This trip was awesome but was also a little melancholy as with my time on exchange dwindling fast it really highlighted the differences between Austria and Australia for me. It is only 2 months now before I have to leave this beautiful country and I'm already starting to get sad... At least it has jolted me out of my complacency and I will definitely do my best to make the most out of the time that I do have left. Firstly the most obvious difference is the landscape. I was constantly awestruck whenever I had a rest and just looked around. [View Full Entry]

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Cruising down the Autobahn at 220km/hr I was a little surprised to see Miro pull out his mobile phone and begin to sms someone, occasionally looking up and braking heavily just in time to avoid a collision with the car in front... As if this wasn't enough to put us on edge he had told us only minutes before that he was from Slovakia and had a job as a meat worker. With thoughts of ending up in pieces in his boot we buckled up, put on our friendliest smiles, and did our best to keep the small talk going. Jasper [View Full Entry]

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The Finnish people are probably one of the most interesting groups of people that I have ever encountered. In all of my travels I don't think I have ever come across a group of people that are so unique. Reserved, friendly, intellectual, funny, confident, slightly unstable, alcoholics. All of these words can be used to describe Finns but they do not fully capture the Finnish essence. All I can say is that after spending a bit over a week in Finland the thing I liked most about the trip was just observing the people. On this trip I travelled with 3 [View Full Entry]

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It is very hard to describe how excited I felt as I stood in the middle of a massive arena surrounded by thousands of dancing people, flashing lights, neon lasers and massive speaker arrays with just a curtain of water separating us all from the best Trance DJ in the world! Before I forget to mention it, check out this video on the left if you have some spare time. Travelblog just recently added a video feature to the blogs so I thought I'd give it a shot. It might take a few minutes to load the video but I think [View Full Entry]

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About a week after getting back to Vienna, I signed up for a trip organised by my University to Oktoberfest. I had missed out on a lot of the introductory activities and thought that this would be a good way to get to know some of the new students. The trip was only 1 day long so not much time for sightseeing but luckily I had already been to München before with Justin. The trip consisted of catching a night train there and spending the morning doing a bit of sightseeing, then off to Oktoberfest for 11 hours before catching another [View Full Entry]

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My last two weeks of travelling where a bit hectic but I managed to see a lot of places and get some good use out of my Interrail Pass so it worked out well. Sorry if this entry is really long with heaps of photos but I didn't know how to split it up. From Vienna I went to Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic and stayed there for two days. It is one of the most picturesque medieval towns you will ever see and a major stop on the backpacker trail. There is a winding river running through the old [View Full Entry]

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The easy answer is that he never existed but I did find out about a very disturbing character called Vlad Dracul Tepes who had the nasty habit of sticking people on spikes and leaving them to die a slow and painful death. Dracul is derived from "son of the dragon" and Tepes means "impaler", thus you get the charming name of Vlad the Impaler, son of the Dragon. This bloodlust led to the myth of the Vampire Lord we all know as Count Dracula. Sadly this was one of the main reasons why I chose to visit Transylvania but after seeing [View Full Entry]

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I think that the most lasting impression I will have of Sarajevo, and Bosnia Herzegovina in general for that matter, is that left by the Sarajevo Roses spread out throughout the city. A Sarajevo Rose is created when a mortar or artillery shell hit a piece of pavement. The force of the strike and the shrapnel create a flower like pattern and as the Government decided to fill in any of these spots that killed 6 or more people with red paint a shape not unlike a rose is formed. This along with the many pockmarked buildings from rocket fire and [View Full Entry]

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After arriving from Tunisia in Palermo I took a train to the other side of Italy and caught a ferry from Bari to Dubrovnik, Croatia. When I arrived I met up with Anna, a Polish girl that I have been seeing in Vienna. She has lived in Vienna since she was 4 but definitely considers herself Polish so thats why I had to make that clear! :P We met about 2 months before the end of the semester and spent quite a lot of time going out together and playing volleyball and frisbee with the other exchange students. She is 20 [View Full Entry]

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When I had first planned to come to Tunisia I thought that it would be a short ferry ride from Italy and a refreshing break from Europe. It was a very refreshing break from Europe but the ferry ride proved much more difficult to organise than I had previously thought. We wanted to take a ferry from Salerno but soon found out that the only ferry was full. It went via Palermo in Sicily though and there were free seats from there to Tunis. We tried to buy tickets but it was "impossible" we were told. We quickly went to the [View Full Entry]

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