incredible HAPPY place. Another one of those tips we'd had for Oktoberfest, was to make sure that you get out of the tent at some point, and explore the festival site. So we escaped the mayhem in the tents for a couple of hours, and got exploring. The place surrounding the tents reminded me of the Perth Royal Show .. Think rides, stalls, games, food.. The girls from my hostel room and I all ventured into the Fun-Haus. Think of a clown's obstacle course with spinning cylinders and rickety bridges and mirrors etc. We came out bruised, but smiling.

That night was interesting - I'd managed to have a kip on my stein glass for about 20 minutes around 2pm - which didn't phase the guys on our table, cause they kept 'prost-ing' as hard as they could with their steins above my head, which of course ended in some shattered glass, a near-fistycuffs between Allana and one my hostel roommates (neither knew that the other was trying to make sure my head wasnt impaled), a few drunken arguments around us, and by about 9pm I was ready for out. So I stumbled back to the hostel room, where one of the chics was having (loud) sex in the bathroom with the tourguide, while her 'we met while travelling so let's see where this goes' boyfriend was knocking on our door asking where she was. Awks.. 

Now, that the LAST day (the Sunday) would be the busiest day, so we were told - DON'T leave your tent unless you plan on leaving for good, or lining up for a while to get back in (once the tent is full, it's a 1-in, 1-out system). Surprisingly with minimal hangover, we headed down to the tents. Very much the same as the first day, but this time instead of taking a nap on my stein, I took a nap on the barrier between the tables and the walkway :P Still only 20 mins, and it perked me up for the rest of the day. By 8ish Allana and I were starving (and not willing to pay €20+ for a pork knuckle in the tent, so we escaped the tent to the carnival site, found some corn-on-the-cob, wandered to a restaurant for the best pork knuckle (for half the price), and stumbled back to the hostel.

All in all - the whole experience was amazing, but I wish I'd been more of a beer drinker at the time (I'm now converted) because the beer bloaty belly and carb overload wasnt fun by each evening. 

I somehow, managed a run on the Monday morning (literally 15 minutes in the freezing cold but better than nothing!), packed up, said goodbye to Lans, and headed to the Munich Central station to catch my 4/5hour bus to Prague. En route to see Shoogs, the Thirsty Swagman, and my 4 to 5* accommodation. 

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Stockholm Syndrome

A family friend (from Sweden) had been living in Perth for about 8 months before I moved to London. She - Natalie - is now living back in Sweden, and we swore that we'd meet up once I was in Europe. So in September, I flew out to Stockholm for a quick 2 night trip to see her, and explore another city.

My memory really is shot, because I honestly don't remember much of what we did. But I do remember landing, and Natalie the sweetheart, (who had flown in a few hours earlier) had killed time in the airport reading her book and waiting for me to land.

I've gotta say it was so handy having a Swedish speaker with me, because that language isn't one you can figure out by using similar words (like you can with spanish/french/italian). Ordering a salad was so confusing that I ended up asking Natalie to have most of my conversations for me. I don't have any crazy stories for this trip, so I'll jot out the memorable bits below:

- The old town (Gamla Stan) is BEAUTIFUL. We literally spent half a day wandering through the cobbled streets. Some of the alleyways are tiiiny.

- The view from the City-Hall is even more beautiful.

- Fika's are the best. Cinnamon buns and coffee - everyday - works for me!

- The people are some of the friendliest I've come across. Even with the language barrier, they were always smiling.

- No matter where you are in Europe/the world, you will ALWAYS find a Irish bar

- Our night-time activities always sounded like a bad joke. I.e. An Aussie and a Swede sitting in an Irish Bar (after eating Spanish tapas) trying to speak Creole.

- Swedish salads are amazing!

- I'm regretting that I never had Swedish meatballs - next time.

- I didn't actually see an IKEA

- H&M is Swedish?! And they're everywhere

- Shopping is actually amazing there. The shops are huge. I found myself with a new watch, and boots..

-Swedish cider is also delish - and sooo many different brands/flavours!! Move over Kopparberg & Rekorderlig!

- Running helps with travel-tiredness. I went for a little jog along the canal to stretch my legs, and came up with:

Rule #5 - Run wherever you can.

Lastly - Natalie is the sweetest girl :) I can't wait to plan another trip with her! 
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Eminem

When I moved over, I had a list of 3 artists that I would see if they ever came to the UK - rain, hail, or shine. Those were - Goo Goo Dolls, Ed Sheeran, and EMINEM. So it was a no-brainer when I saw that Eminem was performing at Slane Castle in Dublin (I know, not the UK - but close enough!)

I flew out on the Saturday morning and arrived in the Temple Bar area (at my hostel) at like midday. I couldn't check-in til 2, so went up to the common area and had a nap. Nek minnit - in walks Anna (a fellow Aussie, and now - new friend), and I discover she's just done the same trip (mind you, she did the bus/ferry/train/bus option - some 15 hours instead of the quick flight I'd done). She was also solo, so we teamed up (were actually in the same hostel room). We got ready, and jumped on one of the shuttle busses to Slane Castle - actually not all that close to Dublin). Were dropped off about 3km from the actual castle, walked through the mud (it was raining), bought our Poncho's, and took it all in. The site was incredible. Imagine a massive ampitheatre without the stairs, with a Castle at the bottom and a stage in front of the castle. We were all staggered up the hill, waiting..  Eminem came on at 9pm, and did about 2 hours of mash-ups from Slim Shady LP through to Relapse/Recovery. I hardly drank, but enjoyed every second if it. That man is a genius, and I'd have flown almost anywhere to see him. Definitely worth the trip, and definitely glad I ticked that one off the list.

The next day my flight was in the afternoon. Ciara (the Irish chic I met in Madrid earlier in the year) was visiting family about 1 hour out of Dublin - so she caught a train in and met me for coffee & cake. Such a gem for making the trip. 

A quick fly in & out visit to Dublin, to see my favourite white-boy.

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I got a job! And Round # 2 in Amsterdam

Back in London.

I must admit I was pretty bloody lucky with my start in London. When I'd been in Majorca, I had an email from the recruiter in London saying that Bloomberg had seen my CV, and wanted to interview me for a contract/temp position. So I landed back from Lisbon on a Saturday, spent the Sunday prepping, and had my interview first thing Monday morning. 

I had absolutely no idea what the role was, nor did I particularly understand it after having the interview. A mix of customer support / training, and technical troubleshooting. Not exactly where my experience lies. But hey, it's a job right? And let's be honest - it's Bloomberg - I'd have interviewed for anything if they'd asked. By Monday afternoon I'd had a call from the recruiter saying that they'd like to offer me the job. By Tuesday I had the contract, and was due to start the following Monday. That's how quickly it all happened for me. Like I said - LUCKY.

 I already had my 'last hurrah' trip to Amsterdam booked for that coming weekend, so it was pretty fitting that it would be my last weekend unemployed too. On the Friday, I flew out to Amsterdam to meet up with Caitlan and 2 of her friends, with plans to meet up with Hayley & Jeff the next day for our final night together before they flew home.

I don't remember too much significant happening in Amsterdam. A lot of drinking. A lot of walking into clouds of weed smoke. Nearly getting taken out by cyclists. The by far most exciting part - was something called the 'Magnum Experience' - a tip from Ciara that I'd met in Madrid - which was a pop-up store where you could... Wait for it... MAKE YOUR OWN MAGNUM ICECREAM. Hayley was in heaven, as the rest of us were. Hayls & I had our final night out on the Sat night - a very emotional one at that. I can't remember it ever being so hard to say goodbye to someone (aside from my family when leaving Aus) - I guess the drinks didn't make it easier, but we were both blubbering by the end.

The next day I was on my own, Hayls n Jeff had left, Caitlan and the others were packing to leave - so I figured I'd do something cultured and go on the Free Walking Tour of Amsterdam. Having done the cycling tour the year before, I thought I'd know everything.. I did NOT. The best part though, was meeting Brooke. Brooke was late 20's, from Bristol, England, and was in Amsterdam for the weekend for work. We were both on the tour solo, and hit it off straight away. By the end of the trip, we'd exchanged numbers, facebook friendships (I got her REAL account - not the fake one she gives to her clients ha), and vowed to organise a weekend that I could go across to Bristol for a weekend. 1 year later, I've been to Bristol - twice - and Brooke and I are now really good friends. It's actually the travel blog she started for her 3 month South America trip that inspired me to get mine back into gear. Cheers Brooke.

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