ich bin in Köln!

ah tis a rare occasion to come accross free internet, but it does happen!
soooo im in cologne, which is in germany, and i think i´ll be heading towards netherlands.
anyway, let me recount the last weeks or so.

sooo, last blog was genova, yeah?
well, i met up with mum and dad there, enjoyed amazing food, had a lovely christmas.
so nice seeing family again.
and i got to speak to my brother and sister again (hi guys!) which was awesome.
so spent thoes few days kickin´ it round genova.
went on a day trip to Nervie which was on the water and insanly amazing.
and enjoyed telling all the people from the markets trying to sell me stuff that i dont speak italian and dont understand... in italian. lol, they got confused.
anyway, boxing day left genova at 4.30 and went to milano.
left mum and dad and saw fillipo for a couple of hours.
he says hi everyone.
then he went off to go skiing somewhere, lucky duck.
anyway, plan was to get an overnight train or bus, but there wasnt one.
sooooo, after tramping around milan for a few hours with my fuck offly heavy backpack, i ran into a polish guy whom i had lent my pen to in an internet cafe, and he was nice enough to show me to a hotel.
35 euro later and i had bed.
thank god for that.
anyway, then yesterday morning i was up at 4.30am again, cause i had a flight at 9am.
man was i fucked, lol.
turned out a flight to cologne was my cheapest option.
so i rocked up here yesterday.
hostel was pretty umm... well it was ok, but not what i was after, so i checked into a different one for the next couple of days.
i figure after tht i´ll head to rotterdam, then amsterdam for new years.
yep, ima gonna be in for a big one.
lol.
talk soon everyone.
- Louisa

p.s. i wnt some fruit, but its like against the law (im only partly joking) to sell stuff on sunday. uncoooool.
p.p.s. hope everyone had a good xmas.

caio

wooooow its been too long!!!!
so much has happened.
ok ok, umm, not exactly sure where i left off, so weàll go from spain.
Right well my first real day in barcelona, i trecked into the moutains with a canadian guy named Brayden. Insane view and we found these like... stone house squats people lived in that were freakin awesome!!! so after a whole bunch of exersize pretty much kicked back at the hostel, chillin'. making friends, enjoying the view.
...just had to take a break from typing because mum was trying to speak (very very bad) italian to a guy at the internet place whom speaks english. it was funny.
ANYWAY.
next day in barcelona, the sax players did a show for us in the lounegroom of the hostel, which was AWESOME. then we went out, and marlon took his sax, and ended up knowing the driver of the night bus. SO, we all got on for free. then, went to a club, wich was ok, but on the way back the night bus driver was the same guy. SO, we all got on for free AGAIN, AND marlon starts kickin out the tunes on the way home. soooooooooooooooo cool. i have video which i will put up when i get the chance.
Anyway, also staying at the hostel was the canadian guy, and also an English guy from london. Very funny, his accent was so strong (and this is a true story) he walked into a store in Spain looking for a knife sharpener. he spoke slowly, tried to make the gesture, the chick had no idea. So, another lady working has come over and said "do you speak english".
we all laughed A LOT.
anyway.
they're going walking from spain to morocco. so, to carry there pacts, locial option, get a donkey.
So i went lookiing with Tim, the london fellow, for a donkey.
Now in Barcelona there is a main drag called La Ramblas, and they have pet stores along the strip.
so, we had a person write on a piece of paper in spanish "i am looking to buy a donkey (burro in spanish, for thoes of you playing at home). do you know where i can find one? how much will it cost me?"
The looks on their faces were dead set priceless.
Oh and also, funny thing, if ever in barcelona, watch out for the prostitues.
lol, one walked up to the canadian guy, grabbed his privates, and as he was taken aback, pick pocketed €20 from him.
lol. they're hardened street women.
ummm, what else... lots of really cool stuff happened on barcelona.
met great people.
had a one of the recptionist guys, Pedo from Argentina, and his gf Charlotte, take me out for Papalya... i dont know how you spell it. buts its a spanish dish of sea food and rice and its awesome.
Man the people in Barcelona were bloody legends.
anyway, ended up staying for 6 days instead of 2.
lol.
so finally caught a flight to Pisa and then got a bus to florence.
Met heeps of people there aswell.
A mexican guy, a japanese guy, a bunch of brazillians and a bunch of Americans.
all very cool people, had a blast.
funnny funny, apparently the brazillian guy in my room had some hanky panky going on one night, and got woken up by the japanese guy and a flash light. ahhhhh man, hostels, eh?
so glad i sleep like a log, and that i brought ear plugs and an eye mask.
so, things are going well, having a ball and enjoying myself a lot.
really keen to head towards amsterdam, heard a lot of good things.
Only issues im having is my diet, eaten shit for so long, finally starting to cook, and thats been ok. Should be nice staying with mum and dad though.
oh, forgot to say, met up with them yesterday arvo. been really nice seeing them again.
anyway, thats all for now.
To the band: email me and let me know how things are going!!!! how'd tims 18th go?
To carl: Email me, we tried calling but you didnt pick up, i wanna talk to you! how is bell doing? what have u been up to?
To eli: whats your address now? i'll send you a post card.
to everyone else, miss you heeps, miss Australia heeps!!!! will see you all soon.
- Louisa

P.S. interesting observations:
In italy, you have to give them your pass port or photo id to use the internet
Toilets are called "WC" (stands for water closet)
You can't get tampons without thoes stupid aplicator things
You can get a litre of wine for 59 cents


thats all for now, Caio bella!!!!

HOLA!

i´m in spain, paying $4 an hour for internet access, and thats like a meal for me, so i have to make this short.
umm i think my last blog was in dublin, yeah?
ok, WELL!
from dublin, i went to galway.
stayed for 2 nights, and chilled with the american guy, Joe. Also met a guy from Melbourne who was pretty cool. Saw some awesome Irish live music, and went to this crazy Pub chrissy party and got a free pint. good times!
then i caught a (highly expensive) bus to Killarney, and ended up drinking with a Perth girl and 3 Irish guys, good fun!!!
chilled the day after that, then on saturday morning caught the bus at 9am, 4 bus rides, 2 trains, 1 plane, 12 hours and 60E later and i was in barcelona!!!!!
rocked up at the hostel, and its been great.
met some amaaaaazing people. Staying in a room with 2 American sax players, and ones the Geniune New Orleans kind. how cool is that?! they´re doing a show for us tonight, should be really good.
today i went for a hike with a Canadian guy, Brendan. Man, had the fucking BEST view of barcelona. craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy. then we walked down the moutain via all these random houses nesseled in the mountain side. ah man, having an awesome AWESOME time.
i should prob look into buses to france, though, so i´ll leave it here.
just know im taking lots of photos.
also, laura and carl, hi, hello, hope everything is ok there. i have 2 post cards from london for you i havent gotten around to posting yet but i will try to soon. so... yeah, that´ll be kind of random, haha.
hope things are ok at home, feel free to send me emails and what not.
cant promis that i will be able to reply, but i like to stay in the loop.
anyway, more when internet is free again... dont hold your breath!!!
haha.
- Louisa

Fiddle de dee potatos

Hey hey My Australian and non australian friends!!!
I'm coming at you from Dublin!!!
finnnnally i found a hostel with free internet access, so i have some time to jot out whats been happening over the past few days.
Ah it feels so nice to be able to type without any time restictions, honestly i didnt think these places existed anymore... good ol' Ireland.
The people are really nice here.
I flew in at 9am this morning (its almost 12pm now) and so far ive recieved friendly faces and helpful advice.
Anyway, let me catch you up on the past couple of days.
On the 4th i rocked up in dundee, met up with Paul.
Paul is a freakin awesomly talented musician and i was lucky enough to be able to listen to him, and 2 of his friends, practice before going to see them play on thursday night.
the gig was awesome, trying to convince them to migrate to australia so i can manage them :-P
It was Paul's birthday on friday, so we went out after the show to... i think it was a uni club or something? All i know was the drinks were cheap and the fashion was of an 80s style.
So after a bunch of boggy-ing down, we stumbled out into the streets of dundee, and it is only in the company of true Scots that you can really sample the local delicaies.
Chips and cheese.
Sounds strange, i know, but at 3am, it really does taste fantastic.
I'm learning something new everyday.
So on friday, after a lengthy sleep in, Paul and myself went out to St Andrews and chillaxed. Checked out yee ol' castles and shiz. Its a very pretty place.
Then we had a bit of a quite one, watched Gilberts Grapes or something... It had Jonny Dep in it. lol.
Then the next day, after another long sleep in, we went to Pizza hut, and Then out for another drink.
Started to get cained by the flu by this stage though. Damn flu.
I left yesterday and went back to Edi for a night where i sampled the fine delicasy (theres no spellcheck on this thing) that is Haggis.
It tastes like a mince pie.
Left at 6am this morning, coughing and spluttering, but going ok. Need to find some Cough syrip.
Keen to get out into the Irish country side and meet some Irish folk.
Well, that is all, talk to you again soon.
- Louisa

Failte Con Alba- Sliante Mhath

"Welcome to Scottland"
I took the bus to Dundee today and met up with my good friend Paul!
everything is going well, have checked into the hostel and whatnot, and have finnnnnally been able to upload the photos.
Made a new friend in Paul's dog Baily, hes cute.
he says "woof".
tonight we're going out, should be fun.
enjoy the photos!!!

- Louisa



^ on the train to Edinburgh



^ Squat party in london

:D

enjoy!


more soon, i hope.
damn lack of internet!

Jazzing it up!!

hey everyone, in Edinburgh at the moment.
caught the train from london yesterday, so sad leaving frenchie :'(
have done a lot, but i'm using a fellow traveler's lap top so i should be quick.
highlights since i last wrote... which really was a mammoth blog wasn't it?
anyway, highlights!
- CS meeting in London, met a bunch of couch surfing people, was great
- Train to Edi, SAW HEEPS OF SNOW!!!! YEAAAAH!
- Comedy club last night
- Jazz club tonight

made friends with an canadian, and an american named Jo.
turns out not all Americans are as uncool as everyone thinks.
lol, will write more hopefully when i get to dundee.

hope everything is ok!

- Louisa

From Paris to London

It has been a CRAZY past couple of days and i have been itching to get it all down.
i miss you all alot, but i have having an absolute ball.
On friday i left Paris, and its been a crazy crazy journey, so let me start from the begining.
9am Friday morning i left the Paris appartment and headed to Le Lourve to meet Mathieu, a French friend i have since affectionatly named "Frenchie".
So Frenchie was late for the meet up, so i sat in the cool winter's air outside the enterance to the Lourve, munching on a musli bar and getting snapped in tons of photos. Sitting under a big statue thing became less and less of a good idea. Keep an eye out for me in random peoples photos.
Anyway, finally the limping frenchman (he hurt his foot) rocked up and we were on our way!
In Europe, the trains are very expensive, as we later found out, so the cheapest and most interesting way to travel is to hitch hike. Frenchie is a pro, so we caught the metro, and then a bus, to the outskirts of Paris.
After getting dropped off at the bus stop, it took a few attemepts to get onto the highway... and a couple of nessisary bits of backtracking, but we finally found the turn off to the highway. Once we had, we were good to go.
The first time is always the wierdest, but after the first car pulled up a smiling face spoke a whole bunch of french i didnt understand, i realise everything would be O.K. lol, it was pretty cool, we got picked up by a bunch of different people, going from petrol station to petrol station. We were trying to go straight to London, but unfortunetly one car dropped us at a really crap spot which we waited at for about an hour. Eventually we gave up on the idea of getting to london, and decided on the train. After this decision was made, a car soon rocked up. This guy, i dont know where he was going, but for the first time we left the highway and spent about an hour driving through french villages.
French villages, are freakin' awesome.
they looked like something out of an old timey film... i totally didnt expect it. Nothing looked... bad or poor. was so cool.
oh oh and the land is like flat... its crazy.
Anyway, when this guy dropped us off, we were pretty much imediatly picked up by a truckie.
truckies are awesome.
lol, this guy was so cool. his truck seemed to be his home, so he had it decked out. He turned on some dance music, and showed us his pimped out truck. lol, he turned on a flurecent light he'd installed in the roof and is like "BLUE LIGHT DISCO!". At this point i thought to myself "truckies are cool."
The ride in the truck was awesome, but it got dark, so we got dropped on the outskirts of a french town called Lille, and caught a ride to the trainstation.
TRAINS ARE EXPENSIVE.
lol, €200 the guy quoted us. I almost had a heart attack. thats like 400 australian dollars!!!
but there was a discount the next day, so we decided to stay a night in lille.
lucky i bought my guide book, because we quickly found a place to get rid of the really really heavy backpack in a nice little hostel.
I had some noodles i brought along for the journey, so we ate that for dinner, and i turned out to be a hit in the kitchen... although it wasnt food related. lol, was talking to a middle eastern lady, and she was really really excited to be talking to an Aussie, i felt popular :P
Anyway, after tea, we set off to find a pub.
Apparently, now, this is apparently, im not sure i trust Frenchie on this, but Lille is a student town. Well, for a student kinda town, we spent ages finding a pub. To aid in this quest, we devloped the game "ask a student!" which required frenchie (as he speaks french) asking students where a good bar is. it was fun, and eventually we found a nice little irish pub to drink at. Pleasntly suprised to find alcohol is quite cheap in europe, so we enjoyed a beer, then headed back to the hostel.
the next morning we woke up, got our stuff together, and checked out of the hostel.
checkout was 10am, and the train was 1.50pm, so we had time to kill.
we headed to the trainstation to check out their locker facilities, but it cost €5, so we decided to spend the €5 on something else instead. across the road was a shopping centre, so we bought ice cream and slushies and chilled out for a while. then we went and bought bread and cheese for lunch... and a bottle of vodka for that night.
we managed to kill a lot of time and almost missed the train... also partly because i got questioned by the UK authorities about how o'd support myself in the UK. Kinda pissed off that hes all "oh ok, no worries." when i mentioned mum and dad were around.
But anyway, finally made it on the train, and before we new it, we were in london!!!!
as soon as i got off the train the whole... paranoia about people became kinda obvious. CCTV is everywhere, and there are always chemtrails in the sky. Its a bit depressing.
Anyway, we got off the train and headed to an internet cafe to find a place to stay.
Frenchie had a place lined up, and luckily enough, his friend Ania, a polish girl, let me stay aswell.
We went back to her place, chilled out for a bit, and cooked up a nice feast.
the we went to possible the coolest pub in london.
no joke.
well, ive only been to one pub in london, but i have to say it was the coolest pub ive ever been in.
i have a couple of photos i'll check up when i get a chance.
but there were sculptures, paintings, photos, organic beer, was AWESOME.
only downer was they stopped serving at 11pm, and closed at 12.
but the night only got better.
from there we went to a squat party.
its like... a squat, that opens up, and all the hippies and whatnot go there.
it was possibly one of the craziest, most amazing things ive been lucky to see.
it took two hours of waiting outside in the cold (they forgot the key to the place, haha), but finally it opened up and we were in.
We sat down on a couch and a guy took a seat next to us.
i ask him if he'd been to many of these, and told him it was my first. he said he'd been to loads, and in a quote that i think sums it up, said something along the lines of "right now, you're in the lowest of the low, and its the best place to be in london." he was right, the floor was wet from a hole in the roof, it was cold, and covered in griffiti, but the enery there was awesome. He said this place had some of the best people you could hope to meet, and although it had a couple of the worst, from what i saw he was right.
It was a good night, we danced, sung, chatted.
i have photos which i'll stick up later, but it was pretty damn awesome.
we got home about 7am and yesterday was spent sleeping, pretty much.
today we did some sight seeing, and tomorrow i leave frenchie and head to edinbrugh.

ive also noted down the following:

observations:
paris has a sore lack of internet cafes.
the toilet paper always seems to be coloured.
the french dont really eat beef.
you have to pay for the toilets.

stuff im appreciating:
free toilets
food (im eating anything atm)
warm showers
clean clothes (i need to do the washing...)
a warm place to sleep

well, thats about it.
and with 7 minutes to go on my internet time!!!!

i will talk to you all soon.
lots of love.
- Louisa

have to be quick!!

in a hurry, but hello everyone.
just letting you all know i am ok!
left mum and dad today and met up with a friend, then made our way towards london.
ended up in lille, though.
crazy story, remind me to type it up later.
i saw a lot today, its crazy, i cant seem to remove a massive grin from my face. any time a negitive thought creeps in i go "hey, wait a minute, i'm in FRANCE!" and i'm smiling again.
but yeah, in a hostel in lille atm and i told some guy i'd only be 10 minutes.
hope you are all ok.
and laura, my hotmail address is the one i am checking, i cant really call though, got a new mobile number which u can get off mum but yeah, strapped for cash so i'll send you an email and photos soon.
more soon!
- Louisa

SALUT!

A big hello from... PARIS!
i was keen to get a blog written yesterday, but nobody informed me paris is seriously lacking in internet cafes, but 2 hours of walking around the city, an sms to a french friend and one good nights sleep later i finally found one, and here i am!
the flight wasn't too bad, although over 20 hours of flying time, my awesome sleeping abilities meant that on the hong kong to paris flight (the 2nd leg of the trip, which is about 12 hours long) i sleep all but 2 hours.
this meant that upon our 5am arrival in Paris, i was refreshed and good to go! so much for jet lag, eh?
so yesterday was spent trecking around the city. we're staying right in the heart of paris, about a 5 min walk from the Lourve. everything looks amazing, its crazy.
mum and dad were enjoying the wonder that is this beautiful city by almost constant bickering, so honestly i'm keen to get away from them.
its 1.08pm, thursday arvo in paris now, and hopefully i'll set off tomorrow.
random facts so far: havn't had to pay for a toilet... yet, no kidding, you cant pee for free. french coffee is so awesome, i dont even need milk to drink it. also, eveything is insanly expensive (but atm mum and dad are footing the bill, so thats ok). oh, and i found out "pardon" means "excuse me", or something along thoes general lines. oh, and finally, french keyboards are different, so different i cant figur out how to do the "@" sign (using the copy and paste technique at the moment).
i'm having a wonderful time!
to carl: i heard you're treating bell well, thanks for that.
to laura: i think mum is running out of credit cause she cant work her mobile. i think she has some international phone credit thing with optus, but it needs to be put on from australia, so you might have to hook it up for her.
to everyone else: i hope all is well at home and i'll talk to you soon.
- Louisa

Jumping in the deep end...

hello hello my friends and family,
well, it was hard deciding when, how and with who, but at extremely short notice i finally made up my mind, and as a result, Tuesday is the day I head off to Europe.
I was originally going to spend some time in London, and then i thought i was going to backpack with a friend in january, but to do that would have required changing dates of the ticket, and that costs money. Sooo instead of working through december to pay for how much it would cost in fees changing stuff around, I head off on the 25th of Novemer... so in 4ish days. Exciting eh?
I figure phone calls are expensive, and while i will send the odd post card, i thought it'd be nice to keep in touch with everyone via the wonder that is the internet.
So here it is, this is my travel blog.
This is the pre-flight ramble, which i am able to make lengthy with my, soon to disapear, ample free internet access.
I warn you all, this is for me as much as it is for you, so i hope you enjoy alllll the details i can manage to get out within my 15min stops at internet cafes.
At the moment i'm just sorting out some last minute accomodation and transport stuff, but my itinary is pretty set, you can check it out here...

View Larger Map

I will definatly miss you all, and while i'll admit i am a bit scared shitless, this trip is going to be fantastic.
I'll try and update this every few days or so.
Probably expect the next one to be from france...
If i dont see you before i leave, see you in 7 weeks when i get back! (I return to the land of Oz on the 14th of January)

- Louisa