Stay Here

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On my last day in Greece I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of girls from Brisbane that I hadn’t seen in years!! I knew it was only a matter of time before I bumped into someone from home.. Australians are everywhere! My last day in Greece also meant the beginning of the massive mission to get to Krakow in Poland.

I got a 10 hour boat to Athens and decided to go straight to the airport because my flight was at 4.30 in the morning. Unfortunately the last metro had already left so the ticket officer said to go to the other side of the road to get the bus. So I went to the other side of the road, where I was then told to go to another street. This bus stop was marked with the airport so I was feeling pretty relieved. Then after about 45 minutes I started getting worried because the bus still hadn’t shown up. Then I asked a kiosk man who said it was actually on the next street, but that was wrong too and it was actually a different street. After all this fuss I finally found the right bus, which had broken down, so I waited for the next one and was finally on my way to the airport. As it had taken so long to get to the silly airport I only got there an hour before check-in, so I decided sleep would be a fruitless attempt and found a Maccas.



<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Krakow

By the time I got to Krakow I had somehow managed to get pretty sick and could hardly talk! Laura had a rough time getting there too, but regardless we forced ourselves to go on the normal walking tour of the city, as well as a Jewish walking tour in the afternoon.. a totally of 6.5 hours of tours on a couple of hours sleep! I was pretty surprised at us. After the second tour we dragged ourselves to an awesome burger place ran by Kiwis and then bed.

The next day we woke up early for a tour to Auschwitz which as you can imagine was really confronting. I found it very interesting to learn about WWII here after visiting Berlin and Munich as well. As Krakow played such a big role in WWII, it actually didn’t get as damaged so it is still an ‘untouched’ beautiful medieval city. It seems rather bittersweet.

I would have loved to spend another day in Krakow just to chill and check out the nightlife (apparently there is this bar where you go through a wardrobe to get to the different rooms), but we had Open’er Festival in Gdynia to get to! I may have convinced Laura to go to the same burger place before we left.



<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Gdansk and Gdynia

We got an overnight train to Gdansk where we dumped most of our stuff before heading to Gdynia for the festival. The weather was pretty rotten so by the time we got to the festival grounds we were soaking and had to set the tent up in the rain. Luckily it cleared up in time for the first act!

The festival was pretty chilled and actually only opened at 4pm every day. This was alright though because it gave us time to see the town plus they put on a theatre production called ‘Angels in Amercia’.. epic! The bands we saw were The Kills, Yeasayer, Bjork, Bon Iver, Justice, Bloc Party, M83, The Ting Tings, Mumford and Sons, Friendly Fires and The xx. I also got to eat lots of hotdogs. The weather was pretty crazy throughout the whole time.. I wore my warmest clothes and my lightest clothes in one day! Unfortunately it started pouring on the last night to the extent where part of the camping ground was flooded. So glad it wasn’t us.. though I’m sick again now. Overall the festival was awesome, but I am glad to be clean (though my feet are still getting there) again and I never want to see a portaloo again. Oh we also bumped into Nicole from Bianca’s korridor in Lund.. she’s Australian too!

After the festival we spent a night in Gdansk which was actually really nice! I hadn’t done my research because we were really only going there in transit to Open’er, but there was a cultural festival on there and the buildings were gorgeous. As I was napping, Laura had a look around and then when I got up we went for lunch at this dumpling place. After lunch I saw this awesome burger place and convinced Laura it would be fitting to go there for her farewell dinner. Turns out she was trying to hide the burger place from me for this very reason and purposely lead me to the dumpling place first for lunch. The plan half succeeded.

So Laura and I have parted for the last time this semester. She’s on her way home to Australia and taking four flights to get there.. crazy person. I am currently on an 18 hour bus ride to Vienna. Some people may think this is strange, but it was cheap and I actually love sitting on a bus and watching what goes by. I have seen some of the most beautiful scenery.. pretty towns, cities, country sides and forests.

This Eurotrip seems completely all over the place. Every time I travel I try to make a plan and end up doing something completely different! I’m really looking forward to seeing what Vienna has to offer and catching up with the lovely Marlies who was on exchange in Brisbane last year.

On a completely different note, Euphoria just came on.. it takes me back to Sweden every time!! Ok bye for now.

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