I really like Austria, the people are surprisingly friendly. Having boarded a surprisingly un-modern train from Salzburg to Vienna, I was joined by two young, beautiful Austrian students on their way to the first day of university term. Needless to say, they both claimed to be bad at English, when in fact their English was excellent. We chatted about life, music, and the road ahead, they introduced me to the concept of couch-surfing and Vienna arrived pretty quickly. Unfortunately, on the way I got a message from Aga saying that she wouldn't make it to Vienna, she'd got stuck in traffic [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sunday 7th October Woke up rested at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, quite dazed, Kiliam the same. First, a steak and salad breakfast. Head for a walk around Hallein, a stunning alpine villiage of narrow streets and angular houses, exactly like you imagined. Then down to the station for a train to Salzburg, only to discover (after 30 mins) that on Sundays such trains are only hourly, so we wait for 55 mins in a dazed stupour. Salzburg itself is beautiful, and after some suicidal road crossing, and watching a steam train depart from the station, we walk along the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Pre-departure and journey, Ljubljana I wake up quite confused. For some reason, there's a blonde girl on top of me that wasn't there the night before. Then I realise she's just looking to turn off my alarm clock. The next thing I realise I've missed my train and I'm still far from soberiety. And my feet still soaked and freezing. I discover the German girl's name is Britta, a European business student: tall, friendly and stunningly beautiful. There's a train to Munich that goes via Salzburg in two hours though, and I decide to get it, even though I know Kiliam [View Full Entry]

---

---

Journey and arrival By the time I got to Ljubljana I was sick of capital hopping. I called into the tourist office to ask what I could do that was a little more adventurous. The very friendly guy there, with a hilarious bald patch on the top of his head, gave me a timetable for a bus to Bled, where I was told I could get my outdoor hit. I decided to get a late bus and spend the day looking at Ljubljana. After extinguishing my Zagreb hangover with coffee, buns and burek from a local cafe, I headed into the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Journey and Arrival A quiet journey across the Serbian border and into Croatia, where a shopkeeper joins my cabin and we have a chat and a game of chess. Soon afterwards, a huge guy headed for Munich arrived and killed the conversation, so the remainder of the journey into Zagreb was pretty tedious. Out of the train and shortly later met Stipe in the station. Zagreb instantly struck me as a much more pretty city and I looked forward to it being better than Beograd. After grabbing some food and beer, and a tram down to Stipe's, we were ready to [View Full Entry]

---

---

Journey and Arrival I wokeup in the train with an old Serbian couple in my car, and sleep wasn't coming back. The old lady seemed releived that I was alive and promptly forced me to eat lots of food, literally shoving it into my face. It was hard to complain, it's quite nice :D The highlight of this train journey was unquestionably pasing through Nis. The train passes along at the equivalent height level of a 2nd storey building across an ad-hoc Serbian city that's not so far removed from what one imagines of the favelas of South America, with buildings [View Full Entry]

---

---

Journey and First Night Met a Czech guy called Vladmir on the train and we travelled north of the border playing chess and drinking beer. Arriving in Skopje was an experience, walked from the train station down a familiar road to Kisele Voda to where the hostel should be, but couldn't find it (in fact, I walked past it 5 or 6 times without ever noticing it was there!) Thanks to Macedonian good will, I quickly accumulated a troupe of about 5 guides, of whom only 2 spoke English, and between us we hunted it down. The hostel itself was pretty [View Full Entry]

---

---

Journey and Arrival Had a beautiful train ride up from Athens to Thessaloniki. The railway winds needlessly through mountain passes and gives beautiful views of the land below. Got delayed by fire on route for an hour as well, which I suppose is traditional :D Passengers were mostly unfriendly and untalkative with the exception of the gorgeous Greek girl, Daniella who sat beside me from Larissa to 20 mins before Thessaloniki. A real local, living in the country and going to uni in the nearest big one which was Aristotle, Thessaloniki, she was beautiful and very touchy-feely which [View Full Entry]

---

---

Arrival Arrived and met a Greek guy living Bournemouth on the metro into town. Which was good, because he told me a hostel I could stay in, rather than slumming it in the Syntagma! So I checked into Athens Backpackers near Acropolis, in the last bed, and headed down to Syntagma to get some food and assure my mother I was alive. And have a beer :) Woke up in the middle of the night in the hostel, in a six bed dorm, to realise 5 of the 6 people in there were wide awake and talking, asking who was in [View Full Entry]

---

---

The journey starts at Green Park Tube Station. After saying goodbye to John, I enter the packed Victoria station, grab a superb cheese sandwich and get the train out to Gatwick. An uneventful check-in later and I'm on the plane to Greece, wishing for sleep that won't come thanks to the lack of legroom in my chair. I notice a girl reading a Lonely Planet on the opposite side of the aisle and strike up a conversation with Tiffany, a friendly Aussie health-club manager, who's also heading off for a travel, of the Greek islands. With good company, the flight passed [View Full Entry]

---

---