OVERALL IMPRESSIONS OF ALBANIA Ok - usually I don’t write these sorts of entries but as I was heading back to mainland Italy there were many things that ‘stuck’ in my head about Albania that I thought I would share. Some of them were perhaps scattered through as mentions in the main blog entry but this is a bit of a summary of sorts. Enjoy… 1. The sheer number of cafes. Particularly in small towns and by the roadside. It didn’t seem unusual for some towns to have a café/bar every two or three shops. While most of them would have [View Full Entry]

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WEDNESDAY 28th OCTOBER - INTO ROME Arrived into Bari, on the east coast of Italy, just after 8am. Took a while to get off the boat and through Customs (people don’t believe in queues over here and it is hard to push little old ladies out of the way just because they shoved in front of you first). By the time I then got a local bus into the city centre, found an ATM and bought a train ticket (which was more expensive than I had thought) it was after 10am. Took a while because the first two ATMs I found [View Full Entry]

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WEDNESDAY 21 OCTOBER - ROAD TO ROME Up bright and early this morning to get the 8am bus to Palermo. I left myself plenty of time but still only made it by about 5-10 minutes as I kept having to ask people where the SAIS bus station was. All the bus stations have their own… and their own ticket office. Somewhat confusing when they aren’t signposted very well. But I managed to get a ticket and get on the 8am ok. From there it was just under three hours to Palermo. I was quite lucky when I got to Palermo [View Full Entry]

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SATURDAY 17 OCTOBER, SYRACUSE, SICILY The guy from New Zealand had told me that his train from Catania had taken five hours the day before. To get to Syracuse, I figured I would have to go to Catania and then change. So I got up early and was at the central train station by about 8am, hoping that there would be an early train to Catania. There wasn’t - the first train was at 12:45 that afternoon. The Rome train went to Syracuse as well but it didn’t leave until 3pm. So I sat for a while and waited and ate [View Full Entry]

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TUESDAY 13 OCTOBER - PALERMO, SICILY Having checked into a hostel a 10 minute walk from Victoria Station yesterday, my alarm was still set at the ridiculously early time of 3:15am. It was amusing waking most of my room when I got out of bed to shower and pack. About three or four of them had gotten in (quite drunk and therefore noisily) at about 2:30am!! I did feel sorry though for the girl with the bunk above mine - she had been crying earlier having just been fired from her au pair job (she was more upset as she [View Full Entry]

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TUESDAY 6 OCTOBER 2009 - AUSTRIA Up before 7am this morning to shower and pack a small overnight bag to take with me out to Linz. As I was coming back to the hostel in a few days I was able to leave my big bag in storage; which was a lot better than having to lug it back and forth! Got the 8:30am train into Linz which arrived at about 10am. Managed to locate Albert as I had seen this man walking around looking like he was looking for someone. He had already planned out some things for us to [View Full Entry]

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MONDAY 28 SEPTEMBER 2009 - PRAGUE After a late arrival I took my time getting up this morning. After a quick shower (and realising I have no voice at all) I headed out to change some money before coming back and paying for the hostel and having breakfast. They were good enough to let me stay in the room they put me in the previous night - which is great because it is only an eight bed dorm with a shower, which is a lot dearer than the 10 bed dorm without a shower that I actually booked!! Maybe they felt [View Full Entry]

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FRIDAY 2 OCTOBER 2009 - MUNICH My overnight bus arrived into Munich just after 5am. I knew that I probably wouldn’t be able to check into my camping ground until about 7 or 8am so I took my time at the station before jumping on the u-bahn and getting to my station. Very glad I hung around as when I got off at the right station I discovered that the first bus to run out to Thalkirchen Camping was about 10 minutes later at 7:15am or so. Myself and two other Aussies travelling with Top Deck were on the bus. [View Full Entry]

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MONDAY 21 SEPTEMBER 2009, RUSSIA TO LATVIA Early start this morning with a 7:30am departure. Was quite a long bus day which was compounded by another lengthy border crossing which took about two hours. I think it was almost as difficult to get out of Russia as it was to get in!! They also made us all take our luggage off of the coach and get it x-rayed which just added to the process. After exiting Russia it was time to enter Latvia, which was slightly easier given it is in the EU and several people on the bus have EU [View Full Entry]

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THURSDAY 17 SEPTEMBER 2009 - RUSSIA Long bus day today as we had to drive from Novgorod into Moscow. That meant it was an early start- with breakfast at 6:45am and on the bus at 7:10am. Most people slept for the first few hours on the bus which is pretty normal - with our first stop being at around 9:30am for coffee and toilets. Back onto the bus for another few hours until midday when we stopped at basically a roadside café/diner. It was raining so they had decided to feed us in there rather than sit outside in the [View Full Entry]

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