The past one and a half weeks have been spent looking at a lot of ruins... The ruins: Troy, Assos, Pergamum, Ephesus, Priene, Miletus, Didyma, Hierapolis and Afrodisias. Troy: in order to escape the ANZAC crowd gathered at Gallipoli I stayed in the village just outside the gates of Troy. This was a total success as the village was nice and peaceful... The next day I visited the site really early so as to be ahead of the inevitable tours, but allas! You can't escape the Asian tourists... Three tour busses had arrived already. Luckily they rushed through the site in whirlwind fashion and seemed to be more interested in the kitschy replica of the Trojan Horse than in the ruins themselves. Although there isn't much to see, I wanted to get my money's worth out ... read more

I have arrived at the very edge of Europe, the heart of the old Ottoman Empire, Istanbul... From my hostel I have views across the Bosporus to Asia and if I look the other way a fantastic view of the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque! The people are friendly the atmosphere fun and the weather consistently good... And I am surrounded by Australians... Because Anzac day is coming up (for those of you who are not Australian or from New Zealand, ANZAC day is when the Commonwealth forces attacked at Gallipoli in the First World War and died in their thousands) so I was almost the only non-Australian around.. Although two Brazilians I had met in Sofia were also at the hostel and they had their flag with them compensating for the overload of Aussie ... read more

Yes Bulgaria is cheap and nice. Two litre beer in a plastic bottle for one euro is just good!! I seem to have come back on the backpacker trail. Which is quite nice actually. The hostels in Sofia are really nice and cheap. I stayed in one hostel first but after two days had to leave as it was fully booked during the weekend, but the hostel I went to was just as fun and met lots of interesting people and had a few good parties. The first hostel had free breakfast, which is normal for all hostel here, but had a free pasta with beer in the evening too, which of course drew my attention. The other one had free dinner, but not the free beer... But since the beer is so cheap it didn't ... read more

Leaving Albania turned out to be more difficult than expected. The bus to Macedonia which I had asked about on Saturday and was supposed to leave at nine in the morning on Monday didn't... So I looked on the map of Albania and took the first minibus I could find to the town closest to the border. And than I tried to get another ride to the border itself but the directions to where the bus was supposed to depart from turned out to be directions on how to walk to the border so I ended up walking out of town through the fields towards Macedonia. I stopped at a house and asked directions and they hailed a car which brought me to the border. Once in Macedonia things went a lot smoother. There was a ... read more

Or so the Albanians call their country themselves... Well I have been here for almost a week now and I kind of like the country... It's a little like Asia within Europe... The traffic is chaotic at best, the roads atrocious and the driving mad, with lots of honking and lots of shouting... You got to love it... Tirana is not as bad as I thought it might be, it has turned into quite a colourful city because the mayor who is a former painter ordered all the concrete soviet blocks to be painted in different colours and motives... I think it's a great idea, it really brightens up the place... Every town should have a painter or crazy artist as mayor! I did a load of day trips from Tirana... One day to Kruja where ... read more

Is the bay of Kotor in Montenegro (or Crna Gore as they call it), with at the very end the walled medieval village of Kotor. And I appreciated it more than Dubrovnik which I thought was very commercial and a bit like Disneyland, whereas Kotor is more authentic. Stayed at a private home stay in old man Marco's kitchen... So no problem cooking... Ha, ha, ha... You can climb up to a fortress overlooking the bay and have spectacular views, in fact the whole ride through the fjord was fantastic and the coast of Montenegro is also great... Almost, dare I say it, better than Croatia... Met an american while climbing down from the fort and we spend the evening drinking because the whole trekking up a mountain bussiness makes one thirsty.. Anyway the next day ... read more

Or in other words Croatia and that's where I am at the moment. On Tuesday I took the train to Zagreb with the idea of catching the onward connection to Split, but the train was late so I had a 4 hour stop over in Zagreb. Of course I used this to wander through the city... There are loads of museums, but since I am poor and didn't have much time I didn't go in any of them. It also has a quaint old centre. Next I got the train to Split and arrived there quite late but there was somebody waiting at the station offering me a room. And since it wasn't expensive I agreed. The guy was training for the European championships swimming, so he swam 14 km's a day... Just the thought of ... read more

Just another quick update... Left Vienna on Sunday morning and got the train to Graz where I had to wait 2 hours for my connection to Maribor in Slovenia so I strolled around town for a while... Very pleasant town I must say... Should spend some more time there another time... When I am rich... Anyway got the train to Maribor and than the local train to Ljubljana which was full of students returning after a weekend at home... Or so I guessed out of all the young people packing the train with their backpacks... I am sure there are not that many Slovenian backpackers! Finally arrived after 4 hours on a slow train and got myself a bed... Also went to have a drink outside by the river together with 2 guys I met in ... read more

After Nürenberg it was time to go to Salzburg. Stopped in Augsburg on the way, but wasn’t impressed by it, perhaps because it was raining... And what to say about Salzburg... Hmmm... Mozart on every corner, the house where he was born, a museum, several statues, every other street named after him and of course you can buy Mozart cakes, cookies, ham, clothes and probably a Mozart lap-dance. They are quite proud of him so it seems... Also have finally run into all those other tourists, unfortunately it’s the worst kind... The big tour groups of mostly Americans (sorry to all you Americans out there reading this... but I think you know the kind I mean) being very loud... Luckily by climbing up a hill you can escape them, they don’t seem to be able to ... read more

A promise is a promise and since I told you I would update this site a little bit more often... Here it goes... First, this damn computer won’t accept my camera so no photo’s yet! Damn German computers, they must somehow have an anti Dutch device in them... Bastards!! Well first stop was Düsseldorf, where my parents brought me, and after walking around a bit there and having a lunch it was time for the tearful goodbyes... Than it was off to Köln where Raphael picked me up and took good care of me, both on the food front as well as on the beer front. And he showed me around town too... I can tell you that climbing up the Kölner Dom is quite hard and the beer afterwards was more then welcome... After the ... read more