Blogs from Europe - page 10053

So I'm back in Kaunas!! My fourth season playing for Kaunas Lituanica. Man I am getting old..... I arrived at the field at around 1:30 PM. I was the second to arrive, just after Gedas and Sigitas. Gedas was wearing nice street clothes, and Sigitas was dressed already in his uniform having worn it for the previous game (the younger team played earlier in the day). I immediately took out a trash bag and began picking up trash, remnants from the previous evening’s festivities. Gintaras Stadium, our stadium, has no fully-enclosed fence around it. We do not own the field. Thus the stands are a popular hangout place for teenagers looking for a place to party cheaply. Even during our game today, for example, there were three separate groups of teenagers hanging out in the bleachers ... read more

Yesterday we got up at some insane hour of the morning to catch the 655 train to Brussels. It is a 3 hour train ride and mum and I took turns sleeping for half the trip each. Very different to Amsterdam! Found ourselves a map thanks to the novotel and walked across the road for waffles... All we really came to Belgium for was waffles, chocolates and beer hehe... Whilst eating yummy waffles that weren't Vegan, sorry Vegan viewers, we worked out what we wanted to do... Found an information booth and started on a self guided walking tour which took us up to the cathedral which was really pretty... Kept on with the walking tour and it brought us to a comic museum!!!! I was in paradise surrounded by smurfs, tin tin and asterix comic ... read more

The traveling was good, but the intermediate parts were a little bit worse. Starting at the beginning: I arrived at the airport very early and went through security about 5 hours early (I had a reason, I'm not insane). I watched the earlier flight to Paris leave and then waited for mine. While waiting, a Hasidic Jewish man sat next to me. He and a few other Hasidim were looking to make a minyan, but they didn't have enough people, so I volunteered to the guy sitting next to me. Unfortunately, I only made 8, so they had a Minion, but not a minyan (that's my funny of the day). We got to talking about Judaism and Israel, which killed some time. Yay! The flight went smoothly, but we took off over an hour late. My ... read more

We took a 'Tuscan Trails' wine tasting trip today. It was nice to get out of the city centre and into the surrounding countryside. We visited a vineyard in the morning and sampled a number of Chianti wines and some olive oil. The tour guide was really good - very passionate about wine and informative. There was only 4 of us on the tour which made it very relaxed and we could ask lots of questions so I learned a few things. Hopefully this will help me when choosing Italian wines in the future. We were taken to a traditional Tuscan restaurant for lunch and had some delicious local food and plenty of wine to wash it down with. We went to a second Chianti region in the afternoon and sampled some more wines. I am ... read more

On the 22nd of May at 6:45 AM, Dick and I started what can only be described as a “sceneryathon”. It involved….(and read this slowly for the full impact) taking a taxi to a train, to another train, to a boat, to a bus, to a train, to another train, to yet another train, would you believe another train and finally to a plane…..all in 26 hours! It is officially called “Norway in a Nutshell” but it was more like shear insanity. As we walked around the Oslo train station supermarket looking to fill our travel larder, we ran into our friend Marit with whom we had dinner a few nights before and knew she would be on the this particular train to Bergen. By 11:00 AM, our train table was resplendent with smoked salmon, ham, ... read more