so our time in cologne was always made better by the giant synagogue right beside our hostel. other then that the city didn't stick out much. remains of city walls, churches, bells, and a river. now dont get me wrong i loved it, just little to write about. when on my computer konz randomly came online; now we are in broken at konz's house. i thought he was in holland or canada. quite happy to be able to visit him.

fun fact: we are getting taken to the exact same beerfest mitch and josh went to all those years ago.

k so i slacked off. the days we spent in warsaw were boring. its a buisness town and we were a 20-25 min walk from anything cool. the hostel workers new so little they couldn't tell me where the nearest corner store, supermarket, restaurant, or pub was. when we got out of warsaw we went to berlin where it was a very nice city but unfortunately we saw no sights whatsoever. our time was dealing with sickness, finding hospitals, and trying to work things out. we left berlin and i kid you not we were on a train on a boat. i didn't know that was possible. apparently its faster.
we saw copenhagen and it was nice and all but our favorite part was training over one of the longest world bridges to get to malma. its a small southern swedish town, also the home of the swedish girls we met in krakow. we had a bbq on the beach, went swimming, and went clubbing with them. it was amazing to be with locals.
after all that fun we went to lypsig to visit josh's long lost family. they lived in the middle of nowhere, it was beautiful although there was no internet of cell signal of any kind. we were shown around once again by locals. i swear it makes it better. the only downer is the only person tat spoke 'fluent' english was 15. so i language barrier was hard but not impassable.
right now we just made it to colgune and right as you exit the train station there is quite possible tthe most amazing building we have seen so far. it is impressively large and made with gothic styling. were actually going to investigate it right now.

howdy neighbor. long time no talk. i blame it on the horrible internet connection we have had in poland so far. im broadcasting live from warsaw right now. so ill go all the way back to prague.
we took a free walking tour and some Scottish guy names peter gave us an amazing 4 hour tour in a thick accent. we realized weve been missing out this whole time because that was amazing so first thing we do in krakow was a free walking tour. not nearly as good but still quite fun. krakow is easily the most beautiful city we have been to so far. we went around town, saw shindler's factory, atched transformers 2, and on our last day went to Auschwitz. the last day was one of the most depressing day trips ever but we felt it was important to see. poland is so incredibly cheep we are racking up cash. we can live a day with accommodations for about 20 euro. so awesome. well we just got into warsaw and first order of business is we need food. im hungry must eat now.

chez it out

yea its a lame pun but our hostel the "chez inn" uses it so its alright. prague is a very beautiful city, like very beautiful. old town square has churches so elegant i feel like im in disneyland again. the night life here is also something to be reckoned with. today we decided to take one of our chill days that we take every week or so and just go for ameless walks and read most of the day. tomorrow, our last full day in prague we are going on a walking tour and probably take hundeds of pictures. sounds like fun to me. once again we got lucky with our hostel, its the third or fourth time that we have booked a large dorm and ended up with a private room for the same price. this time it was because our door keys didnt work. it actually getting cold again in the nights here. its so nice to get to wrap up in a blanket. were going to see some crazy concentration camps in poland. going to be a lot different then following the Mediterranean. o we also made te decision to alter our trip so that we see linkin park on the 1st of aug. a little scrambling around but we are going to make this happen.

vienna vienna vienna.... this city was a little different. i think we are getting accustom to a lot of european sights, granted vienna is cool we didnt get our minds blown. we have basically gone on many hour walking adventures is both day and night. we found an english cinema and watched startreck. it was pretty cool. we went shopping today and i finally replaced my razor that broke back in rome. tommorow we are off to prague for a few nights to see how things are there. o the best thing about it here is there is a fruit market right by our hostel. imagine it: real fruit. its so good after eating skimpy meals and fast food for the last month.

alright so its been too long i admit it. captain's log: star date 06/17/09. we reached the budapest galaxy two far days ago. the road was perilous and long. the last day in the athens star system held 11 hours of wandering. bulgeria held a 5-6 hour layover where we decided to treck the city and venture for food, all the eastern cities are so cool. so i guess i didnt specify, we took a night train to bulgeria, a night train to romania, and a night train to budapest. night trains are no super 8 hotel trust you me. you get woken up a minimum of 3 times: once for ticket and twice for passport (either side of the border). not cool. romania was super fun tho. we had an 11 hour layover and decided to get hopelessly lost in the city and see how many cool things we could find. most notably we watched the pixar blockbuster "up" in not only 3d but it was in romanian. man that movie was so good i didnt even need to understand the words and i was in tears. i recommend you go see it, NOW! but yea we saw the preview for transformers two and it literally blew my mind. like bam, gone. were going to see it wherever we are on the 26th. back to the novel, budapest is a beautiful city we saw many many cool places and also the royal plaice. i wish the pictures were free for public viewing but that is something unattainable at the moment. we are up early and leaving budapest today. good news is that we are staying in our third "famous hostel" as they call themselfs on famoushostels.com but do not be fooled they dont get given the name, they earn it. both weve been in have been simply amazing and i cannot wait to see what a restored building from the 1800's in the center of vienna has to offer. i guess thats all i have for one sitting, captain out.

so we have our last day in athens. our train doesnt leave until 1055 and we had to be out of our room at 11am so we have been wandering for the last 7 hours. we saw the ancient agora and went to do some shoppig on the way to old town. ended up getting some cool things. i got a france jersey and a man purse. it seemed convenient and i was feeling impulsive. im very glad that tonight we will have air conditioning on the train. sleeping in this ho of eather is terrible. you wake up sweaty and cant even consider pitting a sheet over you. well didnt have much to say and probably wont be able to blog for a few days till we make it to budapest. so hopefully the journey holds some fun.

so where i left off. that day we decided to see the acropolis which was very sweet to see. then we basically chilled out that night. yesterday we saw parliament and many other cool things around athens. our days cant ever be too long since it is 37 above and about as humid and sunny as you can imagine. it drains a lot out of you. so today we are going to take it easy, do a little shopping, we need to buy canadian flags so we can represent on july 1st. and tomorrow we have a few more sights to see (like old town) before we start the very long journey to Budapest and Vienna with a night train. im guessing it will take 2 or so days to get there. other then that nothing terribly exciting is happening. greese is an amazing place and athens is huge. when you at the top of the acropolis you can see so far and all the buildings are about 4 or 5 stories with no sky scrapers or downtown you can point out.

Athens

well i guess it would be yesterday we figured out that the bus to athens only goes every second night. so we either had to leave and eat in 2 hours or wait 2 days. in a 2v1 vote we decided to take the night bus cause we still have soooo much to see and we are now on a time budget since we are determined to see linkin park play, more details to come. so after dinner we had a 11 hour overnight buss ride to athens, it was actually quite relaxing. we got here just before 9 and relised we cant check in till 12 so we went adventuring to every noted building on the map within walking distance. we say the uni here and some pretty cool things but our hostel is not in the cool area of greese, like the area you see in all the pictures. so were going to eat then metro to see something really cool, havent decided which we want to do today yet.

yesterday we were so tired from the booze cruze still that we slept and read on the balcony most of the day. until the night... toga party every saturday night and it was damn wild. they had a giant bucket of ouzo (very similar to sambuca) and they would just drop shots down your throat. the supper was excellent too like every night. but yea we indulged a little... wild wild night. dancing and plate smashing, they literally broke plates over your head randomly. today we went on a quad adventure. got horribly lost, went offroading then magically ended up right where we wanted too. it was a fun experience driving here, signs and lanes mean nothing. if you dont think you can make a gap, you try anyways. bigger cars do what they want when they want and small cars and bikes weave everywhere.my burn will never go away with all this sun but this could be our last good beach so its all worth it.

best day ever

im pretty sure yesterday was the best day ever. josh and i woke up early to be on the booze cruze. unfortunately fraser was feeling ill and stayed in. the cruse fir about 50-60 people onto a med sized pink boat (everything is pink at the pink palace). its pretty packed and the first order of business is everyone has to shotgun a beer. after that we all kinda just mingled till we got to the cliff. we of course go there first so people arnt drunk. it was a 17m high cliff, fun as crap to jump off of but the climb up was scary as crapp and i cut my foot on the sharp rocks. i just regular jumped but josh decided to try a double front flip, it went well till he landed on his head haha, dont worry he was fine. another thing is that if you jumped naked dudes get 2 free beer and girls got like 5-10. we drove all the way to a private beach. like so private that you cannot see any signs of people other then us. we went to a bat cave after but we wernt allowed to swim in because it was too wavy and dangerous. the ride back was the most wild things i have ever seen on a boat. a full on cramped party where girls bathing suits were certainly not required and whipped cream was everywhere. it is safe to say that the only proper way to exit a boat like that is with a backflip into the water.amazingly fun but six hours in the sun put me and josh out until supper. it goes every two days so we are going to try it again sunday maybe. im going to try to put a pic of the cliff we jumped off of here, its not th best pic but its an experiment

so its been wayyyyyy too long since ive written in this. ill have to go back to rome. so sunday we went to see the vatican and we figured out the hard way that the vatican is closed at 2 on sundays, we thought it was the perfect day to go. we adventured rome and say some real cool stuff that i forget the name of but when you see the pictures you'll like it. after that we spent an entire day on trains and buses to get to bari to take a 9-10 hour boat ride to corfu. which was wonderful, we got a nice piece of floor to sleep on. e are staying at a place called the pink palace. its crazy here first theng they made us do is take a shot of osiu, at 8 in the morning. and its pretty much an all day and night party, happy hour is from 6-11. tomorrow we are going on the booze cruse which is getting on a huge boat to go cliff jumping and into bat caves and all that cool stuff. were going to rent quads and get lost in th island of corfu and probably see some cool stuff im sure. they give us hot breakfast and a three course meal for supper, actual food is so amazing, weve been eating crap take out food and what we can scrounge up from supermarkets. this is our last week with beaches so i plan on getting as much sun as possible

absinthe

i kinda forget where i left off but yesterday we tourised it up and saw the colliseum, the trevy fountain, and the spanish steps. they were all pretty cool but the main event of that day was that on our way back to the metro we found an absenthe shop. and chose since it is legal here to give it a test. we decided on one 20cl bottle of some french (apparently the best) absinthe and some wormwood extract (since it was in such a small bottle). after drinking the decivingly small bottle of french absinthe we continued on to the extract. after three hours of drinking about three or four times that dose the sissy girl gave us our feelings were dessapointly null. a sort of lusid mild drunkeness is the best way i can describe it. one good story did come of it tho. i woke up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night very groggy, halfway through my urination i realise there is something curled up in the corner of the shower, my first reaction was i thought it was the demon baby from the grudge and i started yelling "what the f*@%!!!!!!". demon baby replied "its better in the shower". apparently josh sleepwalks.

so we made it to rome, well actually 40 min outside of rome in a campsite like resort the is a nice change of senery from the busy citys. we decided our first day here would be our day off so we went to the beach instead of into the city, barcelona was still nicer, because we are on a resort town there is dozens of private beaches and about a 30 min walk after a bus ride to the public beach. tongiht we are going to have some fun at the local club, or disco as they call it because its friday.

so last night i went out with two aussys and two canadians from toroto josh and frazer decided to sleep and me and he randoms went to some chicks apartment, drank a lil, then after a large search for her friends just went to a club where some chick bought me drinks. i went to walk home wher i met some spanish guy, we didn't understand each other then 6 more canadians from al over came and we made it anothr party, it was great. we woke up late, maybe just me, and went to pizza to see the leaning tower, it was ok. we came home and watched the barcelona vs manchester football game, the championship final in a crowded bar it was great. tomorrow is rome then 7 days in corfu grease on the beach

after a short train ride today we arrived in florance. im sad to leave venice, a large part of it is because our hostel was so good. it was more like staying with relitives then anything else. our "mom"s daugeter is quoted saying when she gets a boyfriend she hopes he is not like us, in a good way of course, she is 12, apparently we are immature. we went to see the david today and it was basically a sea of tourists looking at a statue, its cool and all but my mind was far from blown. its so stinking hot here and the differance is in canada you have air conditioning or can go to a basement, here its hot all day all night. you sweat when your awake, moving, sitting, chillin, and sleeping. so basically you need large water bottles all the time just to keep yourself sane. the two things im looking forward the most are our week on the beach in grease that is coming up and the boat ride we are taking from rome to get there.

well our last day in venice. florance tomorrow. i hope the ice cream is as good as it was here. and hopefully there is less birds trying to steal your food. so last night we went out for one beer before bed. four hours later we got back. we met some englishmen dressed as pirates for a wedding party. they were wicked fun and ed's dad bought us drinks which was awesome. so we no have contacts in london, looks like we will never be alone on the second half of our journey. this morning josh and i got up early for a run then we basically slept till afternoon then saw some show about da'vinci and his creations it was alright. frazer's nose randomly turned into a blood faucet. good thing we were near to the hostel. we ate spagetti with lobster and felt gangsta. tonight we just want to chill but somehow that never happens here in europe

So we got to venice yesterday and wow its hot here. Were right in the midst of it all in an actual house being used as a hostel so its very nice for once we have a kitchen and a porch with a couch so we have somewhere to chill during the hot part of the day. There isnt many people staying here since there is only a few rooms. Our “mom” here cooks us breakfast and is very nice, we havent even paid for the stay yet. Last night we basically just had some wine and chilled out, josh fell in the water, then we partied and met some more germans that live near cologne. More people to party with when we are there. Today we got up early and went on a random venice adventure and got hopelessly lost for hours it was very fun. There churches arn't even close to the ones in genova tho. Everything here is more evpensive and we slowly are getting sore from our travels so we are all looking forward to the week or so we are going to spend in grease after florance and rome, a long way to go. When we went to the market and saw a dog on its hind legs begging to the meat counter, it was so italian. O and by the way we cant get anything from street vendors unfortunately because its rank huge fine if you get caught. No internet in the hostel so we are in a nice little bar a little ways away

so a couple things hit my attention. europe is just one giant skate park, seriousally. anywhere you was practially made for skateboarding. another is that pda is way too hardcore here, couples never get more then three centimeters away from eachother at any given moment, easy to get sick of that. third thing i realised is everything is an adventure. today we work up early and decided that venice was our next place we wanted to stay so we jumped on a few trains and by like 2 we realised that there was no frickin way we were making it to venice before dark, we would be there at like 9-11ish and we didnt have a hostel booked, a map, or anything. so we at thee we just decided to stay 2 stops away at a place named geneva. we really had no idea what it was but its this crazy awesome hilly town on the beach with some crazy ass churches. them christian folk had way too much damn money back then. our train ride was awesome for once cause we were in a cart with a middle aged couple from flordia and some young chicks from edmonton. so it was a whole cart of people speaking english for the first time since canada. italy has the best ice cream ever (so far) we cant get enough of it. their beer is alright but i would'nt brag about it. so venice is still our destination we are going to bed early tonight so we can be on the train as early as possible tommorrow and get over to a city with some water in it. last night we went for a few hour walk around nice and saw pretty much everything i think, everything the map had on it pretty much. we have a ton of pictures but apparently it takes an eternity to load them onto anything and were all too lazy to keep it up. just wait till we get to somewhere with steady free wifi like barcelona did. then we will be all over it i promise.

nice!

well i havent had internet in a while so ill have to start back at the results of the pub crawl. it was amazing! although it was pretty much all tourists they were from all over and there was a lot of canadians there. we went to four bars and one club. highlights include: josh buying a drink for a tranny haha, cipetas (i think thats how its spelt) it was a bar with the crazyest shots ever, everything was on fire and shit. we had to drink things on fire marshmellows were cooked with the flaming shots it was just crazy. apparently its fair that 30 year old dudes were hitting on fat 19 year old chicks, the works part was that it was working for him so strange. final highlight we mistakenly asked a hooker for directions on our way home and she was... well.. an aggressive salesperson. since we didn't want her product at all josh offered her a cookie haha. funny thing is she pointed us in the right direction. the next when we woke up a lil groggy we just straight from the metro to the trains for a day of fun on a few trains all the way to nice (a costal town in france) where i do have to thank mr hounjet for that year of french i took because being able to understand a dozen ords off the bat is much better then just knowing hola. we got into nice at 1 in the morning and after sleep we adventured the town (pictures to come). its pretty nice here but he sand is just medium to large pebles. not as nice as barcelona forsure. we went swimming for a while the ocean beats bare ass beach i have to admitt. the girls in nice are all striving to be as skinny as possible apparently and the wear dresses everywhere so we fit in completely looking like slobs. we dont know how long we will be here and arnt too sure where to go next so i'm off and we shall she what lies ahead of us

another chill night gone wrong. we tried to just have a few beer lastnight and we ended up meeting girls from nethrlands, uk, chez, and poland and had some homemade alch with them. it was incredibly strong. once again we were up till all hours of the night and once again i missed breakfast. today we ar just chillin and doing laundry. pumping outselves up for the pub crawl a bunch of us are going on tonight. it shall be great. im going to sleep cause i missed siesta time

germans

we met a very large group of germans last night from cologne and went to te beach to have some drinks and celebrate this lisa girl's birthday at midnight. ended up being up til like 4 again i think but at least this time i was up for breakfast at 8, quite the accomplishment. we got information from a few of the germans and are going to meet up with them and party when we are around there. we are heading to nice france i believe on wednsday where we ar probably going to meet up with miachel and the lesbians from flordia

sunday may 17

yesterday we were planning on a very chill day. me and josh went to the beach which as amazing. girls typically dont wear shirts here which is cool, the water is salty. barcelona won a very big football game and there was a party we decided to go to. now take it that partys start at about midnight and get kicking at like 2 so we went to the town square where thousands of people were chanting lighting fireworks and flares. it was absoultely insayne. at like 3 we went back to the hostel where we drank beer and played ive never with and american group, some lesbians, germans, sweeds i think. long story short me, frazer, an american, and a chez girl ended up trying to see the sun rise on the beach and were up till just after 7am here. needless to say i missed breckfast again. and today when on a food hunt i ended up going downtown barcelona with the lesbians i met last night. we gotsome dece food ice cream, saw freaky street performers, and watched some weird political march for something i coulden't understand.

may 15

sitting in a train station waiting a few hours for our train to be here. Jet lag is still an issue, me and fraser were up at 5 and unable to sleep so we went for a walk and figured out we didnt see too many young people before because apparently they go out at 11 or 12 and go home between 5-7. its warm enough here that there is no need for a coat any time of the day. Looks like we will be in barcelona for a min of 5 days since thats how long we booked our next hostel for... hope the beach is damn nice this time of year.

wE made it to a small town near barcelona in an absoulutely beautiful hostel for the next 5 days at least. I had my doubts about spain till we got here, much more english and much more young spanish girls! Everyone told us that everything as so expensive here... i am yet to see it: beer is .49, a meal from 2-5, and we got 8l of water for 1.09 euro. Not quite breaking the bank quite yet.

may 14
so we finally made it here. 18 hours on planes. one plane ride where your too excite to sleep, the next where people who somehow got it in their head that taking a baby on a 8 hour plane ride was a good idea keep you awake, and the third where your so tired from lack of sleep and the supprisingly cheep beer they serve in the amsterdam airport that you just pass out. well we got in and were immediately swindled by a jerk cab driver that couldn't speak english. i dont know if spain just sucks at english, its just where we are, or they are playing dumb. well we got our hostel and our room is shared with some mexican chick (once again very little english). we decided to hit the hay early because tomorrow we want to get the heck out of here and sit on the beach with all the younger girls. i cant tell if graffitti is just everywhere or just were we are. we took a few adventure strolls around but dont have the energy or the time to go anywhere far. jet lag is playing its course and we shall all pass out and get to beaches tomorrow. fingers crossed.

side note, 1l of beer: .49 euro how awesome is that?

one week ill we leave today. work is almost done. tai is here. sorry im not good at th whole blog thing but im trying to learn b4 europe. the last week of work is really lame because you want to work hard and leave yur impression but dont know if anyone will notice or care,,, because your leaving. whatever i had a good run. tonight we cilled out and had a fer brew to celebrate tai being back in town illegally b4 he goes to japan. well that is all the effort i have for a blog. peace.

test test does it work? o yes here is the blog