Grand Craic: May 2007

Ok ok , it has been a while. My excuse is that I have been ridiculously busy, traveling non-stop (no time for bloggin, but just enough for facebooking) going back to australia, then back to Europe, then back to Australia(long story that I will elaborate later... or never), to Perth, doing research & trying to buy a house all at the same time. But no excuses, lets go again. My memory will be somewhat impaired given that it was such a long time ago, so many things have happened & lots of drinking etc in between. I figure no one really reads this except for me as a kind of jounal. SO here goes....

After basically not doing anything in Munich but wake up with hangovers it is no surprise that the trip out started off with one, we were late & hadn't booked anything. I was going to stop in Pilsen, the home of pilsner!!!, but alas no time. It was straight to my favourite city of the time Prague to meet up with long lost buddy Trost & Lex (who I had never met before) but apparrently they are an item.

(this is the only proper photo I could find of them together where Trost isn't making some sort of face)

After a LONG walk (I had a proponderence to walk everywhere, which Graz must hate me for) we arrived at the pleasantly awesomely presented hostel Czech Inn, it was more like a hotel. It was straight out to get some pilsner into us, and of course it snowed like mad (like last time I was here and it was a record low.... enough for th eriver to freeze over for th efirst time in 40 years)

Children eating snow

The ugliest car around, it actually is a monster (as written on the screen)

Why can't my brothers spell (or maybe he's called Hong, and he is long)

We found our favourite statue, they had moved it, which made it very tricky. It's a tradition

Probably... PROBABLY!!!

I slapped him three times in the face with my glove and threw it on the ground, we subsequently dueled

Jeremy tackles yet another tradition, the Czech "pigs knee"

Couldn't leave without going to our favourite pub, serving the best pils.

We did a lot of touristy stuff with JT & AB, but they had to leave us... and we subsequently had the BEST night out ever. One that will be remmebered for the rest of my life. It all started with Graz going on a walking tour and actually getting friendly with the tour guide. Invited him to drinks, which means inviting me to drinks. At some wicked laid back local pub in the middle of no where, we started chatting to the guide and her boyfriend. Really cool people. I subsequently find out that he organises lots of parties in Prague and invited us along, we said why the fuck not! The party was located in an underground communist atomic bunker!!!! Apparently the whole underside of prague has a network of them, and it also has a fully functional hospital, maintained eeryday, but with NO patients. Anyway so off we went, but not before a dog decided to jump on our table and spill my beer everywhere!!

What a mess

The offending dog

Anyway so we took this tram to literally in the middle of nowhere on some hillside. The outside, pictured below was this graffiti clad cement entranceway. I thought for a second that we would be killed, I even smsed Jeremy a final goodybye and an approximate location incase no one hears of me again. But down we went, I think about 300m underground.. it was a long spiral staircase.

Typical entrance to an underground Communist Atomic Bunker

A long way down

Huge heavy steel doors, were we in James Bond film?

Ready for Atomic War

Once downstairs we were greeted by a live drum & Bass funk gig with apparently some expert/famous bongo drum player. Met lots of random people, did random things. Atmosphere was amazing. No good phots but here is something.

Long walk back up

But we did make it out alive

Our tour guide & her boyfriend. Amazing people, the dude is drummer for some prog experimental band. I did have some of his stuff, but have since lost it all. Went had pizza with him and his very stoned cousin near the big tower thing (which has huge babies climbing up it)

Nothing beats a fresh (not) hot dog after a big night out

The next night saw us going to possibly the best club I have ever been to in my life (again introduce by our tour guide friends). It's called cross and is basically owned by a sculptor who goes to junk heaps and bring back bits of metal to add to his club. Apparently ever time you go there it's different and inside is a huge rabbit warren of rooms. Like out of the matrix. Outside looked pretty dodgy though, again I though we might be killed.

Hot as bar wench inside Cross

Met these cool guys in our dorm, this guy used to body guy for a really important persons girlfriend (who was a stripped and was miss nude something) I can't even mention who it was for fear either of us get assassinated. Funny red mark on his head....

Graz & I went completely the wrong way to get home from the club. Trains had stopped, I thought I could walk, I was wrong, we almot fell through some massive holes in the ground (we're on a bridge) to our death.

That was enough of Prague for me and we left for Vienna on what was the MOST horrific journey of the trip. I think we caught 5 trains, 3 busses and god knows how much walking, fretting, raining and dodgy people, not understanding us, or we them and basically having no idea what was going on the whole time. It all started at some we hour in the morning, going to the train station, finding no trains. Getting the train to the bus station, waiting for hours and luckily Graz snooped around and bought a ticket. I decided to go visit czesky kromlov, bad idea, it was great.... all 30 minutes of it.

We got to kromlov, us and the whole bus of tourists, pretty much in the middle of no where, no directions to the city, raining, eventually found the town. Found out the the next and only train to vienna left in 40 minutes and the train station was ages away! So pretty much ran there and took a few happy (not so much) snaps. Waited at the station to buy tickets, but the ticket guy wasn't there, fearing our train had gone. Went to the toilet, said had to pay 5 kronar, paid some guy in a shack, who jumped like a kangaroo at hearing that I was from Australia, only to find out that the toilet was open anyway. Eventaully found someone to sell us tickets as our train was pulling up. Boarded.

Graz was happy to get on. With us was random commies with mother fucking big dogs, hoodlem kids staring at us (the freak shows - they should look at themselves) plus we didn't really know where to get off.

Eventually got off at some town famous for budweiser beer???? i'll have to check that one, can't even remember the town name. Where we found out that the train no longer runs but instead there is a bus to our next destination. However where is the bus station? the lady pointed in a direction. Found a brand spanking new bus station. So new, it wasn't in operation yet. After lots of trying, pointing and saying bus vienna 2000 times & putting to use my rudamentry mandarin, we found the bus stop, right outside the train station. The picture above is the train station, which felt so stereotypical communist. There were actually 2 busses of the same 'number' but apparently ours was the one with few people on it. Here graz had an extremely drunk guy yelling czech at him and putting him in a headlock, this bus was absolutely fanging it, we had no idea where it was taking us. Each stop we would gesture to get off, each time a man sitting near us told us to wait. Eventually we were the only people left except for this guy. Last stop, he gets off, tells us to come, then happens to also be the ticket collector for the train (more like a 2 carriage tram). Again eventually everbody got off except us, eventually reached the border and saw everybody running to another train. We ran too.. hopped on a pitch dark train (muc nicer though, so we knew we were going to austria) and waited for 30 minutes...

This is us on the train. I am a happy man at this point.

We get off in Vienna and somehow catch the right tram in the right direction & make our way to the hostel in the middle of the night.

After the crazyness of our last we week and pretty much not seeing Munich we decided to lay a little low in Vienna and absorb some culture. Wonderfully beautiful city. Highlights (non-cultural touristy) were watching a beat box concert & trying to eat a huge amount of meat in one sitting.

Watched an Opera after waiting in a ridiculously long line.

Probably the biggest FUCK off Schnitzel I have ever attempted to eat. Pure meat 1 inch thick, I couldn't even finish half. We ordered salads, chips etc on top of this.. which the waited politely 'forgot' to bring out.

My first coffee in ages, at one of those suddenly everywhere Nescafe stores

Twice we came out to this cemetery, just for some dead musicians. Hardly famous even...

The Hundertwasserhaus, wicked wierd wacky.

I love knorx

Sculpting my guns. 1001...1002...

Pretty river Vien, we were going to take hydrofoils over to Brataslava, but they were'nt operating until... the next day!!Grrrr..

These little squirrels come up to you and take a chestnut off you, shake it about a bit (like in the movies) and go bury it somewhere.

They had small guards at the schonbrun palace

Off to Bratislava it was! Arrived, again was totally lost comig out of the train station and yes I decided to walk the whole way. Again another ridiculous journey. Eventually found our hostel, the guuy at the desk completely stoned and struggled to even get our keys. We were expecting cheap and really was NOT dissappointed. I can't beleive how well we lived for nothing, unfortunately there was not much to do here...

Their biggest attraction... an empty castle ( all redone on the inside and pretty much nothing but boring exhibits.)

We had to make our own fun

These random Statues were pretty funny, the whole place seemed to lack much substance (unfortunate side effect of communisms in outskirt countries I think)

THE most awesome meal we had of the tour! All for about 5 bucks! Great vino too!!

City of salt, birthplace of Mozart, deep fried pork.... we really went into Salzburg with one question in mind... honestly, how do you solve a problem like Maria? Despite all my protests and complete lack of enthusiasm 3G (gay gay Gareth) dragged me along to a Sound of Music Tour. But before we get to that I must rave a little bit about just how good the schnitzel is here (general region), I am not normally a schnitzel fan, in fact I don't really even like pork much (maybe I should be Jewish... I mean one of my good friends [Cello] has already converted). But really I couldn't get enough of the schnit... until I met with Schnitzelmidt... but that's a WHOLE other story.

For some reason all there famous monuments were covered in plastic! This photo was actually very hard to take!

Graz, getting angry at little people (lets call them elves)

Monks, brewing up some great beverages at the Augustiner Braustubl. Seriously, what a life... lets get drunk everyday and sing songs! Too bad about the chastity thing though. They should have big bashes with thte local nunnery. Swing off chandeliers, that sort of stuff.

They like there little people here... I happen to be one.

At first I was very urgh... But then I thought we were here, lets make the most of it. So I tried to start singing the songs... which were BLARING the entire trip as you can imagine. But actually didn't know the words to most of it. Did you know most people in Salburg didn't even know that the Sound of Music movie existed, and most didn't see it till a few years ago when it was finally released in Austria in german format. And did you know that the home of Redbull is actually nearby! Ok here it is...

I've been cast for the follow-up movie.... what sound?.

The actual Gezebo from the movie, Graz was 16 going on 17.

Strolling along the same hill that Maria did....

This bull apparently saved the town once. They were beseiged by someone (probably Napolean the little shit) the whole town were starving. But to show the enemy they still had lots of food they painted their only remaining cow a different colour everyday and 'paraded' it to the enemy. Who subsequently withdrew, thinking the seige might last another year or something like that...

Castletop lemon tinged beer!

My favoured dog of the trip so far

Apparently I wasn't allowed in

We then decided to head to Berchtesgaden, holiday destination of the 3rd Reich and home of the Eagle Nest. It was a most wonderful serene town. We ended up staying in a 300 bed hostel... and we were the only people there. This was our view... just amazing

We only had to pay €12 for this view

Apparently my doggies can just 'do' it anywhere

We took ages trying to find this particular schnitzel house recommended by the lonely planet, and surprise surprise it was closed. We ended up stumbling into this pub, with only 7 people in it and they all knew each other. One of those we entered and the whole placed stopped kind of thing. Anyway there was a head of the fucking HUGE rabbit (pictured above) it was about the size of my head, but what's more is that it had horns!!!! Devil rabbit! I later founf out that the horns were a local joke.. very funny

This is at Konigssee, glorious. Must go there again.

Clam tranquil lakes below, magnamous mountains above... and a random church.

Blair witch style. It's the same tree!

Next it was off Munich, home of more beer and schnitzel. We stayed in the most happening hostel I've been in. We walked in and it happened to be a Jagermeister party, where we got an hour of free jager, given to us by test tubes and cyote ugly style (poured right into our mouth) We had a moose dancing infront of us, which we quickly pushed aside for the hot(ter) jager girls. Graz rooted a mormon in the shower. We basically lived at this bar, met all the staff including the owner, got free drinks and needless to say drank excessively. We hardly saw Munich... it was great. We also happened to spend St Patrick's day the (WTF you say). Yes I know it terrible considering we live in Ireland, but apparently it's schnit house in Ireland... and friends who were there actaully agreed. The party is elsewhere.

Our St Pat's day consisted of lots of drinking.. the Guiness was SO SO schnit. We watched 3 games of rugby. Ireland lost the 6 nations title in an absolutely heartbreaking and controversial circumstances.