Not dead!

I'm still around unfortunately. :D

It will be a fun next six weeks! So many trips planned out. The first one will commence tomorrow for three days! My trip plan at the moment looks like this.

10/28 - 31, Tallinn Estonia

11/03 - 06, Berlin Germany

11/11 - 15, St. Petersburg Russia

11/17 - 21, Manchester(?), London(?) UK

11/25 - 28, Venice(?) Italy

12/01 - 6, Paris France

12/10 - 15, ?

12/17 - 20, Maastricht, Amsterdam(?), Brussels(?), Brugges(?), Belgium and Netherlands

12/22 - oo, Vancouver Canada

Yup... looks like a heavy set of trips for me. Wowee! So much fun to be had! The great thing is that I only have one more course remaining and if all my exams went well (and I have reason to believe they did) it means I only have one final in my second period. Isn't life wonderful?

Next update will be for Tallinn, Estonia featuring the feared AK47!

Germany, 3. Sidestep into Austria

Day 3 of our Germany trip.

We woke up at a much more reasonable 8AM instead of the 4AM we got the previous night. I still maintain it was worth it to get up early. In any case, while everyone else woke at 8AM to enjoy the free breakfast (and it was good too!) provided by the Hostel, I decided to wake right near sunrise time. I managed to catch these absolutely epic shots of the sunrise. Amazing skies atop the hostel we stayed at. I wish we could have stayed for another day to enjoy the beautiful sunrise. Something about orange / pink / red skies seems to attract me. Its really a shame I didn't grab camgirl's fancy camera to go out to take these shots.. otherwise we'd be able to share.

The mountains in the distance after we made the descent to the bottom of the mountain, where we visited Austria afterwards on our way to Schloss Neuschwanstein.

The sign was so unofficial: I guess Europe really is starting to become a land with no borders except for.. well, the countries that sit on the edge.

And here we are at the famous Schloss Neuschwanstein!

The place was quite breathtaking. I'm certain that many countries have these viewpoints, but I felt right back at home with this view here:

This concludes Germany. I won't be travelling much in the next month seeing as finals are looming just around the corner, but I should be hitting up Russia, UK, and Italy in November. Any further suggestions for me?

Country Count: Iceland (for a grand total of an hour... LOL), Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria (for a grand total of less than an hour, more LOL)

Germany, 2

Oliver was a very good car! This is Oliver. He is a Black Opel Astra with leather seats inside. We took the liberty to rent a handheld GPS for the car because we (apparently) hate maps. So of course, in a foreign country where I hoped nothing would go wrong, the GPS decided to tell our driver to 'Make a U-turn, if possible" on one of Germany's unrestricted Autobahn sections. Umm....... no can't do that. As a result of this, I got to the airport roughly 40 minutes late, but still in time to catch the airport.You see, by the time Oliver returned to the rental place, he had apparently done over 1600km in three days.

About Oktoberfest.... It is a truly amazing sight to behold. The sheer number of people is absolutely overwhelming. The amount of beer was overwhelming, and the amount of sausages! So many good hotdogs! We waited in line for about two hours to try to get into a tent for Oktoberfest, but alas it was simply not our day.

We couldn't get in and there were just too many people... I'm pretty certain I had about two or three cigarettes worth of second hand smoke that day too. Instead of staying in Theresienwiese where Oktoberfest was held, we decided to go to downtown Munich.

Before we left, I managed to snag a shot with some German patrolmen at Oktoberfest. He initially said it was 50e to take photos with them and he had me duped for about 5 seconds. Germans have humour too!

We headed to downtown Munich for some city wandering. The centre of Munich is kind of interesting... It had a nice mix of old and new architecture. To be honest, it didn't have as much of a wow effect on me as Prague did. Nevertheless, some of the architecture there was still very beautiful. This is one of the scenes you see right away the moment you get to ground level from the underground subways. On a nice day like ours, the sight was quite breathtaking. We had lunch afterwards, and someone decided to try something that was labelled as "I'm going to splurge on lunch today".

It came out to be this dish (Apologies for the half eaten dish..)

That's right. Fresh Mozzarella cheese with a healthy portion of tomatoes. For 10e. Given that some people don't fancy cheese and certainly not tomatoes, I had to engage in a dish swap for my vegetarian pasta.

Regardless, this was basically day 2 of our trip in Germany. Photos to follow in the next few days for our very brief stint into Austria and our visit to Schloss Neuschwanstein, inspiration for Disney!

Germany

It started out with a briskly cold day (I swear it was colder than the forecasted 1c at 4 in the morning) in Helsinki, catching the 4AM bus to the airport. The bus took about half an hour to bumble toward the airport but I didn't manage to catch any sleep while on the bus. Being sick absolutely stinks when you're about to go on a trip. Ignore the man in the photo. I was too tired to take this shot with my hands or even find anything to plunk the camera onto, so pavement was fine for me. :D

Once I got to the airport, being kicked around for the check ins kind of sucked. When all was said and done, I was glad it took me a while, because this sight awaited me while I was chilling at departures.

Let's go to Germany! After a two hour flight, two sandwiches on the flight and a 15cl can of Sprite, I arrived in Stuttgart where I was to wait for a few hours for my ride toward Munich.... or so I thought. While in Stuttgart airport, there were many things for me to see! They had a flight history exhibit going on so I took a look. Wandering the airport was fun for about two hours, then I had to settle down and start working. Unfortunately, Stuttgart airport is cheap. No free wifi was available (boo!) Even at Stuttgart Airport, they care for the kids. Look!

Aside from kiddieland, there was really nothing worth looking at (lol) at Stuttgart Airport. I sat down and worked from 11AM in the morning until 6PM, when my travel buddy and her friends picked me up in a Black Opel Astra. I have nicknamed it Oliver. Oliver was a cool car! He took us to many places and we had many adventures in it. Oliver took us to our eventual hostel for the night which was another four hour drive away from Stuttgart. Oliver took us to Oktoberfest. Oliver took us to Neuschwanstein Castle too! I love Oliver. More updates to come re: Germany in the next few days! I leave you with a jaw-dropping photo of the sights we saw at 7AM in the morning at Oktoberfest.

Sunrise at Oktoberfest in Munich.