Will a photo do?

I know I should update this but I just can't be bothered. This one way communication thing is kind of annoying at times. So will a picture suffice? What about 2 pictures. That's like 2000 words right? And I probably wouldn't have written that much anyway.

So this is the Neuschwanstein castle in Germany and a view over Füssen from the castle which we went to today.

So I hope that will satisfy you for now because you probably won't get more for a few days.

Merry Christmas!

Just a quick note to wish you all a wonderful Christmas. Especially to everyone in Christchurch. It's weird not being there. But hopefully you can all find a way to have a good holiday despite the rocking and rolling going on under your feet. Fingers crossed next year will be a little less shaky.
Since I just did an update there isn't a lot to say about what I've been up to. Yesterday we went to the zoo. It was very big and full of many impressive animals. The reindeer, however, were conspicuously absent. Today we went ice skating in the square. I haven't been ice skating in about 5 years and it turns out it uses muscles I didn't even know I had. Who knew there were muscles in the ankles?
And tomorrow will probably be full of skype. Email me if you want to book a time to talk because some people have already called dibs on certain times.
So have a wonderful christmas everyone and you will hear more from me next week when I will be in Germany.

Into the Czech Republic

So when I told my sister I was coming to a place called Cesky Krumlov (there's meant to be a little v over the c which makes it a ch) she immediately decided it sounded like a bond villain. But when I got here and saw the castle, the cobbled lanes, the brightly painted houses and the river winding through it I decided it was definitely more fairytale. But that was before I heard about the moat. Like I said, there's a castle here. A pretty impressive castle given the size of the town. And like all good castles it has a moat. But when they were making the moat they decided water was just so over done so instead they filled the moat (dramatic pause) with bears.
Yeah, that's a little bond villain.
I didn't get to actually see the bears since they are of course hibernating at this point and apparently, despite the appearance of bats last week, I don't have a magical ability to wake hibernating animals. Must have been someone else on the cave tour.
So I meandered the streets of Cesky Krumlov. Walked through the castle. The interior is closed in winter but you can walk through the out side parts. It's a good castle too. Not quite like any of the others I've been to so far. But I also got a very mild cold and to avoid letting it get worse I stayed in a bit too. Which seems to have worked.
And then there was Prague. I got here yesterday afternoon and spent much of the day trying to track down Rachael because we were not smart enough to make a plan for finding each other before she left New Zealand and she was not reachable once she left. And Prague is quite big and very very crowded this week.
But I did eventually track her down. Along the way I saw a guy making horse shoes in the middle of the square and several spots where people, candles and flowers were gathered to honour Vaclav Havel as well as several incredibly large and bright christmas trees.
Today we went to the castle. It's not really the kind of place that springs to mind when I hear the word castle. Closer to palace but that doesn't really cover it either. It's more like a collection of palaces with a big cathedral in the middle. And all the buildings here are really brightly painted which was an interesting contrast to the dark gothic cathedral. And there was this lane with little houses that looked like something out of a cartoon. We also passed a massive line of people with flowers who we assumed were waiting to get in to see the casket.
After the castle we meandered the streets of Prague for a while. It is a pretty city. Found a church. Watched the astrological clock. Ate sausage. Decided not to go to the sex machines museum, the wax museum, or the marionette museum (personally I think the first one sounds the least creepy). And wandered the markets with hot drinks.
An afternoon of rest (some of us are quite jet lagged) then back out for dinner and enjoyment of christmas lights and market crowds.
Tomorrow we might just go to the zoo.

Christkindlmarkte

I know it's been about a week since I last posted but I just don't feel like I have that much to tell you about. I went to Zagreb. It's a nice city. But I don't really remember anything particularly spectacular about it. Then I went to Ljubljana. Slovenia wasn't originally on my list of places to go but I heard about these caves that sounded worth seeing.
Ljubljana itself was pretty. It has a castle on a hill and architecture and markets and such. It rained most of the time I was there and I got caught in a hail storm at one point.
On my second day in Ljubljana I did a day trip to the Škocjan caves. I looked everything up and so I knew that it was an hour and a half train ride to Divaca and the caves are 5 km from there with buses only going twice a day at very strange times. The bus is run by the people who manage the caves but for some reason the bus goes at 11 am and 2.30 pm when the tours of the caves go at 10 am and 1 pm. So I planned on taking the 9.40 train so I would have plenty of time to walk. But I missed my train. I'm actually somewhat impressed with the fact that I haven't missed any trains or buses before this. I'm usually somewhat paranoid and arrive early (also because I've had experiences with very full trains that don't have any seats left if you get there just on time). This time I forgot how far the train station was from my hostel. There was another train an hour later but it didn't get into Divaca until 12.15 and 45 minutes to walk 5 km is not really enough time. But I wanted to see the caves so I went anyway. The train arrived late and I power walked the whole (at times slightly muddy) way but I got there just in time. The tour left less than a minute after I got there.
The caves were really amazing. It's got Europe's biggest underground canyon. And all sorts of stalagmites and stalactites. And bats. Apparently we were lucky because we actually saw the bats even though they are meant to be hibernating at this point.
From Ljubljana I caught the train to Vienna. Vienna really knows how to put on a show for Christmas. I complained before about the lack of christmas lights in some places. Turns out they're all in Vienna. The giant chandeliers were particularly impressive. I also got my first snowfall of the trip. I was wondering how far north I would have to go to find the real winter and I guess the answer is Austria. It didn't actually snow for long. Only about a minute. But it happened to be the minute when I was wandering through the christmas market with a mug of gluhwein so it was somewhat magical. I had 2 whole days in vienna to enjoy the christmas markets. Which were completely packed one week before christmas. I also did the tourist thing and saw some of the more permanent sights of Vienna like the spanish horse school and the big Stephansdom cathedral.
And today I am on my way to the czech republic. A place called Cesky Krumlov.

More than a hundred and one

And then I headed to Croatia. Dubrovnik was my first stop. It's actually pretty close to Kotor. Just over 2 hours on the bus and a chunk of that is spent at border control. The coastline between the border and Dubrovnik is littered with tiny towns only about 5 km apart. They're all squeezed between mountains and ocean so don't have anywhere to grow except sideways so you mostly go straight from one town to another. Sometimes the you are leaving sign was on the same post as the you are entering sign. Dubrovnik itself is pretty big though. I got in about 5pm and got picked up at the bus station by the hostel I had booked to stay at including a bit of a tour of that part of the city along the way. Had some nice conversation with the only other person staying in the whole hostel. I only had the one day in Dubrovnik so I started early. Left my bags at the bus station and walked to the old town. It turned out to be a lot further than it looked on my map, especially in new shoes. But I found it eventually and took the cable car up the hill for amazing views of the old town. Though in some ways it was more impressive up close. It looks a lot smaller in the pictures from the cable car than it actually is. The city walls are massive. Definitely some of the most impressive walls I've seen. You can walk all the way around them too which I did later. It's really amazing. I don't seem to have words to describe it. I took a heap of photos but they are all stuck on my camera where you can't see them.
So I did the main sights of Dubrovnik and then walked back to the bus station to catch the 5pm bus to Split. Turns out there isn't a 5 pm bus on Saturdays but there was one at 6 so it wasn't a big deal.
And then I got to Split which was all lit up with christmas lights and full of people. I've been a few places lately that are very touristy but very seasonal and are sort of quiet at this time if year. Not Split though. Granted the hostel I was staying at was still pretty much empty (I've gotten used to having an entire dorm to myself. Not sure how I'll manage when everything is packed for christmas) but the city was still a busy place. I guess it was all Dalmatians (being the coast of Dalmatia). Even the next day, the dreaded Sunday, was packed with people. I even stumbled across a square with a stage where groups of little girls were dancing. The lack of coordination of 5 year olds is awesome.
So I wandered the city and got into the Christmas spirit. Found a statue that must be of a magician. But the map said it was some saint. I also did the less fun hiding in my room trying to figure out where I'm going next. I hadn't decided what I was doing after I left Split and really had to do some proper planning. But I also went out after dark to enjoy the christmas lights some more. Most of the places before Croatia had kind of pathetic christmas lights. That's the best part of a winter christmas is having more hours of dark in which to enjoy lights.
The next day I went on a short day trip to Omiš. A girl I met in Athens said it was amazing. It definitely had potential but seemed to be mostly under construction. I headed back fairly early but don't specifically remember what I did with my afternoon. I think just wandering the market and the palace some more.
This morning I got all of my stuff organised. It spread a surprisingly long way in 3 days. That's the problem with not having to share the space with anyone. So that took a while. But since there wasn't anyone there I didn't have to worry about check out time. Once I was sorted I went to climb the hill and check out the city panorama. Not a bad view. I could have climbed higher but my lungs were not impressed with the damp it-might-rain air so I went back down and bought a train ticket instead. I got funny looks from the people at the train station for buying the ticket 4 hours early but I'm getting low on Croatian kuna and don't want to have to get more money out until I'm back to Euros so I wanted to know how much I had left after getting the ticket. Answer: probably not enough. Depends how much a ticket from Zagreb to Ljubljana costs. It's shorter than this trip which usually means cheaper but it's international which usually means more expensive so we'll see. Then I went to the grocery store (so exciting) because food is a necessity on a 6 hour train ride.
And now I'm 4 hours in and there's nothing to watch out the windows because it's too dark and the guy 2 seats ahead who was making muscles at himself in the window got off at the last stop. So I guess I'll go back to my book.
Coming up next: Zagreb, Slovenia and Vienna.

It's all cyrillic to me

Seriously, what do they need so many letters for?
Well it's been a busy few days for me. I've moved around quite a bit. Last I wrote I was in Greece. Now I'm in Montenegro. And it has been an interesting trip getting here. You can't really plan ahead when travelling in this part of the world because you can't be sure of bus times until you actually get to the bus station. You can google all you want but have to be prepared to figure something else out when you get there.
But before all of that I had a day in Meteora. They have these monasteries perched on top of cliffs. They are impressive. I walked up to about the third one (there are 6 still in use today) but then I got hungry so I walked back. But not before getting completely surrounded by cats at one point. They just appeared out of nowhere.
The next day I began the hope-there-is-a-bus part of the trip. The internet had told me that there was a daily bus from Thessaloniki to Skopje at 5.30pm. So I headed to Thessaloniki and spent about 3 hours trying to find this supposed bus. When I asked people they mostly just told me to go to a different place and ask for information there. I finally found someone who told me I had to go to a particular travel agent and gave me directions. But his directions were not very good and I couldn't find it and when I went back to ask again he had gone for the day and the other person had no clue about anything. I did eventually find the right place and there was in fact a bus that night so I got to Macedonia without too much more trouble. Just a short delay at the border because the spanish immigration were terrible stampers so the greek immigration didn't want to let me out. But they did. And the rest of that particular journey was pretty straight forward.
The next day was Sunday. I've come to resent Sundays somewhat since I've been travelling. Everything is closed. Macedonia turned out to be better than Italy because the mall with the grocery store was open decent hours even though all the independent shops were closed. When I went to the old part of town it was almost completely deserted. But it was pretty. Skopje is practically exploding with sculpture. It's everywhere. The central square has probably about a dozen statues including a giant horseman monument thing surrounded by lions. There were guys in chairs and guys in robes and women shopping and a bull about to charge a restaurant. And those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.

So, climbing a mountain in a thunder storm: not my best idea ever. But it works out well for you because now I feel the need to huddle in my bed for a few hours which means I might actually finish this post. I've been writing it for a while.
Where did I leave off? Skopje= statues. And advertising. Almost every street light had a sign attached to it advertising something. It was an interesting place. They also have their own currency, Macedonian denari, which are useless everywhere else and I have 109 denari left over. Which is less than €2 so it's not a big deal but it's all in 10s (they have 10 denari notes and coins and I have both) so it takes up a bit of space in my wallet.
After Skopje I caught a bus to Priština, capital of Kosovo, where the internet said I could catch a bus to Podgorica, capital of Montenegro. I couldn't find the  times for the buses from Pristina to Podgorica online so I took the earliest bus from Skopje and got to Pristina before noon. But the bus wasn't until 5.45 so I had most of a day to see the city. It's not the prettiest city I've been to. More functional. But I found the university and the statue of Bill Clinton on Bill Clinton Boulevard.
Then the bus to Montenegro. Not the best bus ride ever so I'll skip the actual journey. Got a few more stamps in my passport. Arrived in Podgorica at 3 am. The internet had led me to believe it was about a 5 hour trip. Not a 9 hour trip. So I spent a few hours in the bus station and caught the earliest bus to Kotor. Which is where I am now. And it's magical. Not really sure what I like so much about it. It is very dramatic with the mountains surrounding it and the fortress looming over the old city with the bay in the middle. And the old city is walled and free of cars with twisty streets and little shops. But I've been other places with twisty streets so I don't know why I find Kotor so special but I do. I've already put Montenegro on the list of places to come back to someday. All of the trouble getting here was completely worth it.
The first day I napped a lot to recover from my epic journey, yesterday I wandered the town and bought shoes and today I planned to climb up to the fortress and then continue along the old merchants' road as far as I could get in one day and see if I could make it to this famous village in Lovcen National Park. I prepared for rain and did go a bit past the fortress but after the rain got really heavy I decided I should probably start back before I got uncomfortable. Which was a good call because that meant that when the hail and lightening started I was already on the way back and when I was really drenched and wished I could teleport I was more than half way. But the walk up was mostly dry and the views were amazing. I definitely feel like I'm going to have to come back someday with more time.
I find it interesting that this may be on the short list for favourite places I've been so far but no one had ever told me that Montenegro was worth visiting. I have had a lot of advice about where to go. When you're travelling and talking to other travellers the topic of unmissable places comes up fairly regularly. A few people have said Eastern Europe in general but when asked why always first mentioned how cheap everything is. Not one person mentioned Montenegro to me. So let me be the one to say it. Montenegro should be on your to do list.

Pros and cons of travelling off season

Guess I should write one of these before I have even more to write about. I have done a bit since I last wrote. Other than the one photo I don't think I've written anything since before I got to Crete. And I'm not even in Crete anymore. Actually quite far from Crete. I've done a lot of travelling in the last few days.
But that's getting ahead and if I do that then I might never go back and since I don't seem to really be writing my journal anymore this is sort of the only record of my trip so I should probably at least make mention the earlier parts.
I arrived in Heraklion at about 6.30 am after not the best overnight ferry (on the boats that do that route the cheap seats are really not designed for sleeping) and the youth hostel didn't open until 8 so i found a bench and ate some breakfast and watched the sun rise. Or at least I watched the sky go from dark to light. The sun wasn't really visible. Then I dumped my stuff and decided to head over to Knossos. Some of you may have noticed that I tend to visit a lot of old stuff. I don't think anyone can be that surprised. I do have a degree in classics. But after a while some of the old stuff does start to look kind of the same. Knossos is not one of those. There isn't really any other site in the world quite like Knossos. For those of you who didn't major in classics Knossos was the main palace in the Minoan civilisation. And the Minoans were a big deal up until about the 14th century BC when they went down pretty fast. So Knossos is REALLY old stuff. Except for the parts that are really quite new. See Knossos was excavated back before archaeology was really a thing. Before there were rules and systems for how to do things. The guy who did the excavations (hence forth he shall be referred to as Evans) did some things that are a little controversial today. He reconstructed parts of the palace the way he thought it would have looked. The trouble being that there wasn't always enough evidence to support his theories. So he jumped to a few conclusions which he left permanently on the site in concrete. There are debates about whether his reconstructions were good or bad. Point is: these days no archaeological site would ever be treated that way which makes Knossos unique. Because Evans' reconstructions may not be entirely accurate but they tell a good story. They may not show what the palace was like but they show what it could have been like.  There are whole rooms that he put back together and repainted. When you are standing in those rooms it doesn't matter if it's not right, you get a sense of context that you can't get from the accurate reconstructions of other ruins. Knossos is full of imagination.
I spent the afternoon just wandering the city. It's a nice city. The next day I caught a bus to Chania. Which is also sometimes spelt Hania. If it was up to me I'd probably choose to spell it Khania but it's not. Probably they get more english speakers closer to the correct pronunciation with Hania. But phonetics aside, Chania was very pretty. It's got a venetian harbour and lots of beach and twisty streets in the centre of town. I specifically went to Chania because there are some really good day trips from there. But as it turns out at the end of October they stop almost all of the buses so there was only one bus to each place each day. The latest one left at 6.45 am. I didn't end up doing any day trips. But I was paying €12 a night for a room that in summer would cost €65 so Greece in winter has it's bonuses.
Instead of thrilling day trips I slept in and had a bit of a lazy day. Which I liked but doesn't make for much of a blog post. And the next day I started my way to the next place on my list. Delphi. Which required a bus to Heraklion, a ferry to Piraeus, metro and then bus to the Athens bus station (did they purposefully make it as hard as possible to get out of Athens?), and then the bus to Delphi. I'd thought I might be able to do Delphi in the afternoon and head straight on to Meteora but turns out there was only one bus a day and it left at 10 am. So I had to stay the night. Which turned out to be quite nice. It felt good to get out of the cities and apparently I'm a fan of mountains. Who knew? I headed over to the archaeological site but didn't realise it would close at 3pm. I probably should have been prepared for that because a few other things here close that early at this time of year but I didn't think to check so I showed up at 2.15 and had to convince them to let me in even though I wouldn't have time to see the whole thing. But I saw most of it and took a moment to ask Apollo where he thought I should go next. I guess I don't have what it takes to be an oracle (or hadn't inhaled enough noxious gases) because I got nothing. So today I went with my original plan and headed for Meteora. Which actually means heading to Kalambaka. Turns out it's a good thing I couldn't start the trip yesterday afternoon. It sounded so easy but ended up taking 4 buses and about 7 hours. It wasn't bad though. Saw a lot of little mountain towns (and got that harbour union song severely stuck in my head. I only know the one line) and dramatic vistas. Also saw a lot of the inside of bus stations. But I got here in the end and it seems nice enough. Tomorrow I will check out the monasteries and maybe find out what the deal is for climbing stuff. Just for a change of pace.