So.. in case youre frightened right now - here they spell the name of the country Slovenija... a particular souvenir was written with the S somewhat obscured, leading Simon to belive it actually said "Love Ninja". Im not sure it acurately describes the country, but I like it! To get on with the story, this country is BEAUTIFUL!! Very very story book, fairytale castles, mountains, rivers, gorgeous little villages, and crazy motorways! The centre of Ljubljana is gorgeous - a river lined with beautiful old buildings, bars, cafes, restaurants and ice-cream stands, so as you can imagine, it has been [View Full Entry]

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... so about midday on Wednesday, we breathlessly arrived in Vienna. Accidentally landed in a quite flash hotel, due to the assistance of the grumpiest man in Austria at the airport info desk. (PS Vienna airport is full of unattended luggage - including a poor little cat in a cage that had a very big day!). Discovered an excellent old-school giant ferris wheel, did an obligatory bus tour, and ate Wiener schnitzel of couse! (Well, obviously only Simon did:( ) Thursday morning had us on a train for an incredibly picuresque ride to Ljubljana, where I am now writing from. [View Full Entry]

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This is where the "contiki tour" part of our trip begins - with 36 hours in Copenhagen. Another strange little B&B, (a room in someones home, complete with childrens toys all over the place!). I had another excellent day of presenting and meeting, we ate Vietnamese food and prepared for another early start to fly to Vienna. Simon on the other hand, had a much more interesting day, with a visit to Carlsberg brewery a palace, and kissing some random chick (see photos). [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so very behind.... Sweden for nearly 2 weeks... so well make it dot points (and I cant find the apostrophe on this keyboard, so apologies for bad punctuation). 1) Fredrik (Lottas partner) submitted his PhD and had his public thesis defence a couple of days after we arrived and it was unbelievable - 4 professors from different countries grilled him on his work (to do with maths and physics and optimization and radiotherapy - after that I get a bit vague on the details). Anyhow, he shone, Im glad I dont have to do one, and we had a great [View Full Entry]

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So... sorry about the last few countires, and sorry also that this one might be a bit longer than I usually aim for. From Amsterdam we flew to Finland, where we promptly got on a boat to Tallinn in Estonia. It was really excellent, it has a mind-boggling old town and slightly better prices than Finland and Scandinavia! I'll try to attach a few photos of it. We had wine in an underground tunnel, some sort of local liqueur in a cave-cafe and generally soaked up the oldness. Boat back to Helsinki and a quiet night, followed by a day of [View Full Entry]

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Tallinn [View Full Entry]

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Helsinki and Turku [View Full Entry]

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... well, for this country anyhow. So I'm almost done with Amsterdam, we fly out to Helsinki at the crack of dawn tomorrow. To backtrack a little, Simon arrived early on Tuesday, which was very exciting, and everything has been much more fun since. Still haven't really found any gluten free food, but I've heard it's quite good in Finland. The conference at the Vrije Universiteit was actually really interesting, great to see a public health focus on physical activity and a whole area I'm not really familiar with. It was also huge! This is a strange city for health promotion [View Full Entry]

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So official start of the trip - a day in Amsterdam trying to stay awake... and living in fear. Something about this city has me completely on edge (and my sense of melodrama won't let me consider the possibility I'm just tired and grumpy after 40 hours in transit). To summarise, my main fears appear to be: 1) Getting run down- the nominations for potential vehicles are many: most likely, bike! There are seriously about ten million more than I even imagined. and they're mad. I know, it's meant to be my job to want Australia to be more like this, [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so now that I'm actually overseas, it seems a good time to start writing - I've only made it as far as Singapore so far, but absolutely loving it. So far I have been on a crazy city bus tour (with a facts and figures obsessed guide and 20 German tourists in their early 60s, my head is spinning), I have had a free foot and calf massage in the excellent massage chairs, used free internet main reason for writing this!), sent a free postcard (are you picking up the theme?). Love it, but won't bore you with any more [View Full Entry]

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