Austria for Business and Pleasure

I started skiing relatively late, when I was 19. I was absolutely terrible at first. But I loved it and stuck with it and have been skiing for at least one day every year ever since.

This winter I decided to return to Austria, to a resort called Gastein which I visited back in early 2010 (see my post on that trip here).

My girlfriend and I flew to Salzburg on Saturday night. We stayed the night and had the biggest Austrian feast of all sorts of meat that you have ever seen at the beautiful hotel Grünauerhof in the suburbs.

The next day we headed for the mountains of Salzburg state to Bad Gastein. There, we skied for 2 and a half days in the warm sunshine, enjoying Austrian beer, schnitzels, sausages and goulash. Bad Gastein is a town built on thermal springs, which meant that after a hard day's skiing we were able to relax in the comfort of the spa, enjoying the region's healing waters.

We were due to fly back to London on Wednesday but a need to see some clients came up, so instead of jetting back to London, we caught a train to Vienna so that I could attend business meetings and that we could enjoy more of the Austrian cuisine. We visited a number of those classic Viennese coffee houses to sample traditional meals such as Sachertorte, Apple Strudel and Viennese coffee.

Ironically, even though it was sunny and warm when we were in the mountains for skiing, it was cold, snowy and windy in Vienna.  Battling the snow to get to business meetings was certainly fun, however, and beats a day in the office in London.

2012: A year of travel in review

I have not been posting to my travel blog much this year so seeing as it is now December, I thought I'd write a summary for 2012.

• My year started well with waking up on New Years Day in Paris. I had got there just for new years eve (with only about 2 hours to spare) after getting spending the night on a bus stuck on a closed, icy mountain road in the French Alps and having to be rescued by the rescue services (see separate blog post). I would visit Paris two more times in 2012, both in November, with a business trip and a trip to Disneyland Paris in the same week. 

• My business travel year also started well. I travelled to Pennsylvania for business meetings, and combined the trip with a weekend in Atlantic City. I managed to lose both my passports on this trip and only realised on my way to the airport to fly back to London. Luckily I managed to get them back!

• The Spring was packed full of travel! A boys' trip to Las Vegas for a mate's 30th, a long weekend in Tenerife, a business trip and weekend in Ireland, a surprisingly rainy weekend in Gibraltar, and Easter in Australia, where I went just for a week. I surprised my parents as I didn't tell them I was coming home. On my way back from Melbourne I stopped over in Doha to look around. 

• During the summer, my parents were over from Australia. With them, I travelled to Prague and Venice, and also did various sightseeing around the south of England. 

• However, my main trip this summer was to the Benicassim Festival, on the coast of Spain between Barcelona and Valencia  We stayed at a spa resort instead of roughing it camping, spending the nights at the festival and the afternoons recovering on the beach.

• Autumn was spent chasing the last of the summer sun. I saw my parents off to Dubai on their way back to Australia, and had a weekend in Ibiza with my girlfriend.

• Other business trip destinations this year included Brussels, Madrid, Munich, Oslo, Prague, Vienna and Zurich.

• My travel year will finish off with flying to Miami on Christmas Day to get some winter Florida sun!

Overall less flights this year than 2011 but about the same distance flown:

2010 - a year of travel in review

It has been a bit of a slack year, blogwise!  I have to be honest, I have not done a good job at all of keeping this blog up-to-date this year. So as the year draws to an end, I thought I could get away with it all by summarising my year of travel in one single post! So here we go...

Let's start with a scary stat. 

I took 36 flights totalling to about 44,900 miles (about 72,250 km) in 2010. Some of this was for personal holiday travel, and some was for business (not business class though - I wish!)

IT ALL BEGAN IN...

Australia. I visited Australia for Christmas and New Years last year, to get away from the London cold and catch up with those at home. It was great! A trip down to Sorrento with one group of mates and another trip to Warrnambool with another group, ensured that I spent as much time as possible on the beach.

A CHILLY RETURN

Brr! The very next morning after landing, I found myself walking to work in the snow!

But really, you can't let winter stop you! So some friends and I ventured right into the cold. Up north. To Yorkshire. The highlight was staying in the seaside town of Whitby, and you can read all about the trip here.

THE WINTER WAY

Making the most of England despite the winter, my girlfriend and I went down South too, and visited New Forest and Portsmouth. But let's not get carried away with English travel. Europe is at our doorstep! A friend and I headed of to Austria for a few days. We had a good time wandering around Vienna, eating ketchup flavoured chocolate and generally being silly, as well as meeting up with some Austrian friends, and visiting them in the mountains where I lived when I was young. My friend headed back to London, and I stayed on to go skiing at Bad Gastein, near Salzburg.  Austria's a great place to spend a winter week!

Reichenau, Austria

SPRING INTO LIFE


It was a spring full of travel.

• A day road-trip to Belgium on a freezing day with some friends, visiting Antwerp and Gent.
• A visit to Zurich in Switzerland for work
• A trip to Portugal at Easter
• A business trip to America, which took me to Minnesota, Chicago and unexpectedly, New York
• A long weekend in the Peak District
• A break from the winter in tropical Barbados, which was definitely a highlight of the year
• A trip to Brussels just to have lunch with some clients

SUMMER IN EUROPE

This summer I spent a lot of time in England.  I attempted a beach trip to Blackpool, stopping off at Liverpool on the way, but being Northern England, it was cold!  I had a few other trips around the UK for work, including Durham, Newcastle and Birmingham.

The highlight of my summer, however, was my trip to Greece.  I went with a bunch of great friends to explore Athens and sail the Cyclades islands!

SPAIN

I finished summer off with a trip to Spain for the August bank holiday weekend, taking in Alicante, Valencia and Zaragoza.

Alicante

The idea came up by looking at what cheap RyanAir flights were available to warm places. I found one into Alicante, which is half way down the Spanish East coast, and one out of Zaragoza, in the North of Spain. This would be a great excuse to traverse the country by train!

But it didn't all go according to plan. When I landed in Alicante and came through passport control, the first thing I did was get changed into shorts. Which is when I realised I didn't have my wallet!  Surely I couldn't have lost my wallet again? (I had lost my wallet half way through the Greek sailing trip just months earlier!)

I asked at the RyanAir desk and they asked someone to check the plane.  No sign of it. Maybe I dropped it in the airport?  I went to the airport Police station, which was in charge of lost property. They asked me to hang around for a few hours in case it showed up. So the first few hours of my holiday were sitting on the airport floor. And then on the phone to the banks, cancelling all my cards! 

But what would I do for money? When I lost my wallet in Greece, I simply borrowed some money from my friends. But I was in Spain alone! HSBC agreed to send me some emergency money through a Western Union Money Transfer. All I had to do is find a Western Union office and show them my reference number passport (which luckily I still had).

I had €3 in my pocket, and luckily the bus from the airport to the city was €2.40. Although I seriously considered walking, had it not been 35 degrees.  I made it to the city and found the Western Union office. The problem was it was now the early afternoon.... and therefore siesta! I had a few hours to kill before the shop re-opened so I went to the beach. Unfortunately I couldn't find any water taps, and €0.60 wasn't enough to buy a drinks, so after a few hours on the beach in the blistering sun, I was parched.  When I finally picked up the emergency cash, the drinks and ice cream I bought were the most delicious I'd ever tasted!

I explored Alicante a bit, which diddn't take long. It is a small city, surrounded by cliffs and a very touristy beach. It wasn't full of English tourists though, which was nice. That night I caught a train up to Valencia, which is Spain's third largest city. Amazing architecture kept me entertained, and the next day I went to a beach too.  The Valencia beach had a lot more locals than Alicante. On the second night I made my way to Zaragoza, which is a quiet city in North of Spain, inland. After some sightseeing there, I headed back to London, with a few Euros to spare.

Valencia by night

OKTOBERFEST

I decided to celebrate the end of my 20's and beginning of my 30's by going to Oktoberfest in Munich with a few friends.  Just like two years ago, we did a package with Alpenrider, staying in a chalet in beautiful Kirchberg in Tirol, Austria.  For two days in a row, they took us into the centre of Munich for the festivities, and then drove us safely back over the border to Austria to recover. I had a great time and it was a perfect start to the next decade of my life!

Drinking Bavarian style, in Lederhosen

SWEDEN

Soon after coming back to London, I had a business trip for a few days in Sweden.  My colleague and I flew into Copenhagen in Denmark, and the next day caught the train across the Oresund bridge-tunnel to Malmo in Sweden. A small city with a beautiful town centre. We had some business meetings and ate some hamburgers, and caught the train up to Stockholm. For more business meetings. And more hamburgers. And hot dogs.

A Swedish hot dog with mashed potato, in a wrap of course

 Luckily on the Friday night some other colleagues of ours came over from London to join us for the weekend, and saved us from the junk food eating. Unfortunately this was replaced by copious amounts of drinking, which in Stockholm, isn't cheap.  It was a great weekend though, exploring various areas of Stockholm night-life.

KRAKOW AND THE HAGUE

Two of my friends from Australia are in Europe and they spent some of their time visiting family in Poland. What a perfect excuse to make my first visit to that country!  We decided to meet up for a weekend in Krakow.

So I consulted good old Ryanair and booked a cheap flight to Krakow on a Saturday morning. The problem was that the flight was at about 6am, out of Stansted airport - London's equivalent of Melbourne's Avalon. I had to get there by about 4:30, which meant that I had to catch the easyBus from Baker Street at 3:30, which in turn meant that I had to catch the night bus from my house to Baker Street at 2am.  So I had to get up at 1am - probably the earliest I have ever gotten up.  I did think of just pulling an all-nighter, but knew I would only have 1 night with my friends, so I wanted to have the energy and awakedness for that.

And that I did. I managed to do a lot of sightseeing with my first day in Krakow, and then had quite the night out that night, with my friends and some people from the hostel. I thought a 3am finish was a good effort for a 1am start the morning before!

Day 2 in Krakow was cut short by the fact that I needed to be at a conference that Sunday night, in the Hague, the Netherlands. So, after only about 30 hours in Krakow, I left my friends on a walking tour in the early afternoon, and started my marathon journey to the Hague: taxi to Krakow Airport, flight to Prague, another flight to Amsterdam, train to Rotterdam, another train to the Hague, taxi to the hotel! Phew! 

After a few days of fun at the conference I was happy to come back home to London!

WINTER

And that was pretty much it for the Autumn, because soon after that, winter hit!

I had a few more domestic trips around the UK for work, going to Edinburgh, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Bristol and Birmingham, but no more holidays, unfortunately. It was time to save my leave for the the trips coming up in the new year.

I welcomed the new year by the first of those, a ski trip over Christmas and New Years Eve to Chamonix in France - which was great fun.

Happy new year! What have you got planned for travel in 2011? I am off to Australia, Brazil, and Argentina.Can't wait!

Skiing in Gastein

I went to Austria last week and spent a few days in and around Vienna and then went over to the Salzburg region for some skiing. I am yet to write a proper post about the trip, but in the meantime, here is a review for the place I stayed at in the mountains:

I first heard about the Euro Youth Hotel in The Times article on The world's 10 best ski hostels (published way back on 17 December 2008). I was looking for a place in Europe to go skiing solo and therefore wanted to stay in a hostel where I would get to meet some people. This place was an excellent choice!  

I stayed in a 14 bed dorm. So obviously I wasn't expecting too much luxury. The dorms were clean, large and with comfortable wooden bunk beds The people were friendly. Private rooms are also available. There was a TV/lounge room, a restaurant, a pub and a basement bar, so plenty of common areas to hang out and meet new friends. Beers were €2.90 for a pint and there was a nightly happy hour offering cheap shots.  

Inclusive breakfast was available for both for the dorm guests as well as the hotel guests. Probably the best hostel breakfast I have had anywhere in the world.  

Best of all, though, was the location. The hostel is across the road from the train station and the ski centre from where the gondola goes to the top of the mountain. There is also a EuroSpar supermarket right next door, and plenty of bakeries, bars and other useful businesses nearby, including ski hire. The hostel gives a good ski hire deal. Gastein is a good ski area with long and challenging runs, and a multi day lift ticket gives you access to the whole Ski Adame region.

I hope to write a full post soon. See you then!

The Changing World of Travel

A friend and I are going to Austria in a few weeks time, and we will be starting our trip off in Vienna. She mentioned a movie called Before Sunrise to me. I had never heard of it but apparently it was a film set in Vienna. So last night I went to her house and watched it, so that I would have a frame of reference for any such references she may make to the film whilst we're there.

I liked it, and even though it was a complete chick flick, with excessive dialogue (and a distinct lack of car chases and firearms), it reminded me of the romance of travel generally, which is something close to my heart.  But I digress. The point I am trying to get to is that we noticed the characters - with their early-to-mid-1990's style - carrying around bags, and I thought these days they would surely be wheeling around suitcases.

Suitcases... like this maybe?

When I think back to when I was a kid, in the early 90's and certainly the 80's, no-one really had suitcases like that.

People carried bags and suitcases like this:

...which had wheels if you were lucky, and even if they did, the frames were probably still quite unballanced and hard to wheel around. 

The funny thing is that the suitcases we have now haven't been around for long at all. Which made me think, so much has changed with the way we travel.

Here are some things I regularly do when planning and carrying out a holiday, that my parents could not have done in the early 90's:

• I look around for cheap flights online, using sites such as Kayak to compare prices. If I am not sure what airlines fly to an airport, I use Wikipedia to look up the airport. It will tell me which airlines fly there and where from. When I am happy with a flight, I book it. Directly. Without a travel agent.
• I book a hostel days before leaving, and I know it will be a clean, friendly and fun place, because I have read the reviews from fellow backpackers.
• I fly for relatively cheap, because of deregulation of the airline market. Competition has made for affordable fares, as have budget airlines.
• To figure out how I am going to get from the airport at an affordable price by looking up all of the transport options on Wikitravel. Whilst there, I also have a look at what the suggested things are to do in that city. It is like having a Lonely Planet guidebook for every city. Except more up to date.
• Once I get there, I email mum on my Blackberry to tell her I have arrived safely.
• I don't want to waste money on bad exchange rates at foreign exchange offices, so I just put my debit card into any ATM and withdraw through the Maestro or Visa networks. If I am travelling in Europe, I only need Euros for most of the Western part of the continent. 
• As I travel from country to country, I needn't worry about showing my passport. Most of these European countries are Schengen countries. And anyway, an EU passport gets me anywhere.
• I get snap happy and take about 500 photos in just a few days, and don't use a single roll of film. I choose the best photos out of that set. There are some really good ones. There would have to be seeing as I've taken so bloody many! After making some slight adjustments,  I upload them to Facebook for my friends and family to see and comment on instantly, rather than boring them with albums when I get home.

Those were just a few things off the top of my head. Please feel free to comment below and share your thoughts - what can you do in your travels today that you couldn't in 1990? Even more interestingly, what can you do today that you couldn't in 2000?

Interesting Times Ahead

I have been booking flights like crazy over the last few days!

This is a copy of an email I wrote to my friends this afternoon:


From: DK
Sent: 01 February 2010 13:43
To: (friends)
Subject: Exciting times

Interesting times ahead!

BA bookings in the next few months:

 easyJet bookings in the next few months:

(end of email)

What this means, I think, is that my work to accomplish my Travel Goals for 2010 is well in progress.

Autumn in London and Oktoberfest

After arriving back to London from Switzerland, it was head down with work and house hunting.

Work-wise, I got settled in to my job at Law Firm, a huge law firm in the city.

House-wise, I was excited to decide to find a place with my friends J and A. We ended up finding large apartment on Clapham Road, in a really cool and happening part of South London. Possibly not the most original choice for a bunch of Aussies (because Clapham is full of Australians) but very exciting nevertheless!

In terms of travel, things have slowed down a bit as I concentrated on work and house hunting, but I still managed a long weekend away to Oktoberfest in Germany.

Some friends and I headed to Gatwick airport on the first Friday afternoon in October and boarded a flight to Salzburg in Austria.

At Salzburg we were picked up by the Alpenrider team and taken to a small Austrian town in the mountains. This would be our home for the long weekend, in the Alpenrider chalet. This was a chalet owned and run by an Aussie and his Austrian wife, with a seasonal crew of young Aussie backpackers. The first night was spent by settling in with the aid of a few beers. We were also issued with our Mission Oktoberfest uniforms, consisting of t-shirts and dog tags.

Sue and I had travelled with V, a friend of my friend Jen from previous travel adventures. We also met up with Jen's friend Charlotte and her friend Teresa. Together we were 2 Aussies, 2 Kiwis and 2 Canadians. The next morning we got up while it was still dark, had breakfast and boarded a bus with the rest of the guests and crew and bussed it over the German border into Munich in time for 9am for the beer festivities to start.

Oktoberfest was everything I expected it to be, and more. Basically it is a site in Munich dedicated to the beer festival, with lots of giant beer tents which are put up every year. Giant tent is a bit of an understatement. They are massive beer halls made from metal, wood and canvas, not some mere garden marquee. Surrounding the tents is a huge festival site full of various rides, stalls and other entertainment. Surprisingly, it actually is good to go on a rollercoaster with multiple loops after drinking beer all day. I guess the rides also keep the kids entertained whilst their parents are drinking beer inside.

The party was already well under way at 9:30 am and the beer tents filling up quickly. Luckilly our group had managed to get some tables thanks to some good organisation by the Chevy, the Alpenrider owner. The day involved sitting at the table and drinking 1 litre glasses of specially brewed beer. Then standing on the seats and doing the same, and eventually standing and dancing on the tables doing the same. It sounds crazy but you just get taken with the atmosphere of it all, whilst watching the live folky German brass band play.

The best thing is the locals, instead of getting fed up with the hordes of drunk Aussies, just embrace the visitors and party with them happily.

We were kicked out of our beer tent at 4:30pm and went on the rides and continued drinking at some of the outside bars. At night fall our coach took us back over the border to Austria and our Alpenrider sanctuary.

Next day: repeat. Back to Munich to start at 9am at another beer tent. This was a bit of a struggle after the beer drinking of the day before, but by midday the beer was once again going down very well. This time we weren't kicked out of our tent, and the day got quite messy, and the drinking continued all the way back to the chalet back in Austria.

So, how do you refresh yourself from a drunken daze and re-enter the world of sobriety after 2 days of drinking litres of beer, one after another? Simple: you jump off a cliff into a canyon, into almost freezing water. The highlight of the last day of the trip was the canyoning activity. Stepping off a 7 meter cliff into dark cold water is scary. The canyoning also involved jumping down waterfalls, abseiling, swimming, climbing and sliding down the river all to navigate through a canyon. It was an adventure and a perfect way to wake back up to life after a drunken daze. That night, on the flight back to London (which we almost missed - who would have thought alpine Austria had traffic jams?) we had a few more drinks and all slept very well upon returning to our London beds.

G'day from the land of the Drive Thru Bottle-o

When I last wrote I was just gearing up for Christmas, with a little shopping trip to France. The week that followed involved more Christmas festivities and paying particular attention to the media's reports about the trouble at Heathrow Airport.

First of all apparently many people were missing flights because the extra airport security needed after the August London terrorism scare couldn't cope with the masses all escaping London for the holidays.
Then to make matters worse, you may have heard that London was engulfed in some major fog. It really was quite bad. Think of the worst fog you have ever seen early in the morning or very late at night, and apply it for four days non-stop. That's what it was like. Hundreds and hundreds of flights from Heathrow were cancelled, and I was worried because on Saturday 23rd December (the busiest Heathrow day - oh no), I was to fly to Prague.

On the night of the 22nd I had a lovely English Christmas dinner followed by pressies with my house mates and friends and retired to bed early (around midnight) because the next morning was a 4am start to get to the airport the recommended 2 hours early for my flight to Prague. Luckily the fog had lightened up a bit, and the crowds were really full on (I had to wheel my suitcase over people's feet to get through) but it was manageable. In the end my flight had a 90min delay not because of weather conditions or crowds, but because some idiot parked a truck in front of the departure gate where we were meant to get on a bus to take us to the plane on the tarmac, and took over an hour to move it. Nevertheless I arrived in equally foggy Prague safe and sound.

I was greeted by my Czech aunt and cousin and taken to their village outside of Prague. There I relaxed, enjoyed a traditional Czech Christmas (minus the carp fish for dinner, having schnitzels instead), including pressies on Christmas Eve and just generally chilled out in the countryside, including a nice forest bike ride in around freezing temperatures.

On Christmas Day my aunt and cuz took me to Plzen (Pilsen), the original city where Pilsner beer came from and where lager as we know it was initially invented. I was sure to have some Pils at a traditional 17th Century beer hall, complimented of course with some beef gulas.

By the 27th I was well and truly over village life (although going to the well in the village square with buckets to get water and collecting firewood did have a certain 1800's charm about it) so I ventured into Prague itself. I spent the next few days in Prague walking around, taking in the winter atmosphere (and a lot of sausages
served on cardboard with mustard and rye bread), feeling like a bit of a dag walking around with thermals under my jeans and a ski jacket. I felt like less of a dag when mid afternoon on the 28th the heavens opened and covered the city with a few inches of snow. It was wonderful walking around the city and home through the suburbs on fresh powder. Everything looks so nice blanketed in white. Great, although I I returned to feeling like a dag falling on my arse after slipping on ice.

By the 29th December I was a bit bored with Czechia and decided on impulse to jump on a train to Dresden, Germany, for a day trip. The 2.5 hour train ride was beautiful. The whole train link between Prague and Dresden runs along the bank of the Elbe River, the valley looking quite magical covered in snow.

Dresden itself was a really nice city. It was close to flattened by the allies in WW2 but you wouldn't guess it by looking at it. It was rebuilt to a crisp clean city yet retaining what looked like to me as old style-architecture that you see in cities like Prague as well as massive contemporary shopping centres that the Czechs seemed to be visiting in swarms.

Upon returning to Prague that night I met up with some friends of my mum who she used to hang out with when she was 18. They still lived in the same neighbourhood and they took me to a pub in the area which my
mum and her friends used to hang out in. It's a really good feeling travelling across to the other side of the world to see what the folks used to do for a good time (ie. drink beer - more than happy to follow those footsteps).

For New Years weekend my friend Nicolle came over from London and we partied in the city. Midnight was spent on the amazing Charles Bridge (amongst the horde of mostly Italians) watching fire works shoot out from just about every surrounding neighbourhood.

New Years Day was a lovely day, and I tried to suppress my hangover by going for a walk in Petrin, a big hilly park right by the city. But by 5pm I was in bed trying to forget about my hung over existence. The
next day I left that existence behind, catching a train to Vienna. The 4-hour fast Pendolino Tilt train ride was quite luxurious. The luxury continued as I got picked up in Vienna by a friend who took me by car to the village that I lived in as a refugee when I was 6 years old after my parents and I escaped the Communist Czech Republic. I stayed in the Guest House run by the family that put us up when we stayed there originally, so it was a nice trip down memory lane. I got to do some alpine sightseeing in the snow, and even went skiing for a day.

Then I returned to Prague and then London. I worked my last week in London and went for a weekend ski trip in Italy. The European snow season was really poor so there wasn't that much good skiing to be done, but in Italy it is enough of an adrenalin rush just getting into a car, so our taxi ride from the airport made up for the poor snow in the thrill stakes.

Upon returning to London for the last time it was all about packing and going away parties before finally arriving back in Melbourne on the 25th January, to some beautiful weather, great food and welcoming friends and family.

Thanks to everyone who I met along the trip for making it fun and successful and for those at home for staying in touch.

Wine tasting with Adolf, sailing with crazy Captain Ivo and much much more

Hi everyone!

I have been concentrating on travelling again recently. It all started with the August "Summer Bank Holiday" weekend in the UK. Having 3 days off work meant that I had to go and visit the continent otherwise it would be 3 days wasted by staying in England. Flights to everywhere were very expensive so I opened a backpackers magazine and booked the first interesting coach tour I saw. So very early on the Saturday morning I headed off on a bus to Germany. It was a boring bus ride but it was a perfect opportunity to catch up on sleep and even read up on German lingo in my phrasebook.

Upon arrival in the small town of Bad Salzig in the Rhein Valley (a picturesque German wine making region) in the evening, accompanied by a random selection of people on the tour, I drank some local wine, followed by drinking some more local wine, followed by eating, and then drinking some more local wine, more local wine and then some local beer. (The drinks were included in the tour price, the company was good, and the wine was OK - what else could I do?)

Later that night it was interesting using the German I learned earlier to talk to some non-English-speaking locals in a pub. Not surprisingly, I woke up the next morning with a bit of a headache, but that was soon forgotten about thanks to an early morning stroll around the small city of Boppard and a river cruise up the Rhein Valley, underneath the countless medieval castles, green forests and abundant fertile vineyards. We overlooked the beautiful green region from the famous Loriley cliff, and then walked around a local city and attended a wine tasting, presented by a winemaker called Adolf. I've attached some photos from this beautiful place! Back at the hotel the theme was again local wine.

On the bus ride home we stopped off in the beautiful Belgian city of Ghent. That was the third Belgian city I'd been to and the third one I loved, making Belgium grow in my heart as one of my favourite places.

The next few weeks were spent working and partying the last few weeks of Summer away in London, counting down to my 2 weeks of annual leave in the 2nd half of September.

So half way through September I flew out of London to the city of Ancona in Italy. The flight was full of Aussies and Kiwis all heading to sail Croatia (flying cheapo RyanAir to Ancona and catching a ferry across the Adriatic Sea seemed to be the most cost effective way of getting to Croatia.) Ancona wasn't particularly interesting as it was really just a port city, but the overnight ferry ride to Split in Croatia was quite luxurious and fun. Getting to Split was a bit of a disappointment because instead of finding warm Croatian weather, I was greeted with rain, rain and more rain.

I boarded the boat that I would spend a week sailing the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia in. It was the smallest and oldest boat in the fleet of about 17. I was a little bit shocked about the cramped conditions (and the fact we only had 1 toilet/shower for 19 passangers) but luckily I was the only one on the boat who got a room to myself, making it much more bearable. The first three days of sailing were quite bad on account of the weather. We hit some storms and really rough seas. One on occassion, our crazy captain took us head on into a storm the other (bigger and more stable) boats did not choose to brave. The main way of making time pass was balancing out on the deck trying not to vomit. Or fall overboard. Despite the bad weather the water was still warm, and we even managed to go for a swim when we found a tranquil bay.

We saw some beautiful coastal towns and when we got to the southernmost point of the tour, Dubrovnik, the sun finally came out. Immediately the whole place looked so much better – amazing how a bit of shining sun can really bring a place out. Walking around the old castle walls of Dubrovnik was great. It also proved to be a great place for a night out.

The rest of the tour was spent sailing from island to island during the day while we sunbathed on the roof and every now and then anchored in the beautiful clear water for a swim. I swam in some amazingly picturesque locations, each time in crystal clear water. In the evenings we would moor up in a port and explore the village or city we ended up in, explore the streets, eat the local cuisine in great outdoors restaurants among scenic old town ruins and party in the local bars and nightclubs (or on the roof of our boat with our sleazy alcoholic, yet lots of fun, chef). My favourite of these places was Hvar, an amazing, hilly, old town, surrounded by castle walls, overlooking a peaceful marina in a bay surrounded by green hills.

The sailing tour finished with a night back in Split. The highlight of the night was getting a local with a small zippy electronic baggage trolley to drive 16 of us (it felt more dangerous as it sounds) to a huge outdoor nightclub on a hill just out of town overlooking a beach. The next morning I wasn't quite ready to leave Split, so I hired an apartment with some people from the sailing tour and stayed an extra day. That day was spent walking around the local markets before going on a white water rafting trip in the hills about an hour inland from Split. The most dangerous part of the this, unfortunately, was being driven up in a car by a speeding, chain-smoking, non-seatbelt-wearing, Croatian soldier in his early 90's Audi that I WISHED had seatbelts in the back. Luckilly we did make it to the lovely clear river where we boarded some rafts and went down a beautiful forest valley. The rapids were fun but nothing too extreme. The highlight was when we came to a waterfall and stopped to get out of the raft and go through the waterfall. Behind the waterfall we found a small cave that we went into, but to get across had to swim through a small cave lake of 7ºC cold water and then climb up a rock face in the dark. It was fun!

The next day was my birthday. The 2 girls I was staying with took me out to an awesome birthday breakfast in a nice outside restaurant. I then said bye and caught a super modern German tilt-train from Split, winding through the mountain ranges to Croatia's capital, Zagreb.

It was a nice city that I enjoyed walking around in the afternoon, but I had a Croatia/Slovenia/Austria Eurail pass to utilise, so I continued on by rail to Slovenia the next day. Catching the train through Slovenia was great. The countryside was probably the most picturesque I have seen, with a great mix of lakes, forests and small quant villages, each built around a single church old tower. I made it to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia and was going to look around a bit, until I realised that the next train to Vienna was a mere 15 min away so I jumped on that. It was actually a train to somewhere called Maribor, at which I was meant to change to a Vienna train. The problem was that about 45min after we were meant to hit Maribor the train was still in the middle of nowhere. I eventually asked a conductor I saw and she told me in 30% Slovenian, 30% English, 40% German (that I somehow managed to piece together) that I was in fact not on a Maribor train, that the train split in 2 way, way back and that I was in fact heading to somewhere completely different. She ushered me off the train at a small village somewhere and directed me to run onto a small, old, rickety, local train that was about to depart. I followed her instructions. The train ride was an interesting experience. The train stopped at lots of little villages and at other places which didn't even constitute villages. Some of the stations were literally nothing more than a patch of gravel in a field. The passengers were all local farm people, the conductor spoke no English and had evidently never seen a Eurail pass in his life. I wasn't really sure where I was, or even if I was still in Slovenia, and was a bit annoyed that I was only seeing this beautiful sunny day through a train window, but an hour or two later, I did manage to arrive in this Maribor place. I looked around the town for an hour, and was impressed. It was a nice little city. I spent about 2,000 Tolars in a local supermarket and jumped on the next train to Vienna.

The trains distance trains in Sloevnia and Austria were great. I only had a 2nd class ticket but 2nd class was way superior to 1st class in Britain. It was all comfortable big seats in 6-seater-cabins. A great way to travel Europe, assuming you manage to find your way onto the right train. I arrived in Vienna quite late, and the hostel I wanted to check into had no space. I managed to walk to a few hotels near the Südbahnhof train station, picked the cheapest (nay, least expensive) and just crashed – I was exhausted.

I spent the next day just walking around Vienna. The highlight of this was finding the Gorilla in the Prater amusement park. I had been there as a 6 year old with my parents (just after we managed to escape from then Communist Czechoslovakia), 20 years earlier almost to the day, at which time I had a photo with the Gorilla much to my terror at the time, because I was crying, scared of the big ape. So I got a photo with same Gorilla 20 years later. Maybe I'll go back again when I'm 46.

That evening I caught a train from Vienna's Westbahnhof station to the beautiful city of Salzburg. Again, I arrived late and just crashed in a nearby hotel. The next day was the last day of my trip. I spent the morning walking around the Salzburg streets, marvelling at the scenery, which was a mix of great architecture and beautiful gardens, placed against a background of big green hills (which, of course, are alive with the sound of music).

In the afternoon I joined up with a tour group to the ice caves, right up in the Alps. That was a most amazing experience. It involved a super-steep bus ride, followed by an even steeper cable car ride, then a steep walk but all this was rewarded with amazing views over the Alps and valleys below and an even more amazing ice cave. The tour of the cave, aided by old-style open flame torches for light, was an hour long, and any longer would have been painful as the cave temperature is litrally 0ºC. The cave is full of walls of ice and naturally formed ice sculptures. After the cave tour we rewarded ourselves with frankfurters and local beer as we sat, thawing out, and overlooking the Alpine scenery.

Upon return to Salzburg it was a trip to the airport with one of the people from the ice caves tour that was on the same flight as me. At the airport, a last attempt to sample some Austrian cuisine (goulash and beer) and then waiting for a flight which was an hour and a half delayed, resulting in me getting back to London after the trains from the airport had finished running. A coach ride and night bus ride later, I made it home. At 3 am. And went to work the next day. Since then, work has been keeping me busy. I have been seconded to a large French Pharmaceuticals company outside of London so I'm constantly tiring myself out commuting to Surrey, but it's all good fun. Last Friday was my firm's annual party, which was a no-expenses-spared extravaganza, which I'm still recovering from.

Since October ticked over, the previously surprisingly sunny weather has taken a dramatic turn for the cold. So London winter, here I come. My next main holiday is not till December so the next couple of months will be spent trying to save some of these valuable British Pounds to bring back home, instead of spending it all on travel and booze. Wish me luck!

See you in January!