Fi here. Gabe has given up. Yes, that's right. He's taken his soccer ball and he's gone home. No more writing from him. So it is up to me, his long-suffering wife to take up the mantle of the blog, wowing you with our wondrous journey and adventures. I apologise for the serious delay in updating the blog. We were busy. Hamburg. Full of graffiti and Germans. Pretty cool frankly. It was the first place where we were able to wander the streets looking much like locals. No one was any the wiser – until we opened our mouths of course. [View Full Entry]

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Arriving on a very efficient train from Berlin which I thought was heading to South Amsterdam station, the lovely train conductor told me I could hop across a platform at one of the stations and arrive at Amsterdam Centraal which was where I wanted to be, so already I was a fan of Holland... Now I was going solo with Ben having gone to Hamburg to see family friends, I took myself out for dinner, and later realised that I was actually sitting in the restaurant window...luckily in the right part of town & not the red light district!!! A visit [View Full Entry]

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Amsterdam Amsterdam was a super quick trip. We were going to book an extra night when we arrived, but were glad we decided not to after seeing our room. This was probably my least favorite hostel because it was incredibly cramped and dirty. As an added bonus, there were two girls in our room who were very inconsiderate considering they were sharing a tiny room with 6 other people. Anne Frank House This is really the only place we went worth mentioning. The building were Anne Frank hid during the beginning of the Holocaust with her family and some other people [View Full Entry]

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It was time to leave London and begin the real testing part of our journey! Couldn't bucking felieve it! We were kind of sad to go and excited to be on the next part of our trip already, and possibly the biggest part so far. The campervan that we received for our $AU4300/3 month hire was a Toyota LiteAce “Noah”. Obviously this is a Japanese import as it has Japanese writing all over it... And who in the Western World would EVER call a car a Noah? If our budget goes according to plan, we'll get out of the Schengen states [View Full Entry]

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Our time in Amsterdam.... is a blurr.... but so much fun...... get on it!!!! wake up... eat... space cake... laugh ALOT... sleep....... repeat x 5 [View Full Entry]

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I am absolute crap at taking videos, so you can imagine my surprise at capturing this scene of the Concert-Gebouw at night. We were on our way home, looking for a tram, when we stumbled upon it. I hope it works on your computer, since it's worth viewing, it really is. An hour before, sitting at dinner, Ron and I were discussing what we felt were the "bests" of our month in Holland. For me, it was easy. I loved riding my bike, even in the rain, down the smaller canals beside Marianne's house. These weren't the glamourous canals of the [View Full Entry]

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Learning to ride with a loaded bike can be humbling. The first time you set out on a tour it is hard to fathom what the bike will feel like under the load of all your gear. The unsteadiness you feel that first time mixed with the thought of the task at hand makes the whole undertaking seem for a moment unimaginable and you are given the opportunity to either quit, go insane, or focus on what you can do for the moment and forget about the future. That process, forgetting about the future, is an ongoing meditation. When you start [View Full Entry]

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When you travel with a Ron, you get to hear a lot of music. I could trot out all my favourite adjectives and tell you about Katarina Garcia, lilting her way through a set of Sefardic melodies, making us forget that we were sitting on hard chairs in a Dublin public library. Or Slaid Cleaves, who transformed a monastery kitchen on the Dutch side of the German border into a roadside bar on the dustiest patch of south Texas. Or I could confess to a moment of such intense identification during an Idan Raichel concert, where I sang at full throttle [View Full Entry]

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I finally made it to Kenya! Wow, it has been a long weekend of traveling...and it's not over yet. Yesterday, Sidney (another student teacher from IU) and I had a 10 hour layover in Amsterdam! I was so excited about all the things we got to see/do. We got off at central station, which is right by the red light district. We walked around quite a bit and found a nice restaurant with outdoor seating. The weather was probably high 50s and nice. We had some lunch along with a beer of course. Then we walked around to see the sights. [View Full Entry]

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On Tuesday night Gran and Gramps arrived in Amsterdam! Dad, Harry, Sam and I left early to meet them at their hotel. There we surprised them and gave them directions to get to our place for dinner. It was really cool because when we rode home we were going about the same speed as the tram so we could wave to them. Once we got back we had a dinner that we bought from the market and we showed them around. Finally for desert we had some of the 117 poffertjes that we made. The next day it was Dad's birthday. [View Full Entry]

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