Once a Country, Twice a Country, Thrice a Country, Four

Welcome friends and foes to the next update in my travels. As you may or may not remember, last time I updated this literary masterpiece I was in Munich bound for Vienna, and I'm glad to say I made it without a hitch. As the money pot is not exactly overflowing at the minute, we decided to camp out under the stars in Vienna, which was an absolutely brilliant experience, if not an ever so slightly cold one. It turns out that buying your tent and sleeping bag for a combined 12 quid from Argos doesn't exactly provide you with the highest quality product. Also, something I would advise, if you haven't used your tent since a particularly wet and muddy Glastonbury Festival 2 years ago, give it a bit of an airing or else it will have a certain 'aroma'.

Whilst the campsite was absolutly beautiful, it was set on the edges of a forest, just outside Vienna, the views of the Northern Limestone Alps as we travelled from Munich were just unbelievable, it was seriously one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Whilst i'm on the subject of train journeys, European trains are immense, especially the German and Austrian ones. As I'm sure you know, second class train travel in England would entail either standing for the entire journey as there aren't enough seats or if you are lucky enough to get a seat you end up with chewing gum all over your arse as the train hasn't been cleaned for about 60 years. All that and the train is usually late. In Austria, 2nd class trains include your own private cabin with plug sockets and air conditioning and it turns up. On time. Maybe we should fully integrate ourselves into Europe.....only joking, I've not gone mental yet!!

Vienna was wicked, not exacxtly party central, but the architecture and the history of the place is really cool, there really is an amazing amount of stuff to see there, and I'll just have to mention the scenary once again as it was so damn good. Now, as I've set up the rating system on countries I better carry it on and Austria recieves a very respectable score of 7.84/10

After Austria, it was over the border into Eastern Europe, Hungary to be precise. It was on this particular train journey that I had my passport checked 4 times by 10 different policemen. A little excessive I think, but I guess everybody has a job to do! To be perfectly honest, my inbuilt middle Englandness meant I was pretty wary of Hungary and the prospect of getting robbed on every street corner and for this reason only I wasn't really that bothered about going to the place. It just shows how wrong you can than be though as Budapest is fucking mega. Other than a top notch night life, the thermal baths are awesome, I managed to spend 4 hours messing around in a wave machine which was infinitely more fun than working for a living! Also, goulash is a very appetizing meal indeed. The hostel I stayed in there was a little different from any other i've experienced before, each of the rooms had a different theme which included Bob Marley and a jungle, I was staying in the Ganesh room, which had a massive mural of said spiritual God and josticks burning 24/7. The place stank to high heaven! I felt my inner hippy shining through for a while. Back onto the rating system again and Hungary scores a much higher than expected 7.99/10.

And so we progress steadily on to the 3rd country in a week which was the Czech Republic. Originally the plan was to only be in Prague for 2 days before moving onto Dresden, but the fact that Prague is mega and Dresden is apparantly a bit shit we ended up staying in Prague for 4 days. Also another factor that played heavily on my mind when making this descision was that a beer in Dresden would have been about €2 but in Prague it was about 15p. Not to bore you once again with all the touristy stuff but there is so much to do there I can't help but mention some of it. For example, the Prague Castle and Charles bridge are really good and so is Wenceles Square, which despite not being a square but more of an extended rectangle, did inspire me to sing the old Christmas carol ''Good King Wenceles last looked out etc etc etc'' Watching the Czech's play on the big screen in the town centre was cool even though they did lose 2 - 0 to Ghana! It has to be said though that the hourly parade on the Old Town Square Astronomical clock is rubbish, nothing actually happend as far as I could tell!

A couple of curious things did happen in Prague though, the first was watching USA vs Italy in an outside bar with hoards of Americans who surprisingly knew quite a bit about the game even if they did use phrases like 'great D man' instead of 'well defended old chap' and 'wow that game was a tie' instead of 'well, you can't complain at a point against the Italians'. Cultural differences I guess! It was after this match and several more pints of Czech lager that I got completely lost looking for my hostel and ended up trailing the streets of Prague for a couple of hours before finally putting my male stubborness to one side and admiting I was lost and getting into a cab with the only directions I had been a comedy map of Prague. I somehow made it though so everything is still ok. Another thing that happend that rather amused me was that an American bloke (I know it seems I keep having a go at Americans and it's not intentional but they keep asking stupid questions) asked me if there was a beach anywhere in Prague. I didn't have the heart to tell him that beaches are very hard to come across in land locked countries!

To conclude the Czech Republic, it was good, very good infact and that is why it recieves a higher than normal 8.5/10.

The final country in this little week long escapade is Germany, and in the main eastern Germany, basically Berlin. Not a great deal to report here at the minute as i've been here less than 24 hours, but I went to watch the England match last night at the Brandenburg gate surounded by about 10,000 Germans and what with me in an England shirt and Tom with the flag of St George trailing from his back, I was more than expecting to get punched on the nose. All I recieved though were a few dirty looks, apparently the Germans were scared of us because they thought we were hooligans.

That, however, is nothing in comaprison to the secuirty checks crossing the border into Germany. I thought maybe the trip from Hungary, through Slovakia, and into the Czech Republic would have produced the most rigorous checks but basically that was just miserable bastards looking at my passport. The German police interrogated me a bit like the Gestapo would have done a few years back, but my winning wit and charm and that fact that all I was carrying was a bag of very dirty clothes meant I got away with it.

Anyway, as I haven't been here anywhere near long enough I can't give Eastern Germany a rating yet but rest assured, you will be getting the definitive opinion on it soon. I reckon my next update will be after the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, so sorry to keep you all waiting for more insights in European culture but sod it, I'm not a writing machine you know!

Anyway, i'm going to look at the Berlin wall now and to see if I can find David Hasselhoff anywhere so it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from him,
Bye,
Rich

Ps, Sorry it's so long, I didn't realise until i'd finished typing.

Deutschland Über Alles

So here we are again, yet another update and such a short time after my last one as well. I really do spoil you!

As you no doubt will have deduced from the heading, I've just been to Germany, which, once again, is a slightly bizarre place, mainly because of the people I have encountered along the way. The first stop in Germany was Cologne, or Köln as the locals call it, where we alighted the train to be immediatly confronted by the Dom, a more than impressive gothic cathedral that had taken 600 years to build. The question was later raised by an American of "why is it called a Dom? It's not dome shaped at all!" Because of laughing so much I was unable to explain to him that the German for Cathedral was Dom, however, that pearl of wisdom was not the only thing to fall from his lips. The question of "What is Scandanavia?" was particularly good as his next destination was Sweeden. Amazingly he was the most sane person I met in Cologne, the people in my dorm were really freaky people, not just a bit simple.

The first night there, a bloke in his mid 40's ambled into the room, stared at his bed for literally 10 minutes before letting out the must lung busting cough I have ever heard. He then wandered over to my bed and stared at that for a couple of minutes and, yes, I was lying in it at the time. He went away for a while and came back in and just switched the lights on and off for a few minutes before leaving again, coming back and repeating the procedure, which was punctuated by yet more death defying coughing. I awoke the next morning, which was surprising enough as it is, to see the guy putting his coat and iI thought `thank God he's about to leave´, but instead he got back into bed, shoes and all. What with the other person in the room who was out all night and then spent all day in bed they really were a cracking bunch. As for Cologne it was okay, there was not a lot to see but alright all the same.

After Cologne we moved on to Frankfurt, which it has to be said, is very, very nice. There was a marked improvement in the weather which may have helped my opinion of it but still I like it. Frankfurt was the first place that it was noticable that the World Cup was taking place and like a complete muppet I got sucked into buying a beer in the official fan zone. However, this was no ordinary beer. For a start it was 1 litre of pure German lager, it also cost me €10, which when you are on a daily food, drink, accomodation and tourism budget of €35 it was a significant blow to the back pocket. Still, it got me so tipsy that I ended up debating the merits of the monarchy for 3 hours!

The World Cup of course also brings together many people from around the world and when you´re sat in a bar listening to 3 Brazilians playing a bit of samba music it is pretty damn cool. What is not so good is when some knobhead from England wearing tracksuit bottoms, Reebok Classics, an England shirt and €3.99 Next sunglasses walks in with his own amp and mic and starts beatboxing `Drop It Like It´s Hot' by Snoop Dogg. The phrase "absolutly, completely and utterly gut wrenchingly, pain inducingly, put burning nails in your eyes fucking awful" does not do justice as to how bad the guy was. Whatever happened to our great nation eh? In addition to that there are also a completely disproportionate of Mexicans around.

After Frankfurt followed Munich which is an amazing place. World Cup fever has really exploded here and it would be churlish of me not to say I am loving it, the other night was spent drinking steins in beer halls with Germans which was great fun and all very good natured I may add. I did get a little carried away and insist we were going to win the World Cup, but what the hell, we are!!!! I must give a special mention to Jan and David for the fact that they supported England during our game against Paraguay, I guess that's hard for a German to do, but thanks guys!

Amongst doing the normal toursit crap in Munich, we also went to the Dachau Nazi Concentration Camp, which was a very sobering and memorable experience to say the least but I can't really go into much detail on that, i guess it's something you have to experience for yourself to get the full impact.

So that's Germany almost done with, we do visit the old East Germany in a week or so but not before I've been to Vienna, Budapest and Prague. 4 countries in 1 week. Bring it on!!!

Overall, I must say I have really liked Germany and that is why it takes the lead in the country leader board with a spectacular 9.2/10. It would have scored full marks except their language is complicated, the`y´key on the keyboard is in the wrong place and they also have ö ä ü letters on the keyboard which makes typing a pain, and they booed Bobby Charlton when he came on TV the other day.