Teh awesome

It seems once again that it has been too long between blog posts, but when you're only staying somewhere 3 nights and then moving on, it gets hard to find time to eat let alone write.

We've been about half a dozen cities since last post so once again I'm gonna have to keep it short-ish. Photo fascism has spread to southern France too so no photos yet.


Berlin.Was awesome. It's no where near as crowded as any other large European capital, which was a very nice change. A bit like Canberra in that respect, but that's about as far as the similarities go.
We stayed in a big hostel called St Christopher's, which was very conveniently positioned right next to a subway station, and on top of a bar/restaurant that had very cheap beer and food.

We did a free walking tour of the middle of town starting at the Brandenburg Gate. We saw a bunch of cool stuff like Hitler's Bunker... or to the untrained eye, a dirt carpark near some flats.

We walked down the 'East Side Gallery', which is the longest remaining section of the Berlin wall, and is covered in paintings from just after the wall came down.

I also bought a T-shirt. It's cool.


Koln (Cologne).

Our next stop in Germany was Koln. I'd heard wind that a wayward brother of mine(Jo) was passing through town that day, so we went to meet him. Actually he'd just been on planes and in airports for the previous 36 hours or so and had landed in Amsterdam that morning (the cheapest flight to Europe he could find), and had caught a bus straight over to Koln.
We had organised to meet my cousin Gaynor and her family in Koln that night for a picnic, as they live in a village close by. We were going to meets them as soonas we collected Jo, however, when Jo arrived - in the same clothes he left Aus in - he desperately needed a shower. He and I raced back to the hostel to get him cleaned up while Lucy went to meet the rels.
We ended up our night with a lovely picnic in the banks of the (Rhine?) river.

Only one night in Koln, then straight on to Rouen, our first stop in France.

Why Rouen you may ask? I've never heard of such a place! you exclaim. Well, it's close to Bayeux (but not to Mont-Saint-Michel - but that's another story), which has a very long tapestry of note, 70 metres in all. It depicts the events surrounding the battle of Hastings in 1066. Lots of horses and boats etc.

Paris was our next stop. I'll skip the descriptions of all the standard tourist stuff we saw, as you've heard it before, and if you haven't, Lucy will probably write about it anyway ;). Here's the list: Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph, Champs Elysee's, Notre Dame, Moulin Rouge...etc.


We still had Jo with us at that stage, and he and I had an important pilgrimage to make just out of Paris, so we left Lucy at the George Pompadou museum and headed south.

The place I speak of is called Lisses. It's a small ordinary looking suburb on the outskirts of Paris which also happens to be the origin of Parkour.
Parkour you say? WTF is that? here's a nice definition from Wikipedia.org:

(Le) Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement[1] (English: the art of displacement) is generally an urban acrobatic activity of French origin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body.[2][3] It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls — parkour can be practiced in both rural and urban areas.

Me and Jo and some other mates have been practicing Parkour for a while now, and Lisses is where it all started about 9 years ago with a bunch of bored teens with nothing but their environment to entertain them. One of whom grew up to be the black guy in the chase scene at the beginning of the recent Bond film.

Lisses is the setting for many videos showcasing the skills of the original (and best?) practitioners of Parkour, and I just had to go there to check out some of the famous spots.


We did find some of those spots and I tried my skills out, somewhat rusty after not practising for 2 months, but heaps of fun all the same.
We met 2 dudes at one of these spots, 1 of whom is a local, and has been training there for 8 years, with the pros!
Wish I could have stayed for longer and really explored, but oh well. Next time.


Mont-Saint-Michel

After a bit of screwing around, we finally made it out to the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel. As you may know, it's built (in true monk style) in a very inconvenient place. It's perched on a small island in the middle of a lagoon/marsh, and you used to have to make a dash for it at low tide just to get there. They have since built a land bridge which although very convenient, is screwing with the tides and sand movement etc, so I expect they'll put it on stilts at some stage soon.

Bordeaux

We didn't really do much in Bordeaux, except a truly forgettable wine tour.
We wandered around the city, which is quite nice, and marvelled at their newly built futuristic tram system.

Which brings us to Aix-en-Provence, our current haunt... so I don't really have much to say about it yet! The sun has finally come out though, and I'm looking forward to getting to the beach in a couple of days.

Word out for now.