Welcome to part II of my Euro tour. Please sit back, relax and enjoy the show... er.. blog post...
At the end of part I, I had just returned to Bern for two nights, to recharge, do a much needed laundry, and say hi to my 'family' and colleagues there. The next morning, Saturday, I took an early train to Munich to visit a friend, Clara, who is an au pair just outside of the city. (Au pair is basically the same as nanny, but typically its in a different country than where you live.. I think). She met me at the train station and we promptly dropped off my huge backpack at her house then headed back into Munich to check out Frühlingsfest, or Spring Festival. Think Oktoberfest, then shrink it, and you get Frühlingsfest. It was still pretty cool for me to see, as I hadn't been to Oktoberfest so I had nothing to compare it to.
While we were walking to the festival from the train station, we noticed these four people walking ahead of us dressed in traditional German garb: the ladies wearing dirndl, a type of traditional dress worn in Bavaria, Liechtenstein, Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol based on the historical costume of Alpine peasants. The dirndl is made up of a bodice, blouse, full skirt and apron. The men were dressed in traditional lederhosen (German for 'leather breeches'). Once we got to the festival we noticed that this wasn't uncommon: tons of people there were wearing these outfits. And totally comfortable in them too! I tried to imagine my friends back home wearing dirndl and lederhosen, and well, I couldn't really.
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| Super stalker-ish picture from behind of 4 Germans in their traditional outfits. |
We wande
red around the festival grounds a bit, checking out the different attractions and rides and also scoping out a not-too-packed beer hall.
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| Beer hall at the Munich Frühlingsfest |
We found a seat and ordered food and, of course, beer.
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| Clara and me with our 1 L of beer that we shared, and a delicious cheese spread with pretzels. Yum. |
After stuffing ourselves, we wandered around the city a bit, checking out the major sights.
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| Rathaus (City Hall) in Munich |
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| An arch that I think leads into the university area, with lions on top of course. Munich loves their lions. |
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| Stream through Englischer Garten |
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| Englischer Garten |
After spending two lovely nights with Clara at her host family's house, I took the train to Mainz where my friend Meghan is doing a rotary exchange. Her house was a bit full at the time so I stayed in Mainz's youth hostel, but Meghan and I wandered around the city together for the 2 days that I was there.
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| Cool statue in Mainz |
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| Market |
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| Meghan! :) |
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| Looking across the Rhein towards Wiesbaden. Apparently Wiesbaden and Mainz don't really like each other. Not sure why though... |
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| Mainz Cathedral |
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| Heading for the train station to leave :( But still happy to be together! |
Following Mainz, I went to Oudenaarde, Belgium, which is a smallish, laid-back city of 30,000 people 1 hour west of Brussels. Josh, yet another friend from back home, is living there and cycling for Team BC, so I stayed there a few days to see the area and visit him. That part of Belgium is biking paradise: the one day I went for a run I was the only person not on a bike.
Oudenaarde, or at least the old-people part of town that Josh lives in, had a weird event going on while I was there, although apparently it occurs every week. I'm not entirely sure how to name or describe it, but basically people line up birds in little box cages along the street, with a tape player inside repeating a word or phrase, and they count how many times the birds chirp and mark it on the sticks in front of the boxes... like I said, its a weird event.
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| On site at the weekly bird chirping competition... |
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| Josh and Zak trying to get themselves injured as we head into town. |
The next day, also the only full day I had there, we walked downtown to check out the weekly Thursday market, where you can find just about anything you need in life: cheese, meat, olives, bread, floor waxing solution, clothes, shoes, and chocolate.
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| Olives, olives and more olives! Of course they have samples of the one food that I don't like... |
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| The market square |
After two nights in Oudenaarde, I took an early train to Brussels and caught a flight to Milan!
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| Gorgeous Swiss/Italian Alps (not really sure which) |
...then took a train to Venice:
to meet up with the fab four!
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| L-R: Rebecca, Sorrel, Hannah, and Olivia |
We spent three days getting lost in Venice. While it was really cool to see the Floating City, it was so touristy that I found it hard to fully enjoy it. Still, it was nice to hang out with the girls and eat copious amounts of gelato!
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| One of many 'canal picture while crossing one of the trillion bridges' |
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| Rebecca and I with our 'za' |
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| Masks: every kind, everywhere. |
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| View from Accademia bridge |
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| Lots of views from bridges! This is taken from Rialto bridge. |
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| Sorrel and I on Rialto bridge |
After three nights in Venice I headed north east to Trieste, which is right near the Slovenian border. Surya and Olivia had taken the train there the day before so I decided to go as well and meet them, as Trieste was rumoured to be a beautiful city (and the rumours were right!)
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| Gelato # 1928374 |
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| Santa Maria Maggiore church |
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| 'Holding up' the remains of a Roman arch in Trieste's old town. |
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| Statue in front of Castello di San Giusto, which is the main cathedral in Trieste and sits on top of the San Giusto hill above Trieste. |
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| Roman theatre, at the foot of the San Giusto hill |
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| My hostel was just outside of town, right on the water. This is the view on the walk from the bus stop to the hostel :) |
The next day, Olivia, Surya and I were sitting in the train station (can't quite remember why) and I stood up to put my jacket on and happened to turn around and Marlies and Annalea Zimmer, two friends from back home, were walking by! I stood in shock for about 5 seconds before I managed to get a sound out of my mouth to attract their attention. We were all a bit in shock for the next hour or so, considering that I wasn't supposed to meet the Zimmer's until Athens a week later, and to run into them in a train station in Italy? Such a coincidence! Nevertheless it was wonderful to see them, and we wandered around together a bit as they had some time to kill before their train.
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| Annalea and Marlies with delicious gelato in hand. |
After the Zimmer's headed off to catch their train, Olivia, Surya and I bought a delicious feast for lunch and took the bus to Miramare park which is right beside my hostel. We then ate our delicious feast before wandering around the park and the castle, Castello di Miramare, which is right on the point of the park beside the ocean.
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| The three musketeers :) |
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| Castello di Miramare |
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| The palace of the Austrian lieutenant Emil Artmann, seat of the Prefecture, one of the buildings in the Piazza dell'Unita d'Italia, which is the largest square in Europe that overlooks the sea. |
The next morning, before our train, the three of us explored around Duino, which is about a 30 minute bus ride from Trieste.
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| Duino castle |
After spending two nights in Trieste, I parted ways with Olivia and Surya and caught a train to Florence. The first night I was there, I saw an advertisement for discounted entry to an Italian opera that evening, but I didn't really think much of it because I was tired and didn't feel like trekking across the city to see something I don't really like. But then I was in my dorm room and some of my dorm mates were going to it so I asked where it was and it turned out it was right next door! So I whipped on some more 'appropriate-for-going-out' clothes, as opposed to what I had been sweating in all day carrying my backpack around and sitting on a train, and I walked the 10 feet to the next building, and lo and behold it was a small-ish concert hall! The opera was pretty neat to see, although I still can't say I'm a huge fan of that type of singing, but the piano player was amazing! Luckily he did a song on his own while the singer was resting her voice.
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| Opera singer and really good piano player! |
The next day I set out at 10am determined to see as much of the city as I could. I started out by walking through a park, that truthfully I'm not really sure where it was or what it was called, but it had a bunch of these cool, larger-than-life statues of heads.
And that concludes part II of this series! It's a bit behind schedule : I am home already, and I was in Pisa on May 20th, but ah well, better late than never! Part III coming soon.
-Sonja :)
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