Twenty years ago (!), on my first visit to Germany with my parents, we stopped in Wuerzburg and discovered by sheer coincidence that it was the twin town of Dundee, 15 miles from my home town. OK, so it's got several twin towns, which seems a tad greedy, but Dundee's the one that counts for me. Several school exchange and student visits followed, leaving me with a soft spot for the city. When the train schedule threw up the option of Wurzburg or several bland sounding towns in the former east Germany, the decision was a no brainer. Thanks to a [View Full Entry]

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Having spent two semesters at the University of Augsburg, I wanted to go back for a look at the town ten years on. Little appeared to have changed much as we wandered through the campus and the Unikum cafe bar seemed to be doing as good a trade as ever on a sunny day. After stocking up with picnic ingredients en route we set off for a pleasant walk through the SiebentischWald towards Kuhsee to go for a swim. Unfortunately, my memory of the paths through the wood isn't what it used to be, so we saw far more of the [View Full Entry]

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Well, perhaps 'same procedure as every 4 years' would be more apt. There is a famous short film in Germany, entitled 'Dinner for One'. Although it's in english, adapted from a theatre sketch, it's little known outside Germany, where it's a staple of New Year's Eve TV. The plot loosely revolves around the catchphrase 'Same procedure as last year?' , receiving the response 'Same procedure as every year'. Somehow, this immediately came to mind, when, 4 years after our last visit , the scenes of jubilation we'd witnessed there when Turkey reached the World Cup semi finals were repeated, this time [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at our relatives' place in Munich early Saturday morning, in good time to prepare for the match at 5pm that afternoon. A few beers were inbibed in preparation for the main event later on, and so we headed off for the stadium, in an extremely packed S-Bahn train. When we got there, lo and behold there was no record of our tickets, nor of the security man we'd gotten to know in Stuttgart, so we went away somewhat saddened, but really only with confirmation of the scam we'd known all along. Then I remembered that I'd managed to get [View Full Entry]

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Following a slightly disconcerting 2 day stop in London, it was definitely time to temporarily put the spanish language skills to sleep and insert the German CD ROM into our heads. I do love Germany. We'd arranged, instead of paying an exorbitant World Cup hotel rate, to stay with a local German family in Stuttgart for our trip to the game between Spain and Tunisia. Upon arrival, we were greeted with an offer of a cold drink (beer, natuerlich) and a nice seat in the sun on the balcony. Our hosts, it turns out, were offering their room during the World [View Full Entry]

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The orange glow in the sky at 5am signalled our approach to Buenos Aires, and thus our return to big city life where the stars are no longer visible due to the light pollution. The first stage of our trip was definately almost over. However, Buenos Aires proved to be the perfect final stop in South America. We'd enjoyed our time there before, and this time both relaxed totally into the lifestyle. If only there were suitable jobs, it would be an ideal place to move to.... I'll try not to let this turn into a football blog (nor indeed the [View Full Entry]

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Nearing the end of our South American adventure, we found ourselves in Quito for 5 nights, and had high hopes of spending the time wisely...sadly this was not to be. We stayed in the main touristy area of town Mariscal (?) in a lovely room above a coffee shop, surrounded by bars and restaurants..we even bumped into our mate Sally who had just arrived on a 48hr bus journey from Peru. However, Quito doesn't really appear to have that much to offer...plenty of bars, if you like your bars with security guards and pistols, plenty of streets which you're told are [View Full Entry]

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So far on our trip we've found travel by boat to be the most fun and relaxing method of transport, so when the chance arose to take advantage of a last minute deal to the Galapagos, we didn't have to think about it for long. Having been so lucky with the people we met on the Antarctica trip, we were fully prepared to have to put up with a boat full of American pensioners this time, stocking up on books and fully charging the ipods, just in case. However, lady luck shone on us once more when we met our 7 [View Full Entry]

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We were all somewhat sceptical when our 'guide'promised that we'd be on the first bus in the morning up to Machu Picchu (decided not to walk as we'd heard there was a big enough climb at the top to Mayna Picchu for views over the main site). True enough, we crawled out of bed at 4am, had a typically dull trail breakfast and wandered along to the bus stop in town, where we discovered we were the first there. Naturally, Kike the guide had yet to purchase the bus tickets (though he'd told us he had), but we held our places [View Full Entry]

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There is a perfectly good train service from Cusco to visit Machu Picchu. In fact, there are several train services, including an ultra luxury train. So why on earth I was ever persuaded that trekking instead for 4 days was a good idea remains somewhat of a mystery. But despite my reservations, I did it and have the photos and blisters to prove it (not to mention the food poisoning, but lets not dwell on that.) The scene was set for the next few days when we set off at 4.30. It never fails to amaze me that tour companies here [View Full Entry]

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