Blogs from Europe - page 12073

London, like any huge cosmopolitan metropolis, is the home of many nationalities. Roughly 40% of the London population is of foreign origin, you can hear people talking in Turkish, Spanish, French, German, Bengali, Pakistani, Polish, Japanese,etc... The Camden Borough is supporting a project which wants to bring this diversity of languages closer to everybody and encourages teaching all sort of languages after school, community languages that is. They're sponsoring a Teaching Community Languages course which I attend every Friday for 3 hours and it's run by a lovely Bengali teacher. From what I've seen so far, it looks like it's gonna be lots of fun and lots of work as well, as we have assignments and very strict dead-lines, but there's nothing to fear, I've always been quite studious, and I actually enjoy it. The group ... read more

Geo: 47.81, 13.04Today I did a day trip to Salzburg, it was only a two hour train ride, 150 kms from Munich. Salzburg is just over the German/Austrian border. This city is well known for being the birthplace of Mozart and for scenes of The Sound of Music being filmed in the city. The name Salzburg means 'salt castle' and comes from the barges of salt that were transported down the Salzach River which runs through the city. I walked through the palace gardens that were seen in the Sound of Music movie. From here I could see the Hohensalzburg Fortress at the top of the hill. The city is surrounded by the alps. Luckily for the city, only the cathedral dome and the bridges were destroyed during WWII. I saw a house that Mozart lived ... read more

So jumped in a van and did a 5 day tour about the place, went to lots of places.. oxford, sherwood forest, york- stayed a night, had a ''viking feast'' i didnt know vikings had deep fryers- but ok! then went on a ghost walk around the city with this crack up as guy dressed as like an oldin day doctor or something it was totally nerdy but very funny! Next morning headed north some more, went through newcastle, saw the angel of the north (??) some millenium thing apprently, saw an old wall, hadrians wall in fact (ahhhhh more old rocks!), then finally made it to edinburgh (yeeeeeaaaay) for a wander, whiskey drinking and haggis- which is really good, just like spicy mince! then went out for a look on the town- surprisingly busy ... read more

On the 4th Dave and I borrowed the Land Rover and went for a drive to the Mourne Mountains. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer day, the sun was shining and we only had to wear 1 layer instead of 3! The Mournes are Northern Ireland highest mountains and contain 12 mountains in total. Our first stop of the day was Newcastle, which is an hour south of where we’ve been staying and along the coast. We cruised around town for a bit checking out shops and finding information about the Mournes. After that we headed into the Mournes to Silent Valley, which is a dammed and is where Belfast gets its water from. The drive to Silent Valley was really pretty; all the fields were lined with the traditional stone walls that you ... read more

Not long to go until I jet off to Kilimanjaro, and it would be untruthful to say that I am not feeling a tad nervous at this stage. The preparation required for this trip has been phenomenal, and I do not feel that I will ever be ready. I was hoping to be fluent in conversational Swahili at this point: some chance of that! My last few weeks have been spent primarily in the pub, drinking copious amounts of red vino with the Gateley's crew. One of my aims is to detox whilst in Africa, but I have heard that they do a rather nice lager out in Tanzania. Let's see how long I last without a drink! ... read more