Went to Ascot Racecourse for another race meeting, and saw Belinda Carlisle and Bananarama perform while it poured with rain.
M and I Went to see the Waifs play a gig here in London. As you can imagine, the crowd (mainly consisting of Aussies) was pretty excited when they played London Still.
Also went to a Regurgitator gig. They are one of my favourite Aussie bands, so I was very excited when I found out they were playing London. It was a really small gig, at a university bar, so we got to get right close up to the band. They only had a basic set up, so not much in terms of sound or visual effects like they often have, but the set was great. They played many songs from their best album, Unit (including I like your old stuff better than your new stuff,Modern Life, Black Bugs, Everyday Formula, !, I will lick your asshole and Polyester Girl).
Celebrated my first birthday in London by having a night of cocktails in a bar in Balham. Of course you don’t really need an excuse for this sort of activity in London. There have been many nights out with various people. London: it’s always very social.
TRAVEL
On one of the hottest days of the year, M and I went on a daytrip to Brighton. The amount of people going from London to Brighton that Sunday was ridiculous. Standing room only on the long distance train. Then from the train station in Brighton down the main street to the beach was all a big crowd walking in one direction. The beach was so crowded it was almost tricky to find a space to lay down 2 towels. But the worst of it was that the beach didn’t have sand, but big round pebbles. They weren’t bad to lie on, but the moment you tried walking on them,agony! Nevertheless, it was nice to get down to the beach.
The same weekend, M and I also went, along with a couple of friends, to Chessington World of Adventure in Surrey. It is a theme park, and, although not as good as the big ones on the Gold Coast, was still good fun and had some pretty wicked rides.
TRIP TO SWITZERLAND AND AREA
My first bit of major travel in Europe this time around, apart from the weekend trip to Berlin, happened in late August. I planned the trip with my favourite travel partner, Jen. She is a Canadian girl who I met when I was last living in London, and had travelled with her to Belgium, Germany and France. She is quite a jetsetter, and at the moment is living in a little town in the French countryside, right near the Swiss border, near the city of Geneva. She was nannying for a British/Kiwi family and invited me over to her part of Europe to do some travelling.
I made an early morning trip to Gatwick airport to fly into Geneva, Switzerland. I spent the day looking around the city, which is built on the banks of a bay within a massive lake. It was a warm day so when I was tired from walking around looking at all the old buildings, I went on a boat cruise around the lake, taking in the amazing scenery around the banks, of chalets, green forests, mountains and amazing blue water. Watching the lakeside inspired me to go to one of the beaches afterwards and laze around the beach for the rest of the afternoon. Though I wasn’t brave enough to get right in the water, it was too cold!
Jen’s friend Charlotte came to meet me in the evening and show me a little bit of the city at night. We picked up Jen who had just returned to Geneva from yet another trip, and then headed over the French border to Jen’s little village.
She lived in an old massive house with her family, with a huge garden and even a swimming pool. I hadn’t seen this sort of luxury in a long time, certainly not in London! We all sat around and drank some €2 French wine, a perfect end to a European evening.
The next day Jen and I set off on our Swiss journey. We walked to Switzerland (about a 20 min walk to the border) and caught a train into Geneva.
From there, we weren’t really sure where we wanted to go, so we just boarded a train that headed into the middle of Switzerland and got off in the city of Bern.
We spent 3 hours sightseeing in Bern, a really nice old city set on a sharp bend of a bright blue glacial river. It was seriously picturesque! So much so that I filled a whole Facebook album with just Bern (see album Swiss Adventures Pt 2: Three Hours in Bern)
Bern’s city symbol is a bear, and there are bear flags and logos everywhere, and the city even has its own bear enclosure, where you can throw fruit to the bears. Though my favourite part of the town was probably the rose garden at the top of a cliff overlooking the winding valley with the city in the middle.
Once we were exhausted from sightseeing, we bought a Swiss lunch from a supermarket (Swiss cheeses; warm, fresh-from-the-oven baguette and of course Swiss chocolate) to take onto the train and headed further into the centre of the country towards Interlaken.
Interlaken seemed to be Switzerland’s tourist capital. Rightly so, though. In Winter there would be a lot of skiing done on the many mountains surrounding the town. We were there in summer and it had plenty of summer activities to offer, from swimming/boating/kayaking in the lakes (Interlaken, meaning between the lakes, is, as you can imagine between two massive glacial lakes), cycling, Nordic walking in the hills, or going up to the mountain tops to check out the glacier.
We stayed in a small hostel room with some more Canadians, our window overlooking a torrent of bright blue water down the heavily flowing river running past the hostel, with a cliff leading up the mountain on the other bank.
We spent a few days in Interlaken and had a great time. We got around mainly on hired bikes. It was perfect riding around the green countryside during the warm summer days. We went swimming in the lake (water was almost unbearably cold, I thought), and also had a go at kayaking. Being in the middle of a huge bright blue lake surrounded by snowy mountain tops had a real relaxed, tranquil feel about it.
We also ventured up into the mountains, where we walked through the mist of clouds, caught trains and cable cars up and down steep cliffs and ate warm snacks in Chalets to keep warm.
Once we were ready to depart Interlaken, we decided to do so by boat. We went to the port on the Lake facing away from Geneva and caught a ferry to the other side. We ended up in a small country town and jumped on a train, changing a couple of times before we ended up in the city of Luzern.
By this time the night had fallen. We found a hostel, ventured out for food (I had a kebab-in-a-box) and crashed. The next day we explored Luzern, yet another beautiful old riverside city. We spent the day exploring before getting on a train again and heading for the Western border of Switzerland, bound for Liechtenstein – Jen and I wanted to tick another country off the list! No trains went to the small kingdom, so we had to catch a few different trains and a bus to get there, but eventually ended up in Vaduz, the capital. We had a look around bit didn’t find it particularly interesting, and when Jen decided to start destroying the Prince’s property (she broke the fence leading up to the castle trying to jump over it), we decided it was time to leave the country!!
We wanted to stay that night at a Swiss farm, sleeping on the hay in the barn. We called a few farms which Jen found in the listings for this type of accommodation, but when we tried to ring them to get in touch, our German didn’t get us much past “Gutten tag.” So we gave up and caught the train through the mountains in the South of the Country, as we looked in guide books for a hostel that sounded like it could put us up.
At night fall we ended up in a tiny country town in the middle of nowhere called Ilanz. The hostel was in fact some sort of hostel / guesthouse / hotel hybrid, and our room, which was otherwise lovely (with comfy fat feather doonas), was shared with an old man that smelled like an Anticol lozenge and wore nothing but his Y-fronts.
So instead we spent our evening in the restaurant and bar, which was all very nice, and much to Jen’s satisfaction, a unit of uniformed Swiss soldiers.
The next day we headed on, on the train again, through lots and lots of mountain scenery, until we ended up in the mountain resort of Zermatt, near the Italian border.
By winter, Zermatt is clearly a busy ski resort, but even though it was summer, it was still quite full of tourists. We went out on the town and the next day took a train up to the famous Matterhorn mountain. Unfortunately it was surrounded by clouds, so even though we were right next to the snowy peak, we could only see it through glimpses between the thick white fog. Nevertheless, we really felt on top of Europe up so high in the Alps.
After Zermatt, Jen and I headed back through the mountains toward lake Geneva, and back into French speaking territory (most of our trip was spent in German-speaking Switzerland). We ended up going to the small city of Nyon where we went out with Charlotte and her and Jen’s various nanny friends. The next day it was back in the Jen’s town French of Chalex in the back yard around the pool (and a random swim in a flooded quarry) before the imminent return to cloudy London.
