Life in Prague, Return to London, Easter in Edinburgh

When I last wrote I was in Prague.

Prague is the only city I have seen on my travels so far that hasn't got a Starbuck's. I am so proud of that!

I left the beautiful city somewhat sad that I was leaving its brilliant vibrant yet classic atmosphere, but reassured that I would return very soon. After all my eventual trip home begins with a flight from Prague, so I have to go back to catch it.

From Prague I took a coach to the city of Brno, in the Moravia region of the Czech Republic. I spent a few hours there and then went to Brno Airport. This international airport is probably the smallest airport I
have ever been to, and reminded me a little bit of Launceston Airport in Tasmania which I visited earlier this year. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon so after checking in I went back outside and sat on the grass and bench outside relaxing in the sun, something you really can't do at the world's bigger airports. After eventually deciding I better head to the departure lounge, the passport control bloke made me sign my Czech passport, because apparently it is not valid without a signature. Interesting that I managed to get in and out of England and into the Czech Republic with it, but not out.

My Ryan Air flight from Brno to London was much less comfortable than the coach ride from Prague to Brno. The coach had movies, magazines, a free beverage service, reclining seats and customer service with a
smile. The Ryan Air flight had none of these.

When I left the plane the shock of the cold almost blew me away. It was a horrible stormy evening (which didn't exactly result in a smooth flight either - it was one of the scariest landings I've had yet). It was not a nice welcome back to England but since then the weather has improved a bit. (The weather is now quite mild and the trees are starting to go green, a transformation from grey to green that I have been looking forward to witnessing.)

London is huge and very busy. It has 5 major commercial airports, and the bus from Stansted Airport where I landed took about 2 hours to get to central London. I then needed to get 2 underground trains to finally get to my destination. Once I arrived in South Kensington I walked around in the rain and freezing cold for quite a while before I found the Beit Quad, which is the Imperial College hall of residence where I was staying. Once there I was very happy because it is beaut accommodation, and an absolute bargain for London Standards (yet still quite expensive on the Aussie-Dollar-Credit-Card).

Kensington is an absolutely beautiful part of London. Very safe, clean and posh. I have really enjoyed just walking around the streets and beautiful parklands. During the day I have been trying to get myself
organised, applying for jobs, looking around at more permanent accommodation and other fun stuff like that.

I was walking through the Imperial College campus a week or 2 ago when I saw adds for STA Travel Easter weekends. I realised why be in London for 4 days of not being able to work or organise anything, and made an impulse purchase to go to  Edinburgh for a 4 day tour starting Good Friday.

So I got up on Friday and headed to the departure point of the tour on the tube (London underground train system, the only way to get around London). It happened to turn out that there were 3 Aussie girls on the
same carriage as me that were all headed to  Edinburgh too. We all got talking and didn't even notice that the train didn't stop at the station we required. Two stations later we got off the train and caught the next one going back in the other direction. But it turned out to be an overland train headed in a completely different
direction. We were lost, and late for our tour, with no way to contact the operators. A bit of panic and running for trains to backtrack we eventually made it onto the tour bus.

The tour consisted of 30 people, of which 3 were South Africans (or Saffas as we call them here in London), 2 kiwis, 2 Americans, 2 Hungarians and the rest were Aussies, including the tour leader. Everyone lived in London to either work or study and were getting away for Easter. The bus ride was long. Very long. 10 hours, and the bus didn't have a DVD player nor a toilet. I managed to use the time to catch up on sleep the best one can on a bus. 

 It was worth it though.  Edinburgh is a beautiful, friendly city. It is also a party capital. The city was full of people from all around Europe partying on stag trips, rugby trips and of course Aussie tourers. Much of our time was spent in the bars and nightclubs, but we still managed to fit in a bit of sightseeing. We had beautiful sunny weather which really made the city shine. The old architecture and overlapping city streets (many streets run over others below as the city was built over the old town) made every corner a picturesque place to explore. 

Highlights for me of the trip were the side trip to the beautiful town of Sterling (where the battle from Braveheart happened) and the ghost tour of Edinburgh's underground alleyways on a cold, wet, rainy night.

I have also attached some photos from the tour. I haven't got my photos yet, but downloaded some photos that some Saffa mates took in my presence.   


I'm back in London now, back to trying to get settled in. Beit Quad has become student accommodation again so they kicked me out. I will move into a flat soon, but in the meantime I've been hopping around
various dodgy hotels around London, basically the cheapest ones in or near Central London, staying a few nights at each.

I've finally found some work. I'm temping as a litigation paralegal at a big international law firm called [Law Firm], working on a huge matter, acting for a publicly listed company. The work is expected to go till mid-June, with plenty of overtime, so that should keep me going for a bit.

On Sunday I'm off to Dublin to do a 6-day-all-Ireland tour. That should be great!

I know this was a ridiculously long email, but I hadn't written in a while so I hope that at least justifies it.

Cheerio

Daniel

SOME STATISTICS ABOUT THE TRIP SO FAR:

• Time spent travelling so far: It was 2 months on Easter Monday
• Most nights slept in one bed: 7 (London at Rach and Stevo's House)
• Number of Flights Flown: 9 flights in 9 weeks (MEL-LAX, OAK-SAN, SAN-LAS, LAS-DEN, DEN-JFK, JFK-BOS, BOS-LHR, LHR-PRG, BRQ-STN)
• Number of Photos Taken: Approaching 1,000
• Combined number of Animals lived with: 6 (3 dogs, a snake, a turtle and a cat) [and numerous mice if you count the mice I saw in the kitchen of the San Francisco Hotel I stayed in]
• Number of American States Visited: 8 in 5 weeks (CA, NV, AZ, CO, NY, MA, NH, ME). I'll have to visit the other 42 next time.
• Number of Group Emails written: 9 including this one, I think
• Number of times at an Aussie Pub in the 1st week of being in Lodnon: 3 or 4. Was clearly feeling homesick that week!

My new homes (for now): England & Czechia

Hi Everyone!

The last time I wrote I was in the middle of registration interviews with some legal recruitment agencies in London. The interviews went well and I have currently got the recruiters looking for short term legal positions for me. I am also registered for temp work, and so far have worked half a day as a "paralegal" in a scanning house, helping a scanning outsourcing company scan documents in for importation into a litigation database. Sounds interesting, perhaps. However, it was work that a 3 year old could have done (removing coloured pages from batches of documents), so I am hoping to get something more challenging soon, otherwise I will feel that my 6 years at University had really gone to waste.I have not been much of a tourist in London.

After travelling the USA for 5 weeks, sightseeing every day, I wanted a bit of a rest in England. I went to a lot of pubs, caught up with friends, and just generally enjoyed some socialising, particularly with Rach and Stevo who were kind enough to put me up at their house and show me around London. Thanks, I really appreciate it.

I did manage to make it to one tourist attraction, the "British Airways London Eye" which is basically a massive Ferris Wheel with views all over London; that pretends to be a British Airways aeroplane by calling the ride a "flight". We went at sunset, so we got the best of both worlds - seeing the cityscape during the day and also with the lights on as it got dark. Unfortunately we couldn't see the sunset itself, through the clouds and smog.

On Friday I decided to go ahead fly to Prague in the Czech Republic, because, being so close, I was too excited to put it off any longer. So I headed off to visit my Czech family and friends and to return to London when work related matters required me to. That's the beauty of Europe - everything is so close!

So I flew into Prague to return to Czechia for the first time in 20 years (I originally left in 1986). Entering the country was an overwhelming feeling, a mix of feeling like I was in a foreign place at the same time as feeling like I was home. For the first few days and even now to some extent, every time I hear someone speak Czech it catches my attention the same way it would when I heard the language back in Australia (quite rare) but then I remind myself that its the just normal thing here.I was picked up at Prague Airport by my aunty and cousin and taken back to their house in the Czech countryside just out of Prague. Just seeing the countryside, the small towns, the roads, creeks and forests was an amazing experience for me. The landscape and dwellings are just so radically different to Australia that I really appreciate the contrast.It was really nice staying in a house in a country village in central Europe - a really cosy warm feeling. But I really enjoyed the trips to Prague! Prague is an amazing city. So modern yet so old at the same time. You travel around in a really modern metro system only to exit onto cobble stone streets with buildings that date back a long time before the First Fleet ever landed on Australian shores. It is a real city of contrasts. You pay the equivalent of $3 for a beautiful traditional meal and 80c for a 500ml beer, and then potentially pay more than what we would pay in Australia for a McDonald's meal.At the moment there are some pretty serious floods in the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary and Germany but not as serious as the major floods in 2002. Luckily the areas that I am visiting are mainly unaffected, although some restaurants on the banks of the river Vltava here in Prague are well under water.

At the moment I am staying with a friend of my mum's in a Prague apartment for a few days to be closer to the city. A snake and a turtle also live in my room, so I am not lonely. They keep an eye on me. I have been feeling sick over the last few days so I have been resting, but my mum's friend has taken very good care of me here, so I have been lucky.I have a few more days to check out Prague, then on Sunday I'm catching a bus to the city of Brno in Moravia, from where I will fly back to London to continue job hunting. But I will come back to Prague again soon for a Longer time, there is still so much more for me to experience here.

Next week I will be living on campus at a London University. The halls of residence are public accommodation during the Easter Holidays. So that should be an interesting experience. After that, who knows what's next? I just filled out a volunteer application form for the Roskilde Festival in Denmark for June.

Ahoj